“The War Prayer” (1905)

This very short story by Mark Twain is painfully obvious, although I am sympathetic with its views and have even had my own experience that resonates with it. When I say very short I mean it—under five pages. Better to call it a parable complete with readymade moral, as it was written in response to US imperial adventuring in progress for the previous decade. A preacher on a Sunday morning is giving volunteers the patriotic sendoff. War fever is in the air. Then a strange man no one knows steps up, saying he is a messenger from God sent to finish the prayer. It’s more or less a depiction of what they’re praying for from the enemy’s viewpoint—death, dismemberment, and destruction. My experience like this happened shortly after 9/11—on the following Friday, 9/14, which President Bush Jr. had designated as a “day of remembrance.” Fair enough. It also happened to be the 20th anniversary of the death of my mother, and though I had little regard for the Bush-Cheney administration I was shaken up like most people by the array of 9/11 events. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head for weeks of those thousands of people crushed under tons of rubble. And the images of that day have been branded into many of us as well—the planes hitting, the towers collapsing, people leaping to their deaths to get away from fire. They are so traumatic, and have become so sacred, that it is still considered in poor taste to speak of them. Don’t call 9/11 iconic or the greatest anything. Anyway, feeling the need to be with others on this day of remembrance, I attended a public gathering in downtown Seattle that featured a lot of political mucky-mucks who were evidently lost about how to respond. They were uniformly uninspired and uninspiring. The moments of silence were the best part. They prayed. One talked about the guns of retribution roaring, which disappointed me. I wish the strange man in “The War Prayer” had been there to speak. He had things to say to a bunch of these people that they really needed to hear. Yes, they are painfully obvious things. But even so they don’t necessarily reach anyone. Twain never published “The War Prayer” in his lifetime. Friends and loved ones urged him not to, saying it would be taken as sacrilegious. Thus has it ever been.

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“King Leopold’s Soliloquy” (1905)

Wow, what a crazy long piece from Mark Twain this is. Published originally as a pamphlet, it presents itself as a first-person ranting defense by Belgium’s King Leopold II of his colonial adventuring and the Congo Free State. Everything about the Congo Free State I know I basically learned by reading this. Of course I know how terribly Europe has treated Africa for quite some time. The Congo Free State was chiefly about harvesting rubber. Leopold and his private corporate entity enslaved natives for the purpose, and they were brutal about it. My Delphi kindle product version of the pamphlet includes at least some of the original illustrations, which include photos of men, women, and children with amputated hands and other limbs—punishment for not working quickly enough or to quota or whatever. As political satire, this piece is far more bitter than witty. Leopold is an empty vessel of pompous rationalizing. He claims some advances in the quality of native lives, but has no defense for the brutality beyond being within his rights. I should also mention that the piece is a mess on my kindle version. Also, full disclosure, after reading all of the Twain material I’ve written about (and a couple more) the dang kindle product froze up on me and has never worked since. Another $2.99 wasted! (actually, the majority of these invaluable Delphi “shelf” products that I’ve picked up—everything in public domain by a single author in one place—have been very useful and worth every nickel and penny of the $2.99) Some of the text from the pamphlet was printed as sidebars in text-boxes, which were incorrectly converted into largely illegible pictures and thus mostly lost. Not to worry—the online Gutenberg version is correct and available in numerous formats. The HTML looked good. But to the point, I appreciate Twain’s outrage here. The things he describes are terrible, and arguably even more terrible because the Congo Free State for whatever reasons was left out of my education. Twain’s piece is more a long, bludgeoning rant than true satire. You’re likely to imagine some spittle landing on you as you go. Say it, don’t spray it, Mark Twain. Now to find out a little more about the Congo Free State.

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“Eve’s Diary” (1905)

I must say I am mystified by Mark Twain’s relationship with religion. I understand he despised it. Perhaps that’s too strong. He returns to Bible themes all the time, sometimes mockingly, sometimes piously. He’s fascinated by Joan of Arc. Satan is a wonderful character in his unfinished Mysterious Stranger. Whole sections of the travel books are devoted, in hushed spiritual tones, to “the Holy Land.” Et cetera. Then there’s the question of comedy. Is it even funny? I’m not sure. I read “Eve’s Diary” somewhat under duress, also known as being in a bad mood for no particular reason. It did not change my mood. It seems to have feminist sympathies more than not, or at least Adam is something of a surly caveman lout. Eve is part flower child, part curious intelligent interesting person. The problem is more the situation itself. For example, they are naming things: “fire,” “smoke,” etc. It just seemed dumb, not funny. Dinosaurs are around—I liked that, it felt like one place where he is thumbing his nose at religion. I didn’t get the idea from nowhere that he’s hostile to religion. Adam and Eve have no sense of perspective, apparently. Eve thinks she can knock stars out of the sky by hitting them with clods of dirt. I don’t know what to make of some of it: “I found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant, because they live on strawberries.” Say what? Most of all it feels like Twain is just not trying very hard, or worse—trying too hard plagued by writer’s block, which was possible. There’s a clumsy insertion of an Adam passage and a no-warning transition back to Eve. It hops about in time, though at least it is always moving forward and I guess a diary gives him license. I generally like Twain’s folksy voice, but it can grate. At least no racism I could detect here! That was a surprise for me in his earlier work. Racism is rarely a main feature but it's usually there. Here we have dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, a comic point that does wear well I must admit. Adam at Eve’s funeral acting like Dick Nixon at Pat’s was a jarring shift in tone, but I understand Twain lost his own wife the year before this story was written and published so that probably accounts for it. I wouldn’t call this one of his best.

Mark Twain, “Eve’s Diary” (Library of America)
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"For the Blood Is the Life" (1905)

This vampire tale by F. Marion Crawford, the special effects specialist of yore and master of the florid title ("The Dead Smile," "The Screaming Skull"), starts with an interesting optical illusion, which transmutes into ghostly trappings and various impossible events, and then finally here comes mayhem the way only vampires can deliver it. The scene is an ancient tower on the Mediterranean in a section of Italy reputed to be the birthplace of Judas Iscariot. Here a couple of globe-trotting colonialists have dinner in the fresh air of the rooftop at sunset and attempt to figure out the mystery. On the side of a faraway hill which they can see from the tower there appears to be a burial mound and a body lying on top of it. It only appears in moonlight, the host notes, and when the guest obligingly hikes over to it some distance away he sees that the vision changes when you approach, and the body disappears. The host, watching from afar, sees the body take the form of mist, embracing his guest and clinging to him, though the guest is well able to make the hike back. Among other things, it sounds like a long night. Well, it's quite a phenomenon, and yes, now that guest asks, there are local stories and legends about it, and please don't mind me the host if I tell it in two parts without quotation marks. Both of these embedded stories are quite busy, about stolen treasure, legacies denied, murder most foul, a vampire creature, and inevitably ruby-red lips, blood-sucking, and a wooden stake produced and utilized. I never quite understood why Cristina here suffers such a terrible end. No proper Christian burial following her murder is probably the answer but I'm also talking about the murder itself. She already had a vaguely vampiric look even when she was alive, "more like a gipsy than any girl I ever saw about here. She had very red lips and very black eyes, she was built like a greyhound, and had the tongue of the devil ... but she was a good girl." Whatever you say, boss. She never seems to get a break here. After a while the story is full-on vampire hunting and we all know what a bloody mess that can lead to. I can't make up my mind about the strange way the story is set up. It's almost so awkward that's what I like, backing into itself with the optical illusion and long hike, followed by story hour. I also wished Crawford or the storyteller had a little more sympathy for Cristina, whose main crime appears to be only that she looks like a gipsy and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are plenty of good details here and it is always competent, but it dares yet does not always transcend the many ruts of the vampire tale.

The Big Book of the Masters of Horror, Weird and Supernatural Short Stories, pub. Dark Chaos
Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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The House of Mirth (1905)

Edith Wharton's novel is the missing link I did not know I was missing between Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It has all of James's surging narrative style with Fitzgerald's impeccable eye for detail. Like song titles of Nirvana songs, "the house of mirth" never does show up in this novel, but unlike the Nirvana songs Wharton's poetic title has some meaning, as approximately the grasping social landscape of parties, looking good, getting rich, and having a fun time. Fitzgerald's world. Lily Bart, for most of The House of Mirth, is not having a fun time. She is beautiful, but pushing 30, and decisions about marriage must be made. She's also, well, not exactly destitute, but not really in the money either. At the beginning of the novel she has decided to marry a rich introvert, but bridles in the clinch, distracted by the man she really loves, who has no financial prospects. Subsequently, partly as a target of vicious rumor, her rich introvert bridles himself when he gets word of Lily's gambling debts. Those debts have been rung up at evenings of bridge. I didn't know bridge was played for money this way. Big debts as usual are what you get for playing with the rich. Wharton captures a late 19th-century portrait of New York City social life, and it's not pretty, but the novel is quite good. Her language moves comfortably through the architecture of the story—originally serialized, it is put together well, with a steady stream of events escalating the impossible tensions. It ends as a tragedy, a certain template for stories of later beauties such as Marilyn Monroe. I thought Lily's aunt was too hard on her but now I'm nitpicking. The House of Mirth was Wharton's second novel and more or less her coming out, considered her best by many (including Larry McCaffery), though perhaps not as many as her Age of Innocence. I'm not sure exactly what my expectations were but The House of Mirth beat them. In my old Riverside Edition paperback the introduction by R.W.B. Lewis, a very interesting piece (copyright 1963) itself, cautions against seeing Wharton as a missing link between James and Fitzgerald. In fact, it might be where I got the idea. But I am ignoring him on the point.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.