"The Copper Bowl" (1928)

George Fielding Eliot wrote a few horror stories but spent most of his career as a military man. He was born in the US, joined the Australian infantry, and fought in the Great War at Gallipoli, Somme, Passchendaele, Arras, and Amiens. This story is a notably sadistic conte cruel, with nothing supernatural or uncanny about it, only extreme human cruelty (even if the logistics are somewhat confusing). I read it when I was 12 and mostly thought it was gross. That was 1967 but I don't remember noticing that the story, written in 1928, is set in Vietnam. Yuan Li is some cruel warlord of the mysterious Orient and requires information from the blond Frenchman, Lieutenant Fournet. He requires it toot-sweet. Because of Fournet's status, Li cannot do much to him. So he rounds up Fournet's girlfriend and tortures her. It's fiendish and complicated and doesn't entirely make sense, involving the bowl in the title inverted and fastened to her abdomen, trapping a live rat, and live charcoals to heat the interior space. (Seems like the coals would fall off but what do I know.) The idea is that the rat gnaws its way out of the overheated conditions. And so it more or less goes, although Fournet makes a break to free her and even holds off Li and his minions for a time—nice try. By sacrificing the girl the story gets to have it both ways, in that the good guys ultimately win but the Oriental mind is shown to be full of stunning fiendish brutality. These seem to be the main takeaways anyway. I'm sure the exotic torture strategy must have been part of making the sale, as it seems to be the main point of this otherwise soporific slow-moving story. It was originally published in Weird Tales, the pulp gathering point for H.P. Lovecraft and his pack and many things weird, but evidently with room for stuff like this too. In present circumstances I know it's too easy to call racism and misogyny and such on these quaint old creaky little thrillers, but certainly in this case I don't see how you can't. The whole inscrutably cruel thing about Asians is hard to miss, and the one who dies is not only the only woman but also a Chinese and French mix who has been consorting with a French officer. Tsk-motherfucking-tsk, as someone once said. Oh yeah, also Fournet is forever calling Li a yellow this or a yellow that. Bypass.

These Will Chill You, ed. Lee Wright & Richard G. Sheehan (out of print)
Story not available online.

Silas Marner (1861)

I can't say I know George Eliot well—I have attempted Middlemarch with no success yet—but when I connected this title with her I thought I might take a chance. I read it first way back in 7th grade for extra credit and was awfully proud of myself for getting through it. As well I should have been—the language strikes me still as too often cramped, awkward and delicate, full of long sentences, monolithic paragraphs, and dialect (it appears, for example, that people once said "I doubt" when they meant "I don't doubt," among other grievous annoying misdemeanors). Still, it's a wonderful story, with a villain, a few saints, and lots of people between. Silas Marner, our hero, is deeply sad and deeply likable. I was rereading it in a week when everything in my life seemed to be going wrong and my heart went out for him with every setback he suffers and every piece of good fortune too. There is an overall very satisfying movement and growth to so many of the characters, and much transition from dark to light. It's also well plotted—there's a twist that fooled me nearly up to the moment it's revealed, and looking back it's clear Eliot mastered the magician's trick of misdirection. But more than that it's a fascinating character study across a man's life. Descriptions of him often focus on his protuberant eyes, which somehow made him vivid to me. The trajectory of his entire life is given by pieces. We witness the second and third acts and are told of the first. Marner suffers, and we feel it, but it is ultimately heartening in all the best ways. The deadening passages were what I expected, so the surprise was when it slipped into being engaging and compelling. I think I came away from it originally, at 12 going on 13, with something wrong about misers. Silas Marner is more directly about loneliness, alienation, and isolation. It is also about integrity, and about powerlessness, and it is all quite affecting. Yes, there is some resort to convenient coincidence in how it's put together. But I can look the other way because there are just so many very good points about it. The characters are so many of them so interesting. There is a convincing scene with an opium addict. There is a crime that makes one groan with pain. And there are many shades of good people here too. Glad I wandered back to this one.

In case it's not at the library.