Editorial: More by
default than contrivance, PROTA 8 is strictly bookish. Our latest
guest contributor is author, bookseller and long-term JG Ballard
aficianado, STEPHEN E. ANDREWS. Here, he convincingly argues for
greater, deeper coverage of literature and its creators across the
media, where too often it is the poorest relation amongst popular
culture. He ends with a related anecdote, both witty and telling. New
releases from Tartarus and Egaeus Press get the regular 'Pan'
dissection and we end with the all-too-occasional round-up under
Albertine's Wooers. Enjoy...
Empire of the Scum:
J.G. Ballard meets the Pond
Life Literati
By
Stephen E. Andrews
There are more books in the
world than there any other type of product. I don’t mean copies of
books, but titles as in discrete and specific works. I’m
also referring particularly to professionally published texts printed
in codex form and deliberately excluding self-published and e-books.
This has been the case for many, many decades. In any given year in
the UK alone, around 100,000 new titles are issued, a similar number
go out of print and there are usually around 600,000 different
volumes available to order at any given moment. Globally, these
numbers expand into millions. You might think there must be another
consumer durable that is created and manufactured in greater numbers
and diversity, but you’d be wrong. More than anything, printed
books still define human civilisation.
Despite this fecundity,
books are invisible to many: in its fixation on sport as the opium of
the people, the mass media’s coverage of literature is neglectful,
tantamount to deliberate starvation. The paucity of book programmes
on television and radio –those that do exist always focus on
authors already famous or whatever the major publishers are currently
hyping – is an international disgrace. Consequently, those of us
who work in the book trade (whether writers, publishers or
booksellers) are like the fish in M. C Escher’s print Three
Worlds, barely visible beneath the surface of a murky pond,
hardly ever breaking the meniscus above us into the oxygen of public
awareness above.
In the hierarchy of
literary Pond Life, booksellers like me are the lowest of the low.
Inhabitants of the Empire of the Scum, we can’t ever float like
duckweed on the surface as authors who have ‘made it’ do. We
speak to more readers than any editor or author ever does every
single day. We are quietly influential, but in reality never actually
make any work into a bestseller, except maybe in the town our
bookshop resides in. There’s a rumour that a bookseller did this
with John William’s Stoner, (an almost singular example of a
novel becoming a bestseller some forty odd years after initial
publication) but the fact is that this is a myth. NYRB Classics
reissued Stoner over a decade ago before rights were claimed
by Vintage in the UK some years later, but it was one of that
imprint’s own surface floaters (the default English ‘literary
zeitgeist’ novelist Ian McEwan) talking about the book on national
radio that really got copies of Stoner selling en masse.
Some writers recognise
that the committed bookseller is more than an anonymous piece of
software in the mainframe of literature. Instead, they treat us with
respect as collaborators in bringing something special to individual
readers for no more reward than a minimalist wage packet and the joy
of sharing the revelation of neglected but striking art. For career
booksellers, the most important perk of all is meeting one’s idols
and enthusiastically evangelising their works.
One of my favourite
authors is J.G. Ballard. Despite early critical acclaim, Ballard
didn’t cross over into mainstream acceptance from the ghetto of SF
until his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984. Having entered the book
trade in the autumn this event occurred, I can confidently state that
if this shortlisting (and the press reviews that accompanied it) had
not occurred, Ballard would have remained underwater for most readers
for far longer, possibly eternally. After all, Steven Spielberg would
never have filmed Crash, would he? Like most commentators and
interpreters working above the surface, Spielberg doesn’t really
engage with the obscure: all of his literary adaptations are of tomes
that were already bestsellers.
This is where my workmates
and I come in. As a rare example of that mutant amphibian known as
the Writer-Bookseller, I shamelessly promote work I find stimulating
to like-minded readers both in person from behind a counter and in
print. My work on guides such as 100 Must Read Books For Men
bought me brief notoriety via Radio 4’s Open Book programme
while my Amazon bestseller 100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels
led tangentially to my becoming a contributor to Deep Ends: The
J.G. Ballard Anthology, an (almost) annual collection of prose
and visual works in honour of my icon published by Terminal Press.
My first piece for this
handsome full-colour illustrated trade paperback anthology was for
the 2016 edition, a lengthy anecdotal essay on what it’s been like
seeing Ballard break through the surface tension from my perspective
as a thirty-year bookseller who had encounters with the great man
himself. Deep Ends: A Ballardian Anthology 2018 was published
very recently and features much enlightening and entertaining
material by the likes of Paul Di Fillipo, Maxim Jakubowski, David
Pringle (major veteran genre mavens all) and newer arrivals such as
myself and James Reich (a nascent generation working at shaking up SF
and slipstream writing). Although some of my magnificent peers have
contributed startling short stories that homage Ballard in Deep
Ends: A Ballardian Anthology 2018, I’ve aimed to mesh travel
writing with literary history in a Ballardian context in a piece
entitled 'Me: Capri: Brigitte Bardot,' this heading reflecting JGB’s
condensed novel 'You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe.'
To give you an idea what
my writing – and a bookseller’s life – is like, here’s an
anecdote. Some decades ago, Ballard was doing a signing at a large
Hampstead bookshop. Twenty minutes into his stint, no-one had turned
up to get a copy of his new novel inscribed. Ever amiable and
avuncular, Ballard suggested to the bookshop manager that he’d just
be off, as the event clearly wasn’t a happening deal. Two minutes
after the author had departed, a gleaming black sports car darted up
to the pavement outside the shop. Out of the car stepped Bryan Ferry
bearing a pile of Ballard first editions for signing; Crash almost
met 'Re-Make: Re-Model.' Ferry had tried but, like the rest of us, he
could not find a way.
Deep
Ends: A Ballardian Anthology 2018 is published by Terminal Press.
Tree Spirit & Other Strange Tales by Michael Eisele, Tartarus Press
Committed
readers of indie press may be surprised to learn that Michael
Eisele's latest short tale collection is only his second. You could
be forgiven for assuming otherwise since another mature author by
this name had previously self-published four collections and one
novel. (Between 2005 – 2008). Another reason for forgiving such an
assumption is the sheer assured accomplishment of ours. Add the fact
he's made his three-quarter century having previously supported
himself across a wealth of trades and temporary manual jobs that took
in the America of his birth, Germany, Hungary, ending up in the
Brecon Beacons, then such life experience has clearly stood our
Michael Eisele in good stead.
Tree
Spirit is only Eisele's second
collection - after The Girl With The Peacock Harp (Tartarus, 2016)
- where even the 'lesser' tales harbour greatness. Again, we are in
the folk-horror territory of fantasy, melding Hoffmann, Carter and
Pullman. The opener, 'Mouse,' is a pleasingly fictitious account of
the struggling, foundling years of Schalken the painter and the
supernatural little familiar destined to immortalise his very soul.
'Sacrifice' drops us into the middle of one dark seeker's ongoing
search for the Tablet of Suliman; one needful of a companion who must
pay for its purchase with her life. The companion he so casually
chooses he soon underestimates.
'Come
Not High' is a sole example of SF where an alien race parallel a
Biblical rebirth upon another world. If hardly original in concept,
its presence here is a not unwelcome surprise. The title tale,
however, may become a classic. Aeons ago, a tribe's woodcarver
receives a vision of a tree spirit. She commands him to use his skill
to fashion, and so release, her here in the material world, from 'the
great spirit tree of the forest,' so she may find renewed life upon
the waters of the Great River. Ignorant of the fate such an 'honour'
might bestow, his own, as a consequence, becomes all too clear. The
tale's strength is its quiet sensuality, as the female spirit
gradually draws out the simple woodcarver's love of his craft to
ultimately command his fate.
'The
Wife' – along with 'Leshi,' where a wayward son is summoned back to
take over his late father's mountain-top pile – is the entry most
adhering to the Hoffmannesque Gothic; especially in the nature of the
beast to whom she finds herself married. A welcome lightening of mood
climaxes the book in a connected trio of gently humorous folk tales;
'Brown Jenkins,' 'The Gardinel' and 'The Black Man.' This three-tale
arc is narrated by the semi-literate familiar of a rookie witch who
encounters a house, home to one she is feted to replace. These are
both amusing and needful of further sequels' should Eisele ever have
the yen. 'The Nun's Tale,' ending the collection, focuses on the
topic of transfiguration as an elderly Catholic priest recalls his
time as a novice, sent to the Amazon rainforest to seek out a
missionary priestess lost to civilisation. What he found intimates
madness – but in who?
Amidst
the human protaganists, I applaud Eisele for joining Carter and
Pullman in updating the classic fairy tale characters of dwarf, giant
and werewolf while firmly adhering to the tradition. With no appended
credits page, this appears to be first publication for all fifteen
tales. The broad use of the genre unified in the quality of feeling
and mood. You could do no better than prioritising this title as your
main summer read.
A Book Of The Sea, Edited by
Mark Beech, Egaeus Press
The
resulting submissions that cohere from disparate collection prompted
by Mark Beech's call - enjoy two sets of linking themes. The first
can be defined as the evocation and re-creation of lost art; lost for
the personal spiritual 'benefit' and self-justification of the tales'
protagonists. Good examples abound here from names both new (to me)
and established.
Stephen
J. Clark's 'The Figurehead of the Cailleach' is Buchanesque folk
horror seen through the filter of his artist's eye. As with the best
tales here, it is served by an atmospheric prose that doesn't try too
hard, but rather insinuates with a pace both encroaching and ominous.
In Karim Ghahwagi's intriguing 'Sorrow of Satan's Book,' the
Scandi-sea is haunting atmospheric background to a tale of an
art-obsessed film scholar. He is en route to a pre-arranged
meeting with a screenwriter to discuss the production of a screenplay
for silent film director, Carl Dreyer; only to find, upon arrival,
the police cordon of a crime scene. A metaphysical mystery, it hints
upon the madness that can be borne of inspiration. Colin Insole's
'Dancing Boy' is a small dilapidated boat, the restoration of which
becomes a labour of love for its new owner, ignorant of the curse of
its dark past. Jonathan Woods' 'From Whence It Came' concerns an
artist's growing obsession with elemental nature, the tides, and his
attempts to find the secret, and match, his late feted artist uncle's
'perfection' in paint from the site where he'd once lived.
The
second linking theme utilises the more traditional angle of the
protagonist-in-danger spawned by the sea itself. Rosalie Parker's
'Waiting' concerns a young woman – dockside in 18th
century England - finding betrayal from the very love that had for
too long sustained her. With no overt horror, the ending intimates
another sense of loss in just how fickle can be an emotion so
powerful. A more overt expression of intense emotion can be read in
Tom Johnstone's full-blooded Lovecraftian 'In The Hold It Waits.' A
crate harbouring an unknown terror, again in the inevitable century,
feted to curse its possessor through events already dire, is
edge-of-the-seat stuff. The tension-steeped prose never falters.
Familiar territory, yes, but graphically rendered. A rare, very
welcome treat is a new tale from George Berguno. (Lauded previously
in these pages). The understated 'Woman From Malta' finds a visiting
protagonist received with suspicion as a series of actions – in the
stead of an unpopular seer - may be more than mere history repeating.
It is, perhaps, the collection's most subtle and sophisticated entry.
The high quality of the majority of submissions left an
inevitable few that didn't quite match. The baroque prose-style of
one – while committed and contemporaneous – also acted as an
occasional obstacle to this more general reader's concentration. A
second, interesting in its narrative perspective, lacked the standard
of prose attained elsewhere. This may be Mark Beech's most
consistently successful collection so far. As ever, the use of well
chosen stock period paintings and engravings enhance, rather than
overpower or submerge, the texts. The number of featured authors high
on my unofficial list of current favourites, is also great.
Albertine's
Wooers
Joyce Carol-Oates'
Night-Gaunts & Other Tales of Suspense (Head Of Zeus)
should harbour the uncanny. Snuggly Books have a whole raft of
intriguing new releases, including Colin Insole's Valerie &
Other Stories, a very long-awaited, first-time p/b reissue for
Count Stenbock's Studies Of Death and new collections by
contemporary Decadent-era authors, Renee Vivien and Jane de la
Vaudere; Lilith's Legacy: Prose Poems & Short Stories and
The Double Star & Other Occult Fantasies, respectively.
Finally, for those with more traditional tastes, we have Black Shuck
Books A Suggestion Of Ghosts: Supernatural Fiction By Women,
1854-1900; Victorian-era tales collected for the very first time,
edited by J.A. Mains with an intro by Lynda E. Rucker.
