I'll also give you my final thoughts on 50 Great Short Stories, which, needless to say, I finished before beginning any of this other stuff. It sure didn't seem like fifty stories, but that was only because they went quickly. Some of them weren't more than five pages long, and one (The Foreigner, by Francis Steegmuller) was only one and a half or so. But it was nonetheless powerful for all that. Some of these stories' impacts were really crushing or otherwise impressive or influential.
I think my favorite of the latter half of the book was The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H.G. Wells. Demonstrating all his usual strengths (limitless imagination, mastery of articulate narration, and skill for the vernacular, not to mention a subtle yet wry sense of humor), he tells the tale of a simple man, Mr. Fotheringay, who somehow finds himself with the ability to make miracles happen. With a thought or a word he can Biblically modify or transform any object or circumstance to his will. He first enables an oil lamp to burn upside-down, to the consternation of the crowd at the pub. He then sends the local constable to Hades, but after some more thought he transfers him to San Francisco instead. Eventually he comes under the influences of Mr. Maydig, the head of the local parish, who immediately insists that he and Fotheringay embark on a grand campaign of societal modification, during which they reform all the drunkards in town, change all the alcohol into water, improve the railway communication lines, drain a swamp, and cure the Vicar's wart. The story takes a turn for the worse as the two men, in a kind of breathless ecstasy of do-good, reflect that they haven't the time to accomplish all they wish to in one night. Mr. Maydig unwisely suggests to the uneducated Mr. Fotheringay that he simply stop the planet's rotation until such time as they finish their work, and can let the normal course of time resume; Fotheringay obliges. He collects himself and says to the Earth in general: "Jest stop rotating, will you?"
But Fotheringay neglects to look after the well-being of all the houses, cities, animals, and people standing on Earth's surface (Wells refers to these as "movables"), which at the cessation of the Earth's rotation naturally go flying off the ground in a great cloud at hundreds of miles per hour. (The Earth, as you ought to know, rotates at considerable speed, and if such rotation were to be stopped, the impetus would throw you, me and most of the world's buildings, rocks, trees, animals, and landscape hundreds of miles through the air to certain doom.) Mr. Fotheringay manages to save himself by immediately imposing a miracle ("Let me come down safe and sound."), and only just in time, for his clothes are already beginning to burn from atmospheric friction. He lands in a pile of upturned dirt, in time to witness what seems to be the entire town falling down around him and bursting into wreckage, and vast winds roaring about him with the most tumultuous noise imaginable. Titanic storms spring up, hail rains down, and a mammoth wall of water (no doubt the remains of the oceans, also flung incontinently from their beds) come pouring toward him. Just in time he manages to miracle all this to a halt. He then digs his fingers into the dirt, holding on against the winds, and concentrates long enough to turn everything back the way it was before he did his first miracle. And then...well, I won't spoil the end. Suffice it to say, it's a miraculous story, humorous yet chilling, mind-boggling and believable, perceptive, with a relevant moral, but not preachy. There's a reason Wells is my favorite author of all time.
And so I finished the book, with a real sense of the sublime. One does not delve so quickly (and not superficially) into fifty disparate universes without feeling some after-effects. It was a whirling ride through the macabre, the meaningful, the portentous, the humorous, the tragic and the evocative. I loved almost every minute of it. As trite as this exhortation has become, I highly recommend 50 Great Short Stories (ed. Milton Crane) to anybody.
One of the authors I read in that book was Robert Louis Stevenson. Completely by chance I elected to purchase one his fuller works, Treasure Island. I'd read the abridged version as a child (what a travesty I can now see that to be!) and seen several movie adaptations, all of which were lackluster, if for no other reason than they failed to be faithful to the original work. Treasure Island is an unmitigated masterpiece. It defines the pirate genre, as much as Robert E. Howard's Conan stories defined sword-and-sorcery. It's a splendid story in its own right, and a perfect adventure to get lost in on an afternoon, but it's just plain piratey into the bargain. It's got everything: mysterious blind beggars, old seadogs, sea shanties with ominous meanings, narrow escapes on land, thrilling chases by sea, cutlasses, knives in the dark, black oaths, cloak-and-dagger affairs, cutlasses and pistols, betrayal, exotic islands, castaways, brave captains, bungling aristocrats, hangman's nooses, peg legs, parrots, riggings, trade winds, ships, rowboats, coracles, savages, buccaneers, storms, and just about everything you'd want in a pirate adventure on the high seas and in port towns. The book itself has intrigue, mystery, some of the most colorful characters imaginable, a strong plot, and its text is anything but prosaic. You can literally feel young Jim Hawkins's terror upon discovering the bloodthirsty scallywags' murderous plot, and his sense of adventure at roaming the high seas to a far-flung, uncharted island in search of treasure. The sense of the unknown and the ominous in the beginning of the book, especially with characters like Billy Bones, Black Dog and Pew, is palpable, savory and real. Stevenson is one of my new favorite authors. You could tell he put his heart and soul into his writings. He himself was a traveler, and his intoxication with pirates and all that's involved with them is more than tangible...you can taste it when you read. I ought to know; I suffer from that same intoxication with pirates, adventure and travel myself. He loves this story he's telling, and he tells it to the hilt. I ask that God send you back to Earth if he discovers, at the Pearly Gates, that you have not read this book...ye scurvy dog.
Perhaps it was a mistake to read a work of nonfiction after such a marvel as Treasure Island, but I thought I'd give Marco Polo a chance at topping Jim Hawkins. Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu is touted as more than a biography of one of the world's most renowned explorers: some of the critics on the dust jacket twitter about the book's closer resemblance to a travelogue or an adventure story. I can see their point, but thus far I'm a bit let down by the book. It's a tad drier than I expected, and slower. I'll grant you the descriptions of travel on the Silk Road, Mongol culture and Venetian economic practices are engrossing, but they're not quite as engrossing as I was hoping. Perhaps I haven't read far enough. I've only just started Part Two. Part One concerned the travels of Marco's father and uncle to the court of Kublai Khan, being charged by that worthy to return to their homeland, retrieve Papal letters of goodwill, some oil from the Holy Sepulcher, and at least a hundred intelligent craftsmen and merchants for the Khan's service. It took them sixteen years, and in the end, what with delays and their own avarice and all, they only managed to retrieve the papers, the oil and the elder Polo's only son, Marco. The book records the trio's return to the court of the Khan via the Silk Road, and some of the amazing sights and practices they encountered on the way there. I was particularly interested in the accounts of koumiss, the signature alcoholic beverage of the Mongols, made of fermented mare's milk. I think the book will begin to pick up now: no sooner did Marco's father and uncle enter the sight of the Khan (after their years-long absence) than they put young Marco, only just entering manhood, into his service.
Think about that, now. This is in the thirteenth century. Most Venetians (indeed, Europeans) viewed the Mongols, the Mongol Empire, and especially Kublai Khan as savage. They were devils in human form, half-mythic, barbarian conquerors who raped, murdered and pillaged wherever they went. They were so far away they might as well have been on another planet, culturally and geographically. Traveling to those distant lands was a matter of years, not days or even hours as it is today. For a young Venetian to embark on that kind of journey, into the heart of the ancient, wild Eastern empires, and to be entered into the service of the mysterious emperor of a barbaric nation, arguably the most powerful man in the world...it staggers the imagination. In such times, anything could happen. Dreams could come true...and the most agonizing deaths could spring from any quarter. The Khan was unpredictable and temperamental. The Polos would be at the mercy of the Khan's enemies upon his death; there was no way to flee the Empire unnoticed. Danger lurked at every step, both outside of and inside the lands of the Mongols. But Marco Polo lived to return to his homeland, and tell of his many adventures after dwelling for years in the outlying lands. What fortitude, what intrepidity, what adventure...!
Well, maybe this book isn't quite as boring as I let on.
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