This should have been a good book. I mean, look at it, I love reference books, Brewers' Phrase and Fable, Dictionary of Superstitions, this, I thought had promise.
I was wrong. I mean, here's a few samples from the book:
Fortune-Telling: The practice of fortune-telling by reading the palm of the hand is one of the most general activities of Gypsy women in every century. It became the subject of literary mention...
Affection: Among Gypsies there are strong feelings of family affection. Children in particular are overindulged through an excess of such affection. In the first century B.C. the Roman poets Propertius and Catullus showed the deeply moving humanity and love of Roman parents for their children.
I mean, this book has all the depth and understanding of a made-for-TV movie. Bloody hell. I learned more about Gypsies reading Viz's "Thieving Gypsy Bastards"...
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Not the best written book, more a list of crimes committed by the Spaniards against the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Heartbreaking to read, and as much as Bartolome De Las Casas might be prone to exaggeration there are too many other corroborative texts to dismiss it.
Power Corrupts. Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.
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I found him after the "Hardy Boys", terrible books but as a 7 or 8 year old I loved them. 52 books in the series (at that time), I devoured them all, I remember saving up $5.00 from my paper route to buy the next one at the local hobby store, $5.00, then, was a lot of money.
And after the "Hardy Boys" I cast around looking for the next big thing, reading all manner of books, some bad - I don't remember, some good - "The Four Story Mistake".
And then there was Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan, who didn't much interest me, I knew all about him (I thought), had seen a bad movie about him at the Capitol Theatre when I was younger...and I was put off by the lurid covers, clearly trash books, pulp fiction of the worst sort, but there were the ones about Aliens - the Moon Maiden, John Carter on Mars, and these piqued my interest...I was running out of alternatives...
And so I picked them up and read them and loved them, maybe I was 12, probably younger, read through all the John Carter on Mars, then the Moon Maiden and the rest of them, all of them I thought, he was prolific, even read the Tarzan ones, Tarzan in Pellucidar, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, everything. I loved it. It was complete and utter shit.
...well, not entirely. He was a better author than those working under the Pseudonym of "Franklin W. Dixon", he wasn't patronizing you, wasn't dumbing it down, it was pretty dumb across the board...but pretty well written, pot-boilers, things happened and quickly, he wasn't talking down to you, wasn't an adult writing for kids, this was an adult writing for other adults...
At 20 I tried them again, after reading Nabokov, Miller, others, they didn't cut it, were painful, poorly written, shit...
When I next found them again, about 15 years ago, I picked up the entire series for the boy, as well as "The Hardy Boys", he wasn't into them at all, didn't give them a chance, "I can see why you'd like them, dad..." he'd tell me...ouch!
...and so, at the thrift shop, I find "John Carter of Mars" and "The People That Time Forgot", I pick them up. Revisit my childhood. And my tastes flip again. He's good - comparatively, not to Nabokov or Miller or any of the countless other literary heavyweights, but he paints a good picture, gives a good description, advances the plot, and like any antique author his vocabulary is infinitely richer than any number of the literary 'heavyweights' of today.
...and his language, the symbolism, read it not for the absurd adventure, but for the map of the unconscious, he wasn't trying but he laid it bare, these books, Pellucidar, the People that Time Forgot, they're road maps to the soul, understand these and you can build carefully upon his foundation. Yeah, it was pulp-shit-dross, but it was honest, there was no pretension, and all the symbols of the unconscious and the labyrinthine underworld are laid bare...Freud would have loved him.
"_Kazor_!" cried the girl, and at the same moment the Alus came jabbering toward us. They made strange growling, barking noises, as with much baring of fangs they advanced upon us. They were armed only with nature's weapons--powerful muscles and giant fangs; yet I knew that these were quite sufficient to overcome us had we nothing better to offer in defense, and so I drew my pistol and fired at the leader. He dropped like a stone, and the others turned and fled. Once again the girl smiled her slow smile and stepping closer, caressed the barrel of my automatic. As she did so, her fingers came in contact with mine, and a sudden thrill ran through me, which I attributed to the fact that it had been so long since I had seen a woman of any sort or kind.
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I like him.
Poems like:
Love’s Not The Way To Treat a Friend
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’t
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I don’t want to see you end up that way
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make
bridges out of crippled birds.Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.
And
RESTAURANT
Fragile, fading 37,
she wears her wedding ring like a trance
and stares straight down at an empty coffee cup
as if she were looking into the mouth of a dead bird.
Dinner is over. Her husband has gone to the toilet.
He will be back soon and then it will be her turn
to go to the toilet.
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