John Martin

The founder and former publisher of Black Sparrow Press, John Martin, has died. The Times has a nice obit by Adam Nossiter, who can be forgiven for a throwaway reference to the press's authors as "offbeat literary rebels." The online version even includes the cover art for my favorite Black Sparrow book, Paul Bowles's Things Gone and Things Still Here. Martin is survived by his wife, Barbara, who was responsible for the elegant design of the Black Sparrow volumes.

The Deceiver

At first glance this is a typical example of the kind of cheap fiction for adolescents that was popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. The publisher, A. L. Burt Company, was known for reprinting authors like Horatio Alger, whose books are indeed advertised in the back matter, specifically under the heading of "Books for Boys." Even though Reynard the Fox isn't by Alger, the figure on the front seems like a typical Alger hero: an adolescent boy on his own, staff and bag in hand, ready to find his way in the world. In fact, though, the cover is a complete work of misdirection. To begin with, where is the fox of the title?

The author of this book, or rather its editor and adapter, was Joseph Jacobs, a well-regarded Australian-born scholar who wrote a number of books on folklore and fairy tales as well as on Judaica. He states in the book's Preface that he sought to "provide a text which children could read with ease and pleasure, and at the same time give their parents, their cousins, and their aunts a short résumé of the results which the latest research in folklore and literary history has arrived at with regard to the origin of the book." There is a fairly learned Introduction and occasional footnotes, as well as amusing drawings by W. Frank Calderon.

The book's full title is The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox; it was originally published by Macmillan in 1895. Jacobs explains that he has reworked a text published by one Felix Summerley (a pen name for Sir Henry Cole, who is credited with the first commercially marketed Christmas cards). Summerley / Cole in turn took his material from a volume published in the 1490s by William Caxton, who drew on a Flemish version of stories that had been shaped and reshaped since at least the twelfth century. With all those hands involved you might expect something fairly watered-down, but Jacobs's Reynard is actually quite lively and readable, and it has been reprinted several times, notably by Schocken Books. Reynard is classified by folklorists as a typical animal "trickster," but in these pages he's more of a sociopath, a serial murderer, thief, and fabricator. His story doesn't have a tidy moralistic ending; instead, deceit is rewarded, Reynard triumphs over everyone he has wronged, but he's so engaging that of course we root for him all the way.

There's no adolescent boy in the book, let alone an obviously modern one, and the closest the text ever comes to justifying the Burt edition's cover art is a scene where Reynard is described holding a staff and bag of his own. So the question is, was the cover meant to depict the typical reader, rather than the protagonist, of Reynard the Fox, or was it simply a case of bait-and-switch? The bizarre alternate cover below, also published by A. L. Burt, suggests that it may be the latter.

Needless to say, there are no Native Americans or canoes in Reynard the Fox.

Postscript: Twice in the narrative the text refers to two minor animal characters as "the leopard and the loss." "Loss" puzzled me, as I could find no definition for an animal by that name (but Jacobs thought it unnecessary to add a footnote). With a little research I found that Caxton had "losse," and this is from the Dutch "los," meaning "lynx." So this is our old friend the lonza.

Anathematizing All Islands

Celia Thaxter:

Boone Island is the forlornest place that can be imagined. The Isles of Shoals, barren as they are, seem like Gardens of Eden in comparison. I chanced to hear last summer of a person who had been born and brought up there; he described the loneliness as something absolutely fearful, and declared it had pursued him all through his life. He lived there till fourteen or fifteen years old, when his family moved to York. While living on the island he discovered some human remains which had lain there thirty years. A carpenter and his assistants, having finished some building, were capsized in getting off, and all were drowned, except the master. One body floated to Plum Island at the mouth of the Merrimack; the others the master secured, made a box for them, all alone the while, - and buried them in a cleft and covered them with stones. These stones the sea washed away, and, thirty years after they were buried, the boy found the bones, which were removed to York and there buried again. It was on board a steamer bound to Bangor, that the man told his story. Boone Island Light was shining in the distance. He spoke with bitterness of his life in that terrible solitude, and of "the loneliness which had pursued him ever since." All his relatives were dead, he said, and he had no human tie in the wide world except his wife. He ended by anathematizing all islands, and, vanishing into the darkness, was not to be found again; nor did his name or any trace of him transpire, though he was sought for in the morning all about the vessel.

Among the Isles of Shoals

Foraging

A cronopio out for a drive spies a cardboard box at the side of the road marked FREE. He stops and investigates. Inside the box are some pots and pans, a green bowl, a blender, and a child's pail and shovel. Because a cronopio is the soul of consideration he carefully removes the objects, arranges them on the ground, puts the empty box in the back of his car, and drives away.

(Shameless imitation.)

No Kings

A few scenes from today's well-attended and upbeat demonstration in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which merged amicably with a scheduled street fair. I heard only one or two hecklers; the town was ours.

There was even music, courtesy of the Leftist Marching Band.

Human Geography US (Peter Blegvad & Anthony Moore)

Someone directed my attention today to this recording from a few years back, which had somehow escaped my notice. Human Geography US presents "spoken texts taken from the prose work of six 20th century American writers [Jack Black, Richard Brautigan, John Crowley, Edward Dorn, Thomas Pynchon, and Charles Willeford]; a booze-biased mapping of the US in a human geography of words, music and field recordings. The texts are recited by Peter Blegvad, poet, illustrator and musician. The guitar pieces, field recordings and concept are by Anthony Moore." The embedded version below is from a London radio station, Resonance FM; there was also a limited-edition LP version from Half-Cat Music, released in 2022 and presumably unavailable.



I find this project spooky and weird and beautiful (and calming), but given the current pathological state in which the "US" finds itself, it's hard to avoid the question of whether anything like this matters. (Presumably no more than a few hundred people have heard it, or ever will.) But if forced to make a choice of allegiance between the idiosyncratic vision of America that Human Geography US evokes and a disfunctional "republic" presided over by a sociopathic demagogue, I know which flag I'll be flying.

As it happens, I'm in the middle of reading Benjamin Nathans's To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, which recently won a Pulitzer. I'm reading it because the subject has always interested me, not because its depiction of the tyranny and moral squalor against which the dissidents struggled is somehow "useful" in our own situation. But in the end, all political lies are the same, regardless of the ostensible ideology they serve; they're all just tools to gain consent, masks for corruption and abuse of power.

Harry Mathews, re-issued

Dalkey Archive Press / Deep Vellum Publishing is re-issuing seven books by Harry Mathews, according to Publishers Weekly, which notes that "the reissued editions will feature new cover designs and never-before-seen archival photographs of the author, as well as introductions by such writers as Jonathan Lethem, Lucy Sante, and Ed Park." Three of the volumes will appear this year, with the others scheduled over the next few years.

I can't help adding, given the current climate in the nonprofit world, "if the money holds out." It's good to see Mathews getting respectful attention, although I wonder how many potential readers of his work are out there who don't already own earlier editions.