In Color (Spencer Holst)

"On moonless nights he walks over the oozy bog in snowshoes taking time exposures in color of luminous mushrooms. It is the police chief's son." — Spencer Holst

Of stories and their migrations

Here's a little fable, which, like all fables, isn't really true, although it isn't really untrue either. Once upon a time there was a vast city, whose inhabitants had come together from all parts of the earth and spoke all sorts of different languages. Some of those languages were thriving and were spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and some of them were dying tongues known only by a dwindling handful, the dispersed survivors of cultures that hardly anyone even knew existed. In that city lived a writer, a curious little man with a mellifluous voice, who spoke the language that most of the people of the city knew the best, and he used it to write and tell stories for his own amusement but also so that other people would be entertained and maybe even enlightened.

From time to time someone would gather up a few of the writer's stories and make them into a book, so that people who had never heard him read them aloud -- an art at which he excelled -- could buy a copy and get to know his work, and also so that people who had heard him read in person or on the radio could open the book from time to time and remind themselves of just how enjoyable the stories were. This went on for a long time until finally the little man became old and one day he died, and many of the people who used to listen to his stories also died and others lived on but thought about the writer less and less, except once in a while when something -- a turn of phrase, a inexplicable flash of whimsy -- would suddenly recall him to their memories. His books disappeared and were forgotten, with only a few copies lingering in dusty attics or the bargain bins of second-hand stores.

But in the meantime something unexpected happened. Someone who lived in a country thousands of miles away (though he knew the writer's language as well as his own), came across a copy of one of the books and was captivated by it. He passed it along to a friend, who gave it to another friend, and eventually someone went to a publisher in that country and told the publisher about the book and suggested that a translation of it might find an audience and make everyone involved a little bit of money. The publisher was persuaded, perhaps reluctantly at first, and the book was issued and it sold a few copies but in the end not very many and after a while it vanished from the market and no one thought that it would ever return. A few people still treasured their copies, however, and they continued to read them and share them with friends, and the book became famous in the way that things that hardly anyone has ever heard of sometimes do in defiance of all logic, and even though many of the people who read the book knew nothing of the author and couldn't speak the language he had originally used to write his stories, the translation was good enough that it didn't matter or maybe the stories even sounded a little better in their new language, and after a while the publisher decided to issue a new edition and new people bought the book and read it and passed it around. And in the end the writer's name was all but forgotten in the city where he had lived but became better and better known in another tongue far away.

Okay, the above is really very silly, and for the record at least one of Spencer Holst's books is still in print in the US, but I can't help thinking that Holst, whom I used to see now and then in the streets and reading venues of New York City many years ago, would have been amused by the irony that The Language of Cats, reborn as El idioma de los gatos, seems to have found a more appreciative audience in Spanish (a language in which his stories seem to work rather well) than in his native tongue and his own country -- at least, that is, judging by the enthusiasm expressed in blogs and reviews in the Spanish-speaking world.

For those who can understand Spanish, there is a very entertaining audio recording of Holst's sweetly demonic story "El asesino de Papá Noel" (translated from "The Santa Claus Murderer") online at a website called esnips (link no longer active). The text of the story (again, in Spanish) can be found on the website of Página 12, along with Rodrigo Fresán's very amusing introduction to the translation of El idioma de los gatos, an introduction he too has wrought in the form of a fable (a better one than mine, I have to say). The translator of the Spanish-language edition is Ernesto Schóo; the publisher is Ediciones de la Flor in Argentina.


Though I don't mean to imply that Holst's stories aren't enjoyable on the page (they are), the best way of experiencing them is in his own mesmerizing performances. Many recordings of his readings were made, including some that were broadcast on WBAI radio in New York City in the 1970s. Unfortunately, I've found no audio or video of his readings online, although some cassette recordings may still be available from the New Wilderness Foundation. A good selection of Holst's stories is available in The Zebra Storyteller from Station Hill Books. For his story "On Demons" see my previous post.

Spencer Holst: On Demons

In the olden days of the Arabian Nights a fisherman threw his raggle-taggle net into the Mediterranean. He pulled, and pulled, and pulled the net onto the shore, and he discovered nothing in it except an old ivory jar. He lifted a piece of seaweed off the jar, and saw that it was ancient and intricately carved with a procession of people and beasts winding spirally around it, so that whichever way he turned it three lines of people appeared. At the top was a stopper. It was made of lead. On it was impressed the Seal of Solomon.

The fisherman opened the jar and smoke began to come out of it, began to pour out of it, making a rushing sound, and the smoke gathered into a large cloud, and the cloud became the body of a demon, or jinn, or genie, or genius ... or call it whatever you want.

The demon put the fisherman in the palm of his hand, and gave him a choice of a number of hideous deaths.


"But I was the one who freed you!," protested the fisherman.

"Listen," said the demon, "I've been in that jar for 50,000 years. For the first five thousand I joyfully planned how I would reward the man who freed me ... I would turn him into an emperor! Give him palaces, the whole world for his dominion .... But ten thousand years passed, and I began to be a little depressed, and I lost some of my enthusiasm, yet I said to myself: whoever frees me, I'll give him a comfortable princedom, a good castle, servants, so he'll be set for life .... But more years passed, and after 15,000 years I became so disgusted, so disgruntled, that I decided I wouldn't give any reward to the fool who chanced to free me .... But as more time passed I began to hate humanity, they who ignored me ... And I began to devise methods of murder, of torture .... Oh! The things I've thought these 35,000 years .... I have daydreamed of this day, and of the way I should kill you. I have thought up thirteen horrendous ways for you to die. These are the ways: listen carefully, for I shall give you your choice."

"You can obviously do whatever you want with me," said the fisherman. "You can kill me on the spot. But nevertheless, the truth is the truth, and you're a liar."


"What?!" said the demon.

"You couldn't have been in this ivory jar. Look how small this jar is, and look at yourself, you're as big as a mountain. Any child could see that you aren't telling the truth. You're a liar. Kill me if you want, but don't expect me to believe your fairytales, don't make me laugh. Kill me if you want, but don't expect me to believe that you spent centuries in this little jar. Don't be ridiculous. Kill me if you want, but don't expect me to believe such an obvious fable."

"What?!" said the demon. "I'll show you!"

Whereupon his body began to dissolve into a huge cloud of smoke, which began to twirl like a tornado, and the smoke condensed and entered the ivory jar, and the fisherman quickly replaced the stopper, and it has remained there until this very day.

(Drawings by Beate Wheeler. On Demons was published in 1970 by Doctor Generosity Press. Further information on the author can be found at the Spencer Holst Papers page at the University of Texas at El Paso.)