Oh no, I am sitting nearest the retro pulp shelf. And what's that sitting at the near end of the shelf? Oh dear. Ahem:
"If I had had a son I should have liked him to be snub-nosed and bullet-headed, for ugliness in the male is a security for virtue and a passport to popularity."
Heh, you could have done a lot worse. This is an aged clubman reminiscing to our narrator about the evil yet charismatically beautiful Arabin family, who are the mainspring of The Dancing Floor by John Buchan, which is really one of the oddest books I've ever read. It has Buchan's trademark combination of totally ludicrous, coincidence-driven plot with such effective scene-writing as to be at once gripping and unreadable. All aspiring pulp writers should have to read all of Buchan and Daphne du Maurier to learn their trade (and Agatha Christie for the converse virtues and vices). What makes The Dancing Floor specially weird even for Buchan is that there's a lot of very vivid archaic Greek religion mixed in with the adventure story -- it's as if he'd hallucinated the whole plot while stricken with a high fever in the middle of reading The Golden Bough. In other words, it's really rather good....
I believe I'm also supposed to put the fifth sentence of p. 56 from 'the book I'm currently working on'. Unfortunately that description currently picks out a pile of unassembled rubbish with no such page numbers. But I'm sorry to say that several of my current papers-in-progress run to that (if you double space which I therefore usually don't), so here goes from 'Plato on Desire for the Good':
For it is criterial for agency that not everything can count for the agent as success: I must aim at some determinate outcome which my performance may or may not bring about.This is by way of explaining an argument in Plato, but also in my sly historian's way insinuating that he is right. An insinuation I stand by.
Ah, but is it any truer or better than the Buchan? It certainly isn't any better written.
5 comments:
Did you know I collect first edition Buchans? I mean, as much as I collect anything, which is to say I have three or so of them and then I got distracted. I did think I owned his whole oeuvre in one form or other (mostly battered Penguins) but "The Dancing Floor" is new to me. Sounds a ripping tale, however. There are many days when I just can't think of anything better to read than a Buchan. Just like, when it comes right down to it, few movies offer as deeply satisfying a way to pass an evening as any one of the Bourne Trilogy.
Cool. Now, in theory, you're supposed to tag five more people creating all kinds of new links and back-quoting and making your blog surge in popularity. Well, at least bob in popularity
I'm really starting to want to read Buchan!
Ed, I will see if I can find a[nother] battered Penguin of The Dancing Floor. Jenny, I also recommend The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, and possibly The Isle of Sheep. And, if you have a *very* strong stomach for the racism of the past, perhaps Prester John [/trepidation]. Buchan has become such an emblem of all that is politically incorrect -- or to put it more frankly, is so eye-poppingly bigoted -- that I felt very daring writing up a post in which I talked about him semi-positively and didn't flagellate about it. But then I do (a) think it's bizarre and unfair to retroactively apply contemporary standards, and (b) think that the vices of the dead are not of much interest unless they do also have virtues worth talking about, which JB certainly does. So yeah, give him a try, but be warned.... Ed, what would you say are the other good Buchans? (He wrote a ton.)
I like any of the Richard Hannay ones - so in addition to The 39 Steps, Greenmantle and The Island of Sheep, there's Mr. Standfast and The Three Hostages (I saw The 39 Steps when I was very young but discovered The Three Hostages during a fantastic course on Conspiratorial Fiction at university.) The thing I adore about Buchan is that he didn't futz around with little minor conspiracies. He dealt with major, civilisation-threatening, world-wide webs (hey...) of wickedness. I also remember liking House of the Four Winds. I agree, you need to suspend any modern sensitivities in order to enjoy them fully.
And let us remember we're talking of our own dear departed Governor General, after all. And in that vein, read his Canadian work, Sick Heart River. His autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door is as ripping a read as the memoirs of Presbyterian workaholic can be.
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