Favorite Account of Cabell by Someone Not Cabell

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Favorite Account of Cabell by Someone Not Cabell

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1wirkman
juny 27, 2012, 9:10 pm

So what's your favorite account of Cabell by his friends, or critics, or enemies?

Mine is Jack Woodford's account in his autobiography. And Woodford takes credit for the "tell the rabble it's Cabell" mnemonic, by the way.

2Crypto-Willobie
juny 28, 2012, 12:01 am

Tease! I knew Woodford was a fan but his books are hard to come by -- give us a taste...

3wirkman
juny 29, 2012, 2:22 am

Woodford portrays Cabell as a sage. And a prophet. And a literary figure of the first water. A more worshipful portrait could only come from a sycophant, but Woodford is no sycophant. It is very funny, too.

My copy is is in my office, cannot quote from it now.

4wirkman
juny 29, 2012, 2:32 am

An, I see it is available from both Google Books and iTunes.

5rainlights
Editat: abr. 1, 2014, 5:30 am

I know this is a very old thread, but I think this belongs here.

I recently came across this book: The unpredictable adventure: a comedy of woman's independence by Claire Myers Owens. It's basically an early feminist response to Cabell's work, closely following the structure and style of his 'comedies'. It's not only about Cabell, but he plays a prominent part as the "Prince of Poictesme". Some of his characters, like Jurgen or Janicot, also have their cameos. Since the topic of the paper I'm currently writing is basically JBC and women, I found it to be immensely fascinating. For non-JBC-fans it's probably just a very weird and very personal Jungian bildungsroman.

If anybody is interested, here is the draft version of what I wrote about it:

In 1935, New York bookseller Claire Myers Owens published a literally unanticipated reply to Cabell's works: The Unpredictable Adventure: A Comedy of Woman's Independence is an allegory modelled closely on the style and structure of his romances, including his fondness for wordplay and anagrams. Tellectina, the female protagonist, travels from the Land of Err into the country of Nithking in search of Mount Certitude. Following the form of an episodic bildungsroman, she learns about the allure of philosophy and the arts and frees herself from the influence of religion and her Puritan upbringing, while being constantly at odds with Femina, her Jungian twin sister representing her sexual needs. Tellectina meets and dismisses various lovers and makes the acquaintance of many fictional and real-life inhabitants of Nithking, including Cabell and several of his creations. Chapter VI features the heaven and hell episode of Jurgen, chapter X contains a parody of the already parodistic ceremonies of the land of Cocaigne, employing the same ill-concealed imagery.
On Mount Ghaulot ("to laugh") she encounters her literary paragons, including H. L. Mencken, Burton Rascoe and once again Cabell as the "Prince of Poictesme". He resides in the "highest place" (353) she has reached so far and offers her to view the world from his window; but she needs to stand on the "eight strongest volumes" in his tower room to even reach it. Also, the armour of "gatherulic iron" ("ironic laughter") he gives her proves to be "somewhat too large and masculine in design for her slender woman's figure" (385).
The scenes in which Tellectina watches the performance of Cabell's comedies as plays are amongst the most striking ones of the adventure, both paralleling his powerful epistrophic style and exposing his patriarchal point of view:

"Tellectina saw ..., for the first time in her life, that sex was a matter for humor not for morals; and saw too how easily men won women and how quickly they tired of them – and she made a note of it.
... After the Comedy of Justice ... came the Comedy of Appearances ... in which Tellectina saw the wisdom and the folly of doing the expected thing in the world; ... and how far short of man's dream of her woman could fall – and she made a note of it.
... A Comedy of Evasions ... divulged the secret that no man can ever or permanently be happy with any woman .... Tellectina also saw marriage from the man's point of view – and she made a note of it.
A few evenings later Tellectina witnessed ... A Comedy of Disenchantment ... and she saw, too, how quickly after marriage a man becomes disenchanted – and she made an especial note of it.
This was followed in due course by A Comedy of Fig Leaves ... in which Tellectina saw how domesticity and bodily comforts keep men from their high dreams; and she saw also how women lend a hand in both – and she made an especial note of it.
... And oddly enough she saw at the same time another stage ... on which other comedies, complementary to those before her eyes, were being enacted simultaneously ... – more comedies wherein woman is triumphant; and she laughed in the darkness, and there lurked under her laughter a poignant note of sadness ..." (388-91)

Struggling with the perceived trueness of Cabell's ironic outlook on life, but disappointed for having to model her philosophy on man's for lack of independent female pioneers, Tellectina decides to build her own house on Mount Ghaulot (which she finally identifies as Certitude), but at "a slightly different angle", and reconciles with Femina.

6elenchus
abr. 1, 2014, 12:55 pm

Very interesting! Your excerpts do show the parallel style Owens adopts. I find the commentary on Cabell's own works quite interesting, though I've not yet read myself all the novels she comments upon.

7Crypto-Willobie
abr. 1, 2014, 2:48 pm

You know how everybody and his sister from history, literary or otherwise, is now a detective with his own series? H. L. Mencken, Oscar Wilde, Dr Johnson, Shakespeare's brother etc ad inf. are out there solving fictional mysteries.

I'd like to see James Branch Cabell as a fictional detective, perhaps as part of a Holmes/Watson double act with Jack Woodford as his Watson. Series Entries:
1. The Jurgen Murder Case (the murderer turns out to be John Sumner)
2. Who Murdered John Charteris? (presents a startling alternative theory to that found in Cords/Rivet)
3 The Too High Place (Cabell and Woodford accompany Carl van Vechten to Harlem where they nab a murderous cocaine fiend)
4. Figures of Death - they solve a case of Manuel strangulation (sorry!)
5. you get the idea...

Who wants to write it?

8elenchus
Editat: abr. 1, 2014, 2:56 pm

There's gotta be an installment wherein it is revealed dear old J. Edgar turned into the repressed crusader we all know after reading (as an imprintable lad) yet failing to understand Cabell's tripartite gospel of the Romantic Life. Rather than improve his own education, he elects to hunt down Cabell's heirs through the years, seeing behind all major and most minor events in the 20th Century the looming presence of Cabellian Harmonics. MLK is a nifty puzzle for JBC, in actual fact ....

9rainlights
Editat: abr. 1, 2014, 4:43 pm

"Town's End of Lichfield": A remote little village suffers the loss of its high school homecoming queen. Guided by his visions of Hinzelmann and Miramon Lluagor, Cabell deduces her father was possessed by a Sylan. Also, he's eating lots of cherry pie at Dorothy's Diner, meets people with queer feet in the woods and regularly dictates his impressions to Gabriella Moncure.

10wirkman
Editat: gen. 3, 2016, 6:13 pm

"The Trivet in Grandfather's Neck”

Col. Musgrave is called in to suppress the Pendomer family feud gone horribly wrong when the head of the house is found dead with a metal trivet deeply embedded in the side of his neck. Musgrave must save the day by pretending to be the roué, cooks up an elaborate love rhombus to distract Lichfield attention, and in the end the middle-aged librarian seduces his teenage cousin . . . while making sure that the actual murderer goes free. (It is the Negro maid, and she was entirely justified.)

I suppose, to conform to the challenge, it could be young Cabell as detective. But Rupert Musgrave is perfect.

11Crypto-Willobie
gen. 3, 2016, 11:03 pm

>10 wirkman: We'll take then however we can get them!

9. The Maltese Stallion

12elenchus
ag. 3, 2016, 10:39 pm

Stumbled across this in Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse:

I had a wisecrack on my tongue -- something about Cabell being a romanticist in the same sense that the wooden horse was Trojan -- and didn't want to be robbed of my opportunity to deliver it by this drunken joker, or whoever he was, on the phone. I couldn't make heads or tails of what he was saying, so I hung up and went back to my guests.

The person speaking those lines is Fitzstephan, a novelist, and appears to be a stand-in for Hammett for the purpose of cracking wise about novelists and how they write crime stories. (He might turn out to be more than that, I'm not done with the novel yet.)

13Crypto-Willobie
ag. 4, 2016, 8:22 am

Very cool.

14Crypto-Willobie
ag. 4, 2016, 12:23 pm

Sounds like Hammett may have recently read Mencken on Cabell...

"Even such fantasies as The Silver Stallion, and Domnei, and The High Place I put among the realistic books. What gives them their peculiar tartness is the very fidelity of their realism. Their gaudy heroes, in the last analysis, chase dragons precisely as stockbrokers play golf. Is Jurgen, even when before the great God Pan, superbly real? Then it is because he remains a Rotarian in the depths of that terrible grove."
H. L. Mencken, 1927

15elenchus
ag. 4, 2016, 1:15 pm

Mencken is on my TBR pile, not sure which work yet but I'm looking at the various Library Of America editions.

I'm not sure I would drawn the parallel between the Hammett and Mencken, but I agree it's there. The basic idea of using fantasy (romance) to smuggle in a pragmatic and contemporary critique is found in both. Hammett makes the more forceful point that such critique is likely to be felt painfully by those on the receiving end.

16Crypto-Willobie
ag. 4, 2016, 2:03 pm

Mencken's bit is mildly famous (in the Cabellian universe) and has been quoted (excerpted, paraphrased) by various writers. In book form it dates from 1927, though it may ultimately derive from an earlier magazine piece. Hammett's book was published in 1929 -- that's why I suggest he may have 'recently' seen it.

17Crypto-Willobie
maig 5, 2019, 5:17 pm

>7 Crypto-Willobie: ff.

The Crime of the Jest
The Corpse of Vanity
Beyond Death
Shivalry
The Curtain Hour