THE DEEP ONES: "With and Without Buttons" by Mary Butts
ConversesThe Weird Tradition
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1semdetenebre
"With and Without Buttons" by Mary Butts
Discussion begins August 4, 2021.
First published in Last Stories (1938).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?584477
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940
Modern Ghost Stories by Eminent Women Writers
The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century: Volume 2
Ghosts in Country Villages
ONLINE VERSIONS
No online versions found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ausrJfi6aPU
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Butts
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00572045/document
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/blondel-butts.html
https://tinyurl.com/yz7l86hl
Discussion begins August 4, 2021.
First published in Last Stories (1938).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?584477
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940
Modern Ghost Stories by Eminent Women Writers
The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century: Volume 2
Ghosts in Country Villages
ONLINE VERSIONS
No online versions found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ausrJfi6aPU
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Butts
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00572045/document
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/blondel-butts.html
https://tinyurl.com/yz7l86hl
2paradoxosalpha
Man, I really want to read this story, but so far my efforts to land a copy have come up dry. I may buy a copy of Women's Weird, but not in time for Wednesday. Good thing these threads are persistent. When I tried to see if this story could be found at my public library, I got the following silliness:
5elenchus
Likewise do not have a copy available, so will lurk. I can trust my fallible memory to leave me un-spoilered if I ever do track it down.
6housefulofpaper
The first miscellany link in >1 semdetenebre: is a complete reading of the story. Not quite word-perfect, but not abridged in any way. If you'd find this a suitable alternative to reading the story from a book.
7AndreasJ
I’m afraid I’m one of those who put audiobooks behind me when I learnt to read. Their popularity with adults in the last couple decades baffles me.
(That’s not to say those who enjoy them shouldn’t do so, of course. But they’re not for me.)
(That’s not to say those who enjoy them shouldn’t do so, of course. But they’re not for me.)
8semdetenebre
>7 AndreasJ:
I agree with you. That's why I can't quite bring myself to list readings under "Online Versions". Even though they technically are, I suppose. Should I start putting an "Audio Versions" section in there?
I agree with you. That's why I can't quite bring myself to list readings under "Online Versions". Even though they technically are, I suppose. Should I start putting an "Audio Versions" section in there?
9paradoxosalpha
>8 semdetenebre:
I think calling out the "Audio Versions" would be super helpful. Even though I read the recent CAS story, I really appreciated the Leiber audio. And in this case, it may be my only convenient access to the "text."
I think calling out the "Audio Versions" would be super helpful. Even though I read the recent CAS story, I really appreciated the Leiber audio. And in this case, it may be my only convenient access to the "text."
11elenchus
Appreciate the audio version link, too. I tried turning down the volume and turning on the captions: an interesting exercise given the inevitable transcription errors and lack of punctuation.
I hope to try the audio reading later, though.
I skimmed the "document" linked at the HAL Archives site, and what little I read piqued my interest in Mary Butts. I want to revisit the section on her conception of magic, at the least.
I hope to try the audio reading later, though.
I skimmed the "document" linked at the HAL Archives site, and what little I read piqued my interest in Mary Butts. I want to revisit the section on her conception of magic, at the least.
12paradoxosalpha
Yes, the Matless "Geography of Ghosts" paper is pretty good, at a skim. I knew Butts' association with Crowley, of course. I'm a huge Jane Ellen Harrison fan, so it's interesting to see Butts as a partisan of Harrison's.
13RandyStafford
Somewhat underwhelmed by this one, and found the final sentence annoyingly vague and the ending rather anticlimactic.
On the other hand, I did like some things about the story.
The two women are somewhat reminiscent of the teenage girls said to frequently be the focus (whether via genuine paranormal powers or fraud) of poltergeist activity. They plot a hoax involving a ghost, and the ghost seems to appear.
I appreciated their motive about teaching the rather boorish sounding Trenchard a lesson and that they wanted power, simple power, not erotic power, over a man.
I haven't yet taken a look at Butts beliefs about magic, so I don't know if the narrator's antipathy towards Trenchard's materialism is a reflection of Butts' own beliefs.
On the other hand, I did like some things about the story.
The two women are somewhat reminiscent of the teenage girls said to frequently be the focus (whether via genuine paranormal powers or fraud) of poltergeist activity. They plot a hoax involving a ghost, and the ghost seems to appear.
I appreciated their motive about teaching the rather boorish sounding Trenchard a lesson and that they wanted power, simple power, not erotic power, over a man.
I haven't yet taken a look at Butts beliefs about magic, so I don't know if the narrator's antipathy towards Trenchard's materialism is a reflection of Butts' own beliefs.
14elenchus
My appreciation is definitely tempered by the audio reading, which was distracting. I felt I missed a lot because of the medium, and uncertain how much of that distraction was from the reading and how much originated with Butts' prose.
>13 RandyStafford:
I also like premise and the ironic turn of events, with the hoax seemingly exposed by a supernatural presence not believed by the hoaxers. That much was foreshadowed in the opening paragraphs and the idea that disbelief can be as distorting of reality as can belief.
The emphasis placed on scents (of skin, of kid glove leather) is interesting given the central idea of gloves appearing as a sign of paranormal activity. So, too, the appearance of spiders -- especially at the end, with just five legs (like the fingers on a human hand).
Overall, I also agree the story was underwhelming, though.
>13 RandyStafford:
I also like premise and the ironic turn of events, with the hoax seemingly exposed by a supernatural presence not believed by the hoaxers. That much was foreshadowed in the opening paragraphs and the idea that disbelief can be as distorting of reality as can belief.
The emphasis placed on scents (of skin, of kid glove leather) is interesting given the central idea of gloves appearing as a sign of paranormal activity. So, too, the appearance of spiders -- especially at the end, with just five legs (like the fingers on a human hand).
Overall, I also agree the story was underwhelming, though.
15housefulofpaper
I was impressed by this story, although I think it's unfortunate that it became the test case for audio versions (my bad!). The reason is, it's subtle and rather allusive in a way that both traditional and Modernist works of the period can be (think Henry James but also Virginia Woolf); and listening rather than reading makes it harder to pick up on those subtle hints, I think.
As an aside, for some people, an audiobook or other type of reading is their only access to literature. I heard a statistic on the radio, for example, that something like only a third of blind people can read braille.
Getting back to the story, there are some traditional aspects, or perhaps it's that the story's traditionally structured: Trenchard is the bluff Materialist who falls foul of "there are more things in Heaven and Earth"; events unfold and escalate in a way reminiscent of, and worthy of, M. R. James.
What made it different for me was the combination of the feminine with a sort of inherent witchy magic (I think this might have been in the air at the time. The story was written around the time that the European Witch hunting craze had killed millions of women (between 40,000 and 60,000 is bad enough, of course). There's a novel I haven't read but have heard of - Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner - for example, that uses some of the same ideas (Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife is a bit later and comes from a different intellectual milieu, I think).
Also the causal way in which Something can be Summoned. Scary if you start to dwell on it...
But, on the other hand (or, "as well as") the sisters could just as well be exhibiting some casual cruelty appropriate for Bright Young Things to inflict on a straight-laced (well, the inference seems to be that his main offence is Mansplaining - not the only way this story jibes with current concerns).
Interesting that the sisters intuited that the chimney had to be closed - that the rules were coming to them from their subconscious or their Feminine - aspects?
On that point... I wondered at the mention of old Miss Blacken's brother:
"'- Now her brother, he was not what you might call ordinary.' Again that stopped at that.
' = Regular old maid she was. If maid she'd ever been. Not that you could be saying regular old man for him, for he wasn't either, if you take my meaning, Miss.'
The narrator says she does that his meaning, but doesn't say anything further for the benefit of the reader. I wondered if the brother was the ghost - a crossdressing ghost? And how would that be understood in a Victorian rural society filtered through a Modernist 20th-century one? But going on with the story, I didn't think that the emphasis on the feminine nature of the occurrences warranted that reading. And the mention brother seemed like a weird loose end.
However, I wondered there was only online criticism that had gone into this any more deeply. I found this blog post by V. H. Leslie:
https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/bloodlines-lost-and-found-mary-butts-with-and-wit...
which follow up on the hint from the narrator's interlocutor, and suggests that Miss Blacken may have been the "alter ego" of the brother. It would tie up that loose end (and it's nice to have one's ideas validated, or at least shared by somebody else). It would mean Mary Butts had a progressive view on sexual identity. Especially so for 1938? Maybe not in the circles she moved in. I just don't know enough about her, or about that aspect of history.
As an aside, for some people, an audiobook or other type of reading is their only access to literature. I heard a statistic on the radio, for example, that something like only a third of blind people can read braille.
Getting back to the story, there are some traditional aspects, or perhaps it's that the story's traditionally structured: Trenchard is the bluff Materialist who falls foul of "there are more things in Heaven and Earth"; events unfold and escalate in a way reminiscent of, and worthy of, M. R. James.
What made it different for me was the combination of the feminine with a sort of inherent witchy magic (I think this might have been in the air at the time. The story was written around the time that the European Witch hunting craze had killed millions of women (between 40,000 and 60,000 is bad enough, of course). There's a novel I haven't read but have heard of - Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner - for example, that uses some of the same ideas (Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife is a bit later and comes from a different intellectual milieu, I think).
Also the causal way in which Something can be Summoned. Scary if you start to dwell on it...
But, on the other hand (or, "as well as") the sisters could just as well be exhibiting some casual cruelty appropriate for Bright Young Things to inflict on a straight-laced (well, the inference seems to be that his main offence is Mansplaining - not the only way this story jibes with current concerns).
Interesting that the sisters intuited that the chimney had to be closed - that the rules were coming to them from their subconscious or their Feminine - aspects?
On that point... I wondered at the mention of old Miss Blacken's brother:
"'- Now her brother, he was not what you might call ordinary.' Again that stopped at that.
' = Regular old maid she was. If maid she'd ever been. Not that you could be saying regular old man for him, for he wasn't either, if you take my meaning, Miss.'
The narrator says she does that his meaning, but doesn't say anything further for the benefit of the reader. I wondered if the brother was the ghost - a crossdressing ghost? And how would that be understood in a Victorian rural society filtered through a Modernist 20th-century one? But going on with the story, I didn't think that the emphasis on the feminine nature of the occurrences warranted that reading. And the mention brother seemed like a weird loose end.
However, I wondered there was only online criticism that had gone into this any more deeply. I found this blog post by V. H. Leslie:
https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/bloodlines-lost-and-found-mary-butts-with-and-wit...
which follow up on the hint from the narrator's interlocutor, and suggests that Miss Blacken may have been the "alter ego" of the brother. It would tie up that loose end (and it's nice to have one's ideas validated, or at least shared by somebody else). It would mean Mary Butts had a progressive view on sexual identity. Especially so for 1938? Maybe not in the circles she moved in. I just don't know enough about her, or about that aspect of history.
16paradoxosalpha
>15 housefulofpaper: Maybe not in the circles she moved in.
While she was at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Crowley would routinely change gender to "Alys."
While she was at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Crowley would routinely change gender to "Alys."
17elenchus
>15 housefulofpaper:
Persuasive notes, many thanks for taking the time.
It seems I missed as much as I feared. Some of that is audio, and some is that I attempted to work while listening. I knew better but went ahead, anyway.
Persuasive notes, many thanks for taking the time.
It seems I missed as much as I feared. Some of that is audio, and some is that I attempted to work while listening. I knew better but went ahead, anyway.
18housefulofpaper
>16 paradoxosalpha:
That's interesting, thank you. I'm going to have to read something that puts Crowley centre stage. To date all I know about him has come from sources where he isn't the focus of attention.
>17 elenchus:
Yes my experience is you need to pay attention to a reading. Just a few seconds of inattention, and you're lost.
That's interesting, thank you. I'm going to have to read something that puts Crowley centre stage. To date all I know about him has come from sources where he isn't the focus of attention.
>17 elenchus:
Yes my experience is you need to pay attention to a reading. Just a few seconds of inattention, and you're lost.
19paradoxosalpha
>18 housefulofpaper:
There are a surfeit of Crowley bios, running the full gamut of accuracy, friendliness, and lack thereof. For the intelligent general reader, I recommend A Magick Life.
There are a surfeit of Crowley bios, running the full gamut of accuracy, friendliness, and lack thereof. For the intelligent general reader, I recommend A Magick Life.
