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Paul Tabori (1908–1974)

Author of The Natural History of Stupidity

55+ Works 458 Members 10 Reviews

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Works by Paul Tabori

The Green Rain (1961) 75 copies
Secret and Forbidden (1966) 23 copies
The cleft (1969) 15 copies
The Art of Folly (1961) 14 copies
The Torture Machine (1969) 14 copies
The Doomsday Brain (1967) 14 copies
A pictorial history of love (1966) 11 copies
COMPANIONS OF THE UNSEEN (1968) 9 copies
Pioneers of the unseen (1972) 9 copies
The Demons of Sandorra (1970) 8 copies
Alexander Korda (1966) 5 copies
The Survivors 5 copies
Dress and Undress (1969) 5 copies
Maria Theresa (1969) 5 copies
Epitaph for Europe (1942) 4 copies
Song of the Scorpions (1971) 4 copies
London Unexpurgated (1969) — Author — 3 copies
Lily Dale (1972) 3 copies
De verdwaalden 2 copies
Taken in Adultery (1967) 2 copies
Het einde van Perdita (1952) 2 copies
Salvatore : a novel (1951) 2 copies
They Came to London, (1943) 1 copy
The Invisible Eye (1967) 1 copy

Associated Works

Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Send Chills Down Your Spine (1979) — Contributor — 123 copies
The Fourth Ghost Book (1965) — Contributor, some editions — 24 copies
The Witches' Almanac: Aries 1974 to Pisces 1975 (1974) — Contributor — 6 copies
Unlikely ghosts, (1969) — Contributor — 5 copies

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Reviews

No doubt researching something like this wd've been intense drudgery (just kidding!) but "Petronius" did a good job. Of course, the original Petronius (who the author takes their name from) was a satirist who was sentenced to death by one of the Caesars in ancient Rome but who lived long enuf (by slitting his wrists & surviving over & over 'til it finally killed him) to write the "Satyricon" as a commentary on Roman society at the time. Fellini made a wonderful movie from that. Anyway, this a thorough bk & I got a good education from it.… (more)
 
Flagged
tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
review of
Paul Tabori's The Green Rain
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 27, 2017

When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies was The Boy with Green Hair (1948), ironically, I wd've witnessed it on a black & white TV. An online capsule description says this: "Peter (Dean Stockwell), an orphaned boy, is adopted by Gramp Frye (Pat O'Brien) after his parents are killed in Europe doing relief work. The boy feels safe with his new caretaker, but when he is taunted for being an orphan, he gets demoralized. The next day Peter wakes up with green hair. Enbarrassed and further ridiculed, Peter seeks solace in a nearby forest. To his surprise, he finds other orphans in the woods, who encourage him to spread the news of the injustices of war." At least he didn't wake up as a giant bug.

The film was directed by Joseph Losey, who I remember as a famous director even though I can't remember the names of any of his other films. Looking him up online I see that he studied w/ Bertolt Brecht, wch interests me. I see that he made Boom!, a movie I liked, & that he did a remake of Fritz Lang's M, wch surprises me. ANYWAY, as an adult, my childhood liking of The Boy with Green Hair is interpreted by me as having to do with intuitions of how anyone who deviates from the social norm, intentionally or otherwise, might be subjected to harsh societal pressure to conform. When I was 14, in early 1968, I started growing my hair long, against the strict instructions of my conservative mom, & was immediately subjected to what struck me as an insane amt of social hatred.

The Green Rain (1961) has a text below the title on the cover that reads: "A fantastic tale of a world gone made" wch is fair enuf but cd mean just about anything in an SF novel. The cover also has a somewhat Surrealism-inspired painting - something not too uncommon in SF at the time.

I wasn't familiar w/ the author, Paul Tabori, so I had no particular expectations. As it turned out, I probably did have some expectations b/c the bk took me somewhat by surprise. Just as I'm surprised to read that The Boy with Green Hair was partially an anti-war movie, I was surprised that The Green Rain seems to be partially an anti-racist bk.

Chapter 1 begins:

"SOMETHING WENT WRONG.

"Something always does, as Professor Pelargus used to say, smacking his lips. It was his pet opinion that humanity consisted entirely of bunglers—two and a half billion men, women, and children going industriously about their idiot affairs, creating—all unaware—monstrous linked chains of circumstance and consequence, and settling—still unaware—their own and everybody else's hash." - p 5

This bk was copyrighted & published in 1961. The world's human population is presented as 2.5 billion. I was born in 1953. I remember concerns about overpopulation appearing in the early 1970s, although I'm sure they appeared earlier. According to a Wikipedia article on world population the 1960 total was 3 billion - .5 billion more than The Green Rain wd have it. According to the same article, the population had increased to 4 billion by 1974. As of October, 2017, it's reputed to be 7.6 billion. That's quite the increase in a mere 57 yrs!! Some one alive today, born in, say, 2000, might be 74 when the population might 12.3 billion. A more conservative estimate from the UN has it at 11.2 billion by the yr 2100.

Plagues, wars, famine, & extreme weather conditions are the usual thinners of the herd & people are generally pretty unhappy to be exposed to any of those. I've been against human-inflicted misery my whole life - that means I'm against war, e.g.. Most people who think about these things are probably in agreement that humans cd act sensibly & curb population growth by more careful birth control & that, in turn, wars that result from attempted national boundary expansions & the like cd be curtailed, etc..

But will it happen? It doesn't seem likely. I was reading a very dry analysis of overpopulation in an impoverished place & details of economic conditions were the only data provided to explain the population growth. Nowhere was the pleasure that people get from sex mentioned. I found that quite strange. Isn't it obvious that if you're poor & living in overcrowded slum conditions that one of the few pleasures that might not cost you anything is fucking? & that fucking will produce more mouths that can't be fed? ETC?!

If people had fewer children, plagues, wars, famine, & even things like earthquakes might be less likely to happen. A generally better quality-of-life might result & people wdn't have to forego their pleasure from sex, just be more careful about family planning. Is that too much to ask? Alas, humanity seems to be like a race car driver ever more eager to drive faster & faster w/ newer models & in denial about the big wall that they're going to crash into ahead. But I digress.

"Perhaps they remembered the careful calculations of the German historian who asserted there had been only thirty-four years from the birth of Christ to the end of the nineteenth century when men were not trying to kill each other either with stone axes or high explosives" - p 13

In the unlikely event that those 34 yrs were contiguous imagine what an interesting time that wd've been to be alive in!

"In 1934 a sensitive, articulate and highly civilized writer named Aldous Huxley visited Guatemala. This visit set him to think about nationalism, war and hate. He decided that the three were more or less parts of the same whole; facets of the same horror. He quoted, with approval, Dr. F. Vergin's 'Subconscious Europe' in which the doctor contended that war was an escape from the restraints of civilization and that hate paid a higher psychological dividend than could be obtained from international amity, sympathy and cooperation." - p 14

So, what's the solution? Become a multiple-personality instead of having kids:

"The bottles, the whitewashed mural on the front of the house—and now this. Dr. Lukachevski's neighbors were all in his mind . . . if he was a schizophrenic he must have split into not two but three. Four if you counted his normal, brilliant, scientist-self." - p 10

Ok, I was kidding, I just wanted to segue to that last paragraph quoted.

"Chlorophyll, as any botanist will tell you, is a mixture of two green and two yellow pigments. The greens predominate; one is called Chlorophyll A and its chemical formula is C55 H72 O5 N4 Mg, while Cholorphyll B has been determined as C55 H70 O6 N4 Mg. The yellow pigments are carotin (C40 H56) and xanthophyll (C40 H56 O2)—if you insist." - p 12

What if I don't insist? What if I, instead, propose what Daniel Tonzig has suggested to me that Chloroplasts be used to pigment the skin to enable humans to draw nourishment from the sun - inspired by the interview that I link to next. Check out how Tonzig explains it in this section of my movie Don't Walk Backwards ( https://youtu.be/kODzM_2_bRM ): https://youtu.be/kODzM_2_bRM?t=4h32m12s .

"There are some plants that have no chlorophyll—fungi and a few flowering plants, among them the Indian Pipe." (p 12) Fancy that, I just happen to have footage of the latter in a different movie of mine, Spectral Evidence, wch you can witness at 1:06:52 at https://archive.org/details/SpectralEvidence

Tabori's writing is such that he uses the plot as an excuse for introducing various factoids that help enrich one's perception of the overall theme &, for me, are just generally fun to read:

"Green us one of the three primary colors. A green house is a house painted green but a greenhouse is a glasshouse for the growing and preservation of especially rare and delicate plants. Greengages are yellow-green plums which Sir Henry Gage made popular in England; he wasn't so successful with purple or blue gages." - p 27

When I really started to get interested was when Tabori started parodying racism, starting off w/ a parody of South Africa, wch was still in the grip of apartheid at the time:

"In the shadow of the Great Table Mountain the Trial of the Century entered its forty-first year. There were only sixteen defendants left; the others had died of old age or various ailments and of the original two hundred and thirteen twenty-two had actually been discharged for the lack of a true bill. The trial had used up over a dozen prosecuting attorneys—and because they were more advanced in age—over twenty judges." - p 32

So begins chapter 9. Something has happened worldwide that's causing people to turn green. Imagine the fuss that cd stir up in a society that's dependent on a skin color hierarchy:

""Are you a doctor?"

""No, but I could get one. What's the matter with Judge Prenger?"

""He . . ." the usher took a deep breath as if he needed extra strength for the enormity of his news, "he . . . he's started to turn green. . . !"

"He pushed the journalist aside but the two of them reached the exit at the same time. The reporter sprinted for the telecommunications room, pondering how he could get this dispatch through the ever-vigilant All-White censorship." - p 35

""Why beat around the bush? IS a nigger a nigger when he was turned green? That's what I want to know!"

""Precisely," the Foreign Minister was unquenchable. "or you may put it the other way round. Is a white man a . . ."

""Don't say it! the Prime Minister intervened hastily, "Don't even think of it!"" - p 36

Ha ha! Tabori spares no political creed in his mockery but he does seem to have a special thing against the USSR - wch is herein called the "UPPR":

"M. Vertbois, the French delegate asked what the attitude of the UPPR was to the alleged revival of the Green International? There had been reliable reports that several thousand members of this organization had been executed and over a hundred thousand had been deported to Siberia. Was this discrimination or not?

"Mr. Zelonnee declared that this was typical slander by the capitalist press; that the Green International, if it existed, was a counter-revolutionary organization of Fascist hyenas, the descendants of kulaks and murderers. The UPPR was entitled to take any steps necessary against those who threatened her internal security. He would also like to remind M. Vertbois of the millions of oppressed colonial subjects who were still groaning under the yoke of French imperialism. He, Mr. Zelonnee, had no wish to acerbate the discussion but perhaps he might quote a Russian proverb: "An owl should not tell a sparrow that its head is too big!"" - p 54

I have to wonder what the political inclinations of Tabori were. The only use of the word "anarchy" that I noted was pejorative in the mouths of the South African racists. Ha ha!

"this is the moment of danger, the most terrible test of our great All-White Republic! It is for us to fight for our sacred principle—that blood is more important than color, that race is rooted not in surface pigmentation but in the ancestry and blood line of any human being. Unless we find an immediate solution to our problem—to differentiate clearly and swiftly between a green-white and a green-black—out heritage will be destroyed, our country driven into anarchy, our very name wiped from the earth.["]" - p 69

"When G-Day came, the first thing the greenbods did was to cut all telephone cables, destroy all electronic communications so that the All-White Republic was suddenly isolated from the rest of the world." - p 85

Sounds good to me!

"They reached Los Angeles, the biggest city on the American continent—its merger with San Francisco was to be decided by a referendum in a few weeks' time as the suburbs of the two metropolises were now only a few miles apart" - pp 80-81

HHmm.. waddya think Rump's take on such a thing wd be? I think maybe he'd have a wall built between the 2 cities, maybe mine the intermediate zone? Put some billionaire buddies in charge of each city? Contract Haliburton to build the wall? Or is Haliburton out of favor now that Cheney & the Bush whackers are gone? I'm thinking a new highway shd be built across Washington DC that just has to cut the White House in half. Sorry about that but the urban planners know best. Is nothing sucrose?

Tabori's full of interesting ideas:

"Mimosa even developed the counter-plagiarism or 'theft-by-attribution'—he would trot out one of his dreary and shabby clichés and make it decisive, important and brand new by ascribing it to Lenin, Aragon, or any other approved Communist deity." - p 88

It's interesting that the Surrealist writer Louis Aragon is thrown in there w/ Lenin, I don't think that wd happen these days even tho he was a long-term Communist Party member. I've only read one of his bks, Paris Peasant (barely reviewed here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/12739936 ) but I'd like to read more. As for "'theft-by-attribution'"?: I can think of at least one writer who'd take to that like a rat to a garbage can.

"There was a comparatively wise one among them who put it all into the mouths of a cockroach who could use a typewriter; it was all about a toad named warty bliggens:

"a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the said
universe" - p 95

That's one of those cultural references that wd've been widely recognized in 1961 that might only be remembered by a very few in the yr of writing this review (2017). The quote is from "warty bliggens the toad" wch I have as part of a bk called "archy and mehitabel" by don marquis. I have a "dolphin book edition: 1960". Here's the ad copy from the back cover:

"Don Marquis first introduced archy the cockroach and mehitabel, a cat in her ninth life, in his newspaper column, "The Sun Dial," in 1916. In a previous incarnation archy was a free-verse poet, while mehitabel's soul once belonged to Cleopatra. She is toujours gai, but archy is more philosophical. It is he who records their songs and observations on the boss's typewriter late at night. But he is not strong enough to make capital letters so it all comes out lower case:

"the main question is
whether the stuff is
literature or not.

"It is."

The green-skinned people become more powerful - mainly b/c the people who were accustomed to seizing & wielding power before they were green now have a new excuse for doing so. Their cult issues commandments:

""Thou shalt obey no laws, decrees, commands, or temptations that are not hallowed by Gloriana.

""Thou shalt multiply in greenness and increase the ranks of those Chosen to be Green and shalt have no intercourse with any female who is not green." - p 103

&, this being a power struggle, those who win are those who play the dirtiest. Personally, I'd like to see that change in favor of integrity & mutual aid but I may very well be in the minority.

"Just two weeks before the Chicago Convention, the 'Byelo letter' was released. It was infinitely more skillful a forgery than the Zinoviev letter that had cost Labor so dearly in a historic" [Ah, English!, 'shdn't' that be "an historic"?] "British election earlier in the century." - p 137

The 1st paragraph of the Wikipedia entry on the "Zinoviev letter" states:

"The "Zinoviev letter" was a controversial document published by the British Daily Mail newspaper four days before the general election in 1924. It purported to be a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, the head of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow; to the Communist Party of Great Britain, ordering it to engage in all sorts of seditious activities. It said the resumption of diplomatic relations (by a Labour government) would hasten the radicalisation of the British working class. If true, it was a deeply offensive interference in British politics to the detriment of the Labour Party. The letter seemed authentic at the time, but historians now agree it was a forgery. Historians also agreed that the letter had little impact on the Labour vote, which held up in 1924. However, it aided the Conservative Party, by hastening the collapse of the Liberal Party vote that produced a Conservative landslide. A. J. P. Taylor argues that the most important impact was on the psychology of Labourites, who for years afterward blamed their defeat on foul play, thereby misunderstanding the political forces at work and postponing necessary reforms in the Labour Party." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter

"Exactly twenty-one months to the day since the coming of the Green Rain, Gloriana was inaugurated in Washington and a Demo-Republican (or as some called it, a Repu-Democrat) administration was installed in the great Republic." - p 139

I find the above particularly interesting b/c of the use of "Demo-Republican" & "Repu-Democrat". Political activist occasionally say Demmicans or Republicrats to mock the insufficient differences between the 2 parties. Note the voice of Mumia Abu Jamal in "Tails from the Unconvention" (2000): https://youtu.be/b-HKzrINS3M?t=12m41s .

This was written in London from January-July, 1960. Even tho. in some sense, it's an eco-disaster novel, it's more of a parable about human foibles than it is a warning about probable outcomes of current eco-insensitive practices. It even predates J. G. Ballard's 1st eco-disaster novel: The Wind from Nowhere (1962) but not M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud (1901). I'll definitely be reading more by Paul Tabori if I can find anything by him.
… (more)
 
Flagged
tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
review of
Paul Tabori's The Cleft
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 8, 2019

I've read & reviewed one other Paul Tabori bk: The Green Rain (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2166657267 ). Once again, I'm amazed at how much 'time flies' b/c 'it seems like just yesterday' when I read that but it was almost 2 yrs ago instead. My life has changed entirely too little since then. The Green Rain seemed 'a little off' — perhaps as if it were written by someone who didn't usually write SF or someone who was writing SF for the 1st time. The Cleft is even more that way. The front cover proclaims:

"A wide-open city—two turned-on players in a strange sex game—a bawdy, blistering novel of tomorrow"

Now, one expects misleading advertising copy & the above isn't THAT misleading but the cover art shows a somewhat amorphouse cluster of naked bodies that suggests orgiastic behavior. The story is about a crack opening in New York City that gets wider & bigger & more life-disruptive & threatening PLUS it's about the promiscuous sex-life of the wife of the city official whose job turns into dealing w/ the crack. Hence "wide-open city" doesn't mean a 'city where anything goes' or some such. PLUS the 'tomorrow' isn't exactly futuristic, it's a 'tomorrow' that's not necessarily that much different from the 'today' of the yr's 1969 copyright. As for the "two turned-on players"? I wdn't quite describe them that way either. Anyway, I'm not complaining, I find the ad copy funny. The back-cover blurb claims that "THE CLEFT is a science fiction novel like none other you have read. As wildly visionary as H. G. Wells, as wickedly witty as Terry Southern, Paul Tabori has concocted a devilish brew of far-out sex, fascinating science, and unbeatable suspense." That's pushing things a bit, I think. I wonder if it worked? Was it a popular bk in its day? You know how much the public loves "far-out sex" mixed w/ "fascinating science"!! I looked on the internet to find more info on The Cleft & its popularity or lack thereof & didn't find anything relevant. I did find that he was a much more prolific writer than I expected.

I generally find that it's much easier to get sucked into a novel if there's a sympathetic protagonist. That cd also be sd to be the easy route for keeping the reader involved. Tabori doesn't do that. 2 of the main characters, the Pokolis, a married couple, have little to recommend them.

"Caesar Pokoli, not to mince words, was a phony who got away with it because his malpractices and misdemeanors were on a modest scale." - p 7

The "tomorrow" of the novel is the 1980s, 'long' since this reviewer's yesteryear.

"By the eighth decade of the twentieth century New York had grown into such a huge and complex organism that its very size created seemingly insoluble problems. To get to work and get home had become a major problem. For every yard of super freeways, a dozen new cars were spewed forth by the assembly lines. Parking was a game of snakes and ladders and the city had started to tow away the tow-away trucks before the streets became choked into immobility." - p 9

Sounds like the NYC of the 1980s that I knew (except for the towing away of the tow-ers).

Marianne's married to Caeser. She randomly picks a man in the phone bk & tries to have sex w/ them. This is an everyday occurence. Sometimes she picks up info beneficial to her husband's career.

"And she called them all, without exception, Bernie. This was a fad they had to accept—she told them: "Look, I can't remember names, I don't even remember faces, I remember other, more essential things," and she demonstrated on the spot what those were. Bernie was the quintessence of all the men she picked up by the most essential instrument of modern living and, whether Bernie was tall or short, white or black, couth or uncouth, a sex master or just a so-so performer, in her wildest transports it was this name she whispered, cooed or screamed.

"She was by no means as methodical and orderly as her husband. For her ashtrays could overflow and pictures could dip at most irregular degrees. But in her hobby and life's work she did not neglect the slightest detail. And she always carried her little Polaroid camera which produced an instant picture of her lover's manhood for a collection which she kept in a safe deposit box, visiting it from time to time like a dowager inspecting the family silver or grandma's tiara. The hours she spent in the vault were among the happiest of her life." - pp 19-20

I wish I'd done that, taken pictures of every girlfriend's naked center of attn. Oh, well. They wd be such nice non-marital aids to while away my lonely hours w/. Sigh. Well, at any rate, the crack was bound to enlarge.

"You have heard of metal fatigue, or should have—even if you aren't a Nevil Shute fan. And there was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"Five million heavy trucks cross a bridge and it just groans and sways a little and holds its peace. Then the five million and first starts to rumble across—and, wham, bang, whizz, steel and concrete split and dissolve." - p 23

We're not talking beaver dams here. Not even a dental dam.

"The dam cracks at dawn, almost silent and invisible, the drops of water start oozing through the infintestimal open pores which grow bigger and bigger until, with a wrench and a roar, the millions of tons of cement topple and the flood engulfs a whole countryside." - p 23

Caesar Pokoli is in charge of the complaints dept.

"There were a few candidates for the first Complaint of the Month. Hospitals were mentioned and it was quite seriously considered, for five minutes, that people should get medical attention first and be questioned about their financial status second. City facilities were discussed, and it was suggested that something should be done about making less profit on food and drink consumed by municipal employees; but someone pointed out that after all the City paid them and could rightly expect that, in turn, the city workers spend some of their pay in places that would support free enterprise and the true American principle of damning the public and nourishing monopoly." - p 34

Pokoli isn't about to improve upon such situations but he will insure that government is at work enuf to further insure that he continues to get pd.

"Caeser's spelling was highly individual and Webster-defiant; but then, there was Miss Barbara ("Boobie") Mollison, a product of Bennington-Vassar, a white edition of Mandy in ugliness and efficiency whom Marianne had picked as her spouse's secretary. Out of Caeser's half-illterate srcibblings, out of his mumbling, stammering and stuttering words she could weave webs of perfect oratory and paragraphs of illimitable logic. Sometimes Caeser suspected that Boobie took a special delight in this and that if he had been a model of cogency, articulateness and erudtion, she would have pined away and died." - p 48

Or been put in the Boobie Hatch. Alas, w/ all the aggravations of Caeser's job he might just end in there too.

"Also, this was the proper occasion, their negotiators hinted, to establish the tweny-two hour work week, two months vacation with pay per year and retirement at forty-seven." - p 71

Sounds reasonable. Might as well add that all pleasures enjoyed by people w/ inherited wealth over 1 million dollars be made available to working & retired working people at no cost. Despite this reasonableness of the workers, the cleft problem deepens.

"["]It would be safer to take immediate steps, before your fair city splits into two and pitches most of your citizens into the sea."

""But that's utterly impossible. How can we evacuate New York? Three million people live on this island, another three million commute for work."" - p 77

This bk being the parody that it is, it just has to have the Soviets exaggerate the problem.

"Radio Moscow: SEGREGATION GONE MAD. Pluto-capitalistic America has decided on drastic measures against the rising tide of its oppressed colored masses, our Negro comrades. A beginning has been made in New York though we understand that similar plans are about to be put into effect in all the important communities of these Disunited States. All the nonwhites are going to be herded into a ghetto or concentration camp in the area known as Down Town (which is called so because the downtrodden, poor and exploited people live there in contrast to Up Town which is for the idle and domineering rich) and in order to ensure their complete segregation, a deep ditch or moat is being dug between the two unequal parts of the city." - pp 101-102

I won't give away the climax of everything that comes into the cleft but I will say that a good time wasn't had by all.
… (more)
 
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tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |

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