The Certain Hour

I am reading each story in The Certain Hour. I had read at least one before (the most highly regarded story in the collection, "Balthazar's Daughter"), but a friend has insisted the whole book is quite good.

I am commenting, briefly, on each story on Goodreads, in the review I update (edit) as I progress through the book:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34826798-the-certain-hour

Please advise if I get anything wrong.

The book is indeed more than merely good. Each story, so far, is better than the previous.

That's not a title I'm familiar with except by name, I'll be following along via the GoodReads link.

Is there any overlap in its collection of stories and any other, e.g. The Silver Stallion? I didn't think there was much overlap in Cabell's various collections, but I haven't paid attention at the level of chapters / stories.

ETA The story featuring Shakespeare as hero looks like quite good fun.

No overlap. Certain Hour is 'late early Cabell' -- it was the last of his story collections and was published in 1915. Silver Stallion was more than 10 years later, 1926, and strictly speaking counts as a novel -- linked stories in a frame. Of course some of his earlier story collections might be so described but in those the linkage was much looser. Also Certain Hour is 'pre-fantasy' Cabell -- before Cream (1917) and Jurgen (1919). He definitely wrote some good stuff before Cream (Rivet, eh, Timo?) but somehow everything was 'different' after Cream -- Cabell felt Cream was a new start, the real him.

This is the collection that contains 'Concerning Corinna' a story that's gotten a fair amount of attention in 'weird' circles in the last couple decades -- reprinted three times, I believe, during that time.

Balthazar's Daughter was used as the basis for Cabell's only play, The Jewel Merchants.

Aha! when following the Goodreads link to wirkman's review I didn't realize I needed to scroll down to "Timothy's" review.

Interested to see what you make of "A Brown Woman" and "The Lady of All Our Dreams"...

I liked the latter one very much. I finally finished the book, after misplacing it for about a year....

The final tale of the book, in which we meet John Charteris, is quite good, and, as I noted in my review, it has an interesting linkage with Cabell’s own life — or so I think, in terms of a possible murder and cover-up — as well as the central preoccupations of dream and compromise.

According to MacDonald's biography (or was it Godshalk's article? or both?) John Scott was set upon and beaten by two brothers of a young woman he had got pregnant. JBC was not involved at all -- it just took place near his mother's house.

Might I note that a very close friend has used tales from this book to teach to his teen students — in the far east?

The idea of even American youngsters reading these stories seems far-fetched. But Asians? For whom English is a second language?

Well, Americans are notoriously ill-equipt and -disposed for literature. So now we can say that our greatest culture is being outsourced, too.

The tales in this book are among Cabell’s very best. I just read “Concerning David Jogram” in Townsend of Lichfield, which I very much enjoyed. It, along with “The Wedding Jest” and a half dozen from this The Certain Hour, together with The Music from Behind the Moon would make an excellent introduction to Cabell’s work.

Are one of you preparing an anthology? I forget.

I've been toying with the idea of an anthology specifically of his neglected fantastic and supernatural short fiction for the Fantasy crowd who can't get past the Big 7. So from Certain Hour that would include Corinna and Lady of All Our Dreams.

There's an article in one of the issues of Kalki -- by editor Paul Spencer I think -- that nominates Certain Hour as The Biography-in-Small.

Somewhere Cabell said, if I recall correctly, that Jogram was left over from a discarded novel other parts of which ended up being worked into Certain Hour and Cream of the Jest.

Who controls the rights to the still copyright protected fiction, such as the Storisende versions of the Biography and The Witch Woman? If one were to reprint the final versions of his best stories, one would need permission, no?

The rights are controlled by The Cabell Associates, a committee formed (by his will? his widow? Cabell Library?) to protect his written legacy. They're not a very responsive group -- we at The Silver Stallion website have never had a direct response from the Committee, but when occasionally we have asked about reprinting a Cabell letter or story the answer eventually trickles through our contacts at the VCU Cabell library that it's ok -- one reason being that they're glad someone is bothering. I believe the rights to the not-public-domain works are currently leased (not sure how exclusively) to Wildside for their paperback/pod reprints.

That would be an anthology worth publishing, copyright hassles and all. (Easy for me to say from my easy chair!)

The Cabell Associates, abbreviated backwards, is ACT. Their indirect actions are, then, suitably backward.

Here's one version of the toc for the proposed Cabell short fiction collection, in ‘Biography’ order, sorta-kinda; there's another version that has them in the order Cabell wrote them:

 
Day-Trips to Poictesme: The Collected Fantastic Short Fiction of JBC

Part I: The Fairy Time (6)
(magazine short stories that were later revised and combined to form Figures of Earth)

- The Feathers of Olrun

- The Designs of Miramon

- The Hour of Freydis

- The Head of Misery

- The Image of Sesphra

- The Hair of Melicent



Part II - In the Wake of Manuel (7)
(followers and children)

- *The Thin Queen of Elfhame (from Straws & Prayer-books – hybrid text?*)

- *The Delta of Radegonde (from Straws & Prayer-books - hybrid text?*)

- The Soul of Mervisaunt (from Harpers) (Manuel’s 1st daughter)

- Some Ladies & Jurgen (from the Smart Set) (Manuel’s 2nd daughter)

- The Music from Behind the Moon (early version) (Manuel’s 3rd daughter)

- The Tenson (from Chivalry) (Manuel’s son, Edward I of England; proto-Manuel; one of the first stories to use Poictesme as a setting)

- The Wedding Jest (from The Line of Love, revised edition) (Manuel’s 1st daughter, granddaughter & great-granddaughter)

*although the body of Thin Queen and Delta perhaps should follow the revisions of 1924 or 1930, the linking material which was added at the beginning of each to integrate them into the run of Straws and Prayer-books should be omitted, and they should retain the 'storybook' opening they had in their magazine forms. Is a hybrid text justifiable?



Part III - Down the Generations (7)

- {{The Satraps (from Chivalry)
- {{The Heritage (from Chivalry)
- {{The Scabbard (from Chivalry)
(Three linked alt-history stories, c1400 – Richard II did not die, etc. This is his first published fiction to feature a wizard and a demon. Only Satraps and Scabbard appeared in magazines. Heritage was written for the book as a link story.)

- Concerning Corinna (from The Certain Hour) c1670

- In the Second April, parts 1 & 2 (from Gallantry) c1700, one of the first stories to use Poictesme as a setting. (1928 text is better than mag or 1907 text; link with The High Place.)

- Confusions of the Golden Travel (from Something About Eve) c1800



Part IV - Branlon, Ecben & Environs w/ 'Geography of Dream' map from Kalki (6?)

- The Way of Ecben

- The White Robe

- True Thomas (from These Restless Heads)

- The Book of Volmar (from Smith)

- The Book of Elair (from Smith)

?- Helena/Branlon episode (from The King Was In His Counting House)



Part V- Cabell At Home (7)

- The Vampyre

- An Amateur Ghost

{A Charteris Suite (from "The Foolish Prince and other Fables")

{- The Foolish Prince (from The Cords of Vanity)

{?- untitled fable from the introduction to illus ed of Something About Eve, (I think)

{- Taboo

{- The Lady of All Our Dreams (from The Certain Hour)

- ‘Cabell gets his head together’ (introduction to Quiet Please where Cabell gets into an argument with the clay bust of his own head. Probably counts as his last bit of ‘fantastic fiction’)

I'm in awe at your grasp of JBC's oeuvre. I've read quite a bit of Cabell, certainly scads more than even the usual fiction or Fantasy reader, but there's so much I haven't, and I can't keep straight the various episodes I've read in Figures or Jest or whatnot.

I do like the divisions under which you've arranged your selections. For "hybrid" texts, an editorial note indicating the changes would be appropriate to Cabellania, I'd think.

I certainly don't "get" your several references ("I think", "from Cords", "followers and children") but am intrigued by the allusions you apparently are making. (Unless touchstones simply went awry, though then the happenstance remains intriguing!)

Those weird touchstones are from my habit of using square brackets (no shift) instead of parentheses (shift needed). I pasted this in from a word.doc, forgetting you can't use square brackets in regular text on LT. I'll fix it.

'from Cords' just means that that fable is a fantastical inset in The Cords of Vanity, a non-fantastic novel.

TOUCHSTONES NOW FIXED

I figured that you could have linked in each instance to the Cabell source for the excerpt, but the idea of allusions to these non-Cabellian books was delicious anyway.

Links etc fixed now.

Maybe not all of these selections wd be appropriate or doable. For instance, TWO excepts from Smith? But this is a fair haul of the kind of fantastical material that Cabell is mostly prized for, and which otherwise fans would have to dig around for in largely non-fantastical books (that is, in other than the easily available 'big seven'), or in anthologies.

(big 7 = the six titles reprinted by Ballantine, plus Jurgen)

The first edition of The High Place goes into the public domain next year, with all other works from 1923. In 2020, into the public domain go Straws and Prayer-books and A Round-Table in Poictesme, along with all works from 1924.

>9 Crypto-Willobie: "There's an article in one of the issues of Kalki -- by editor Paul Spencer I think -- that nominates Certain Hour as The Biography-in-Small."

I did not go looking for the Kalki article, but believe you had A Certain Hour momentarily confused with The Line of Love, which Cabell refers to as "the Biography in miniature" in the Storisende preface, which was extensively rewritten for Preface to the Past. Line of Love "alone among the many books which I have written, presents all three of the attitudes almost equally, where the the other volumes of the Biography specialize in one or another this trinity." Also "...this, the earliest of my books in point of composition, is the germ of the Biography, and the seed from which all has grown..."

He then discusses all of the books in the Biography as to how they relate to the three attitudes, essentially as introducing, in success, in failure, or in modern times.

" 'Something About Eve' and 'The Certain Hour' then illustrate the failure, and, from at least the standpoint of an Economist, the success, of the poet's attitude toward life."

Also of interest in The Certain Hour is that the 10 poets are the figures of earth sculpted by Manuel, brought to life by the magic of Freydis and then inserted at various points of history by her.

>20 dscottn:

No, Spenser's brief article entitled "The Certain Hour as Mini-Biography" appears on pp. 15-18 of Kalki 9.1 (33) 1987. In its first line he acknowledges that Cabell called Line of Love 'the biography-in-miniature' and then explains how he thinks a similar epithet applies to Certain Hour.

Also of interest is that the only textual difference between the 1916 first printing of Certain Hour and the Kalki editions of the 1920s is that one page opposite the dedication which purports to be from an early history of Dom Manuel:
http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/bibliography/manuel/certain_hour/ch_a2/h...
Unlike most of his other early works Certain Hour was not, that page aside, revised until the Storisende.

>21 Crypto-Willobie: Good thing I didn't go looking. I don't have 28-33.

Also on this thread of interest were your proposals for Cabell collections. One of my unachieved goals in life was to be a small publisher getting books that no one really wanted to read and wouldn't really sell back into print. Beerbohm, Cabell, Dunsany and Kenneth Morris were the authors I wanted to start with. Disney greasing the wheels of Congress to change copyright law and keep their claws in Mickey Mouse pretty much killed that dream.

I had completely forgotten The Foolish Prince at the beginning of Cords. I have an extra 1909 Cords of Vanity if anyone is looking for one.

Almost finished reading all the threads. The Rabble is serving as a great Cabellian diversion to avoid dwelling with life "in the flesh."

VCU is in the process of adopting the Silver Stallion website -- more or less combining it with their own Cabell material into a larger Cabell site. Cabell revival on the way? Part of the larger project may be a collection of the shorter fantasy works along the lines I described.

Doug Anderson (Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson) has done some work on Kenneth Morris, and is planning to issue some more Morris material from his Nodens Press. Dunsany has been pretty well served now by the pod crew.

Doug Anderson has done so much better than I ever could have with Morris and many others. At one point I was trying to track down the whereabouts of the Chalchiuhite Dragon manuscript and uncollected stories, but was always too busy with my actual job. I'll check his sites. I am unfamiliar with the pod crew.
At UC Santa Cruz I made copies of every Cabell story that was in their bound magazines, which did not survive one move or another. Right now I am willing to reap the benefit of the hard work by you and others, and simply enjoy what is available at Silver Stallion.

>23 Crypto-Willobie:
VCU adopting Silver Stallion sounds like a boon, but maybe you don't feel that way?

>24 dscottn:

"Pod crew" refers to Print On Demand, so not one entity but the publishing channel.

Which provokes an idle thought: does POD indicate a possible emerging market that would be served by editions with better print quality, editorial support, layout & outwork? "Idle" because while I find it interesting, I'm not going to put forth any effort to answer it!

>25 elenchus:
No, the people at VCU are great. We are actively collaborating with them. For one thing, John Thorne and I will not live forever (I'm the youngster of the team at 67) and this way our illustrated and annotated bibliography will survive us, to the benefit of future Cabellians. VCU (located in Richmond, and with their library named after Cabell) has a lot invested in reversing the years of Cabell-neglect.

>24 dscottn:
Most of Cabell's works have been cheaply/pod reprinted by Wildside, or for public domain titles (pre-1923) by almost anyone. Many of these are ugly and poorly done, as well as unnecessary as most of Cabell's works are available relatively easily and inexpensively in various pre-1980 (i.e., real) editions on the secondary market.

Most of Dunsany's works have in recent years been republished or are available from the p.o.d. publishers; though it appears to me that Dunsany's pods tend to be better done than Cabell's.

>25 elenchus: I should have realized that entities like Wildside were POD. I have never seen an actual physical book from them. I originally assumed they were Cabell fanatics like me. When C-W mentioned his least favorite Cabell cover elsewhere, I was thinking of them.

I really have been out of touch this last decade, completely offline for a significant portion which was one of the most productive periods ever for me in research and writing.

Things have changed. I'm aware that my friends my age have largely switched entirely to to E-books because they find them easier for aging eyesight. I have gotten used to reading PDFs of really old books, but that is only because that is the only way I will ever be able to read them. Physical books have been a dominant part of my existence since the First Grade.

>26 Crypto-Willobie: Once again I am pulled away while composing and by the time I come back to post the message, you are already discussing what I was writing about. I like this place.

>27 dscottn:

When I spoke of my least favorite Cabell covers I wasn't even thinking about the pods. Actually a few have pleasant ones but mostly it's a crapshoot with many banal or inappropriate images.

>28 dscottn:

Cheers!