Cameo appearances of Cabell's Books in the Books of other Authors

If this specific subject is redundant to the erudite denizens among The Rabble's readership, then may this momentary Cabellian benightedness of mine be met by your magnanimity if not your blessing.

Kidding. The Great Willobie said I could.

While reading The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography recently, I came upon the following unexpected passage I thought I should share:

The censor habitually passes what I, who am no puritan, consider nauseating filth, while refusing to license Oedipus Rex, which we are compelled to assimilate at school. The prosecutions against publishers are equally incomprehensible. The country is flooded with . . . nasty pornography . . . while there is an outcry against epoch-making masterpieces of philosophy like Jurgen. The salacious musical comedy goes its libidinous way rejoicing, while Ibsen and Bernard Shaw are on the black list . . .

Great idea for a thread, and I like the debut post.

>1 absurdeist:
That's Grape Willobie...

>1 absurdeist:

Crowley was putting in a sort of coy brag there. The big "objectionable" chapter in Jurgen is the one (22) that Cabell based on Crowley's Gnostic Mass.

Still, Crowley was quite a Cabell fan, and initiated a correspondence with him that lasted some years. Here's Crowley's review of Beyond Life, the first Cabell book he read:

FOR four years I have been cast away upon a desert island, and I am seriously alarmed at beholding a footprint in the sand. As a matter of fact, the goats have acclimatized me to most things, and I take up the task of reviewing this book with all the more confidence, because the publisher begs me to abuse it. I dislike publishers intensely, and I am not going to abuse books merely because they ask me to, and even if I had wanted to abuse this book, I should have found myself in the position of Balaam.

It is an extraordinarily good book. I quite understand why the Times says that Mr. Cabell is "one of the most pretentiously attitudinizing of American authors." The Times has had some. But what does the Times matter? It used to be the thunderer. It is now an imitation of thunder which only Martial could describe, or an ambitious Marine imitate. What in God's name is an American author to do? He has got such a dreadful milieu that it is almost impossible to discover him. I never blamed the cock who failed to notice the pearl in the dung hill. Fortunately, I had Mr. Mencken to indicate Mr. Cabell. Thus, I was able to read the book as if I knew nothing of its surroundings, which is of course the only way to read a book. It is admirably written. It is a defence of romance. What does it matter that it is written among a people who think that romance means Robert W. Chambers? There are extraordinary things in this book.

I do not think Mr. Cabell's irony so wonderful as his humour. He says, "The most prosaic of materialists proclaim that we are all descended from an insane fish, who somehow evolved the idea that it was his duty to live on land, and eventually succeeded in doing it." Insane fish is right. It is possible that the fish was not insane. It is possible that he discovered that he could not get a drink, except water, and decided to emigrate. If that is insane, I am insane. I hope that Mr. Cabell is insane too, and that I shall meet him in the Solomon Islands.

That is a great review, thanks for sharing!

Are any from the Crowley-Cabell correspondence available publicly? I don't recall knowing they were friends. And did they ever meet?

I don't know if they met in person. Aleister Crowley admired Cabell and was keen to convert him to Thelema. Long after sending him the copy of The International from which Cabell derived his knowledge of the Gnostic Mass, Crowley was still sending Cabell such items as the "Memorandum on The Book of the Law," written as a letter expressly for Cabell and unppublished until its appearance in The Revival of Magick and Other Essays (1998). My books of published Cabell correspondence are boxed at the moment, so I'm not sure if the relevant letters appear in them or another I've consulted, but Cabell's friends in publishing were aware of his dialogue with Crowley and discouraged him from associating with the magus.

Crowley's review of Jurgen was written for The Equinox III:2, but never published. I probably have a way to get my hands on it, but have never yet done so. "Another Note on Cabell" by Crowley was published in The Reviewer III(1-2), July 1923, but I haven't read it either.

There are no letters to or from Crowley in either of the books of Cabell's correspondence, although in Between Friends Guy Holt (Cabell's editor) refers to Crowley as "an ingenious charlatan".

When I visited the Cabell collection at VCU last year I did see a few letters from Crowley to Cabell, and if he ever finds the time the Cabell Room librarian is supposed to send me copies of them (and much else).

In the mystery novel Fatal Step by Wade Miller (aka Whit Masterson) the detective while waiting for a witness to show up goes over to the wall and takes down a book to read... Cream of the Jest...

I'm fairly certain that Ross Macdonald includes a brief scene in which Lew Archer pulls a Cabell title from a library shelf while awaiting an interview with a person of interest. Trying to track it down, think it's in The Doomsters but I didn't include that detail in my review.

The Cabell reference in the first few pages of Two Sisters, by Gore Vidal, is not only droll, but perceptive.

And as I have related before, The Autobiography of Jack Woodford contains more than a chapter'a worth of Cabell adulation — all in all a great chaos of a memoir. I seem to remember a Cabell reference in one of Woodford’s “sex novels,” such as Unmoral, but I did not write it down. Maybe it was Illegitimate. I am now, alas, a fan of Woodford, and regard him as a bizarre genius recognized not even by himself.

>2 elenchus: thanks!
>3 Crypto-Willobie: Fine Wine Willobie!
>4 paradoxosalpha: I'll revisit chap. 22 of Jurgen. Thanks for the tip. Beyond Life was the second Cabell I read, and I agree that that is an insanely great review by Crowley. I'll be curious to see if he references Cabell again as I make my way thru the Autohagiography.

>9 elenchus: I spent some time this afternoon flipping thru The Doomsters to no avail, then pulled Tom Nolan's Ross MacDonald: A Biography off the shelf—a superb bio., btw— hoping to find Cabell listed in the Index . . . No luck. Doesn't surprise me at all that MacDonald would have had Archer pulling Cabell off the shelf. MacDonald's Ph.D. dissertation was titled—this I also learned today, searching for Cabell in the bio.—"The Inward Eye: A Revaluation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Psychological Criticism". I'd wager Ross MacDonald was familiar with the work of James Branch Cabell.

I was mistaken in recalling the Cabell reference from Macdonald: it was Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse. My copy's in storage so I can't quote the passage, but my review includes this reference: Tempting to see Hammett poking fun at himself in the character of Fitzstephan, in more ways than one. Fitzstephan references Cabell at a cocktail party. That's from page 233 in my edition, no idea if pagination changes a lot or not.

Something to Hold Onto: Autobiographical Sketches by noted British historian Richard Cobb.

See p.108 ff.
Frank C Pape married Richard Cobb's aunt and so young Dick heard tell of Cabell -- but he seems to have got it confused -- he appears to think that Poictesme is a fantastical medieval realm which is imposed geographically onto Tunbridge Wells and its environs. And when noting that Pape's Cabell-related jobs petered out c1930, he wonders if this was because the author had died. I hope the famous historian's historical research was more reliable...

Tunbridge Wells?! Maybe Papé was having fun with young Dick and deliberately skewing his stories.

Tunbridge Wells is where Pape lived, but it was also, coincidentally, the setting of several early Cabell stories. In fact it was Cabell's difficulty in getting the geographical details pf TWells right that led him to decide henceforth to use imaginary rather than real settings... which led to the creation of Poictesme. But Cobb has mashed these things together into a confusion.

Ah, I've not encountered those Cabell stories -- an old English town is not what I'd have guessed for even a fictional setting of his.

I'm reading my first Anatole France novel, and the Parisian setting -- even set in early 20th Century -- seems much more aligned with what I acquaint with Cabell's tales, even when not in Poictesme.

The TWells stories are in Gallantry. He tells the Wells.Poictesme bit in 'A Note on Poictesme' (I think it's called) in Preface to the Past.

Which A France?

The Revolt of the Angels, I'm about halfway through at this point and I definitely see a corresponding outlook and style.

I've been meaning to get to that one. Most of the A France I've read are collections of shorter tales.
Mother of Pearl
Seven Wives of Bluebeard
Golden Tales of Anatole France
and the novella
Bee: The Princess of the Dwarfs

Acc. to Cabell he was unfamiliar with France's work until after some people began calling him the 'American Anatole France'.

I'm reading The Ghost of Jack Woodford, arguably the strangest appreciation of one writer by another excepting only U and I by Nicholson Baker. (The books are not entirely dissimilar, though Baker is a great prose stylist and ...) Anyway, in the eleventh chapter we come to the Matter of Cabell:

“Woodford was great friends with James Branch Cabell. He thinks of Cabell as a genius and admires everything the man ever did. Jack outlived Cabell, and this also caused him a great deal of pain. Jack outlived most of his friends, he talks about it from page one. He seems a sad old man when he wrote the Auto-Biography. Cabell was a professor at William and Mary, when he was a scant twenty-two. He was fluent in several languages, and could write most. He never made so much as a typo in anything he ever wrote. It came out perfect the first time, and he never re-wrote anything. Cabell used his fantastic intellect to predict, using lessons from past history, what was going to happen to each new writer or politician that came into being. He was always right, Jack says. Cabell seems to be a larger than life person. Jack Woodford tried to live in isolation of the world, but Cabell managed to live in complete seclusion, never visiting anyone, and never going out. Jack says that the only person Cabell ever would bother to go and see was Ellen Glasgow....

“Cabell loved Charlie Chaplin movies, and Jack doubts he ever saw anything besides. Jack himself loved Chaplin films, admiring them for their simplicity.”

>20 wirkman:

That excerpt makes Woodford's relationship to Cabell sound highly idiosyncratic. I've not read much on Cabell the person, but didn't have that extreme of a picture of the man.

>20 wirkman:

I’m going to assume that the numerous inaccuracies in this account of Cabell are the fault of Keith Nichols rather than of Jack Woodford.

1. “Cabell was a professor at William and Mary, when he was a scant twenty-two.”
In 1901, when Cabell ‘was a scant 22’, he was working for a newspaper in New York.
He was never a ‘professor’ -- during his last two semesters as an undergraduate at W&M in 1897-8, when he was 18/19, he was an instructor in French and Latin, teaching younger students.

2. “He was fluent in several languages, and could write most.”
‘Could write most’? what does this even mean? that he could actually write most languages? Probably just sloppy writing on the part of Nichols. Cabell was certainly fluent in English and at least grad-student passable in Latin and French as we see from his history at William and Mary. How fluent is another question – somewhere I’ve read of someone – Jean Maurice Duke? Or Edgar MacDonald? -- complaining about the quality of Cabell’s French, and I recall in one of his letters in Between Friends Cabell himself complaining that he had not enough German to read a book in the original. He had more languages than me, and probably you, but linguistically he was more an inspired dabbler with a library of good translations than a Master Philologist.

3. “He never made so much as a typo in anything he ever wrote. It came out perfect the first time, and he never re-wrote anything.” This is nonsense. I have (seen) Cabell letters where he has typed the wrong letter and then typed over the correct one, and seen galleys with corrections. The surviving typescripts/manuscripts of his various works show much insertion, interlineation, scribbled margins, typing over, writing over etc., as you would expect with any writer. And ‘never re-wrote anything’??? He constantly re-wrote almost everything almost all the time. The story “Love-Letters of Falstaff” for example was published in a magazine, then re-written when it was incorporated into The Line of Love in 1905, then revised again when LoL was reissued in 1921, and revised yet again when everything was revised for the Storisende collection in 1927-1930. Throughout his life almost every magazine essay or story was later incorporated into a book, but it was invariably re-written in the process.
It sounds like Nichols is cribbing from Heminges & Condale’s praise of Shakespeare in the preface to the First Folio: “His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers.” But as we can see from Shakespeare’s three pages of autograph in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More this was an exaggeration too.

4. “He was always right, Jack says.” Right… Like me. Like Trump. Like you…

5. “Cabell managed to live in complete seclusion, never visiting anyone, and never going out. Jack says that the only person Cabell ever would bother to go and see was Ellen Glasgow.”
Well, Cabell was certainly no socializer, and pretty much a homebody, but this is another exaggeration. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least two times he visited New York, once to work with his publisher, once for a dinner. Then there’s a famous photo of him at a party at Joe Hergesheimer’s house in West Chester, Pa. And there’s a story about the time he went (sans arm-band) to UVa in Charlottesville for a conference on Southern Writers. I’m sure a bit of research in MacDonald’s biography and in Between Friends could multiply these instances.

6. “Cabell loved Charlie Chaplin movies, and Jack doubts he ever saw anything besides." I doubt if it's recorded anywhere how often Cabell went to the movies but he was certainly a fan of Lillian Gish, who has been claimed as one of the models for Ettarre...

Woodford was certainly an interesting fella and a huge Cabell fan. But Nichols seems to have skimmed his works, had a few drinks, and then written from a faulty memory.

ETA -- On re-reading the above I feel compelled to clarify... when I specify "you" I mean The Reader, not wirkman personally.

Yes. The Nichols book is bizarre. Exactly as you put it.

And note: Woodford is not really reliable either, though his near worship of Cabell is a sign that the man was not exactly a pure egotist.

Another passage:

“‘What the public likes is Mickey Spillane. He even soothes the savage breast over in Russia, and is one of their foremost favorites.’

“Yeah. He once said that the public, the average reader expects to get the same sort of stuff by Spillane or a guy like James Branch Cabell out of the same spigot. His words. The same Spigot. He said that the average reader wouldn't be able to grasp what Cabell was talking about. I think he said a Cabell reader would be able to understand completely a Mickey Spillane novel, while a Mickey Spillane reader would have no idea what Cabell was talking about.”

The Ghost of Jack Woodford, Keith Nichols

"I am sure that you know, by now, that the award to me of the Nobel Prize has by no means been altogether popular in America. . .

"Yet had you given the Prize to Mr. Dreiser, you would have heard groans from America . . .

"And had you given Mr. James Branch Cabell the Prize, you would have been told that he is too fantastically malicious. . ."
— from the Nobel Prize acceptance speech of Sinclair Lewis, 1930.

No, bell the cat...

>25 absurdeist: Very interesting.

"All right, maestro mio, list me the things I must never know (although I feel more or less certain that I shall intuitively avoid them). Cabell, I suppose for one; Congreve, Thomas Love Peacock and Petronius, I daresay?"

— Paul Bowles in letter to Bruce Morrisette, February 28, 1930, collected In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles.

Hahaha!

Great find and a funny line, to boot!

What's funny is an old junkie disparaging four good writers...

In Bowles' defense (not that I necessarily feel any urgent need to defend an otherwise solid writer who nonetheless possessed a lesser talent, imagination, and creative vision than JBC) he was only a 19 year-old smart-alecky teenager at the time he wrote that.

According to Jay Martin, circa 1970, we can thank James Branch Cabell "(from whom the original plot idea derived)," for inspiring the genesis of The Dream Life of Balso Snell, Nathanael West's first novel written between 1924-1929 and published in 1931.

"Balso Snell, the American Ulysses and successor to Cabell's Jurgen, is essentially a Babbitt of the imagination, 'an ambassador from that ingenious people, the inventors and perfectors of the automatic water-closet,' who gives aphoristic advice like: 'Play games. Don't read so many books. Take cold showers. Eat more meat,' and ' . . . run about more. Read less and play baseball.'"

— from Nathanael West: The Art of His Life.

I'm just reacting to the quick-draw prejudices people had, often borrowed from yet other people, about Cabell's work in general. In many cases they were only marginally familiar with his work and were reacting to a straw-man caricature.
For instance T. S. Eliot loved Beyond Life and Jurgen when he first read them, but five years later he scorned Cabell's work because that's what the Modernist line was...

"Whatever the material, extravagant or seemingly commonplace, a narrative is a fantasy if it presents the persuasive establishment and development of an impossibility, an arbitrary construct of the mind with all under the control of logic and rhetoric. This is the central formal requisite...An author's purpose may be, for example, to incite the reader's participation in wonder, in which disbelief contributes to a drifting pleasure detached from any kind of intellection. This is the charm of Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande, or in the prose fiction of Eleanor Farjeon's The Fair of St. James and Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn, in which the reader is actually encouraged to consider the events beyond credence. Such, too, was the repeated effort of James Branch Cabell, a name conspicuously missing from my previous list of major fantasists..."
- from The Game Of The Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy (1976) by W. R. Irwin

James Branch Cabell is out there still, secreted inside the creaking pages of books arcane; in books for too long boxed in their rectilinearly respective, recondite nights, awaiting to see that light between the dawn and sunrise, when the gilded dust gets breath-blown off the block's top edges, and the book is opened, begins beating, conscious and aware again....

We must keep on finding him!

I should have put my recent Arthur C. Clarke mention here, rather than starting a separate thread for it: https://www.librarything.com/topic/331021#n7472869

It has been a long time since I've had a JBC cameo sighting, but I just had one. It's in The Folsom Flint and Other Curious Tales (Arkham House, 1969), a posthumously published story collection by David H. Keller (1880-1966).

The book opens with "In Memoriam: David H. Keller" by Paul Spencer. Spencer writes that even as Keller's work first appeared in the pulps, namely in Amazing Stories and Weird Tales, he "was not simply a clever pulp writer but a literary artist. Not an impeccable artist, by any means, but an artist moved by what James Branch Cabell called 'the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings.' "

Spencer adds about Keller that

"He did sample authors mentioned to him as major competitors—Lovecraft, Merritt, E. E. Smith—and he had a few personal favorites such as Dr. Miles J. Breuer and Seabury Quinn. But for the most part he found the magazines of limited interest.

"He had, however, a profound love for imaginative fiction at its best. The shelves of his glass-doored bookcases at Underwood are filled with volumes, often rare and valuable, by such masters of fantasy as Arthur Machen, James Branch Cabell, Anatole France, E. R. Eddison, and Mervyn Peake. These thoughtful and beautifully wrought works were his real interest and his real competition."

I have a copy of Cabell's The King Was in his Counting House inscribed as a Xmas gift (1953) from David Keller to Paul Spencer.

>37 Crypto-Willobie:

Is that the right touchstone for Paul Spencer?

no but coincidentally paul's daughter (with whom i correspond) is named susan

eta: fixed

>37 Crypto-Willobie: that's an outstanding acquisition! David H. Keller has been a recent revelation to me.