Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Dwight Macdonald. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Dwight Macdonald. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, August 24, 2012

FFB: THE STUFFED OWL, edited by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (1930); PARODIES edited by Dwight Macdonald (1960)


Two volumes which I enjoyed in part in my earlier years, and which somewhat disappointed, (again) in part because I, unlike many for whom these books were uniformly delightful, had not always been willing (nor forced) to endure some of the targets of the parody, intentional and unintentional, of the work collected in them. Of course, none of the work collected in The Stuffed Owl was meant to be parody; Lewis and Lee simply ranged across the canon of major and near-major poets in English as it was widely understood in 1930 and chose the most purple and self-sabotaging examples they could find from the likes of Wordsworth and Poe, never afraid to go to ridiculous extremes, and others more tone-deaf, while avoiding, for the most part, the more minor and unheralded poets of the previous centuries. While it's difficult to defend much collected here, in what might well be a pioneering volume of its sort, the book taken in large doses at once is more than a little deadening; the worst examples of fustian from experts in fustian are simply well-refined fustian...but taken a bit at a time, the desired effect, of giving perspective to the enshrinement of these artists as unimpeachable (a ridiculous insistence felt much more sharply in 1930 than now, I suspect) is more thoroughly demonstrated.

Likewise, Dwight Macdonald's compilation was brighter for me in many spots than in others, not least the presumption that he should include untranslated material in French (at least untranslated Cervantes I could make a stab at, but surely few cultured Anglophones could be expected to know Spanish, much less the Castilian of his time, and all such people have a working reading knowledge of French!). But it did send me out after the balance of Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland, and was my first encounter with the entirety of Wolcott Gibbs's "TIME . . . FORTUNE . . . LIFE . . . LUCE" as opposed to a few choice lines ("Backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind" mostly). And it's a bug crusher, if not quite to the same extent of the more-eclectic if similarly hit-and-miss The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose edited by Frank Muir, so some material is simply more likely to be effective than other inclusions for almost any reader. It probably helped, in comparison, that Bennett Cerf "crowd-sourced" his choices for his YA anthology I recalled the other week, quizzing his kids and their friends and others for suggestions, at least in terms of making for a more satisfying reading experience, as well as perhaps oddly a more consistently interesting one, for the much younger me (and, I suspect, for many other readers) than either of these two more ambitious and many ways pioneering anthologies did for me as an adult. These books are rewarding, as well as monuments in their fields, but simply not as thoroughly delightful as one could hope...and while that's probably not why both are in a sort of shadowy in-print status (since this weekly exercise is all about books of some interest to utter brilliance that face such fates--the Cerf is utterly out of print, the Muir is similarly barely in print after initial publication in 1990...clearly, round number years are ripe for such volumes), it does help them both be more admired than loved.

For more of today's selections, please see Patti Abbott's blog. Barring a pre-emptive hurricane or somesuch, I will be the likely gatherer of links to others' reviews and citations next Friday. ("Be there. Aloha." as Jack Lord would peremptorily intone at the end of the teasers for the next week's episode of the original Hawaii Five-0.)


Table of Contents (courtesy of Modern Library.com)

Parodies: An Anthology From Chaucer to Beerbohm—-and After

Table of Contents

Edited by Dwight MacDonald
Preface by Dwight MacDonald

PART ONE: THE BEGINNINGS
After by
MEDIEVAL ROMANCES Geoffrey Chaucer
GEOFFREY CHAUCER Alexander Pope
GEOFFREY CHAUCER W. W. Skeat
JOHN LYLY William Shakespeare
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE William Shakespeare
THOMAS NASHE William Shakespeare
JOHN DONNE Sir John Suckling
GEORGE HERBERT Christopher Hervey
JOHN DRYDEN George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
ROBERT BOYLE Jonathan Swift
AMBROSE PHILIPS Henry Carey
JOHN MILTON John Philips
ALEXANDER POPE Isaac Hawkins Browne
JONATHAN SWIFT Isaac Hawkins Browne
ROBERT SOUTHEY G. Canning and J. H. Frere
THE SENTIMENTAL NOVEL Jane Austen

PART TWO: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
After by
GEORGE CRABBE James Smith
WILLIAM COBBETT James Smith
ROBERT BURNS Shirley Brooks
ROBERT BURNS James Clerk-Maxwell
LORD BYRON Thomas Love Peacock
LORD BYRON J. K. Stephen
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH J. K. Stephen
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Smith
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Keats
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Catherine Fanshawe
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Hamilton Reynolds
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Lord Byron
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Walter Savage Landor
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Hartley Coleridge
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Bret Harte
EDGAR ALLAN POE Anonymous
EDGAR ALLAN POE Bayard Taylor
EDGAR ALLAN POE Thomas Hood, the Younger
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW Anonymous
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW J. W. Morris
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW George A. Strong
FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON H. D. Traill
EDWARD LEAR Samuel Foote
CHARLES DICKENS Robert Benchley
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON William Aytoun
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Algernon Charles Swinburne
ROBERT BROWNING J. K. Stephen
ROBERT BROWNING Bayard Taylor
ROBERT BROWNING Anonymous
ROBERT BROWNING H. D. Traill
ROBERT BROWNING C. S. Calverley
ROBERT BROWNING J. K. Stephen
EMILY DICKINSON Firman Houghton
WILLIAM MORRIS C. S. Calverley
WILLIAM MORRIS Anonymous
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI A. C. Hilton
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI H. D. Traill
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Mortimer Collins
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A. C. Hilton
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Richard Le Gallienne
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Lewis Carroll
WALT WHITMAN J. K. Stephen
WALT WHITMAN Bayard Taylor
WALT WHITMAN E. B. White
HENRY JAMES Max Beerbohm
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Anthony Brode
RUDYARD KIPLING Guy Wetmore Carryl
RUDYARD KIPLING J. K. Stephen

PART THREE: BEERBOHM--AND AFTER

SOME LEAVES FROM MAX BEERBOHM'S A Christmas Garland
P.C., X, 36 ….............………... R*DY*RD K*PL*NG
Endeavour ..............…………. .JOHN G*LSW*RTHY
A Sequelula to The Dynasts…..TH*M*'S H*RDY
Scruts …………...................... ARN*LD B*NN*TT
Perkins and Mankind ....……...H. G. W*LLS
A Recollection ....………........ EDM*ND G*SSE
PLUS THREE TWIGS:
The Sorrows of Millicent …………….. M*R*E C*R*LLI
The Blessedness of Apple-Pie Beds ..... R*CH*RD L* G*LL*"NNE
The Defossilized Plum-Pudding ........... H. G.W*LLS

Post-Beerbohm:
after by
A. E. HOUSMAN Humbert Wolfe
WALTER DE LA MARE Samuel Hofjenstein
GERTRUDE STEIN Arthur Flegenheimer
THEODORE DREISER Robert Benchley
MENCKEN and NATHAN Robert Benchley
T. S. ELIOT Henry Reed
T. S. ELIOT "Myra Buttle"
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH Edmund Wilson
EZRA POUND Gilbert Highet
ROBERT FROST Firman Houghton
ALDOUS HUXLEY Cyril Connolly
J. P. MARQUAND Wolcott Gibbs
WILLIAM FAULKNER Peter De Vries
ERNEST HEMINGWAY Wolcott Gibbs
ERNEST HEMINGWAY E. B. White
THORNTON WILDER Kenneth Tynan
JAMES GOULD COZZENS Nathaniel Benchley
JAMES GOULD COZZENS Felicia Lamport
JAMES JONES Peter De Vries
JACK KEROUAC John Updike
ALLEN GINSBERG Louis Simpson

PART FOUR: SPECIALTIES
The NONSENSE POEMS IN THE Alice BOOKS, by Lewis Carroll;
with the Originals by Dr. Watts and Other Hands
SOME UNRELIABLE HISTORY, by Maurice Baring
THE REHEARSAL
JASON AND MEDEA
KING LEAR'S DAUGHTER
FROM THE DIARY OF MRS. JOHN MILTON
FRAGMENT OF A GREEK TRAGEDY, by A. E. HOUSEMAN
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
SALAD, by Mortimer Collins
THE POETS AT TEA, by Barry Pain
VARIATIONS OF AN AIR, by G. K. Chesterton
THAT ENGLISH WEATHER, by Ezra Pound and Anon
REVIEWS OF UNWRITTEN BOOKS, by "Baron Corvo" and/or Sholto Douglas
MACHIAVELLI'S DESPATCHES FROM THE BOER WAR
TACITUS'S Scripturae de Populis Consociatis Americae Septentrionalis
TIME . . . FORTUNE . . . LIFE . . . LUCE, by Wolcott Gibbs
The Literary Life on the TIMES
LITERARY LOST & FOUND DEPT., by Robert Benchley
SPEAKING OF BOOKS, by Donald Malcolm
ALF STRINGERSOLL'S REPORT ON BROOKLYN, by William Atwood
W. B. Scott:
CHICAGO LETTER: Agony, a Sense of Plight
GAETAN FIGNOLE: Pages de Journal
Cyril Connolly:
WHAT WILL HE DO NEXT?
YEAR NINE
Paul Jennings:
THE BOY'S GOT TALENT
RESISTENTIALISM
PRIMITIVISM—ENGLISH: from Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
PRIMITIVISM—AMERICAN: from Torrents of Spring, by Ernest Hemingway
SOME EXCURSIONS INTO THE VERNACULAR
A BALLAD UPON A WEDDING, by Sir John Suckling
THE HUMBLE PETITION OF FRANCES HARRIS, by Jonathan Swift
GRANDFATHER'S OLD RAM, by Mark Twain
MUSEUM TOUR, by James Joyce
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN AMERICAN, by H. L. Mencken
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS IN EISENHOWESE, by Oliver Jensen
THE WEST POINT ADDRESS, by Dwight David Eisenhower
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, by Warren G. Harding
THE AVANTGARDE VERNACULAR: by S. J. Perelman

SELF-PARODIES: Conscious
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Max Beerhohm
William Faulkner

SELF-PARODIES: Unconscious
Richard Crashaw
Abraham Cowley
Samuel Johnson
Edward Gibbon
George Crabbe
Lord Byron
Edgar Allan Poe
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Wordsworth
Robert Browning
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Charles Dickens
Walt Whitman
Rudyard Kipling

SCIENTIFICATION (i): The Parameters of Social Movement, a Formal Paradigm,
by Daniel Bell
SCIENTIFICATION (ii): Struwwelpeter, a psychoanalytical interpretation
by Dr. Rudolph Friedmann

UN PEU DE FRANCAIS:
L'AFFAIRE LEMOINE, par Marcel Proust
Apres Balzac
Apres Flaubert
Apres Michelet
EXERCICES DE STYLE, par Raymond Queneau

THE OXEN OF THE SUN PARODIES, by James Joyce
THREE NONSENSE PLAYS, by Ring Lardner
Dinner Bridge
Clemo Uti (The Water Lilies)
I Gaspiri {The Upholsterers)

APPENDIX: SOME NOTES ON PARODY, by Dwight Macdonald
INDEX


Related link: Seriously Funny edited by Gerald Nachman
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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: NELSON ALGREN'S OWN BOOK OF LONESOME MONSTERS (also published as 13 MASTERPIECES OF BLACK HUMOR)




From the Contento Index:

Nelson Algren’s Own Book of Lonesome Monsters ed. Nelson Algren (Lancer 73-409, 1962, 60¢, 192pp, pb)

7 · Preface · Nelson Algren · pr
11 · A World Full of Great Cities · Joseph Heller · ss Great Tales of City Dwellers, ed. Alex Austin, Lion Library Editions, 1955
24 · Talk to Me, Talk to Me · Joan Kerckhoff · ss, 1962
34 · Show Biz Connections · Bruce Jay Friedman · ss, 1962
44 · Hundred Dollar Eyes · Bernard Farbar · ss, 1962
54 · The Man Who Knew What Ethopia Should Do About Her Water Table · H. E. F. Donohue · ss The Carleton Miscellany, 1961
68 · Among the Dangs · George P. Elliott · nv Esquire Jun ’58
95 · Peacetime · Brock Brower · ss, 1961
111 · The Shores of Schizophrenia · Hughes Rudd · ss, 1961
120 · Day of the Alligator · James Blake · ss The Paris Review #17 ’57
136 · Address of Gooley MacDowell to the Hasbeens Club of Chicago · Saul Bellow · ss The Hudson Review, 1951
143 · The Closing of This Door Must Be Oh, So Gentle · Chandler Brossard · ss The Dial, 1962
157 · Entropy · Thomas Pynchon · ss The Kenyon Review Spr ’60
173 · The House of the Hundred Grassfires · Nelson Algren · ss, 1956

So, you want to talk noir...if there's a concept in "darkness" that can be as argued about and misconstrued as noir, it's probably "black humor." Grotesquerie, biting satire, modest proposals. This book is a handsome sample of what was available in 1962, assembled by the writer best remembered for The Man with the Golden Arm, but who should be remembered for a much wider range of work, including the story that he immodestly caps this anthology with. As with Joe David Bellamy's SuperFiction from a decade later or Dwight Macdonald's fat Parodies from a couple of years before, this has been a widely-distributed anthology touching on the fantastic and the grimly realistic, surfiction and some stuff that at least verges on metafiction. Saul Bellow, not usually thought of as a comic writer (though his wit was just one of his many facets) delivers what might be the slightest and lightest piece here; Hughes Rudd, in the 1970s the acerbic anchor of the CBS Morning News (which was actually more or less a news program, imagine) gives him a run for that laurel (any joking aside, CBS News had several fictioneers on staff in those years, including Reid Collins on the radio side). George Elliott's "Among the Dangs" is straight-up science fiction enough to have been reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction before its appearance here, and Pynchon's "Entropy" might've been squeezed in without too much forcing the issue. The Heller is from a fine, pioneering Lion Books all-originals paperback anthology, and Joan Kerchoff probably shouldn't be the only woman to be represented in the book (how many Dororthy Parkers did he pass by? No Mary McCarthy?), but it's a solid, grimly funny read (and not only grimly funny) under either of the titles Lancer Books, that ultimately doomed publisher, chose to reissue it (Bernard Geis Associates did the hardcover, which I've never seen). Somebody else should; it's been gone too long.

Please Patti Abbott's blog for more "Forgotten" books for this Friday.
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Friday, January 24, 2014

FFB: Helen Hoke, Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis, Michel Parry, Hugh Lamb and Some Other anthologists of my early reading...

While I've written a fair amount about magazine editors, and such (and sometimes Also*) anthology editors as Robert Arthur* and Barry Malzberg*, Ellen Datlow* and Jerome Charyn, Betty M. Owen and Dwight Macdonald*, Bill Pronzini and Joe Lansdale, Gerald W. Page* and Nelson Algren, Henry Mazzeo and Judith Merril, Jessica Amanda Salmonson* and Harold Q. Masur, Marcia Muller and Ann VanderMeer*, Harlan Ellison* and Robert Silverberg, I haven't yet touched much or at all upon at least five anthologists important to my early reading: Helen Hoke, (Ms. and Ms.) Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis (names that are hard to forget), Michel Parry, and Hugh Lamb--all of whom contributed to the enjoyment of horror and suspense fiction, and more. 

 Helen Hoke might've been the most prolific producer of anthologies, particularly for young readers, among this handful, but not by much. She did have a long (and trans-Atlantic) career as a writer and editor, as her 1990 New York Times obituary notes, 

 In the late 1930's, Ms. Hoke inaugurated and managed children's book departments at several publishing houses, including Henry Holt, Reynal & Hitchcock and Julian Messer. In the 1940's, Ms. Hoke, whose first marriage, to John Hoke, had ended in divorce, married Franklin Watts, founder the New York publishing company that bears his name. She became the company's vice president and director of international projects.

 She would go on to collaborate on at least one book each with one of her sons and one of her grandsons. And she didn't restrict herself too much...along with such titles as Monsters Monsters Monsters and Jokes Jokes Jokes, she also offered both Nurses Nurses Nurses and Doctors Doctors Doctors, which mixed short stories with essays and autobiographical excerpts.

 But it was her horror and humor anthologies and compilations that I remember, particularly the former...she relied mostly on chestnuts, but intelligently arrayed, and for young readers, this isn't the worst strategy. From ISFDb: 

 Anthologies
...and so, I missed the preponderance of her work in the horror and fantasy fields, having left behind the younger-readers' sections of libraries by 1976, but I do remember the early volumes well, with their often rather uninspired covers, but usually interesting content (ISFDb, again):

Weirdies (aka Weirdies Weirdies Weirdies): 

  • 9 • A Creature Imagined (excerpt) • shortfiction by C. S. Lewis
  • 11 • The Cocoon • (1946) • shortstory by John B. L. Goodwin
  • 35 • The Hair • (1928) • shortstory by A. J. Alan
  • 47 • The Brown Hand • (1899) • shortstory by Arthur Conan Doyle (variant of The Story of the Brown Hand) [as by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ]
  • 67 • The Nightmare Lake • (1919) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 70 • Mrs. Manifold • (1949) • shortstory by August Derleth [as by Stephen Grendon ]
  • 86 • The Ancient Track • (1930) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 88 • The Monster of Baylock • shortstory by F. H. Lee
  • 94 • Phase Two (excerpt) • shortfiction by John Wyndham
  • 109 • The Night Crawlers • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 110 • The Howler • [Fungi from Yuggoth • 12] • (1932) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 112 • A Crossbreed • shortstory by Franz Kafka (trans. of Eine Kreuzung 1931)
  • 116 • The Mansions of the Dead • (1965) • poem by Robert Blair
  • 117 • Hallowe'en in a Suburb • (1926) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 119 • The Quest for Blank Claveringi • (1967) • shortstory by Patricia Highsmith
  • 138 • Wentworth's Day • (1957) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
  • 153 • The Shark-Man Nanaue • shortstory by E. M. Nakuina
  • 164 • The Monster (excerpt) • shortfiction by Edmund Spenser
  • 167 • The Upper Berth • (1885) • novelette by F. Marion Crawford
  • 192 • What Was It? • (1859) • shortstory by Fitz-James O'Brien
  • 211 • It • (1940) • novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
    • My first encounters with at least some of this work, and not mine alone...

     Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis in their turn didn't specialize as thoroughly in books for younger readers, but mixed their bags sufficiently that some librarians probably put a few aimed more at adults in the juvenile sections...when such things happened where I could see them in the early '70s, my feeling were rarely bruised:

     Anthologies
    ISFDb, unsurprisingly, doesn't choose to list their criminous anthologies, of which there were a few, and such outliers as Cat Encounters: A Cat-Lover's Anthology or the nonfiction anthology Polar Secrets.  As WorldCat notes, this couple could turn in an impressive (and feminist, particularly given the ironic subtitling) compilation of crime-fiction, as well:

    (New York, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1973.)
    Sayers, D. L. The leopard lady.--
    Nesbit, E. The head.--
    Dickens, M. To reach the sea.--
    De la Torre, L. Goodbye Miss Lizzie Borden.--
    Meade, L. T. and Eustace, R. Madame Sara.--
    Bowen, M. Cambric tea.--
    Spofford, H. P. The ray of displacement.--
    Rice, J. The willow tree.--
    Biographical notes.

    ...the Edward Gorey covers, when they occurred, never hurt a bit.


     An earlier example:

    Suspense: A Treasury for Young Adults
    New York : Funk & Wagnalls, ©1966.

    Miss Phipps Improvises / Phyllis Bentley --
    The Signalman / Charles Dickens --
    The Gloria Scott / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle --
    The Symbolic logic of murder / John Reese --
    The sleepwaker : Lady Macbeth / William Shakespeare --
    The Macbeth Murder Mystery --
    A Tale of the Ragged Mountains --
    The Ghost-Extinguisher / Gelett Burgess --
    Tobermory Saki (H.H. Munro) --
    A Terribly strange bed / Wilkie Collins. Stepping westward / William Wordstorth --
    A Charm / John Dryden --
    For though the caves were rabbited / Henry David Thoreau --
    The Witch's whelp / Richard Henry Stoddard --
    The Night-wind / Emily Bronte --
    After I shot the albatross / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
    Song of the mermaids / George Darley --
    The Indian burial ground / Philip Freneau --
    The Witch's ballad / William Bell Scott --
    The Haunted palace / Edgar Allan Poe --
    Hymn of Pan / Percy Bysshe Shelley --
    Phantom / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
    Proserpine / Algernon Charles Swinburne. The Lotus-eaters / Alfred Lord Tennyson --
    Dream-Pedlary / Thomas Lovel Beddoes --
    Darkness / George Gordon, Lord Byron --
    The Story of a conscience / Ambrose Bierce --
    The Dressmaker's doll / Agatha Christie --
    My queer dean / Ellery Queen --
    How I wrote Frankenstein/Mary Shelley --
    Frankenstein's monster / Mary Shelley --
    Rappaccini's daughter / Nathaniel Hawthorne --
    The Trail of the catfish \ Allen Lang --
    The Haunted space suit / Arthur C. Clarke --
    Your world of suspense / Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis.


    It's remarkable how poorly Parry's
    books were packaged in the UK;
    ...this is the least-bad UK cover
    I see among web images...
    Michel Parry, as his name might suggest, probably didn't begin speaking in English first (he was born in Belgium)...and, as his list demonstrates, didn't by any means restrict himself to YA anthologies. But that didn't stop him from putting together excellent books that were both slotted and collected for the young readers that included me in my youth:

    Anthology Series
    Anthologies
    ...albeit an X certificate on films in the UK was likely to be handed to any sort of horror film, at least until the 1970s, whether with Hammer-style sexuality or not. Beware of the Cat was a fine start, if obviously missing a Fritz Leiber story:
    US editions rather better, on balance.
    I definitely would've appreciated seeing the Mayflower Books series as they were being published...as it happens, I still haven't. No US editions aside from the first, I gather.

    And that first was from Taplinger, which also did a number of the anthologies of Hugh Lamb, whom (when first encountering his books ca. 1976) I rather inexactly used to think of as a sort of protege of Peter Haining, given that Haining's books seemed more numerous, in similar editions frequently, and he would pop into the odd Lamb anthology to provide a guest introduction. But while there were similarities in the compilations, Lamb was even more an assiduous scholar than Haining, digging out lost stories (most famously an M. R. James, early in his career) and generally going even wider into stories which were less-traditional horror and more bizarre psychological studies, for his anthologies of the weird...

    Anthologies
    My first Lamb, I believe, was A Wave of Fear...Lamb, more than any other editor, introduced me to the brothers' works, the Other Bensons, alongside the brilliant horrors of E. F. Benson (best remembered in the '70s and perhaps now for his relatively sunny comedy of manners novels about Mapp and Lucia).

     For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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    Sunday, December 12, 2021

    FFB: THE 1965 ANNUALS of fiction and drama, further augmented...some more...

    The Best American Short Stories 1965  edited by Martha Foley and David Burnett 
    The 10th Annual of the Year’s Best S-F  edited by Judith Merril 
    Best Detective Stories of the Year, 20th Annual Collection edited by Anthony Boucher 
    World's Best Science Fiction: 1965 edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr 
    Prize Stories 1965: The O. Henry Awards edited by Richard Poirier and William Abrahams 
    The Best Plays of 1964-1965 
    edited by Otis L. Guernsey, Jr.
    The Great SF Stories: 1964 edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg (2001)
    The Best American Plays, Sixth Series: 1963-1967 edited by John Gassner and Clive Barnes (1971)
    Coast to Coast: Australian Short Stories of Today 1963-1964 edited by Leonie Kramer (1965)
    In 1965, the five best of the year fiction annuals (imagine a time where only five such series existed, one new that year, albeit a sixth was issued biennially in Australia, even then) were facing some number magic: the 50th 
    annual Best American Short Stories (there was also a 50th anniversary Best of the Series); the 20th annual Year's Best Detective  Stories; the 10th volume of Judith Merril's annual (the only series still being edited by its founder, aside from the new one), the first as noted from Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr; and the 45th volume of The O. Henry Awards (which lost a few volumes after the then-current editor in 1951 died unexpectedly, and Doubleday was clearly considering discontinuing the series, before eventually continuing several years later). There's number magic in regards to these volumes now, as well: they were fifty years old the year I first attempted this survey (and there was the "Century of BASS" volume in 2015 along with the annual series entry); and for me there's a personal number magic, inasmuch as the stories collected in these volumes were mostly first published in the year I first emerged into the world, too: 1964. (The
    O. Henry book, as they did in those years, collects stories first published from June 1963 to June '64, and the Coast to Coast series was devised to draw from the two previous years in each volume; the other volumes include  a few stragglers, as well, with various excuses employed.) The Foley and the Merril saw both hardcover and paperback editions; the other four prose compilations saw only one edition each (the first Ace annual didn't get a book club edition, as later volumes would; the Boucher and Poirier/Abrahams possibly did get book-club hardcovers, but no paperbacks; the publishers  of Coast to Coast had a London office and presses to go with theirs in Sydney and Melbourne; my copy of the UK edition set one back 26 shillings in '65).  I'd just become fully aware of the Aussie series, which began in the 1940s and ran at least into the '70s; as far as I know (in December, 2021), there were no British nor other Anglophone annuals nor biannuals being published in 1965 (nor later, drawing explicitly on 1964 publications from multiple sources) but Oz's books should've come to my full attention earlier!  It's notable how the intentionally eclectic fiction anthologies will restrict themselves to writers from the US (O. Henry), North America (BASS), Australia (Coast to Coast); the other fiction anthologies attempt to be international, if not too surprisingly and rather slightly so, in most cases. 

    John Brunner is represented in three volumes, with the same short story. A number of the playwrights are represented by the same play between the two drama volumes. Dennis Lynds has a story in each of the Best Detective and the BASS volumes, John D. MacDonald one each in the Merril S-F (a hot-rod youth v. cops/elders horror story from Cosmopolitan) and the Best Detective, Joseph Nesvaba has different stories from his Vampires, Ltd. in both the Merril and the Wollheim/Carr SF volumes; Fritz Leiber and Thomas Disch have two stories each in the speculative fiction annuals. Joyce Carol Oates has stories, different ones, in both O. Henry and BASS; Isaac Bashevis Singer has different stories, one each, in the Foley and the Merril. Peter Beagle is in the O. Henry with what I believe to be his third published short story (two of them followed his first novel, A Fine and Private Place), the impressive and straightforward fantasy "Come Lady Death", from an issue of The Atlantic.

    More important measures, than the blown opportunity to write these up in detail on their golden anniversary (things were in some ways Even More trying, at least for me, in 2015, than they have been for the human species as a default of late), come to mind...these were, as all art and commerce is, products of their time, and their time was one of a number of  emerging forces in the arts and culture...newly energized liberation movements hadn't quite come to full strength, so that the remarkable lack of women contributors in comparison to the men, even in the annuals edited by women, would be a lot less likely to happen today (and certainly more would be made of it); ethnic and other diversity also only starting to be felt...the contemporary-mimetic short fiction anthologies are less imbalanced than the others, where two feature no contributions by women at all, but none are indicative of an equal access to the fields being surveyed. And the barriers between "high" and "low" and Dwight Macdonald's "midcult" culture, never terribly robust, were crumbling in every way, as is positively indicated by the contents here, albeit it did mean that slight work is as likely to be showcased along with the more lasting--as in previous volumes in these series or the later volumes...just perhaps in later volumes with a slightly less gleeful sense of artificial restrictions being breached in both the magazines and other sources (very much including theaters, obviously) consulted and the range of sources being consulted by each of the sets of editors. Abrahams, particularly, in his introduction to the O. Henry volume, can almost be heard to be shaking his head in wonder at how fiction writers do not attempt to change their tone nor approach when writing for Partisan Review or The Ladies Home Journal...perhaps, unfortunately, part of what led the publishers to eventually see fiction as dispensable in the large-circulation magazines. 

    Meanwhile, the fiction annuals, which had had as accompaniment a humor annual for three volumes at the turn of the 1950s, and would soon after 1965 see the advent of Best Magazine Article and Best Political Cartoon annuals in the US, did have a yearbook cousin in The Best Plays annual, which underwent its own major change in 1965, when founding editor Burns Mantle was succeeded by Owen Guernsey, who would edit or co-edit the series for some decades. My memory of looking at some of the 1970s volumes was hazier than I thought, as I'd remembered the volumes reprinting the entirety of the selected plays, when actually they instead featured synopses of and excerpts from the scripts, with the first-time exception in the 1965 volume (the 48th), perhaps because of a book contract elsewhere for Neil Simon, of an extensive photo sequence instead, representing The Odd Couple...with Art Carney playing Felix along with Walter Matthau as Oscar. 

     Then I finally stumbled across the not-quite-annual volume, edited by John Gassner in its early issues, which with its delayed 1963-67 volume did collect the notable plays of 1964 and thereabouts in their entirety...a book delayed by Gassner's death, as he was preparing the final selections, and finally published in 1971, with new editor Clive Barnes's headnotes, introductions, and tweaking of the content for purposes of both representation and lack of reprint rights availability (and Barnes's not always flattering descriptions of the items included and those which got away are refreshingly earnest, if not always supportive of the notion of a Best-Of so much as Representation-Of anthology). Barnes would continue with even more widely-spaced volumes into the next decades.

    Fuller reviews of these books will be forthcoming soon (or so I hoped at mid-decade), as I get further along in each (I'm reading or rereading each more or less together, and these are not slender volumes!), and I had hoped, when first posting this in 2015, to present an interview with Kit Reed (who died in 2017), among much else the author of the lead-off story in the Merril volume, "Automatic Tiger"...perhaps the story which got her the most early attention in fantasy and sf circles (and her career was one rather gracefully devoted to fantastic fiction, crime fiction and contemporary-mimetic fiction in nearly equal measure).  Meanwhile, along with introducing/presenting the only image online I'm aware of the Best Plays volume's cover (with a gracious assist from Alice Chang)(my copy deaccessioned from a Belfast, Eire public library, of all places), I will at least provide some preliminary indices...and perhaps even a few more comments over the course of the day.  (I will note that Flannery O'Connor's lead-off story in the O. Henry volume, "Revelation," was offered the "first prize" in this volume, I suspect, more as memorial for her than as measured judgement of this story, not, I'd suggest, one of the best she'd published, though solid work.)

    Indices below; for more of today's books, almost all more thoroughly considered, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

    Indices courtesy William Contento/Galactic Central
    and WorldCat with a few corrections and added bells and whistles (and ghosts of layout imports into ever-clunky Blogspot).





    And, in 2001, a latecomer chose to join this company, in the form of Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg's one-volume continuation of the Great SF Stories series Greenberg had been editing with Isaac Asimov...the last Asimov volume, finished up as Asimov lay dying, also treated with stories from the year 1963, meant to be the last in that series from DAW Books since DAW's own first annual, the World's Best SF cited above, began in '65 choosing among 1964 publication. But Silverberg, Greenberg and NESFA Press were all game, and gave a revival a shot...apparently to little response, critically or commercially, in the wake of the 11 September attacks and whatever else drew attention away.  Eppur si muove. 
      • 1 · Center of Gravity · L. J. Amster · nv The Saturday Evening Post Mar 14 1964
      • 45 · The Returning · Daniel De Paola · ss Prairie Schooner Spr 1964
      • 57 · The Transient · Stanley Elkin · nv The Saturday Evening Post Apr 25 1964
      • 93 · Opening Day · Jack Gilchrist · ss Georgia Review Spr 1964, as by John Shafter
      • 99 · The Gesture · James W. Groshong · ss The Antioch Review Sum 1964
      • 113 · Sarah · Martin J. Hamer · ss Atlantic Monthly Jan 1964
      • 125 · Sherry · Maureen Howard · nv The Hudson Review Aut 1964
      • 167 · A Family Man · Donald Hutter · ss The Saturday Evening Post Feb 22 1964
      • 187 · The Month of His Birthday · Henia Karmel-Wolfe · ss Mademoiselle Dec 1964
      • 199 · Heart of Gold · Mary Lavin · nv The New Yorker Jun 27 1964
      • 223 · A Blue Blonde in the Sky Over Pennsylvania · Dennis Lynds · ss The Hudson Review Spr 1964
      • 241 · The Guest · Frederic Morton · ss The Hudson Review Win 1964
      • 251 · The Application · Jay Neugeboren · ss Transatlantic Review Oct 1964
      • 259 · First Views of the Enemy · Joyce Carol Oates · ss Prairie Schooner Spr 1964
      • 271 · The Practice of an Art · Leonard Wallace Robinson · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 5 1964
      • 283 · A Sacrifice · Isaac Bashevis Singer · ss Harper’s Feb 1964
      • 291 · Eskimo Pies · Robert Somerlott · ss Atlantic Monthly Jan 1964
      • 299 · The Visit · Elizabeth Spencer · ss Prairie Schooner Sum 1964
      • 313 · The Tea Time of Stouthearted Ladies · Jean Stafford · ss The Kenyon Review Win 1964
      • 325 · For I Have Wept · Gerald Stein · ss The Saturday Evening Post Jan 4-11 1964
      • 345 · There · Peter Taylor · nv The Kenyon Review Win 1964
      • 371 · The Last Right · Lee Yu-Hwa · ss The Literary Review Sum 1964
      • 385 · Biographical Notes · [Misc.] · bg
      • 393 · The Yearbook of the American Short Story, January 1 to December 31, 1964 · [Misc.] · bi

    Best Detective Stories of the Year: 20th Annual Collection

    Editor:Anthony Boucher
    Publisher:New York : E.P. Dutton & Co., 1965.
    Contents:
    9 Introduction/Anthony Boucher
    13 H as in Homicide / Lawrence Treat     (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar 1964
    31 Routine Investigation / Robert Twohy (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1964
    39 No Way Out / Dennis Lynds (ss) Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Feb 1964 
    55 Payoff / Ellery Queen (ss) Cavalier Aug 1964, as “Crime Syndicate Payoff”
    61 Temple by the River / Leon Comber (ss) The Strange Cases of Magistrate Pao, Charles E. Tuttle 1964; Short Story International Aug 1978
    75 Return of Schlock Homes / Robert L Fish (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1964
    89 Short and Simple Annals / Dan J. Marlowe (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Aug 1964
    103 The Ingenious Mind of Mr. Rigby Lacksome / Ernest Bramah (ss) Max Carrados Mysteries (Hodder and Stoughton, London 1927)
    135 Credit to Shakespeare / Julian Symons (ss) Murder! Murder!, Fontana 1961, as “Credit to William Shakespeare”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 1964
    145 A Soliloquy in Tongues / William Wiser (ss) Cosmopolitan May 1964
    159 Papa Tral's Harvest / Barry Perowne (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar 1964
    183 Blurred View / John D. MacDonald (ss) This Week Feb 23 1964
    189 Reunion / Edward D. Hoch (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine December 1964
    219 Violet / Hal Ellson (ss) Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine May 1964
    233 A Case for the UN / Miriam Allen deFord (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul 1964
    245 Legacy of Office / Rog Phillips (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1964
    259 The Yearbook of the Detective Story / Anthony Boucher:
    259 Bibliography
    262 Awards
    264 Necrology
    267 Honor Roll
    Description:271 pages ; 21 cm

    Prize Stories 1965 : The O. Henry Awards

    Editors:Richard Poirier; William Miller Abrahams
    Publisher:Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., 1965.

    ix Introduction / by William Abrahams --
    1  Revelation / Flannery O'Connor (ss), The Sewanee Review, Spring 1964
    21  Ocean / Sanford Friedman (nv) Partisan Review, Winter 1964
    53  The Ballad of Jesse Neighbours / William Humphrey (ss) Esquire September 1963
    73  Homecoming / Tom Mayer (ss) Harper’s Magazine August 1963
    81  Mama and the Spy / Eva Manoff (ss) Mademoiselle August 1963
    93  Sunday's Children / Nancy A.J. Potter (ss) Four Quarters, November 1963
    103  Margins / Donald Barthelme (ss) The New Yorker, February 22 1963
    109  If Lost Return to the Swiss Arms / Leon Rooke The Carolina Quarterly Winter 1963
    115   There / Peter Taylor nv The Kenyon Review Winter 1964
    149  Come Lady Death / Peter S. Beagle (ss) The Atlantic Monthly September 1963
    165  First Views of the Enemy / Joyce Carol Oates (ss) Prairie Schooner Spring 1964
    177  Fifty-Fifty / Leonard Wolf  (ss)  The Kenyon Review Autumn 1963
    189  Sucker / Carson McCullers  (ss)  The Saturday Evening Post September 28 1963
    199  Love in the Winter / Daniel Curley (ss)  The Colorado Quarterly Winter 1964
    213  A Woman of Her Age / Jack Ludwig  (ss)  The Quarterly Review of Literature Vol. 12
    233  What I Wish (Oh, I Wish) I Had Said / Arthur Cavanaugh (ss) McCall’s August 1963
    249  The Hounds of Summer / Mary McCarthy (ss) The New Yorker 14 September 1963
    287  Chaos, Disorder and the Late Show / Warren Miller (ss) The Saturday Evening Post October 5 1963
    Description:xii, 295 pages ; 22 cm.
    The World’s Best Science Fiction: 1965 ed. 

    Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr, editors (Ace G-551, 1965, 50¢, 288pp, pb)

    7 · Introduction · Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr · in
    12 · Greenplace · Tom Purdom · ss F&SF Nov 1964
    26 · Men of Good Will · Ben Bova & Myron R. Lewis · ss Galaxy Jun 1964
    32 · Bill for Delivery [Al & Sam] · Christopher Anvil · ss Analog Nov 1964
    53 · Four Brands of Impossible · Norman Kagan · nv F&SF Sep 1964
    86 · A Niche in Time · William F. Temple · ss Analog May 1964
    103 · Sea Wrack · Edward Jesby · nv F&SF May 1964
    123 · For Every Action · C. C. MacApp · ss Amazing May 1964
    131 · Vampires Ltd. · Josef Nesvadba; trans. by Iris Urwin · ss Vampires Ltd., New York: A. Vanous 1964
    142 · The Last Lonely Man · John Brunner · ss New Worlds May/Jun 1964
    160 · The Star Party · Robert Lory · ss F&SF Sep 1964
    169 · The Weather in the Underworld · Colin Free · ss Squire Jun 1965
    178 · Oh, to Be a Blobel! · Philip K. Dick · ss Galaxy Feb 1964
    199 · The Unremembered · Edward Mackin · ss New Worlds Mar 1964
    211 · What Happened to Sergeant Masuro? · Harry Mulisch; trans. by Roy Edwards · nv The Busy Bee Review: New Writing from the Netherlands No.1 1964
    235 · Now Is Forever · Thomas M. Disch · ss Amazing Mar 1964
    252 · The Competitors · Jack B. Lawson · nv If Jan 1964
    279 · When the Change-Winds Blow [Change War] · Fritz Leiber · ss F&SF Aug 1964

    The Great SF Stories: 1964 
    ed. Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg (NESFA Press 1-886778-21-3, Jan 2002, $25.00, 395pp, hc, cover by Eddie Jones). 
    Anthology of 15 stories first published in 1964, a continuation of the series originally edited by Isaac Asimov and Greenberg. Authors include Norman Spinrad, Poul Anderson, and John Brunner. Foreword and introduction by Silverberg, who discusses why he decided to do the anthology, and the state of the US and science fiction in 1964. Order from NESFA Press, PO Box 809, Framingham MA 01701; [www.nesfapress.com].

    The Best Plays of 1964-65

    Editor:Otis L Guernsey
    Publisher:New York : Dodd Mead, ©1965.

    434 pages : illustrations by Al Hirschfeld ; 24 cm.

     contents:
    photo essay: The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
    excerpts:
    Frank D. Gilroy, The Subject was Roses--
    Joseph Stein, Fiddler on the Roof--
    Friedrich Duerrenmatt, The Physicists--
    Murray Schisgal, Luv--
    Jean Anouilh, Poor Bitos--
    William Hanley, Slow Dance on the Killing Ground--
    Arthur Miller, Incident at Vichy--
    LeRoi Jones, The Toilet--
    Edward Albee, Tiny Alice.

    Best American Plays: Sixth Series, 1963-1967 




    		John Gassner; 
    Clive Barnes, editors

    		New York : Crown Publishers, 1971

    Description:xii, 594 pages ; 24 cm
    Contents:

    		Tiny Alice / Edward Albee --
    Blues for Mister Charlie / James Baldwin --
    The Last Analysis / Saul Bellow --
    Hogan's Goat / William Alfred --
    The Fantasticks / Tom Jones --
    The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window / Lorraine Hansberry --
    The Lion in Winter / James Goldman --
    Hughie / Eugene O'Neill --
    The Toilet / LeRoi Jones --
    You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running / Robert Anderson --
    Benito Cereno / Robert Lowell --
    Fiddler on the Roof / Joseph Stein --
    Slow Dance on the Killing Ground / William Hanley --
    In White America / Martin B. Duberman --
    The Owl and the Pussycat / Bill Manhoff --
    The Odd Couple / Neil Simon --
    The Subject was Roses / Frank D. Gilroy.
    Responsibility:
    		edited by John Gassner and Clive Barnes;
    with an introduction and prefaces to the plays by Clive Barnes.


    Coast to Coast: Australian Stories of Today 1963-1964 

    edited by Leonie Kramer (Angus & Robertson 1965)

    1 * Boy in a Ford * Hugh Atkinson (ss) ** (apparently original to this volume)
    7 * Journey to Olympus * Thea Astley (ss) **
    15 * The Tractor * Peter Cowan (ss) Meanjin Quarterly January 1964;     Short Story International #7, April 1978
    28 * Impasse * Bary Dowling  (ss)  **
    45 * The Widow * Thelma Forshaw (ss) The Literary Review Winter 1963-64: Australia number
    51     * Boy at Play * G. M. Glaskin     (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January 1964
    65 * The Silent Woman * Esme A. Gollschewsky (ss) Meanjin Quarterly March 1963
    74 * Remora * T.A.G. Hungerford     (ss) The Literary Review Winter 1963-64: Australia number
    82 * Mr. Morris * Gwen Kelly (ss) Southerly December 1963
    87 * In the Manner of a Champion * Brian McPhee (ss) ** (reprinted in The Bulletin, 23-30 December 1966)
    95 * Every Man Has His Price * David Martin (ss) 20th Century: An Australian Quarterly Review [seeking issue date, apparently 1964]
    103 * Bushfire * John Morrison (ss) Overland [issue date tbd]
    114 * The Madame * Bobby Nelson (ss) **
    120 * The Odds * Heinz Nonweiller (ss) **
    134 * Doctor Deju * Desmond O'Grady (ss) ** (possibly first published 1961?)
    147 * Uncle Fred's Christmas * John O'Grady (ss) The Bulletin 17 September 1958;     Argosy (UK) January 1967
    153 * Gretel * Hal Porter (ss) The Literary Review Winter 1963-64: Australia number
    166 * A Really Splendid Evening * Lesley Rowlands (ss) **
    174 * The Miracle * A.E. Sturges (ss) Quadrant Autumn 1963;     Short Story International #20, June 1980
    181 * The Game * R. Thomson (ss) **
    184 * Pill, Etc. * Margaret Trist (ss) **
    191 * The Eye Stopper * M.G. Vincent     (ss) The Literary Review Winter 1963-64: Australia number
    203 * Mr. Forster's Christmas party * Peter Ward     (ss) The Literary Review Winter 1963-64: Australia number
    215 * Sunday-School Picnic * H.H. Wilson     (ss) The Literary Review Winter 1963-64: Australia number
     

    Originally posted in revised form   --Many added bits and pieces since then!
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