The Wallet of Kau Lung
The Wallet of Kai Lung, by Ernest Bramah, is a book I picked up chasing a recommendation in Noel Perrin's bibliophile classic A Reader's Delight. The book that Perrin actually recommends is the second of the five or so Kai Lung collections, called Kai Lung's Golden Hours. But when I finally came across a copy of that one, the dealer also had this one, and it's the start of the series, so, compulsively, that's where I started reading.
Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was the pen name of Ernest Brammah Smith, an Englishman with wide interests and varying styles. I know him for his Max Carrados detective stories, which are famous early entries in that genre (featuring a blind detective) and which I first read in my misspent youth. I also once read at least part of What Might Have Been, an early (1907) science fiction work, which Orwell claimed was an influence on 1984.
I'm a Bramah fan, in other words. And I've never been steered wrong by Perrin's guide to forgotten worthies, either. So, I am a little disappointed with this volume. Perrin did suggest starting with the Golden Hours, so I look forward to reading that one in the semi-near future. Importantly, Perrin also warned his readers that these books are "mannerist" works, in which Bramah had invented a voice for the narration that mimicked the overly ornate, self-deprecating pre-Revolution formal Chinese speech. The joke is that much of the narration is really a standard English story put into Imperial Chinese code; rather the effect of some of the dialog in Charlie Chan movies.
The result is sentences like this: "In this manner it came about that when a very wealthy but unnaturally avaricious and evil-tempered person who was connected with Quen's father in matters of commerce expressed his fixed determination that the most deserving and enlightened of his friend's sons should enter into a marriage agreement with his daughter, there was no manner of hesitation among those concerned, who admitted without any questioning between themselves that Quen was undeniably the one referred to."
The use of multiple negatives in a single sentence frequently exceeds modern OSHA standards. The phrasing is constantly periphrastic, sly, evasive, and labyrinthine. And that can make for some pretty heavy going.
The book is occasionally amusing, but I cannot recommend it.
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