The cuckoo of truth.
I recently remembered that Sinclair Lewis dedicated his first successful novel, Main Street (1920), to two of the hot-shot authors of his day -- James Branch Cabell and Joseph Hergesheimer -- in the hopes of getting some favorable notices from them.
I've been intending to try Cabell for a while now, if for no other reason than for my love of one of his literary descendants, Jack Vance; I've been dragging my feet because Gore Vidal's opinion of Cabell's work is less than flattering, and my brief flip-throughs of Cabell tend to incline me more towards Vidal's opinion than against.
Joseph Hergesheimer's name, however, always vanished like a soap bubble as soon as I read it; even with the singular awesomeness (and awfulness...) of Teh Internets, I never remembered his name long enough to google him.
I finally did, and decided that he sounded like someone whose work I just might like, so I vowed to keep an eye out for his books on my next secondhand book store trawl.
Lo and behold, I managed to snag a very nice 1949 hardcover reprint of the 1930 illustrated edition of Hergesheimer's revised, reset, and authorially-introduced novel The Three Black Pennys, originally published in 1917. The Three Black Pennys is the story of three men from the titular Penny family of Pennsylvania (from whence Hergesheimer hailed), from three different generations; the black and white line drawings by David Hendrickson make me nostalgic for more similarly illustrated old books.
While The Three Black Pennys wasn't at the top of my list of Hergesheimer books to try out -- I'd have to say that I was hoping to score copies of Java Head or Linda Condon -- I felt that I couldn't pass it up. (Plus it has a small sticker on the inside back cover, identifying it as having been purchased at "Hudson's Book Shop," part of the late, lamented, multi-story Hudson's department store in downtown Detroit: a bonus for someone as nostalgic for certain aspects of Detroit's past as I am.)
After reading Hergesheimer's seven-paged introduction to the 1930 edition of The Three Black Pennys, I am provisionally persuaded that I have not made a bad choice in purchasing it. Some stand-out excerpts from it:
"The purpose of fiction is not, as a matter of fact, answerable to the measure of reality. There is no logic in reality. No form. It cannot be based on the cuckoo of truth. It must go beneath words. Rest on some universal and fundamental fact. If that fact is present the manner of representation, the materials or style, are unimportant." (p. xi)
"All writing, I suppose, at any rate where prose is concerned, is either an act of indignation, of protest, or an effort at escape. You write because the world has proved unsatisfactory or because you are dissatisfied with yourself. One or the other. With poetry, I believe, it may be different. A poet can indulge in praise. He may be lyrical. That is not possible with sustained prose. There isn't anywhere a good lyrical novel. A happy novel. The purpose of prose, like the purpose of life, is not happiness." (p. xiii)
"The most blasting of all ideas is the conception of eternity." (p. xv)
"The cuckoo of truth": I'm tempted to re-imagine John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned in 1960) along a line suggested by this phrase -- or, more whimsically, Sonny the Cuckoo, mascot for General Mills' Cocoa Puffs cereal....
I've been intending to try Cabell for a while now, if for no other reason than for my love of one of his literary descendants, Jack Vance; I've been dragging my feet because Gore Vidal's opinion of Cabell's work is less than flattering, and my brief flip-throughs of Cabell tend to incline me more towards Vidal's opinion than against.
Joseph Hergesheimer's name, however, always vanished like a soap bubble as soon as I read it; even with the singular awesomeness (and awfulness...) of Teh Internets, I never remembered his name long enough to google him.
I finally did, and decided that he sounded like someone whose work I just might like, so I vowed to keep an eye out for his books on my next secondhand book store trawl.
Lo and behold, I managed to snag a very nice 1949 hardcover reprint of the 1930 illustrated edition of Hergesheimer's revised, reset, and authorially-introduced novel The Three Black Pennys, originally published in 1917. The Three Black Pennys is the story of three men from the titular Penny family of Pennsylvania (from whence Hergesheimer hailed), from three different generations; the black and white line drawings by David Hendrickson make me nostalgic for more similarly illustrated old books.
While The Three Black Pennys wasn't at the top of my list of Hergesheimer books to try out -- I'd have to say that I was hoping to score copies of Java Head or Linda Condon -- I felt that I couldn't pass it up. (Plus it has a small sticker on the inside back cover, identifying it as having been purchased at "Hudson's Book Shop," part of the late, lamented, multi-story Hudson's department store in downtown Detroit: a bonus for someone as nostalgic for certain aspects of Detroit's past as I am.)
After reading Hergesheimer's seven-paged introduction to the 1930 edition of The Three Black Pennys, I am provisionally persuaded that I have not made a bad choice in purchasing it. Some stand-out excerpts from it:
"The purpose of fiction is not, as a matter of fact, answerable to the measure of reality. There is no logic in reality. No form. It cannot be based on the cuckoo of truth. It must go beneath words. Rest on some universal and fundamental fact. If that fact is present the manner of representation, the materials or style, are unimportant." (p. xi)
"All writing, I suppose, at any rate where prose is concerned, is either an act of indignation, of protest, or an effort at escape. You write because the world has proved unsatisfactory or because you are dissatisfied with yourself. One or the other. With poetry, I believe, it may be different. A poet can indulge in praise. He may be lyrical. That is not possible with sustained prose. There isn't anywhere a good lyrical novel. A happy novel. The purpose of prose, like the purpose of life, is not happiness." (p. xiii)
"The most blasting of all ideas is the conception of eternity." (p. xv)
"The cuckoo of truth": I'm tempted to re-imagine John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned in 1960) along a line suggested by this phrase -- or, more whimsically, Sonny the Cuckoo, mascot for General Mills' Cocoa Puffs cereal....