#22 The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas

The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas was originally published in Nynorsk in 1957, and is available from Peter Owen books and now also as a Penguin Modern Classics  edition.  The translation is by Michael Barnes and Torbjorn Stoverud.  The central character of The Birds is Mattis, a mentally disabled man, living with his sister in a small rural community in Norway.   We observe Mattis as he attempts to navigate the obstacles of everyday life - the obligations of work, family relationships and even romantic love.  Mattis’ transcendental, or even visionary inner life, keenly evoked by Vesaas’ spare and lucid prose, is far richer than it appears to those around him.  At the core of the novel, is Mattis’ struggle with the border between experience and expression in a world where birds seem to understand more than people.  

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the role of the woodcock as a symbol, Vesaas’ sensitive and generous treatment of mental disability, and the possibility of viewing Mattis as an artist figure.

#21 Graves: An Interview with Quentin S. Crisp

On this episode of Sherds Podcast, I’m joined by writer, Quentin S. Crisp, to discuss his new novel, Graves (2019), published by Snuggly Books, who give the following description of the book:

In Graves, Damien, a male nurse and self-styled ‘thanatophile’, is in love with death in its purer and more ideal form. However, as he casts around for some authentic way to defy the void of modernity, his thanatophilia is swiftly and insidiously corrupted. Scavenging what ‘materials’ he can, he works in isolation like a reverse Doctor Frankenstein, wishing to understand the secrets of death, not life, in order to break the narrative power of science over the modern mind.

Set against the backdrop of anomie-drenched 21st-century London, Graves, Quentin S. Crisp’s second major novel, is a work of Gothic horror that confronts the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness in a world where it is easier to believe in artificial intelligence than human intelligence.

Over the course of the programme we discuss the influence of Japanese Literature on Crisp’s work, the importance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Graves, and the moral complexities of antinatalism.

Footnotes:

Some of the authors mentioned by Crisp throughout the programme are:

Nagai Kafu - you can read about Quentin S. Crisp’s relationship with this writer here: https://mathewfriley.com/2010/08/quentin-s-crisp-the-book-i-would-like-to-be-buried-with/

Justin Isis - http://justinisis.blogspot.com/ - whose two collections of stories, I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (2011), and Welcome to the Arms Race (2015) are both published by Chômu Press: http://chomupress.com/

Jeremy Reed - http://www.jeremyreed.co.uk/

Zdravka Evtimova - http://www.contemporarybulgarianwriters.com/1-writers/evtimova-zdravka/

Brendan Connell - whose novel, Clark (2016), is singled out for special mention: http://www.snugglybooks.co.uk/clark/

About the Author:

Quentin S. Crisp was born in 1972, in North Devon, UK. He studied Japanese at the University of Durham and graduated in 2000. He has had fiction published by Tartarus Press, PS Publishing, Eibonvale Press and others. He currently resides in Bexleyheath, and is editor for Chômu Press.

#20 Hauntings by Vernon Lee

In this episode, I’m joined by Patricia Pulham, Professor of Victorian Literature at The University of Surrey, to discuss Vernon Lee’s collection of supernatural tales, Hauntings (1890).  

The book collects four of Vernon Lee’s ghost stories, ‘Amour Dure’, ‘Dionea’, ‘Oke of Okehurst’, and ‘A Wicked Voice’, which together represent some of the finest examples of the genre, and reflect Lee’s deep engagement with Italian art, her sensitivity to place, and her imaginative relationship with the vestigial, fragmentary manifestations of history. 

Over the course of the programme, we discuss Lee’s preference for a more restrained form of horror, her evocation of the settings in her texts, and take an in-depth look at music in her story, ‘A Wicked Voice’. 

Bibliography:

Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales by Patricia Pulham (Ashgate Publishing, 2008)

Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics, Aesthetics ed. Patricia Pulham, Catherine Maxwell (Palgrave, 2006)

Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography by Vineta Colby, (University of Virgina Press, 2003). 

#19 Forest of a Thousand Daemons by D. O. Fagunwa

D. O. Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons was first published in 1938; it marks the first full-length novel published in Yoruba and has become a classic work of African literature. The delightfully rich translation is by the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka and is published by City Lights Books.

The book concerns the life of the brave hunter, Akara-Ogun, whose encounters with spirits, bog-trolls and other supernatural creatures are related orally with great flair for an enraptured audience which grows bigger with each night’s telling, and an author who takes down the hunter’s words that they might provide a record of his days upon this earth.

The book stands at a crossroads between oral and written culture, between Christianity and traditional Yoruba beliefs, and takes place in a world in which the boundary between the natural and the supernatural is a distinctly porous one. To open its covers is to witness this complex metamorphosis taking place.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the choices Wole Soyinka makes in his translation, religious syncretism, and the strong emphasis the book places on the body.

Bibliography:

‘Compound of Spells: The Predicament of D. O. Fagunwa’ by Olakunle George in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 28, No. 1, The Oral-Written Interface (Spring, 1997), pp. 78-97 (Indiana University Press)

An interview with Anthony Olajide Fayemi: https://www.thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2014/05/hidden-facts-about-fagunwa/

#18 The Witches of Kyiv by Orest Somov

The Witches of Kyiv and Other Gothic Tales collects a range of stories by Ukrainian Romantic author, Orest Somov which were originally published between 1827 and 1833.  This collection comes from Sova Books and the translations are by Svitlana Yakovenko.  The book also features a helpful glossary and annotations, as well as excellent introduction by Svitlana Krys.  

Though written in Russian, these gothic tales draw heavily on Ukrainian folklore, and introduce a distinctly regional flavour to the palette of the Romantic literature of the 1820s and ‘30s.  Bold Cossack warriors, perilously seductive water sprites, and cunning witches haunt the pages of the collection, and bring into being the theories espoused by Somov in his seminal essay of 1823, ‘On Romantic Poetry’.  

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr Keith Walmsley to discuss the work and influence of this forgotten innovator of Romantic prose in Russian. Over the course of the programme, we discuss Somov’s role as the originator of many motifs that will echo throughout Russian and Ukrainian literature, consider his relationship with Russia, and examine the import of the various folkloric figures which populate his tales.   

Bibliography:

‘Orest Somov: An Introduction’ by John Mersereau in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 43, No. 101 (June, 1965), pp. 354-370 (the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London)

The Holy Fool in Russian Culture by Eva Thompson (University Press of America, 1987)

Russian Romantic Criticism: An Anthology edited by Lauren G. Leighton (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1987)

Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times (McGill-Queen’s Press, 2001) 

Были и небылицы, Орест Михайлович Сомов (Сов. Россия, 1984)

#17 The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall was originally published in German in 1963.  Our protagonist and narrator is a woman in her 40s. While visiting friends at a hunting lodge in rural Austria, she finds herself divorced from all human contact when an invisible wall descends, cutting her small region off from the rest of the world.  She is quickly forced into a struggle to survive, and must learn to become self-sufficient. Willingly or not, she must become the ruler of her own destiny.   Often interpreted as an allegory of female emancipation, this Robinsonade places questions of identity and society at its core by describing a world in which their very existence becomes questionable. 

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the rich interpretive possibilities the book offers, delve into its treatment of nature, and ponder the recurrent reading of the novel as a feminist text.

The readings in this episode were performed by Ola Wittchen

Bibliography:

Wahrscheinlich bin ich verrückt: Marlen Haushofer - Die Biographie by Daniela Strigl (List, 2007)

marlenhaushofer.ch

Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe

‘Marlen Haushofer–eine Feministin aus Österreich’ by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 12, No. 3/4, Special Issue on Austrian Women Writers (1979), pp. 171-191

‘Behind the Transparent Wall Marlen Haushofer's Novel "Die Wand"‘ by Hugo Caviola in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1991), pp. 100-112

#16 The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen

One contemporary reviewer referred to The Hill of Dreams (1907) as the “study, rather than the story, of a morbid temperament.” Often regarded as Machen’s masterpiece, this beautiful and idiosyncratic novel concerns the short life of a young writer, Lucian Taylor, and follows his journey from the Welsh countryside of his boyhood to the squalor of late 19th-century London. In an attempt to commune with a reality beyond our own, a plane of existence accessible only to the true artistic visionary, Lucian sacrifices himself and becomes a martyr to aesthetic ideals.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the book’s place within the decadent movement, Machen’s moral position regarding his main character, and the traces of opium that stain the novel’s pages.

Bibliography:

‘Arthur Machen: Ecstasy and Epiphany’ by NIcholas Freeman in Literature and Theology, Vol. 24, No. 3 (September 2010), pp. 242-255

‘Abominable Transformations: Becoming-Fungus in Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams’ by Anthony Camara in The EcoGothic in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press)

Mark Valentine’s ‘Introduction’ in The Hill of Dreams (1907) by Arthur Machen (Tartarus Press)

The Friends of Arthur Machen website: http://www.arthurmachen.org.uk/

‘Lucian in the Labyrinth: London Locations in The Hill of Dreams’ in The Library of the Lost : In Search of Forgotten Authors by Roger Dobson (Caermaen Books and Tartarus Press, 2015)

Decadent and Occult Works by Arthur Machen, ed. by Denis Denisoff (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2018)

The Paris Notebooks (2017) by Quentin S. Crisp

#15 Beirut Nightmares by Ghada Samman

Ghada Samman’s ‘Beirut Nightmares’ was originally published in Arabic in 1976.  Set at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, this autobiographical novel concerns two weeks in the life of a journalist and writer living at the heart of the warzone.  With the conflict raging outside,  and snipers on every corner, she is unable to leave her flat.  The horror of the waking world soon finds its way into the dreamscape where disembodied limbs roam the flaming streets, and mannequins come to life.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the strange mixture of realistic depictions of war and fantastical nightmares, boredom as a literary theme, and the clash between ideology and aesthetics within the novel.

Bibliography:

Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide 1873-1999 (2008, The American University in Cairo Press)

‘Arab Causes in the Fiction of Ghada Al-Samman 1961-1975’ by Hanan Awwad, reviewed by Miriam Cooke (Al-'Arabiyya, Vol. 17, No. 1/2 (Spring & Autumn 1984), pp. 129-133

‘The Square Moon: Supernatural Tales’ by Ghada Samman and Issa J. Boullata, reviewed by Evelyne Accad (World Literature Today, Vol. 73, No. 4, Celebrating Czesław Miłosz (Autumn, 1999), pp. 811-812

#14 The Human Chair by Edogawa Rampo

Edogawa Rampo’s short story, ‘The Human Chair’,was originally published in Japanese in 1925.  The story is taken from the collection, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, translated by James B. Harris, and published by Tuttle Publishing.  ‘The Human Chair’ is a tale of the grotesque in which a master carpenter entombs himself inside a chair in order to gain the intimacy that society has denied him.  The longer he spends inside the chair, pressed close to the bodies of strangers, the harder it becomes to return to his ordinary life.  As well as being a superb example of the uncanny tale, ‘The Human Chair’ is a rich palimpsest that reveals layer upon layer of sexual, social and national anxietie: s. 

Over the course of the episode, we discuss Edgar Allan Poe’s influence in Japan, the combination of the erotic and the grotesque, and consider how this tale straddles the border between the horrific and the horrible.

Bibliography:

Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities (1999) ed. by Lois Davis Vines (University of Iowa Press)

Stalking (2006) by Bran Nicol (Reaktion Books)

‘“Anxieties of Influence” Edogawa Rampo’s Horrifying Hybrids’ in Purloined Letters (2008) by Mark Silver (University of Hawaii Press)

‘Deviance and Social Darwinism in Edogawa Ranpo's Erotic-Grotesque Thriller "Kotō no oni"‘ by Jim Reichert in The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Winter, 2001)

#13 The Dying Peasant by Karel van de Woestijne

Karel van de Woestijne’s novella, ‘The Dying Peasant’, was originally published in Dutch in 1918.  It is now available for the first time in an unabridged translation by Paul Vincent, published by Snuggly Books.   The book concerns an elderly farmer, Nand, who lies on his deathbed and is visited by five figures, each representing the one of the five senses.  As the fragmentary reflections occasioned by these sensory avatars tell the rich story of Nand’s life, van de Woestijne evokes a deep reverence for the surface of things, and the simplicity and beauty of ordinary life. 

#12 Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker was originally published in 1980.  The novel is set in Kent some two or three thousand years after a nuclear holocaust which has destroyed the land, plunging society back to iron-age levels of technology.   Its foundational myth, the Eusa story, grown out of the scattered fragments of ancient history, is the story of how technological progress led to the nuclear war and the long dark age which is referred to as “Bad Time.”  After the death of his father in an accident at work, Riddley, our narrator, eventually finds himself leaving the community and heading out alone on a quest to rediscover and perhaps return to prosperity of the ancients.  The story is told in an imagined, future dialect of English which, though rugged and decayed, has its own alien poetry. 

Over the course of the episode, we discuss Hoban’s invented dialect, his plundering of English folklore, what it means to create a mythology, and the pivotal significance of the figure of The Green Man.

Bibliography:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage (Faber & Faber, 2007)

The Death of Tragedy by George Steiner (Faber & Faber, 1961)

‘Hoap of a Tree in Riddley Walker’ by David Huisman in Christianity and Literature, Vol. 43, No. 3/4 (Spring-Summer 1994)

‘Dialect, Grapholect, and Story: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker as Science Fiction’ by R. D. Mullen in Science Fiction Studies Vol. 27, No. 3 (Nov., 2000)

#11 Ice by Anna Kavan

Anna Kavan’s Ice was originally published in 1967 by Peter Owen books.  The book is Kavan’s final and best known work, and appeared just one year before her death.  In the aftermath of a nuclear war, society is rapidly crumbling as a wall of ice threatens to engulf the entire planet.  Our unnamed narrator roams through this barren, frozen wasteland in pursuit of a young girl with a halo of hair as bright as spun glass; his designs on her are decidedly sinister.  The novel proceeds with the torturous, cyclical quality of an inescapable nightmare in which the reader is cocooned. 

Over the course of the episode, we discuss the extent to which Kavan's heroin addiction influenced the novel, consider the novels place in the tradition of post-apocalyptic fiction, and explore the unique brutality of the novel's narrator. 

Bibliography:

A Stranger on Earth: The Life and Work of Anna Kavan (2006) by Jeremy Reed (Peter Owen)

'The Fiction of Anna Kavan' by Victoria Walker (PhD Thesis, 2012) https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/8627

https://www.freud.org.uk/2013/12/11/anna-kavan-politics-madness/

The Drowned World (1962) by J. G. Ballard

#10 The Ship by Hans Henny Jahnn

Hans Henny Jahnn was a German organ-builder, playwright and novelist. 

In this episode, we look at the only novel of his available in English, The Ship (1949), a beguilingly dark, allegorical tale set aboard a wooden ship with blood red sails which embarks upon an unknown mission, carrying an unknown cargo, a mystery to both captain and crew.  The reasons for the journey are perhaps understood only by the shady figure of the supercargo as well as the shipowner, whose presence is as uncertain as the contents of the boxes in the ship's hold.  The captain, Waldemar Strunck, has a daughter, Ellena, who follows him on this voyage, while Gustave, her fiancé, takes himself aboard as a stowaway in order not to be separated from his beloved.  In the middle of the ship's journey, Ellena disappears, and in the search for her, Gustave must confront the very fabric of reality. 

Over the course of the episode, we discuss Jahnn's curious mixing of genres, the interplay between the hidden and the revealed,  and speculate upon the possible allegorical intentions of the text. 

Bibliography:

'Apologie des Untergangs: Ästhetische Erfahrung in Hans Henny Jahnns "Fluß ohne
Ufer"' by Christoph Zeller in Poetica, Vol. 35, No. 1/2 (2003)

Hans Henny Jahnn: eine Biografie (1986) by Thomas Freeman

'The Theme of the Black Race in the Works Of Hans Henny Jahnn' by Richard Detsch in Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2, LITERATURE AND IDEAS (Winter, 1974)

#9 The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough

As well as being a very fine novelist, Dorothy Scarborough was a noted early scholar of supernatural literature, a folk song collector, editor and teacher of creative writing at Columbia University, where she counted among her students the Southern Gothic writer, Carson McCullers.  Although established as a regional writer in Texas, it appears that Scarborough has so far failed to gain recognition further afield. 

In this episode I'm joined by Patricia Pulham, Professor of Victorian Literature at The University of Surrey, to discuss Dorothy Scarborough's remarkable novel, The Wind (1925).

The novel concerns the fate of Letty, a young girl plucked out of a life of ease in Virginia and forced to move to the plains of Sweetwater, Texas at the height of a terrible drought in the 1880s.  Letty struggles to acclimatise in this new, hostile environment - its ugly, arid vistas and its harsh manners - but it is the incessant wind that strikes her most deeply.  As her isolation increases, she begins mentally to imbue the wind with supernatural power, coming to believe that it intends to destroy her and everything she holds dear.

Over the course of the episode, we consider the reasons why the book has struggled to achieve classic status, its potential as a rich subject of study for the burgeoning field of Eco-Gothic and Eco-Horror, and the folkloric influences at the heart of the novel. 

The readings for this episode were provided by Iga Wiśniowska

Bibliography:

'Race, Labor, and the Gothic Western: Dispelling Frontier Myths in Dorothy Scarborough's The Wind' by Susan Kollin in MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 46, Number 3, (Fall, 2000)

'When East Meets West: Rethinking the Domestic Heroine and the Western in DorothyScarborough's The Wind' by John C. Orr in Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 31, No. 1 (1996)

The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917) by Dorothy Scarborough

#8 Armed With Madness by Mary Butts

Mary Butts was well known in the Anglo-American modernist circles in Paris in the 1920s.  During her lifetime, her work was highly regarded by fellow writers such as Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound, her books were illustrated by Jean Cocteau, her poetry published in influential journals such as The Egoist and The Transatlantic Review.  After her death, however, her star waned and her work fell into obscurity.

In this episode, we discuss her 1928 novel, Armed With Madness.  Over the course of the programme, we consider the possible reasons for her the descent of her reputation, the mythological and literary underpinnings of Armed With Madness, and think about the ways in which her novel expands the palette of what we think of as modernism. 

Bibliography:

The Journals of Mary Butts, ed. by Nathalie Blondel (Yale University Press, 2008)

'Religion and the Occult in Women's Modernism' by Heather Ingman in The Cambridge Companion to Modernists Women Writers  ed. by Maren Tova Linett (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

'Defending Nature's Holy Shrine: Mary Butts, Englishness, and the Persephone Myth' by Andrew Radford in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Spring, 2006)

'Mary Butts's "Unrest Cure" for the Wasteland' by Jennifer Kroll in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Summer, 1999)

From Ritual to Romance (1920) by Jessie L. Weston

#7 I Burn Paris by Bruno Jasieński

Jasieński’s I Burn Paris upset the French authorities enough to have him expelled from the country upon its publication . The story concerns a plague that breaks out in Paris, which exposes the worst tendencies of the city’s inhabitants.  As the death toll rises, the city breaks down and groups begin to isolate themselves according to ethnicity, nationality and ideology.   In today’s political climate, the book is perhaps more relevant than ever and serves as a stark warning about the perils of isolationism.

Over the course of the episode, we look at I Burn Paris in the light of Jasieński life and politics, consider the influence Futurism on the novel, and explore the communist message its core.

Bibliography

Nina Kolesnikoff, Bruno Jasieński: His Evolution from Futurism to Socialist Realism (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983)

Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generations Life and Death in Marxism 1918 - 1968 (Yale University Press, 2006)

Aleksandr Wat, My Century (University of California Press, 1988), trans. Richard Lourie

Excerpt from Jasieński's poem read by Andrzej Girdwoyń - wolnelektury.pl

#6 Et in Arcadia Ego by Tadeusz Różewicz

In this episode, I'm joined by Stefan Głowacki to discuss Tadeusz Różewicz's long poem 'Et in Arcadia Ego' (1961).   Over the course of the episode, we consider how the  poem might be thought of as Różewicz's idiosyncratic "Italian Journey", written in response not only to Goethe's text, but as an attempt to confront the ghosts of classicism, a journey undertaken to see if the ideals of Western art can still be found among the wreckage of postwar Europe.

We also look at Rózewicz's attempts to construct new poetic forms to reflect the postwar experience, his exstensive use of ekphrasis, as well as aspects of his work that seem to be in dialogue with the anglophone poets T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. 

#5 The Man Whom the Trees Loved by Algernon Blackwood

In this episode, we look at Algernon Blackwood's story, 'The Man Whom the Trees Loved', which was published in his collection Pan's Garden (1912).  The story concerns David and Sophia Bittacy, a married couple living on the edge of the New Forest.  Under the influence of the bohemian painter, Sanderson, David becomes increasingly obsessed with the inner life of the trees in the neighbouring forest. 

Over the course of our discussion, we consider Algernon Blackwood's place in the Gothic tradition, the symbolism of cedars, and explore the dual possibilities of supernatural and psychological readings of the story. 

#4 At Twilight They Return by Zyranna Zateli

In this episode, we look at Zyranna Zateli's At Twilight They Return: a Novel in Ten Tales (1993), translated by David Connolly.  Set during the final decades of the 19th century, the novel tells the vivid and meandering history of several generations of a single family in northern Greece.  As the modern world begins encroach upon the ancient, the border between the mythic and the real becomes porous, and in Zateli's hands, both are able to exist in a perpetual twilight.

Over the course of our discussion, we consider the transitional period of the book's setting, the symbolism of wolves, and examine Zateli's curious weaving together of folklore and mythology. 

#3 Red Grass by Boris Vian

In this episode, we look at Boris Vian's Red Grass (1950), a surrealist science fiction novel in which the main character, Wolf, creates a machine that allows him to erase his own memories.  Perhaps a critique or satire of existentialism, perhaps a veiled song of mourning for post-war France, Red Grass is a somewhat obscure novel that really got us thinking.

Over the course of our discussion, we consider Vian's playful complexity, his parodies of psychoanalytical and existentialist thought, and the possible significance of Red Grass in terms of French collective memory in the wake of the Second World War. 

This episode features readings by Kinga Stanczuk