Six issues of
Weird Tales hit the newsstands in the war year of 1940, which saw the Katyn massacre of members of the Polish middle class by the Soviet Union, Soviet defeat of Finland, German conquest of Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, and ferocious fighting between the British Empire and its allies and German and Italian forces at sea, in the air and on land, among other atrocities, misfortunes and desperate trials. A year of tragedy and evil of staggering proportions! And things would only get more catastrophic in the years to follow! Of course, it's not all bad news; it was in 1940 that Bugs Bunny and Abbot and Costello first appeared in movie theatres. Look on the bright side, kids!
Anyway, we here at MPorcius Fiction Log have pledged to read at least one story from each issue of Weird Tales published in 1940 and today we tackle the July ish, which has one of the most boring cover illustrations in the history of WT. Let's hope the fiction from the mag we are reading today, the contributions from Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, and Maria Moravsky, brings some excitement to the issue.
"The Fiddler's Fee" by Robert Bloch
I don't know a hell of a lot about classical music. (OK, you got me, I don't know a hell of a lot about anything.) So it was this story that introduced me to Paganini the famous violinist of the Napoleonic era, a virtuoso reputed to be the son of the devil or to have made a deal with the devil. Fortunately, you don't have to be an expert on serious music to appreciate "The Fiddler's Fee," a quite good black magic tale. We can be grateful that Bloch here doesn't undermine his story with dumb jokes or annoying social commentary, and that his use of psychology here consists of
showing psychological phenomena and not talking about psychological theories, and is very effective. Thumbs up for "The Fiddler's Fee"!
Our main character is a kid in an early 19th-century Italian village, Nicolo, the son of an innkeeper. Nicolo loves music, and plays the violin, and has real talent, but Dad doesn't really have the shekels to send him to the best schools; Nicolo is destined to take over the inn. Nicolo has a friendly rival in the village, Carlo, the son of a wine-merchant who is a fellow music lover and budding violinist. Carlo's wealthy father will be able to provide his son the education that will offer him a chance at becoming a professional musician and travelling around Europe.
But then Paganini, the world's greatest violinist and a guy who has made deals with the devil, comes to town and shakes things up. He senses our protagonist's affinity for music and brings Nicolo along to the cave where he has his business meetings with Ol' Scratch. Bloch wisely does not allow Satan to appear "on screen;} we just witness the effects of the various deals the devil makes with the various characters.
"The Fiddler's Fee" has quite a few twists and turns as the inn keeper's son and his rival both go to the big city to study, and both return to the village, where both end up having cut deals with the devil and suffering terrible fates, but the story never feels long, Bloch handling the pacing well. Bloch also has greater success in describing music, and its effects on listeners, than genre writers in my experience usually do; I so often find deal-with-the-devil stories and stories that try to convey how excellent music makes you feel to be stupid and annoying that Bloch's ability to make such material work is really impressing me.
But the best part of the story is the evolving psychology of our protagonist Nicolo. Early on, Nicolo is animated by a love of music, but he quickly becomes a monster driven by envy of his rival. The devil gives Nicolo the ability to play the violin like a genius, and to compose--even improvise on the spot!--masterpieces, but such virtuoso feats bring Nicolo no satisfaction, because it is not really he who is performing or writing these powerful works of art--he is merely the instrument of a greater power. In contrast, the wine-merchant's son, Carlo, works hard at learning to play, and while he is second best behind Nicolo, Carlo can enjoy a sense of accomplishment because his successes are really his, the product of his industry and his mind.
Similarly, Carlo wins the heart of a beautiful blonde whom the protagonist also covets, and Nicolo uses his satanic powers to seduce her so that she cheats with him, cuckolding Carlo. But again for Nicolo there is a nagging sense that he has not earned the right to enjoy the woman's body, that he has won by cheating. And, when this poor young woman is destroyed, collateral damage of the protagonist's fell sorcery, we see that Nicolo never really loved her at all, just lusted after her.
In my humble opinion, one of Bloch's best stories. "The Fiddler's Fee" has been reprinted in several Bloch collections, as well as an Italian anthology of horror tales about music.
"The Dreadful Rabbits" by Manly Wade Wellman
This story appeared here in
Weird Tales under a pen name and isfdb is telling me it is a component of the Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant series of four stories. When I saw the title and the illustration by Hannes Bok that accompanies it I groaned a little--a story about a swarm of killer rabbits? But I forged on regardless.
The Judge is a collector of folklore, and he travels to a town in the American South because he has heard of curious customs in this town regarding rabbits. Everybody here greets rabbits they see ("Howdy, Mr. Rabbit!") and it is illegal to hunt rabbits in this county. These customs are very localized--people in the next county over do not share these laws and customs. And nobody knows how these curious practices got started, if they were picked up from local Native Americans or African-American slaves or brought over by the English settlers.
The Judge looks at the old records at the home of the township clerk, and learns that when the town was founded in 1735 the Indians who sold the land to the colonists insisted that rabbits, their totem animal, be respected and exempt from hunting. Among these 18th-century primary sources are also to be found clues that indicate to us readers that the local rabbits can kill people and suck their blood like vampires, should people disrespect them. So when we hear that one of the Judge's local friends is going to hunt rabbits we know what is going to happen. If I was editing WT, I would have told Wellman to end the story right there, with the Judge realizing with horror that his friend is going to be massacred by Bugs, Peter, Thumper, Jaxxon, the whole crew. In the real world, in which I can't even edit this blog properly, D. McIlwraith allows Wellman to spend two pages on the Judge's tracking of the hunter and his horrendous discovery at the end of the trail. As if that wasn't already superfluous, the Judge even foolishly tries to fight the supernatural rabbits before resorting to saying the magic words "Howdy, Mr. Rabbit!", which pacify them.
Wellman tries to build up atmosphere and a sense of place, describing the town's houses and people's furniture and how the old records are brittle and 18th-century writing uses odd capitalizations and so forth. He also connects the universe of the Judge to that of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin--the Judge knows de Grandin and they love to swap folklore tidbits. "The Dreadful Rabbits" also has an ideology: sympathy for all religion and a belief that traditions should be respected even if you don't specifically know their utility, because they likely were started for a good reason (Wellman doesn't mention Chesterton, but I think we can align Wellman's thinking with the "Chesterton's fence" principle.)
Despite Wellman's efforts to add literary and philosophical heft to the story, it feels minor and the idea of hand-to-hand combat with a platoon of rabbits still seems silly. Spiders or snakes would have been better, though I guess Wellman wants you to sympathize with the Indians, and spiders and snakes aren't very sympathetic. "Acceptable filler" is our judgement on "The Dreadful Rabbits."
"The Dreadful Rabbits" has reappeared in Wellman collections.
"Beyond the Frame" by Maria Moravsky
Moravsky has thirteen fiction credits at isfdb, mostly for stories in
Weird Tales and
Strange Stories.
You can read about her life and career, highlights of which include flight from the Russian Revolution and publication in a diverse range of American periodicals, at Terence E. Hanley's
extensive website about Weird Tales and the men and women who contributed to the magazine
.
"Beyond the Frame" is a banal and boring piece in which the characters don't do anything, just get ushered along by fate; if we weren't living in an enlightened and feminist age I'd say Moravsky here has penned a stereotypical female wish fulfillment fantasy, a story of a girl who becomes a princess and experiences a tragic but also immortal (having her cake and eating it, too) love affair without having to make any decisions or perform any feats or anything. (A stereotypical male wish fulfillment fantasy has the man killing lots of guys or outwitting a sorcerer or climbing a mountain or something to prove his prowess and thus earn a satisfying sexual relationship.)
This story also seems to reflect Moravsky's ethnic and cultural background, referring directly to Polish folklore and history with which I am not familiar, even though I have Polish ancestors--my parents and grandparents transmitted no family history or traditions to me, leaving me adrift, deracinated, unmoored to any kind of ethnic, religious, or geographic community.
It is 20th-century America; a Polish woman runs the Slavic section of a public library. She stares at a painting of a teenaged princess being escorted by hussars to her wedding to a hulking Lithuanian king, a hairy pagan. The librarian feels like she is being sucked into the painting, taking the role of the princess, and most of Moravsky's story consists of the princess experiencing love at first sight with a stonecutter and cheating on the king with him, then dying. It turns out the souls of the princess and the stonecutter meet again and again throughout history--when the librarian comes out of her trance a young man, an artist, has come to see the painting, and it is clear his soul is that of the stonecutter.
This story is well-written from a stylistic perspective, and the images are good, but the plot and themes are limp--these stories in which the main characters are mere spectators always annoy me. (As happens so often in genre literature, the villain is more interesting than the heroes--it is the hairy Lithuanian king who is the most exciting figure of the story, a guy who dominates the environment he finds himself in, a man who has a personality and who pursues goals.) But we'll be generous and call "Beyond the Frame" barely acceptable.
"Beyond the Frame" does not seem to have been reprinted anywhere.
**********
The Bloch is obviously the gem here; the Wellman and Moravsky aren't terrible, but their plots and characters and themes are less than compelling.
More weird material ahead as MPorcius Fiction Log continues to explore Farnsworth Wright and Dorothy McIlwraith's seminal magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment