The Collected Jorkens, Vol. I | ||||||||
Lord Dunsany, edited by S.T. Joshi | ||||||||
Night Shade Books, 358 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Georges T. Dodds
Lord Dunsany is primarily remembered for his fantasy works, so much so that the adjective "Dunsanian" crops up in many descriptions of
Lovecraft and C.A. Smith's early works. These over 200 prose-poem short stories, full of irony and humour, were recently collected
and spanned the period of 1905 to 1920. These were followed up by a pair of fantasy novels [Chronicles of Rodriguez (1922) and
The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924)], but from 1921-1925 nary a short story. It was in July 1926 that the first -- "The Tale
of the Abu Laheeb" -- of over 125 Jorkens stories began to appear. These were later collected in five books, of which the first two,
The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens (1931) and Jorkens Remembers Africa (1934) are included in this first volume
of The Collected Jorkens. Nightshade Books will reprint all the previously published Jorkens collections, several uncollected
tales, and a recently discovered unpublished collection of Jorkens tales, all in a three-volume collection.
Who is this Jorkens? A British clubman raconteur (when properly lubricated), who is a mix of Baron Munchausen, the 19th century British
explorers, and a sort of British upper middle class retiree. His fanciful tales of his life, and those of some of his equally eccentric
and colourful friends, combine Lord Dunsany's hands-on knowledge of many exotic locations throughout the world, and the irony and humour
of his older purely fantasy tales. It also showcases, in some tales in particular, an undercurrent of the socio-environmental concerns
which are clearly played out in some of his later books, such as The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933). The stories, however
far-fetched, have an air of plausibility that takes them outside the purvue of the purely farcical tales of Munchausen. Dunsany,
through a great deal of little details, about the locations, characters and events, many obviously seen or experienced himself in his
extensive travels, makes the tales, at least on the surface, quite believable. Add the fact that acts of Nature or the disappearance
of any witnesses through death or inaccessibility render any definite proof or disproof impossible and you have the fine tales of the
rather modest and effacing Mr. Jorkens. Also well done is the fact that one grows to know the character of Jorkens through the
stories, he boasts but he also confesses to actions he regrets, of love and revenge, of happy times and sad times, of times of great
wealth and great poverty; neither an Allan Quartemain nor an buffoon.
Given the great variety of the tales -- a cricketer who has made a deal with a pagan God, an aviator who flies to Mars to discover its
human inhabitants serve as food to the dominant species, the discovery of a diamond a day's walk in width, marriage to a mermaid, a
turbine-powered Tibetan prayer wheel, murderous poplars stalking Jorkens down a country road, amongst others -- and the fact the
tales are fairly short -- roughly 10 pages apiece -- makes them quite palatable even when taken in large doses; not something that
can be said for some pulp literature. There are occasional glimpses of the prose that graced Dunsany's early fantasies, but
generally the language is reportorial and simple, and the incidences of nasty comeuppances of his earlier tales are far fewer. This
is much more the raw gem of Dunsany as a raconteur than the finely polished jewels of Dunsany the fantasy craftsman.
The first volume also includes a Preface by the current Lord Dunsany, a Forward by
Arthur C. Clarke (who at one time corresponded with Dunsany), and an Introduction
by S.T. Joshi, which places the Jorkens stories in the context of Dunsany's overall writing career. So pour yourself a drink -- and
of course one for Mr. Jorkens -- sit back and read and you won't believe where he'll take you -- but don't let on to him.
Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has read and collected close to 2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both in English and French. He writes columns on early imaginative literature for WARP, the newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association and maintains a site reflecting his tastes in imaginative literature. |
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