FFB: Men Without Bones -- Gerald Kersh

The title story of this collection was, at least for a time, a well-known horror tale.  Now, both Kersh and the story are pretty much forgotten.  The setup of the story is one of those that's familiar but that always works, at least for me: a man working on a banana boat in some banana republic tells us about a man who came out of the jungle with a fantastic tale to tell, a tale of men without bones.  The telling of the tale is what matters, but the snapper ending is still a good one.  It's very atmospheric and stylish and fun to read.

And speaking of style, I mentioned Kersh's style in another FFB post.  All the stories in this collection are written in a style that would probably be thought of by most readers today as antiquated.  It was probably a bit old-fashioned even when the stories originally appeared.  However, it's not as rococo as the style in The Secret Masters.  The style was fine by me.  I can adjust to styles from different eras.  I know some people can't, though.

If you're of a mind to, you can download the collection at munseys.com.

Here's the complete Toc: 
Men Without Bones
The Shady Life of Annibal
The Ape and the Mystery
The Oxoxoco Bottle
Thicker than Water
The Madwoman
The Terrible Ride of Colonel Tessier
The Dancing Doll
The Hack
Ladies or Clothes
In a Room Without Walls
Clock Without Hands
The Epistle of Simple Simon

PaperBack

Gerald Kersh, On an Odd Note, Ballantine, 1958

PaperBack

Gerald Kersh, Nightshades and Damnations, Gold Medal, 1968.

PaperBack

 

Gerald Kersh, The Secret Masters, Ballantine, 1953

PaperBack

Gerald Kersh, The Secret Masters, Ballantine, 1953

Forgotten Books: The Secret Masters -- Gerald Kersh

Since this book was published in 1953, I must have read it that year or the next.  I remembered next to nothing about it except that I thought it was great at the time.  Reading it again now, I wonder how a kid of 12 or so managed to get through it at all.  I suspect that no kid now would read more than a page.  A lot of adults might not, either.

I'm almost 100% certain that no publisher would touch it in 2013.  Why? First of all there's the writing style.  I guarantee you that there are more semicolons per page in this book than you'll find in 100 thrillers written and published in the last decade.  And dashes and, well, here's a sample sentence from page 46: The Greek laughed richly, opening a bottle of Mavrodaphne, and said that it was necessary only to sit down at such-and-such a table and take it easy; the bookkeeper would be coming down to lunch in a few minutes: a harmless old man, "but with the figures, a whiz" -- he kissed his hand in ecstasy.  

It's the kind of book where characters speak for pages without interruption, scattering literary allusions from sources ancient and modern on every page, where paragraphs take up at least half a page and sometimes more, where there's considerably more telling than showing.

The plot? Well, it's timely enough.  A bunch of super-rich men, known as the Sciocrats, plan to take over the world.  Our Heroes might be able to stop them, but can they?  Sure, but it's not easy.  The last 1/4 of the book introduces the only real action in the story, and it's enough to make you think that Ian Fleming must have read the book and thought he could do something similar himself, but in a very different style.

This probably sounds like a negative review, and I guess it is.  Still, I got a kick out of the book.  Nostalgia was part of that, but I also enjoyed the humor, much of which must have gone over my head when I was a kid, as did many of the literary allusions.  Let me leave you with one paragraph that you might enjoy, tossed in when the police arrive on the scene:

Writers of crime fiction may have led you to assume that any detective worthy of the name must look like something else: he must live in dressing gowns, be slender, have a good nose for fine tobacco and a palate for good wine, know the difference between a drypoint and a mezzotint, have eccentricities, talk superior, and be able to distinguish a Dionysian tetradrachm by touch in the dark.  If it happens to be a gluttonous orchid-fancier, a jaw-bopping three-bottle-of-rye man, a violin-playing cocaine addict, a marasmic dandy who clips his Engilsh and rolls his own cigarettes with Bull Durham which he carries loose in his waistcoat pocket -- so much the better. It is just as well if he happens to be a Belgian with funny mustaches, or a pimplish Greek with a temperamental wife, or a satanic blond man who has a superhuman capacity for bourbon and bullets and is reluctantly compelled to knock somebody's teeth down his throat in every other chapter.  He may also be afflicted with locomotor ataxis, and play with bits of string in tea shops; or he may be a priest, a stupid-looking priest with dull gray eyes, of course, and a gampish umbrella.  In peacetime, he may even be a Japanese who will clap the Nami-Juji on a felon five times his size before you could say "Jack Diamond, or a fat Chinese who quotes Confucius.  Anything quiaint, anything out of character, anything but a policeman!