Short Commons
Best Fantasy Stories. Edited by Brian W. Aldiss. (Faber, 16s.) Winter Tales 8. Edited by A. D. Maclean. (Macmillan, 25s.) Pick of Today's Short Stories. Edited by John Pudney. (Putnam, 16s.) IN his introduction to Best Fantasy Stories Mr. Brian Aldiss says a fantasy story is invariably 'a story containing something (event or article) either impossible or exceptional but in all cases fantastic.' A vague statement indeed, but one Which by its very vagueness makes a comment Upon the plight of the short story in general today. In almost all cases contemporary short- story writers are producing fantasies, either of mind or of action elaborated upon by the con- trolling mind. Unable or without patience to develop the art of story-telling, they use the short story form as a receptacle for their elusive and often fragmented fancifications. Since these flights of fantasy, amusing or macabre, need not or cannot be developed, they come to rest as short stories. They can be passed off on the public as 'entertainment' with the added touch of a trick or unexpected ending. But these efforts need not be valueless. If the fantasy is well wrought and engrossing in its other- worldliness, it is certainly worthwhile entertain- ment. If it says something about the vagaries of the human imagination and makes the reader take stock of his own, it has value as art.
Mr. Aldiss's collection of self-declared
fantasies has something of both. Although Michael Joyce's 'Perchance to Dream' smacks a bit of the conventional horror story, the author creates a tone of foreboding too intense to be ignored. A young n-van arrives at his sister's dismal home to find her mad giant of a husband mixing a potion which will turn their son into a genius. If Mr. Joyce holds the reader by intensity of mystery, Angus Wilson does so here by setting his scene with subdued conversation and exploding everything at the end. Engulfed in the misery of a motherless little girl in 'Mummy to the Rescue,' one suddenly discovers her to be a twenty-five-year-old motherless lunatic. Stories like 'Incident on a Lake' by John Collier and 'Cousin Len's Wonderful Adjeetive Cellar' by Jack Finney may ring a bit false and a bit silly, but they are well made up for by the entertain- ment value of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Wilson. At the Other end of the entertainment-art spectrum Saki as usual stands out above the rest. Don't tell Your children sentimental stories, he says in 'The
toryteller. They will be more intrigued by the his of real life. There can be no disputing
his sense of timing and economy of style. As simple but less effective is 'In a Season of Calm Weather' by Ray Bradbury (it is lesser Bradbury to be sure), in which a man has a dream realised and destroyed at the same time. Of the stories in this year's Winter Tales, al- most all deal with the problems of the wayward ttnagination. Except for 'The Agents' by Brian Glanville (a lengthy but slight piece of reportage), they touch upon what well could be daydreams (mostly nightmares) of different kinds of people in different places and correspond, on most Occasions, to inner fears and delusions experi- enced by everyone. In 'Family Christmas' by Jean Stubbs a prodigal daughter brings her A
and takes thelover to her family's Christmas dinner William S the consequences. Diana Craig in ansom s 'A Smell of Fear' wanders
about fearing everyone and everything until her own senselessness leads to her rape. Retired re- viewer Henry MacManus gives a dinner for all his ghost-writers in 'The Ghost-Writers' by L. P. Hartley and realises what it is to be some- one and no one at the same time. But perhaps the best story in the book is 'The Rain Child' by Margaret Laurence. An elderly Englishwoman is at home only in Africa. A young African girl is at home only in England. The agonies of the deracinated lead only to rejection of the home- land or resignation to its loss, says the author. The elderly woman is resigned, the young girl rejects.
John Pudney's alluring collection of stories combines in almost all instances absorbing and bizarre fantasy with thoughtful insight. These stories are both entertainment and art, In 'A Banner with a Strange Device' one snickers at the eccentricities of English clubs while follow- ing with horror the mission of James Whiting, last surviving member of the 'Twenty-fivers.' Sita Rathnamal's 'Cuckoo in the Hills' explores a people whose overwhelming sense of tradition makes them blind to promiscuity. In 'The Young Champion' by Michael Fisher a young chess champion's New York gang background leads him away from the. fair play of the chess table and into murder. In 'The Planting Rain,' a Rhodesian farmer suffering from rabies turns into a raging animal en route to hospital in a blinding rainstorm. These writers are original and exciting.
In his introduction Mr. Russell says his book is about 'dark tides in human affairs,' and some . of his stories fit the bill. In 'Me and My Shadow' a timid little man gains the support of himself. Trimble drinks a vial of liquid given him by a wizened old gentleman. His shadow speaks to him, gives him strength, and enables him to force a rise out of his boss and tell off his wife. The little peasant in 'The Ponderer' has for years farmed in the shadow of a huge out- crop of rock shaped like a giant. He imagines himself lifted and addressed by the Ponderer and deposited on the ground again. ,Dr. Blain con- fronts a- corpse propelled by tiny intelligences from a foreign planet in 'A- Matter of Instinct,' and the experience is frightening. RuSsell, who is sometimes brilliant, writes a jaunty, readable prose, and one finds oneself impatient to reach the always incredible denouement.
Mr. Rosso's style is unaffectedly moody and iridescent. In 'A Trip into the Heart of Germany' he creates the same kind of psychological claustrophobia as Kafka at his best. Albert Motka, an official in one of the ali:es' political offices in Berlin after the war, confronts Erich Kunz, suspected of running a German concentration camp. When Motka re- views the ghastlY details of Kunz's wartime activities and one finds the record set before one, one cannot help but loathe such a man. But the Kunz of the present is weak and sym- pathetic. The resultant arnbivalance of feeling on the reader's and on Motka's part is madden- ingly effective twice over. Both 'A Distant Sum-. mer' and 'The Bait' are concerned with the loss of innocence. In the first a young boy matures by observing the carryings-on of a faithless wife. In the other a young Italian soldier in the ser- vice of the German army is led astray by a Communist friend. He learns what it is to hero- worship and dies for his thoughtlessness. They lack the power and the pain of 'A Trip into the Heart of Germany,' but they are sensitive por- traits of young men and one is in wartime Italy with them—in a montage of sunlight and s'adness.
STEVEN KROLL
Previous page
