Cabell, James Branch

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Loved it
A tedious Victorian curiosity
America's secret weapon - it rates 10 stars.
One of My Very Favorites
Book published in 1921; Good but difficult and different.

Jurgen
James Branch Cabell
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486235076

Book Description

A witty and irreverent landmark of modern fiction, this compelling fantasy recounts a time-traveler's adventures through a supernatural dreamscape in which he has romances with Guenevere and The Lady of the Lake and confrontations with God and the Devil. Unabridged republication of the definitive 1926 edition, with 13 full-page illustrations by Frank Papé.

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Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, an entry in the Poictesme series, is an epic fantasy voyage as well as an erotic fable. Cabell himself wrote: "This fable is, as the world itself, a book wherein each man will find what his nature enables him to see; which gives us back each his own image; and which teaches us each the lesson that each of us desires to learn." Jurgen was banned for decades because of its explicit content. It was, and remains, a groundbreaking early fantasy novel and a worthy addition to the Wildside Fantasy Classics line.

Customer Reviews:

Loved it.......2007-05-24

Stumbled across this writer while researching something else. James Branch Cabell is wonderful, and JURGEN is one of those books that delivers just what you hope it will. The hero is an aging pawnbroker who has lost his belligerent wife and sets out to find her as a matter of propriety more than will. Managing to regain his youth, he begins a year long journey that takes him to various worlds including heaven and hell. Jurgen takes up with many brilliant and pretty women along the way, but somehow is never satisfied. Then, he meets his wife Lisa again.. This was a publishing sensation in the 1920s and deserves to be again. It is funny, poetic, witty, and sometimes poignant. Cabell writes about youth, the loss of innocence, maturity and love in a uniquely refreshing and poetic way. I liked the sound of Cabell's 'THERE WERE TWO PIRATES..' so I also bought it and enjoyed it. I am currently reading his AS I REMEMBER IT, a memoir mostly of his wife, which reveals the brilliance and humanity of a real Southern gentleman of letters as much as it does the woman behind him.

A tedious Victorian curiosity.......2007-05-02

After the fervent reviews of other readers -- which prompted me to buy the book in the first place -- I have been reading along waiting for the moment of illumination that would make me find something redeeming about this book. I am halfway through and about to throw in the towel. In this plotless ramble of Victorian soft porn (there are only so many conversations about one's "big lance" that a reader can take) I just don't see rhyme, reason, or much in the way of entertainment, much less profound statements on the human condition. Jurgen sleeps his way through a dozen fairylands. Yawn. Next book.

America's secret weapon - it rates 10 stars........2006-10-02

I accidentally bumped into this book when I was in my 20s. Had no idea where it would lead me. Read it practically in one sitting. I was amazed that I understood what Cabell was driving at even tho I could not have explained it coherently to anyone.

Next I re-read it in my 50s. I never read books twice. Still amazed by it.

The book was buried in a box, after house moving many times. I re-discovered it last night. Now in my 80s I'm reading it all over again. Amazed as ever.

One of My Very Favorites.......2006-05-08

"I have finished Jurgen; a great and beautiful book, and the saddest book I ever read. I don't know why, exactly. The book hurts me -- tears me to small pieces -- but somehow it sets me free. It says the word that I've been trying to pronounce for so long. It tells me everything I am, and have been, and may be, unsparingly...I don't know why I cry over it so much. It's too -- something-or-other -- to stand. I've been sitting here tonight, reading it aloud, with the tears streaming down my face..." -- Deems Taylor, in a letter dated December 12, 1920.

What can I add to that? Jurgen is on my short list of very favorite books. It wrestles, in its odd way, with the fundamental tragedy of human life in general and male life in particular: We are doomed to age and die; meanwhile happiness will prove elusive. Wow, I'm making this sound awfully depressing, aren't I? But that's not right. Jurgen is humorous and fun and weirdly uplifting. Jurgen's strange adventures manage to represent all that a man may pursue and aspire to. The tale burns, but in a wonderfully brilliant way. (I made that comment about the tragedy of "male life" because Jurgen is, among other things, the quintessential rogue. His notion of how happiness might be ideally pursued differs somewhat from the ideas of the females he holds discourse with. Thus does Cabell illustrate a reality that we can either acknowledge or deny; take your choice. Enlightened people will prefer the latter.)

Jurgen isn't for everyone. Some will "get it" and some won't. I once handed a copy to a person who returned it with the comment that he wasn't a fan of the S&S ("swords & sorcery") genre. This surprised me; the book can only be described as S&S by someone who does not look below the surface. I mention this not to mock but to warn. Jurgen may be better appreciated by those who are stirred by symbol and metaphor. We may not be prancing through a magical world as Jurgen does, but some of us will see echoes of our own dreams and nightmares in his story. If you're such a person, then Jurgen may hit you like a ton of bricks. Otherwise you'll chuck the manuscript against the wall.

It's worth noting that Jurgen, in its circumspect way, managed to offend the contemporary powers-that-be. The book is obscurely suggestive without being explicit; it went over the heads of some, but others saw what was going on, and they either guffawed or objected vigorously. There were serious attempts to suppress it, which of course only made the text notorious. It was (and still is) politically incorrect, and it garnered something of a counter-cultural following for all the wrong reasons. Well, so be it. The book is great, and that's all there is to say.

The tale incorporates supporting characters and environments rummaged from myth and history. You won't need to know all these background details to understand or enjoy the plot; however if you should want to follow up, some rabid fans (of which there were many) put together a collection of footnotes way back in 1928. It's long out of print, but you'll find an Amazon listing on it (Amazon lists everything!); search Amazon books for ASIN=B00085DJ0A. A copy of the notes is also posted online; search the web on the phrase "Notes on Jurgen".

If you buy the book, you'll want the Dover paperback edition (ISBN=0486235076), which is a trade paperback and includes the wonderful old illustrations. Holding this edition in my hands just feels right. There's also a great unabridged audio cassette (ISBN=1574534505), rendered by a troupe of actors. They do a very nice job, switching to the most appropriate character to read the text as the book progresses.

Cabell was a prolific author, with "Jurgen" being his best-known (and probably his greatest) work. If you're unfamiliar with Cabell, "Jurgen" is the book to start with. If you want to follow up, look for "Figures of Earth".

Book published in 1921; Good but difficult and different. .......2006-05-07

I read this 1921 book because H.L. Mencken, my guide when it comes to literature, thought so highly of it. It is perhaps most difficult to read because it is a fable and fables of course, do not consist of characters and actions which are based in reality. The book is a little hard to follow at the beginning. It is rather hard to explain what the story is about.

When the book starts, Jurgen is a pawnbroker in a mythical kingdom. Knowing what actions will please an elderly sorceress, he elicits from her the privillege of living as a young nobleman in several different kingdoms over the course of a year, all under different names and noble titles. Cabell writes in a slightly tongue in cheek tone as he describes Jurgen's vanity, and most explicitly his penchant for the ladies. The most common phrases Cabell uses to describe Jurgen's sexual exploits are that Jurgen "intended to deal fairly" with a particular lady and to the effect that when Jurgen retired to a lovemaking place with the lady, the place therein was dark and nobody can see anything in the dark. Because of the darkness the old sorceress, whose shadow followed Jurden, did not see Jurgen engage in sex acts which would have displeased her. Probably my favorite part of the book is where Cabell tongue in cheek uses evasive language to describe Jurgen's sexual actions, such as on page 140. At that point in the book Jurgen is married to the Queen Anaitis. Anaitis catches Jurgen and a lady at court, a resident expert on the Kama Sutra, involved in a "philosophical experiment, necessarily performed in the dark." Stella had asserted that a certain sexual position could only be performed in the dark and asserted that "in simple equity," she was entitled to prove her assertions. "So Jurgen proceeded to deal fairly with her," i.e. peformed the sex act with her. It is when he leaves the kingdome of Guenevere's father and goesto live with Anaitis that the book gets really good. Jurgen also goes to live on the outskirts of the kingdom of Pseudopolis, getting married to a tree dweller and livining in a tree. He invades the home of Queen Helen of Troy in Pseudopolis and observes her sleeping. He goes to Hell and gets married to a female vampire and has an affair with Satan's wife.

The prose in this book is really quite beautiful.

A strong theme of this book is how reality is so covered up by our illusions about ourselves. We think that there is a God or a Devil that watches our every move, looking for virtue or sin. We think we are that important even though we are a tiny speck in the universe. Another theme relates to Jurgen never being able to find happiness, despite the sorceress granting him the privillege of living out all his longstanding dreams of being a king and nobleman and husband of some of the most beautiful women on earth. He discovers at the end of the story that he prefers to go back where he was before the sorceress granted him all his illusions.

I found it a somewhat difficult book. Particulary in the beginning of the book, Jurgen jumps from situation to situation without a certain logic that would make it easy for the reader to understand. Of course, the book is a fable and fables are not meant to be logical. The characters speak their dialogue in very beautiful language, though sometimes the meaning of the sentences are opaque.

However, I think it is easy to understand the book, if you just keep reading, you can understand everything eventually if you don't worry.

Cabell also constructs a phony introduction to the book written by some make believe bookish verbose academic or book reviewer. He also places some unintelliglbe blurbs after the title page, written by imaginary verbose, bookish book reviewer critics. This was all pretty funny.

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Something About Eve
James Branch Cabell
Manufacturer: Wildside Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1592240941

FIGURES OF EARTH, A Comedy of Appearances

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FIGURES OF EARTH, A Comedy of Appearances
James Branch; Carter, Lin (Intro) Cabell
Manufacturer: Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OVAOGA

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How to get far in the world, and does it add up to anything?
In the Beginning
A Tale of Obligations, Magic, Deceptions & Social Mobility

Figures of Earth (Wildside Fantasy)
James Branch Cabell
Manufacturer: Wildside Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1587152215

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The other saying, Manuel replied, "I cannot utter. Yet I wish I were not forced to confess this. It sounds badly. At all events, I love Niafer better than I love any other person, but I do not value Niafer's life more highly than I value my own life, and it would be nonsense to say so. No; my life is very necessary to me, and there is a geas upon me to make a figure in this world before I leave it."

Customer Reviews:

How to get far in the world, and does it add up to anything?.......2006-07-15

It just may, Cabell seems to say...

Most who know James Branch Cabell know him as the author of Jurgen. However, Cabell wrote at least a dozen novels of equally high worth, one of which is Figures of Earth, the second volume (and the first real novel) of the 18-volume Biography of Manuel.

Whereas Jurgen is markedly a man of words, Manuel, the main character of Figures of Earth, is more a man of action. The tale begins with a quest to defeat a wizard and rescue a count's daughter. By and by, the tale evolves into something magnificent and quite different, and in the meanwhile Cabell succeeds in "the staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred books" (Burton Rascoe).

In this book you will also find Cabell's fifteen "experiments in contrapuntal prose", as Cabell himself called them. They are in essence (if not in appearance) poems that crystallize central themes of the Biography, while also functioning as dialog. They *feel* like monologs of Shakespearian power, each organized into 'stanzas', sometimes by short intervening comments of another character. They also fit the storyline perfectly, and each of them makes a number of allusions or direct references to different persons or happenings in the story. Here is one-fifth of one to give a sense of Cabell's mastery of language:

"All things are possible, Manuel, at a price."

Said Manuel:

"What price would be sufficient to re-purchase the rich spoils of Death? and whence might any bribe be fetched? For all the glowing wealth and beauty of this big round world must show as a new-minted farthing beside his treasure chests, as one slight shining unimportant coin which--even this also!--belongs to earth, but has been overlooked by him as yet. Presently this hour, and whatever is strutting through this hour, is added to the heaped crypts wherein lie all that was worthiest in the old time."

- - -

And here's a part of another one:

She turned to Manuel. She said:

"The land of Audela is my kingdom. But you embraced my penalties, you have made a human woman of me. So do I tread with wraiths, for my lost realm alone is real. Here all is but a restless contention of shadows which pass presently; here all that is visible and all the colors known to men are shadows dimming the true colors; here time and death, the darkest shadows known to men, delude you with false seemings: for all such things as men hold incontestable, because they are apparent to sight and sense, are a weariful drifting of fogs that veil the world which is no longer mine. So in this twilit world of yours do we of Audela appear to be but men and women."

"I would that such women appeared more often," said Manuel.

- - -

I should also mention that, as most Cabell novels, Figures of Earth is also funny. Not, perhaps, the kind of hilarious laughing-out-loud funny of R.A. Lafferty, but often the kind of amusing, elegant irony, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, which is one of Cabell's trademarks, and which you have to experience yourself (nobody does it like Cabell--and its effect is cumulative--although some readers may be reminded of Balzac, others of Voltaire, even though neither writer wrote in English).

The next volume in the Biography is The Silver Stallion, and is what I would read after Figures of Earth (the order in which the rest of the Biography is read doesn't matter as much).

The Wildside Press edition (paperback or hardcover) is, as always, worth the price, and infinitely superior to decades old pocket book editions (unlike those old paperbacks, the Wildside Press paperbacks, although of varying sizes, are always pretty big, there's always lots of space around the image area, the pages are of superior quality and open well, the backs simply won't wrinkle, and so on).

In the Beginning.......2001-07-12

This is where it starts (maybe); the epic History of Dom Manuel of Poictesme (pronounced pwa-tem), progenitor of a clan that stretches from pre-revolutionary France to the American South and includes Kings of England and Shakespeare. Cabell was witty, erudite and scandalous,,,by far the finest, widely unknown fantasist ever produced in America. Only for those who relish dense language and wisdom that is inevitable.

A Tale of Obligations, Magic, Deceptions & Social Mobility.......2000-06-28

Manuel, a swineherd for his brother-in-law the miller, was a resident in the area ruled by Count Demetrios d'Arnaye. His girlfriend was the lovely Suskind. On her deathbed, Dorothy, his mother, told him that she wanted him to make himself a figure in the world that was a splendid and admirable young man in all respects. After her death, he spent much time at the Pool of Haranton using its marsh clay to make a figure of earth of himself. After he had an adventure with Miramon Lluagor, the wizard, which netted him a lover named Niafer who was then taken by death to the pagan paradise, he decided to seek his fortune elsewhere. He did the following: provided wisdom for King Helmas, turned the wicked King Ferdinand into a saint and ended up engaged to Alianora the Unattainable Princess, the daughter of King Berenger of Arles. The princess taught him her magic and he saved the life of a stork that became indebted to him. He relinquished Alianora to the King of England and found a way to turn Queen Freydis of Audela into a woman permanently. That queen gave life to one of his figures that ran away fom them and became Sesphra, the god of the Philistines. After Queen Freydis taught him how to invoke Misery to free Niafer from the pagan paradise, he invoked Misery and served him for 30 of Misery's days which turned out to be 30 years for Manuel. Misery returned Niafer to him and they were married. For a time, they lived with Queen Freydis on her enchanted island where the stork delivered Melicent, their first child. With the aid of Queen Freydis and Miramon Lluagor, Manuel became the Count of Poictesme which had been granted to him by King Ferdinand, but had been occupied by the Northmen. As count, he founded The Fellowship of the Silver Stallion and turned Poictesme into a prosperous place. He gave one of his stork invoices to Queen Alianora so that she could have a son. The stork added Emmerick and Dorothy to his family. After succeeding at everything, Manuel vanished and legends about him began to form.

Book Description

1926. Today, some recognize Cabell as one of the first contemporary writers from the South. He is also noted for his unique blending of classic myths and legends with his own imagination and is considered a pioneer of fantasy writing. Contents: A Note on Alcoves; The Way of Wizardry; Minions of the Moon; The Thin Queen of Elfhame; Celestial Architecture; Romantics About Them; Diversions of the Anchorite; The Delta of Radegonde; A Theme with Variations; and Flaws in the Spur. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

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The High Place
James Branch, with an Intro By Lin Carter Cabell
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OVATUG

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Unsurpassed Jacobean Satire from the Master

The King Was In His Counting House
James Branch Cabell
Manufacturer: Wildside Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0809530627

Customer Reviews:

Unsurpassed Jacobean Satire from the Master.......2006-06-30

This novel differs from such novels as Jurgen, Figures of Earth, and Something About Eve perhaps most significantly in that it focuses on the doings (or, in this case, schemes and plottings) of more than one character. And while in The Silver Stallion the doings of the many main characters scarcely intertwined, in The King Was In His Counting House they form an intricate tapestry of human motivations and perhaps inhuman consequences.

This is the second part of the "Heirs and Assigns" trio (nominally part of the Biography). However, all the parts can be considered totally independent, unlike with the "Jurgen trilogy" (Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen).

This is one of my favourite Cabell novels, and if you want to see what Cabell is able to achieve in terms of multiple characters and their intrigues, you don't want to miss this.

The Wildside Press edition (paperback or hardcover) is, as always, worth the price, and infinitely superior to decades old pocket book editions (unlike those old paperbacks, the Wildside Press paperbacks, although of varying sizes, are always pretty big, there's always lots of space around the image area, the pages are of superior quality and open well, the backs simply won't wrinkle, and so on).

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The High Place
James Branch (intro. by Lin Carter) Cabell
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: 0345018559

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"Figures of Earth?"
Poets Provide Time and the Commonplace with immortality

The Certain Hour
James Branch Cabell
Manufacturer: BiblioBazaar
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 142641109X
Release Date: 2006-07-13

Book Description

A verse: So this is the song of the double-soul, distortedly two in one.—

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He was hoping, while his fingers drummed in unison with the beat of his verse, that this last play at least would rouse enthusiasm in the pit. The welcome given its immediate predecessors had undeniably been tepid. A memorandum at his elbow of the receipts at the Globe for the last quarter showed this with disastrous bluntness; and, after all, in 1609 a shareholder in a theater, when writing dramas for production there, was ordinarily subject to more claims than those of his ideals.

Customer Reviews:

"Figures of Earth?".......2001-07-29

Tales of the "spiritual" descendants of Dom Manuel the Reedemer, carefully annotated by expert commentary. Figures of earth have feet of clay.

Poets Provide Time and the Commonplace with immortality.......2000-06-24

. . . "They of Poictesme narrate that Queene Freydis thereafter did giue Lyfe to these muddie Ymages, eche at a certayne Houre, and that her sotyll scyaunce of Ergomancy sett these x to liue among Mans Kind," . . .

Poets and bottles come in different shapes and sizes, but both should be judged by their contents not their labels. The poets in these ten stories range in time from the early 13th century to that of the 20th.

In 1210, the chivalrous Raimbault de Vaquieras, a 30 year veteran of the Crusades, returned to France and made peace with a long time enemy. When he was told by Dona Biatritz, his long time friend and lover, that his enemy was planning his murder, Raimbault refused to negate his oath and take action. However, Dona B.was not restrained by any such an oath. In 1533, the beautiful Graciosa Balthazar not yet 16, attracted the attention of Duke Alessandro de Medici and Count Eglamore,the duke's hatchet man, and found herself forced to make a choice between two evils. In 1609, William Shakespeare found his talents waning, but found new inspiration in the creed of Judith, his unlettered daughter. In 1674, Robert Herrick, the eccentric clergyman and poet, disappeared. His friends Sir Thomas Browne and Philip Borsdale learned that RH had dabbled in magic with tragic consequences. In May of 1680, Robert Wycherley, poet, fop and social gadfly, failed to make a remunerative marriage and was saved from drowning by an unexpected turn of events. In 1718, Alexander Pope, the small, disfigured poet and satirist, tried to bestow a generous gift on a young couple, but failed to do so. In 1681, Robert Calverley resigned an important state position to save the life of his wife Honoria who he had literally stolen from the Marquis of Umfraville before their expected marriage. He returned to England despite warnings from friends that his actions had outraged many in high places and now,they wanted revenge. He was saved from ruin by an unselfish act of a scheming relative. In 1795, Richard Sheridan, poet-politician, married Miss Esther Jane Ogle known as "the irresistible Ogle," after being rebuffed by her many, many times. On Sheridan's turf, Miss Ogle proved to be no match for the wily politician. In 1803, Crown Prince Hilary of Saxe-Kesselberg, staged his funeral, changed his name to Paul Vanderhoffen and fled to England to become a poet and writer. After a series of events, one of which almost ended in his death, he married Mildred Claridge and became a writer on Grub Street. John Charteris, a distinguised writer and lecturer, gave a Commencement Speech at his alma mater and thought he had a chance to rekindle a relationship with Pauline Romeyne, a former lover, until his friend Rudolph Musgrave ruined his plan with a dose of reality.

The 21 page "Auctorial Induction" should be read both before and after reading the ten tales. In it, JBC makes a number of penetrating observations about the 1916 literary scene in the USA. The ballad at the beginning of the book and the one at its end, both bear rereading.

The Silver Stallion
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Cabell: supercilious fop

A Central Piece Of "Biography"

Innuendo Plus

Before Tolkien

Legends and heroes are made, not born

The Silver Stallion
James Branch Cabell
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 0345280725
Release Date: 1979-05-12

Customer Reviews:

Cabell: supercilious fop.......2006-11-26

Cabell is an excellent writer at the sentence level and he certainly possesses a subtle, literary wit. His books are empty, suggestive drollery, a sort of irony-drenched satire of light fantasy. If you're in the mood for that sort of thing you won't do any better.

However, he has no other merits. The artsy, supercilious tone he strikes ensures that he cannot plumb any kind of real depths. Surely, he tries on occasion, but he is such a life-hating, self-absorbed, limp-wristed aesthete that he can't pull it off. It's all just philosophizing. In the end, he is a typical dilettante: all style and no substance. This, of course, fools the pseudo-intellectual type into thinking he is an important writer. He is not. His books are nice lightweight stuff to chuckle over as a break from real reading (for example, Lord Dunsany or the greatest fantasist of all time, E. R. Eddison, either of whom make Cabell look like a clown). Enjoy Cabell for what he is, but don't be fooled by his supporters into thinking he is anything else. For my part, I would rather read even something along the lines of R. E. Howard or K. E.Wagner than this stuff, because at least those writers are honest, and at least they are real men: everything, in other words, that Cabell is not.

A Central Piece Of "Biography".......2006-05-03

James Branch Cabell (1879-1958), a novelist, poet, essayist, playwright, satirist, the favourite author of Mark Twain (another satirist), was a true wizard of words, who, according to his own words, wrote only for his own pleasure, and spent countless hours studying the writing styles of other authors, always mixing up the styles of two, three or perhaps four different authors as he saw fit for his current literary work (you can read Cabell's own words in Quite, Please). Thus the writing styles varied from novel to novel--and, on some special occasions, from page or paragraph to the next--more or less subtly (most notably in The Devil's Own Dear Son), yet always suitably. Commentators usually fail to note this particular excellence of Cabell, as does Mr. Eric Walker in his otherwise excellent essay on Cabell (which you may wish to read to find out more about Cabell and his work) in his Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works website.

The Silver Stallion (a good edition by Kessinger Publishing is currently in print) is one of my personal favourites of Cabell's (or anybody else's) novels, along with Figures of Earth (the previous volume in the "Biography"), Jurgen (the volume that comes after this one), Domnei (the ultimate romance), and The King Was in His Counting House (a late work). Moreover, having read some of the above mentioned books a number of times, I think this one emerges as the one I would choose to read over and over again if I could choose only one novel by Cabell. Unfortunately, I'm not experienced enough to trace back Cabell's stylistic influences in this particular work, but I can say his writing is loftier, and his usual trademarks in evidence: the well-weighed assonances, huge vocabulary (which he uses prudently), urbanity, polyphony of different voices (views), and even meanings (through deliberation, not incompetence), and the sheer mastery of language.

The novel is about how a legend is made; its consequences; and the different attitudes... As Cabell writes in the prologue (the tone of the story itself isn't quite that lofty):

Herewith begins the history of the birth and of the triumphing of the great legend about Manuel the Redeemer, whom Gonfal repudiated as blown dust, and Miramon as an impostor, and whom Coth repudiated out of honest love: but whom Guivric accepted, through two sorts of policy; whom Kerin accepted as an honourable old human foible, and Ninzian, as a pathetic and serviceable joke; whom Donander accepted wholeheartedly (to the eternal joy of Donander), and who was accepted also by Niafer, and by Jurgen the Pawnbroker, after some little private reservations: and hereinafter is recorded the manner of the great legend's engulfement of these persons.

Innuendo Plus.......2006-01-05

James Branch Cabell was much admired by H.L. Menken as one of the few southern writers of merit, and i can see why. He is quietly and persistently subversive - the innunedo in the book is quite wicked.

Murder, adultery, treachery etc are dealt with in such a civilised and matter of fact and even tounge in cheek way. The book can be seen as a satire of southern american society. Its rather reminicent of Lord Dunsany. Cabell repays close reading and much meaning has to be teased out of the text. Im sure it did appear shocking in the 1920's when written - but now days would appear rather tame and stale to most. It provides a wealth of insite into the human psyche.

Before Tolkien.......2001-07-29

Before "The Fellowship of the Ring" there was "The Fellowship of the Silver Stallion"; the consequences for those who allied themselves in arms with Dom Manuel (The Reedemer), progenitor of generations (mortal and otherwise) and founder of myth.

Legends and heroes are made, not born.......2000-06-19

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) wrote "All social realities--values and processes--are created by humans. The social and ideational world represents no entity without humans. Such a world is the reflection of the socialization experienced by each individual in his/her cognitive development. This novel is an inadvertent fictional demonstration of the validity of Durkheim's statement.

This book provides a major key for getting perspective on Poictesme and its varied inhabitants. In 1239, Dom Manuel, Count of Poictesme disappeared. At Storisende, his young daughter Melicent said that she had seen her father on a black horse riding to the west in company with Grandfather Death on a white one. Young Jurgen, another child who was the son of Coth, reported that at dusk,in Upper Morven, he had seen Dom Manuel partake of a fearful eucharist, who was then transfigured into the glowing clouds of the sunset. Dom Manuel had founded the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, and since it had lost its leader, Niafer, his wife, summoned the nine remaining members of the group to come to Storisende for its final meeting. After they all had arrived, Horvendile addressed them as follows, "The master who held Poictesme, under my whims, has passed. A woman sits in his place, his little son inherits after him. So begins a new romance; and a new order is afoot." Next, he assigned each of the nine a fate and ordered that a fire be kindled. The banner of the fellowship was burned and each lord of the Black Stallion broke his sword into fragments and threw them into the flames, so that their swords could never defend any other standard. The nine, Gonfal of Naimes, Donander of Evre, Kerin of Nointel, Ninzian of Yair, Holden of Nerac, Anavalt of Fomor, Coth of the Rocks, Guivric of Perdigon and Miramon of Ranec, returned home and made ready for the new order. In this book, the fates of Gonfal, Miramon, Coth, Guivric, Kerin, Ninzian and Donander are told. Alongside their stories, a parallel history is given of the birth and triumph of the great legend about Manuel the Redeemer as it developed in Poictesme.

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