Overton's Overture

I am surprised it took this long to find an author like Joseph Hergesheimer. Over the last three weeks we've read a mix of tales, from stories by famous authors, to popular tales that resonated in their day, to still-anthologized works like "The Most Dangerous Game." Hergesheimer, the author of today's story, is the first time we've come across an artist who followed that winding road that begins at fame and ends at obscurity.  Throughout the 1920s Hergesheimer was regarded as one of the most important writers in America. His fourth novel, Java Head (published by Knopf), almost won the Pulitzer in the award's second year of existence. 1 Powerful directors like Henry King and King Vidor directed cinematic adaptations of his work in the silent era. At the time Hergesheimer wrote frequently and was read by many. He was known to have been a great influence on now-canonical authors F. Scott Fitzgerald and Upton Sinclair. The critic Leon Kellner lavished pra...

The twist seems to have disappeared. The first two titles in this volume shared winding narratives delivered by characters that were not the narrator. In these stories description, whether of a supposed national identity or an unceasingly dismantling ship , propelled the narrative forward. There was no need for an unannounced revelation. Focused on the recollection of the past, the twist of fate format was exchanged for an imaginative reconstruction of the past. Charles de Musset’s “The Beauty Spot” returns us the territory of the first volume. A “novelette” set in the mid-18 th century during the reign of Louis XV, this story is structured by seven chapters. Each chapter is an episode in the Chevalier de Vauvert’s evolving attempts to win the love of Mademoiselle d’Annebault. It bears the Franco-historical specificity of Stevenson’s tale of Villon and the economic morality of Arthur Somers Roche’s “The Dummy-Chucker.” What distinguishes this—the third lengthy tale in the “Rom...

To recount a memory is often to embrace the romantic possibility that things went the right way. Even if they didn’t. Yesterday, I discussed how Kyne’s story of Bill Emlow and Dad Tully was framed around Dad recounting the past as a lesson. Romance blossomed in Bill's persistent entreaties to Lady Angela and Dad used that fortuitous foundering of love to prescribe possibilities for the future. Joseph Conrad considering tales of the sea he has heard The past was the map to move forward. In Kyne’s ever moving forward progression of time, it was important for Dad to create an American identity and thus an American past that could resonate in perpetuity. “This could have occurred nowhere but in England where men and seas interpenetrate, so to speak” are the first words of Joseph Conrad’s “Youth.” Conrad’s tale follows a similar framing device, but the narrators are much less assured of any nationalist bombast.  Around a table sit five men. They drink. They share. Marl...

We’ve lived with "adventure" for ten days. Perhaps to the point of repetition. In the last posts I returned to the same question: what are the conditions that define “adventure?” Grant Overton, the editor of the collection, gave his own account in the introduction and it may make the most sense to chalk up the term to contingency. Whatever the necessary and sufficient conditions are, I certainly haven’t figured them out. However, as I wrote before the connections between imperialist desire and colonialism were foundational to most of the first volume.  Peter B. Kyne And now we turn to “romance.” After the first story I’m not sure if romance will refer to stories of love and explicit sexuality or those invested in the slippery smoothness of Coleridge’s Xanadu. Either vision will be interesting as most of the stories (except for “ The Dummy Chucker ” ) in the first volume detailed certain undercurrents of obligation within homosocial relationships. Values were impo...

I was seven years old when Disney's version of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released in June 1996. I never saw the movie, but I remember promotional materials, I remember the green tunic of the main character, I remember the toys. This was Disney, perhaps the representative figure of capitalism, so there were toys from both gigantic fast food dealers: Burger King and McDonald's. I had some of the Burger King toys. At the time I dug Aladdin (1992) and I loved  The Lion King (1994), but I kind of fell off Disney after that. I didn't see any Disney animated release until Tarzan came out in 1999, and to be honest that was probably only because Phil Collins did the music. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Walt Disney Pictures, Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1996) It is through Disney that I learned of the name Victor Hugo. And the promotion for that film, with the omni-present posters for Les Miserables , are my strongest reference point for the F...

The concluding "twist" has been important in most stories read here. So I appreciated that "The Dummy Chucker"  is the first story to foreground the role of a confidence man. Ignorant of the intricacies of early 20th century cons, I was unfamiliar with dummy chucking: the process of eating a bit of soap and miming the convulsions that come with epilepsy in an effort to solicit coins of sympathy from individuals walking in the street. The term was most prominent around the turn of the 20th century, from the 1880s through the 1920s. That act of mischief, that play for financial stability, opens Arthur Somers Roche's warm-hearted tale "The Dummy Chucker." The June 1920 issue of Cosmopolitan , where "The Dummy Chucker" was first published Though Roche was a prolific writer he might be more famous now as the originator of stories used as source material for a variety of films. Well, except for in Arkansas. In 1921, a year after "T...

At this point it seems that the role of "adventure" is coalescing around tales of the West, stories of sea travel, and perhaps most fundamentally, imperialism. The importance of indigenous presence, whether acknowledged or projected has been the denied obsession of this collection (evident in stories by Davis, White, Russell, Harte). That continues with Frank H. Spearman's "The Run of the Yellow Mail," a simple tale of the young little engineer who could. Except, well, that engineer needed some Sioux people to risk their lives for his safety. The relationship between vigilantism and ambitious young men runs deep in the American imaginary. Often knowing what is "right," in the moral sense, comes to a head with professional growth. Of course, the trick of narrative is to draw a narrow focus around what is right—i.e. Dirty Harry movies or the Deathwish series, rely on dominant logics of racism to promote their revenge stories. Thus what is show...