Characterizing Cabell
DiscussieThe Rabble Discuss Cabell: James Branch Cabell &c
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1wirkman
There are many passages throughout his writings. Here is one:
‘Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation and realistic representation. The stories in "The Line of Love," though they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a mediæval baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for "Jurgen," it is as realistic in manner as Zola's "La Terre," despite its grotesque fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen and Queen Guinevere's father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling's "Mandalay" is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of "A Doll's House.’
“The Novel,” H. L. Mencken. “Prejudices, Third Series.”
‘Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation and realistic representation. The stories in "The Line of Love," though they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a mediæval baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for "Jurgen," it is as realistic in manner as Zola's "La Terre," despite its grotesque fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen and Queen Guinevere's father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling's "Mandalay" is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of "A Doll's House.’
“The Novel,” H. L. Mencken. “Prejudices, Third Series.”
2wirkman
“Mr. Cabell is in literary escrow at the moment, but he is dead, and the necessity for being dead in order to attract the literary patronage of American intellectuals is well known. He will come back into his own. He is temporarily dead literarily also because it is said his writing held no ‘Social Consciousness.’ Interpreting this double-talk without academic frescoes, we find it means that the contemporary clowns who interpret literary value in the United States can’t find any Communism in his work.”
The Autobiography of Jack Woodford (1962)
The Autobiography of Jack Woodford (1962)
3elenchus
I'm fairly certain Lucius Shepard inadvertently mis-characterises Cabell here, conflating him with Stephen R. Lawless:
My father forced me to read James Branch Cabell, which almost ruined me for fantasy. Somebody, I forget who, wrote of his Dragon King trilogy that his dragon hunters had the personalities (I’m paraphrasing here) of desperate insurance salesmen.
My father forced me to read James Branch Cabell, which almost ruined me for fantasy. Somebody, I forget who, wrote of his Dragon King trilogy that his dragon hunters had the personalities (I’m paraphrasing here) of desperate insurance salesmen.
4Crypto-Willobie
Yeah, that's why I thumb my nose at Lucius Shepard every night before I go to bed.
I suspect he was thinking of this quote from Mencken...
H. L. Mencken disputed Cabell's claim to romanticism and characterized him as "really the most acidulous of all the anti-romantics. His gaudy heroes ... chase dragons precisely as stockbrockers play golf."
(from wikipedia )
I suspect he was thinking of this quote from Mencken...
H. L. Mencken disputed Cabell's claim to romanticism and characterized him as "really the most acidulous of all the anti-romantics. His gaudy heroes ... chase dragons precisely as stockbrockers play golf."
(from wikipedia )
