12/11/21

Relatos fantásticos y entretenidos ( )

Less than the sum of its parts. Apparently on a lark, Lord Bertie decides to write some short stories expounding on some of is favourite themes in a new medium. Of the "nightmares", a couple are stellar--the psychoanalyst's nightmare in which Hamlet, Othello, Romeo, Lear and Antony are sitting around in purgatory talking about how he made good stable citizens of them all; Stalin's dream, where he is remanded by a war crimes trial to the custody of understanding Quakers, out of whom he cannot get a rise even when he burns them with hot soup. That shows inventiveness, and he has a kind of overponderous humour, and I like the future dystopia in "Zahatopolk" where the Inca rule the world and eat their babies (of course), even if it is a bit sub-Huxley. But as you read, you see the same stories--the exact same allegories, only illustrated in a new way--make their appearance, and people get up and say their set pieces in tortuous word sequences no human would ever have spoke, and it all gets a bit twee and dusty and tedious, really. Famous as he is as a logician and ethicist, Russell was canny enough to keep the former out of his little fictional side project here; he would have been better off if he could have said the same about the latter. ( )