cosmopolis

Grub Street Irregular

Jeremy Lewis' third autobiographical volume focuses, like his second, on the London literary life of the 1970s through 1990s. Even in the early part of this period, there was a sense that the silver age of publishing was passing; conglomerates and women were taking over, and the long bibulous lunches were replaced by coffee and sandwiches. Lewis pays homage to departed friends like Alan Ross, David Hughes, Dennis Enright and Peter Gunn--men who seemed rich both in achievement and savoir-faire to Lewis, who likes to portray himself as a bit of naif. And then there's Nirad Chaudhuri, the centenarian Bengali writer:

At some stage in his wanderings, Mr. Chaudhuri had acquired an enormous scimitar of the Arabian Nights variety; frustrated by his belated physical decrepitude, he decided to end his days, and insisted his manservant should cut his head off. The manservant refused, claiming that if he did so he would almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison; Mr. Chaudhuri accused him of gross insubordination; the manservant was adamant, and -- for the first time in his very long life, perhaps -- his master was forced to climb down.

Lewis can be sloppy -- if he was Paul Theroux's agent, he should know that Theroux's first book was not published by Alan Ross -- or strangely coy, as when he talks about being Ian McEwan's agent early in his career without naming him. But this is redeemed by his brilliant and not unsympathetic portraits of Andre Deutsch, unsure at the end of his life of exactly what his apartment address is, and A.L. Rowse, bedridden and cranky, positive he is one of the few "first-raters" around.  

The Domains of Koryphon

I've now read the novel, which I don't think I ever did as a lad. I still doubt that at the time of its original publication it was vilified as racist, as Resnick claims in his introduction; but a glance at the Amazon comments makes clear it's being vilified now. A much bigger problem is that the novel is not excellent, as I said, but rather far from Vance's best -- the characters are flat, the plotting awkward, the pacing poor. Schaine is a dithering damsel waiting for the right man; Elvo sensitive but ineffectual; Jemasze square-jawed and dull. I wonder why this novel was rescued for a pricey omnibus when there were so many better candidates.

The Jack Vance Reader

Through a career now spanning 60 years, Jack Vance has rarely been well-served by his publishers. Covers are hideous, production standards non-existent, the will to keep the books in print sadly lacking. Now comes Subterranean and their Jack Vance Reader, containing two excellent novels, Emphyrio and The Domains of Koryphon, and the lesser Languages of Pao. Physically it's a reasonable package, solidly made and with a good but not great cover (the usual rocketships and ruins) by Gnemo. But the general introduction by the editors is blather, while Mike Resnick introduces Koryphon (originally known as The Gray Prince -- not the Grey Prince, which is how it's consistently identified here) by rambling about his own work, and then says the charges of racism against the novel aren't true. Who made these charges, anyway? No clue. Robert Silverberg phones in his introduction to Emphyrio. Ursula Le Guin makes a good point about Pao and Vance's work generally: "They aren't alien worlds, or future worlds. They are our own lost world. They are Earth before the airplane, Earth in all the centuries when it was boundless, endlessly rich in mystery and strangeness." She also refers to Vance in the past tense as if he were dead, admits she hadn't read any of his books for many years, and devotes much of her space to complaining his women are stick figures. Sigh. Next time, folks, can we spend more than 10 minutes on writing this stuff? Vance deserves better and so, for $38, do I.