Here’s a plot for a mystery novel. Who killed the writer? Perhaps an ancient Egyptian mummy whose spirit hated a book that a Victorian author had churned out about him? Not because it was racist but because it was so mind-numbing?
Such thoughts came to me after reading Bad writing from a long time ago, an Arabist.net post on some “dreadfully dull” writing of yesteryear.
I’ll share a gem the Arabist site dug up from The Spell of Egypt, by Robert Smythe Hichens, tactfully mentioned as an “otherwise a relatively capable early fantastic/mystery writer:”
“The terrific temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men, crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose.”
Actually Hichens did come up with the 1905 novel on which Hollywood based The Garden of Allah film. The poster showing Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer was for the Italian version of the movie.
If you want to see racism from the past, a number of old Gutenberg classics will do. No, I would not want them stricken from the online archives: let’s stay true to literature and history and appreciate how far we’ve come. For a possible example, read Tarrano the Conqueror, complete with references to “the Anglo-Saxon Republic” and pesky immigrants from the planet Venus. Where is the killer mummy when we need him?
I’ll confess: I had trouble getting into Ray Cummings’ book, and an Amazon reviewer says it “foreshadowed what was going on in Germany, and I am not the only one who saw quite a bit of Hitler in Tarrano.” Probably I need to give Tarrano a second chance and read on. Cummings is said to have helped found pulp SF, and I’ll welcome a word from any of his defenders lurking out there.
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If you want to see racism from the past, a number of old Gutenberg classics will do.
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Heck, like John W. Campbell wasn’t a raging racist? Asimov one wrote that Campbell’s racism informed his editing, twisting any alien stories published in _Astounding_. Asimov refrained from writing about aliens for Campbell as a result.
IIRC these comments are in _The Early Asimov_ prefacing the story “Homo Sol.”
Heh. This reminds me of a Victorian-era thriller I found on Project Gutenberg that was going along okay until about chapter 4 or so, where they all got to the country house, sat down for tea, and then somebody said ‘So, what are your opinions on politics’ or something like that, and there ensued a good 40 pages or so of the author spouting off their political views through the mouths of the various characters, and I am vainyl trying to skim ahead and find the murder promised by the title…
Yeah. There is a reason some works have been confined to the dustbin of history, isn’t there?
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This reminds me of a Victorian-era thriller […] and there ensued a good 40 pages or so of the author spouting off their political views through the mouths of the various characters
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I didn’t know Michael Crichton was that old. 🙂
I read the first Shadow novel and there’s some pretty jarring references to Chinese and “African American” characters.
And HP Lovecraft gets a lot of stick for his descriptions of “African Americans”.
Quotations marks because I find that term ludicrous.