John Crowley Little and Big

The Case of the Impossible Author

The Case of the Impossible Author

[info]crowleycrow
7/4/09 10:54 am
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baby
 
A link in Rhe Dizzies homepage opposite led me to this:

site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/story.html

Can this really be possible?  Is it the sort of elaborate hoax that the Net invites and obsessed over-stimulated and highly intelligent college students create?  It has to be real; follow the links and you get an actual novel, published by McSweeneys -- but then again McSweeneys is a doubtful enterprise and seems itself somehow impossible even when yhou hold its products in your hands.
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  • Ramblehouse has reprinted a lot of this

    [info]nihilistic_kid
    7/4/09 03:03 pm (UTC)
    The original weird-boiled detective writer!

    http://www.ramblehouse.com/HarryKeeler.htm

  • [info]sheherazahde
    7/4/09 03:06 pm (UTC)
    Amazon.com lists several novels by Harry Stephen Keeler. So that looks like a confirmation.

  • [info]thatmakesmemad
    7/4/09 03:23 pm (UTC)
    The "Arabian Nights device" could suggest that the site creator was writing a story about someone who wrote stories but a search reveals antiquarian book dealers offering first editions (http://www.antiqbook.co.uk/boox/lit/16056.shtml £250 for an edition in a somewhat worn state!!!) so it seems he did exist. Mind you one site describes him as the Ed Wood of detective novels and aside from the middle period sounding somewhat Beckett like in style it suggests a character from an Edward Gorey book. Flying strangler babies ?!!!!

  • [info]anselmo_b
    7/4/09 03:32 pm (UTC)
    When I read this (it's in Spanish)
    http://www.letraslibres.com/blog/blogs/index.php?m=20090423
    in April, I thought it was some sort of joke or hoax too. Especially the affirmation that his last loyal publishers were in Madrid, during the time of Franco's dictatorship; I mean, we're talking about the last fascist dictatorship here. But then Letras Libres is one of the most important literary magazines in the Spanish-speaking world.

  • [info]le_trombone
    7/4/09 03:43 pm (UTC)
    Oh yes, quite real. There was an article on Keeler in the Chicago Reader some years ago (unfortunately before they had their articles on-line, so I can't give a link). I had him on my to-read list for a while when I stumbled upon the McSweeny's edition of The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, and bought it about three years ago.

    I have a very large to-read stack, so I can't give a summary, sorry.

  • Keeler

    [info]ivebeenreadinglately.blogspot.com
    7/4/09 04:30 pm (UTC)
    As others have noted, Keeler was very much real, living and working in Chicago. He was extremely prolific, and the novels of his I've read are as strange as they seem at a glance.

    He's also, as the Keeler Society page has indicated, attracted a lot of dedicated fans--I think people are drawn to him simply because he seems to be sui generis, his oeuvre seeming to be utterly independent of any influence or school.

    If you want a recommendation of where to start, the Keeler Society folks would I'm sure be glad to give you one.

  • [info]dharma_slut
    7/4/09 05:04 pm (UTC)
    There's an element of R. A. Lafferty as well, who wrote Irish tall tales in a science fiction milieu.

    Or conversely, like an internet fic writer who never found a 'beta reader.'

  • [info]dyvyd
    7/4/09 05:06 pm (UTC)
    He is apparently eccentric enough to command some hefty prices from collectors! Many of his first editions are on AbeBooks.com selling for hundreds of dollars and "The Portrait of Sir John Cobb" is going for $850!

  • Keeler

    [info]graywyvern
    7/4/09 05:33 pm (UTC)
    i have a couple of his books--there's actually not as terrible as the writings about them might suggest.

    i've always wanted to try to write something using his formula for creating plots (very OuLiPo)--there's a pdf IIRC kicking around the internet somewhere--

    No, life can invent weirder writers than anything writers can come up with.

    m.

  • [info]snej
    7/4/09 09:43 pm (UTC)
    I had a tingly feeling while reading that page, as though I'd read one of his books already; but what I was thinking of turned out to be "The Deadly Percheron" by John Franklin Bardin. That one's pretty damn weird, but it sounds like John Cheever compared to what Keeler's output must be like.

  • [info]p_straub55
    7/4/09 11:31 pm (UTC)
    Wow, is he ever real, shamelessly, fabulously... Neil Gaiman turned me on to Keeler, whose books are totally unlike any other writer's. He liked heads in bags, for one thing. you can get his books from the publisher linked to in that piece, a man in Louisiana who makes each book by hand, ironing on the covers on his kitchen table. Of course, he worships Keeler.

    • [info]crowleycrow
      7/4/09 11:56 pm (UTC)
      Every time I think this isn't possible any more, something like this comes into my ken. Maybe somewhere now someone's writing stuff just as weird and getting away with it under some rubric: Anime? Fanfic? Something.

      • (Anonymous)
        7/5/09 01:59 am (UTC)
        Oh my word, I can't even begin to imagine the idiosyncratic gems you could turn up if you spent enough time wading through the right fanfiction databases. Alas, the signal to noise ratio in that particular mouth of the woods would render the endeavor... problematic.

      • [info]snippetygiblets
        7/5/09 11:32 am (UTC)
        It brings to mind a character created by my college friend, Dan with whom I have now lost contact. His invention was an American author along the lines of a Carson McCullers / J D Salinger fusion, named Clem Toberg. His seminal work was "The Lacquered Cousin". Much fun was had bemusing one female lecturer in particular who couldn't decide if the whole thing was a joke or not.

  • [info]lizhand
    7/5/09 09:11 pm (UTC)
    ABE Books lists " Y. Cheung: Business Detective" as going for $664.69. A rather Dischian title — and if the price had only been a dollar more, so that it could be rounded up, rather Dischian pricing too.

    • [info]anselmo_b
      7/5/09 09:50 pm (UTC)
      I thought that was the number of the Crowley, the other Crowley that is.

      • [info]joculum
        7/6/09 07:04 pm (UTC)
        This will probably get posted somewhere other than as an answer to anselmo_b, so I'll specify that. In answer to your remark, there is quite a history in Protestant America of multiple paranoid references to the Number of the Beast from the Book of Revelation...so I imagine anyone with a certain level of amused perversity could make considerable use of it.

        Scholars have recently suggested that in the original Greek text, John's number of the beast was actually something like 616, which seems just plain silly.

        • [info]anselmo_b
          7/7/09 09:58 am (UTC)
          I assume [info]lizhand is referring to something in Tom Disch's "horror" novels which I have not yet read. In fact, one of the dialogues that remained unconcluded between us was about the question of how shocking I would find his merciless treatment of the Catholic faith in "The Priest" (Crowleycrow has some excellent lines on those novels in his "In other words"). So I was really only joking for the sake of it.
          616? I guess by now 666 must have been so thoroughly explained that even if the original manuscript of "The Revelation" were to be produced and proved to say 616 it would only show that even guys like John (the one of Patmos) are not above misspelling.

          • [info]joculum
            7/7/09 06:56 pm (UTC)
            I had forgotten the pop horror story uses of the triple six, but the repercussions in the general culture include reluctance of some people to have the number in their license plates (where they usually have no choice) or telephone numbers, though 666 Fifth Avenue was and I presume is a rather acceptable street address in NYC.

            The 616 version apparently turned up relatively recently in a fragment that is the earliest known surviving copy of the passage containing the reference.
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