Seabury QuinnRecensioni

A wonderful little novella written for Weird Tales in 1938, which re-imagines the origins of Santa Claus. After Claus - a Viking gladiator in the Roman games - rescues Mary, Joseph and their baby from Herod's soldiers. a voice thanks him, gives him eternal life in service of His Lord and sets him down a path across history until he finally discovers his now familiar destiny as the patron Saint of children.

Mixing the old style prose of a classic fable, with elements of sword and sorcery and historical fiction, this is a short, but fun little novella. Starting from brutal beginnings and ending with on the note of joy and hope you'd expect from such a tale, Claus' journey is one worthy of any classic hero and makes this the perfect little story to read during the season.

This volume is one of a series of collected Jules de Grandin stories drawn from the body of ninety-three originally published in the pulp era pages of Weird Tales. As usual, they are "detective" stories ranging a gamut of mundane to magical menaces. The French sleuth himself is reliably amusing, giving vent to various exclamations in his characteristic idiom. "Pains of a dyspeptic bullfrog, I am greatly annoyed, me!" (59)

Two of these six stories feature villainy involving the Burmese worship of the goddess Kali: "The Gods of East and West" and "Stealthy Death." The one completely non-supernatural tale is "The House of Golden Masks," concerning an international human trafficking operation abducting young women from New Jersey. Grudge-bearing spirits of the deceased feature in both "The Poltergeist" and "The Jest of Warburg Tantavul." The latter story is notable for de Grandin's entirely non-judgmental attitude toward incest.

There are also two tales in which de Grandin brings in consultants for their esoteric expertise and powers. "The Gods of East and West" features the "full-blooded Dakotah" Doctor John Wolf, and a Muslim thaumaturge Doctor Hussein Obeyid comes to the aid of Dr. Jules in "A Gamble in Souls." This second helper is so vividly drawn that I suspected author Seabury Quinn must have used him in other stories as well, but editor Robert Weinberg in his afterword says that it is disappointingly not so.

Quinn's stories were frequently featured on the covers of Weird Tales, inevitably with illustrations of their climactic moments. "The Gods of East and West" supplied the cover for January 1928, depicting the scene on p. 37 of this book. June 1929 showed "The House of Golden Masks" with the action on p. 92. The others in this book did not make it to cover art.

This 1976 mass market paperback collects a half dozen of the ninety-three tales about occult detective Jules de Grandin. This set were all written for publication in Weird Tales from 1926 to 1933. Although all of these books by Seabury Quinn under the Popular Library imprint boast "SCIENCE FICTION" on the cover, they don't conform to the genre as it is currently understood. They are pulp-era action stories in mundane settings. The "Hellfire" title here is reasonably apposite, since each story has something to do with diabolism or a nefarious cult.

One yarn is called "The Great God Pan," and although it compares unfavorably to identically-titled stories by Arthur Machen (1894) and M. John Harrison (1988), it is still a palatable romp regarding a neo-pagan cult in the wilds of New Jersey. This one is actually the earliest included here, although it appears second.

Quinn, in the voice of de Grandin, supplies a little occult theorizing around the notion of "psychoplasm." (A likely proximate source for the term and concept was the 1920 Adventures of a Modern Occultist by Oliver Bland.) The supernatural element in the stories is highly variable, and the final pair of tales furnishes an admirable contrast between "The Hand of Glory" where exorcism is the effective solution to thwart genuine demonic influence, and "Mephistopheles and Company Ltd." where sleuthing and physical combat overcome a criminal gang who use superstition and trickery to terrify their victims. Both stories, like nearly all of these, derive motivation from a young woman in peril. Quinn seems to have preferred such ladies to be tall, slender, and pale.

The selections here include both a vampire story and a werewolf story. The latter, "The Wolf of Saint Bonnot" was the basis for the Hugh Rankin cover art of its December 1930 issue of Weird Tales (scene on pages 125-6 of this book). "The Hand of Glory" inspired the July 1933 cover by Margaret Brundage (pages 174-5). Both covers were racy illustrations typical of their genre and era, and pretty accurate to Quinn's text.

The book includes an appendix by editor Robert Weinberg that furnishes full biographical sketches of de Grandin and his amanuensis Dr. Trowbridge, as abstracted from Quinn's stories. For readers new to the de Grandin material, it might be helpful to read this end matter before the stories. Steve Fabian's map of Quinn's fictional Harrisonville, New Jersey appears at the start of the book, but the printing is a little muddy and hard to read in my copy.

This first volume of the 1970s paperback series reprints seven out of the ninety-three Jules de Grandin stories by Seabury Quinn, including several of the earliest. These began in the 1920s and quickly became a staple of Weird Tales, where they appeared nearly every other month. They were not a serial, however. There is no overarching plot nor development over time of the central characters, who are stock types of an occult investigator and his medical doctor amanuensis. In general, the stories rely on broadly-drawn characters and stereotypes in order to maintain a high tempo and to create a quotidian background for shocking crimes and supernatural menaces.

The sleuth de Grandin himself is an amusingly exaggerated, sword-cane-wielding, mustachioed, gallic scientist of diminutive stature. Most of his adventures take place in the hometown of his host and colleague Doctor Trowbridge, Harrisonville, New Jersey. Being a European in America allows de Grandin to make amusing asides castigating Prohibition, religious bigotry, and other forms of American provincialism. "Today your American courts convict high school-teachers for heresy far less grave than that charged against our Jeanne [d'Arc]. We may yet see the bones of your so estimable Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin exhumed from their graves and publicly burned by your heretic-baiters of this today" (53, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!).

The narrator Trowbridge maintains a naïve skepticism in the face of exotic events that grows less believable with each passing tale. One of the strengths of the stories is their use of menaces drawn from folk traditions and popular culture (vampires and werewolves, for instance) while allowing that the common lore may be inaccurate in its details. Thus the reader can see where de Grandin's hypotheses are leading him--while Trowbridge refuses even to consider such fanciful notions--but the tension of the unknown is maintained, along with a sense of the "scientific."

In those points where de Grandin explains or employs occultism as such, the details tend to be fairly flawed. For example, Trowbridge describes a hexagram (and the book even supplies a diagram) but de Grandin calls it a "pentagram" (182). In another adventure, de Grandin calls elemental spirits "Neutrarians," a term I hadn't previously encountered, but which appears to have been coined by Elliot O'Donnell in his Twenty Years Experiences as a Ghost Hunter.

These stories are not great works of literature, and it doesn't seem that anyone has ever mistaken them for such. They are pulp paragons, and one of their attractions is their great variety, from the piracy-and-cannibalism yarn of "The Isle of Missing Ships" to the parapsychological crime mystery of "The Dead Hand." Quinn's de Grandin stories frequently served as the basis for the cover illustrations of the numbers of Weird Tales in which they appeared. Even reading them in this mass market paperback reprint, it is not difficult to spot the moments in the stories that would be chosen for this honor. They usually featured a naked woman in peril. "The Tenants of Broussac" (scene on page 67) and "The Man Who Cast No Shadow" (153-4) are the two stories in this collection that were realized as cover art in their magazine appearances, and it is easy to note Quinn offering similarly "graphic" climaxes in every tale.

as someone who loves both pulp novels and sherlock holmes this one was a definite treat! i can't wait to start the next one!!

not my favorite of the series, but still pretty good!!

This is by no means a classic tale, and there aren't any real surprises along the way, but it is pleasantly entertaining. The audiobook is well done. The story of a young man ensnared by a long dead woman is well told, although there is no way his narrative could be quite so well constructed as he is telling it after being practically flung through the windshield of his fiancee's car....½

Meh.....These stories are the "made for TV" version of weird tales. It should be noted, however, that Mr. Quinn was one of the more popular authors at the time.¯_(ツ)_/¯

"I admit that I've read only 10 of the many stories in this book and found them all suffering from the same illness: no attempt at coherency. Consider a hand---cut off at the wrist, flying through the air to break into a house and rob it at the command of the hypnotist whose female assistant had died and from whom he severed the hand while her body lie in the morgue. The logic was that the assistant was accustomed to obey hypnotic commands in life, and the hand would continue to obey after death. Nowhere does Quinn even try to explain how the hand was able not merely to follow orders but to fly through the air! Each of the 10 stories I've read have the same gross flaws and all of the characters in the tales accept the wisdom of de Grandin without compunction (we're talking mummies and werewoves and vampires and 600 year old Rumanian counts drinking the blood of virgins, and a cult of lovely young rich ladies who worship Pan, but are afraid to actually meet him).

I will say this for the books: the covers by Donato Giancarlo are wonderful and provided me more pleasure to see than the stories did to read.

But, truth be told, if I were to have read these stories at age 13 I'd probably have loved them. As it is, I must stand behind my conviction that William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories are far superior in the genre of spiritual detectives and supernatural villains. The de Grandin stories are aimed at a light and humorous view of the supernatural and is written in a light and humorous style. Hodgson, on the other hand, writes in the vain of Merritt and Poe and Lovecraft...and with the same skill and tone--and depth--as those worthies. So, if you can still stomach the tales of your youth then read Quinn. Otherwise, restrict yourself to the real masters (""The House on the Borderland"", ""The Night Land"", ""The Boats of the Glenn Carrig"" are still among my favorite tales--primarily for their sophistication of style and spiritual tone that sucks me in and the makes me ""feel"" the horrors of the situations). Hodgson's Carnacki stories can be found on the internet for easy downloading; and well worth the effort."

Eight tales of horror from pulp writer Seabury Quinn, including two of his French take on Sherlock Holmes, occult investigator Dr. Jules Dr Brandon and his New Jersey host and sidekick, Dr. Trowbridge, who appears as a minor character in a third story, sans de Grandin. Quinn had stories in about half of Wierd Tales issues, which included 92 Dr Brandon stories. The stories covered all kinds of creatures and exotic villainy which appealed to readers, and still does to this one. Regrettably the writing reflected the casual racism of the time. Fun stories though.

“’Purty, purty!’ cried the idiot as he ran hands trembling with delight along the terrified kitten’s sleek back. His voice was high and thin and childish. Somehow it was horrifying, that weak treble coming from the monstrous bulk. ‘Purty, purty pussy!’”

—Candid Camera by Seabury Quinn

A regular contributor to “Weird Tales”, Seabury Quinn was an inevitability for my stumbling feet. I didn’t, however, plan on reading these stories to my wife. They were perfect in their unrelenting dedication to adventure, exoticism and the macabre; much like the usual fare of that American Gothic publication in which he’d been published. They were imperfect for their pervasive employment of racism (chiefly Asian stereotypes) and sexism (meant to be endearing, I believe)—to be expected, of course (just look at the magazine covers). It’s easy to condemn with time and distance from the sterile ramparts of a progressive society that makes egalitarianism a goal. It’s also easy to see how that ideology had once been so palatable given that America is heading into a new era of Gothic recidivism and counterfeit reality. You know, as if the constitution had been some barely legible palimpsest on the backs of menus and half-finished crossword puzzles. Those curvy blades in those fantastic magazine covers were largely useless, mostly ritual. Those curvaceous women largely unrealistic, mostly masturbatory invention.

So, I’m torn when I read this kind of fiction. The wife and I enjoyed the tales. The suspense and atmosphere. The exotic locales and larger-than-life characters. And I can’t deny that this kind of fiction has an influence on my own narrative. But a lot of it comes in the form of opening a door to what the genre usually closes; giving a microphone to the voices normally gagged and tossed in a darkened corner; putting a real working blade in a real woman’s fist and letting her have bloody revenge—without the help of a male counterpart. Or maybe I’m just being overly sensitive. But I can’t help wince when watching, say, Boris Karloff as Mr. Wong or Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu, even while getting a perverse thrill from the campy performances among outlandish backdrops. Maybe being overly sensitive is the right pitch—the raw nerve poking through the meat. Maybe any form of joy that comes at the expense of another culture should make one uncomfortable—no matter how fun following that gory yarn may be.

And seriously, dude—a bowtie? What a strange nexus of influences that time in America must’ve been. I guess we’ll find out. God, I hate bowties, though.

“So, like all modern philosophers, I thought much, drank much, and smoked much over the problem—and arrived nowhere.”

—The Stone Image by Seabury Quinn

Audiobook: A longtime fan of Dr. Jules de Grand in and Dr. Trowbridge, pulp fiction occult counterparts to Holmes and Watson. Their targets are werewolves, ghostly Knights Templar, mummies, vampires, and other deadly supernatural villains. The intent is to collect all 92 stories. I can hardly wait for the second volume.

Yet another massive collection from Night Shade, this one featuring the entire set of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin stories. De Grandin is your classic occult investigator, with, perhaps, more than a little of the Poirot-like "leetle grey cells" at play.

They don't write them like this any longer, and some people might be grateful, but aside from the constant "name of the this or that" that de Grandin uses instead of more conventional swearing, these are generally fun stories, with the opponent ranging from science-gone-wrong to star-crossed lovers to the mysterious workings of the supernatural world, each story presents us with with an unusual situation, which, after brilliant (and often off-page) investigation by de Grandin, results in a dramatic resolution, sometimes happy for all, sometimes merely a hard-won survival.

There is plenty of casual racism and sexism on display, although it tends towards being more laughable than deliberately nasty—there are plenty of "colored men" and "natives" fulfilling their roles on the adversarial side, along with the beautiful but weak women who are so often their victims.

For me, the most consistently annoying aspect of these stories has been their narrator, Dr. Trowbridge, an American physician who runs into de Grandin time and time again, first in America, then France, then on a ship, and who, again and again, clings to a hopelessly naive and blinkered view of the world surrounding him, with his previous encounters with de Grandin apparently making very little impression on the way he looks at the world or the limits he imagines to exist. Honestly, I suspect that de Grandin must keep him around in part because Trowbridge always makes him look so good in comparison. As this is only the first of five volumes, I can only hope that Quinn will eventually give Trowbridge the opportunity to purchase or otherwise obtain sufficient clues to how his world really works so he can be more helpful to de Grandin and less annoying to the reader.

UPDATE: After writing this review and considering the stories some more, I’ve decided not to purchase (or read) any of the other volumes. Unlike Poirot’s Captain Hastings or Holmes’s Watson, who are a bit dim but bring bravery and derring-do, as well as medical experience and support in Watson’s case, to their stories, Trowbridge brings nothing but stupidity and incompetence to the table, and is, in fact, so amazingly annoying that I actually get angry every time I think of him. So no more de Grandin, and, probably, no more Seabury Quinn for me.½

Jules de Grandin is basically a French Sherlock Holmes who investigates occult-related mysteries (complete with narration by his doctor friend.) It was fun, predictable in a good way, and even rather sweet at the end. De Grandin himself is a delight. I've had The Compleat Adventures of Jules De Grandin on my watch/wishlist for a while now; I'm going to have to bump up the priority on that.½

A terrific Nativity story, which also provides an explanation of the origin of another great Christian character.

The correct title is "The Compleat..."
http://www.sfsite.com/08a/jg133.htm

Originally read in the Popular Library editions of 1976-77 (The Adventures of..., The Casebook of..., The Horror Chambers of..., The Hellfire Files of..., The Skeleton Closet of...)

"The Devil's Bride" read as an e-book in 2002

Read as a photocopy...