Fred ChappellRecensioni

I liked the first two-thirds of this book, when it revolved around a son's attempt to find out more about his deceased father's inner thoughts. Abruptly it changed into a sci-fi book with a flashback (I think) to when the family went on a trip to the moon via the father's homemade spaceship. This incident wasn't mentioned again, and could easily be lifted out of the book without causing any plot disruptions.

Overall I think the book was mediocre, and putting in a random chapter that was pure sci-fi did nothing to make things better.

Chappell has a poet’s facility with language, and I was happy to see him turn it to a fantasy tale. I love his Appalachian stories, and here he portrays an Italianate setting with vivid character, from its sly bravos and petulant artists to its society of cats, pirates and even unusual and deadly flora. With a touch of adventure and light use of the fantastic, there are echoes of Vance and Leiber here, but its very much its own thing. Sciomancy, the art of shadow mastery, is an imaginative and clever idea, and had me thinking more than once of the shadow I take for granted that follows me.

This book was a disappointment. Despite a couple of high points Chapelle came across as a poor man's [a:Ray Bradbury|1630|Ray Bradbury|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1445955959p2/1630.jpg]. The [a:Carl Linnaeus|660225|Carl Linnaeus|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1398435775p2/660225.jpg] story was outstanding, "Bacarole" and "The Snow that is Nothing in the Triangle" were excellent as well.

"Duet" would have gone from primarily maudlin to profound if Chapelle had just gone the extra mile and made the relationship a more explicitly homosexual one. I think he was trying to be enigmatic about the relationship, or maybe I'm just reading more into it and it was truly intended to be just maudlin. As it is he plays it safe.

I didn't like "Weird Tales" and more particularly "The Adder" but I have a personal bias against this sort of Lovecraftian fiction.

I absolutely hated "Alma." I know what Chapelle was trying to do but it still made me cringe. I felt similarly but to a lesser extent about "Ladies from Lapland." Chapelle just couldn't resist the pun. "After Revelation" was particularly weak as well, not horrible, just uninspired.

The rest were good but not great; the sort of thing that would fit in well in a Twilight Zone episode. Chapelle is somewhat like [a:Charles Beaumont|246684|Charles Beaumont|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1306872680p2/246684.jpg] in that he is largely a "What if?" sort of story teller. "What if the Necronomicon were real?" That sort of thing.

Overall the stories were clever but forgettable and Chapelle's prose isn't as inspired as Bradbury's.

The stories of Falco the apprentice shadow thief first appeared in ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction’ and I loved them. So when I discovered they had been combined into a novel, I couldn’t get it soon enough or is it a novel that was sold in bits to ‘The Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction’? Hard to tell. It reads like a novel, to be fair, with the disparate elements coming together nicely at the end and, as people are more likely to buy novels than story collections, we shall call it a novel.

Falco is a farmer’s son who wants to better himself, so he comes to the port city of Tardocco in the province of Tlemia with the aim of apprenticing himself to Maestro Astolfo of the shadow trade. When we meet Falco, he is in Astolfo’s mansion with Astolfo’s blade at his throat. Fortunately, the master decides to admit him to his household. Falco the farmer is soon engaged in intensive training. He will learn to separate shadows from their casters with the quasilune knife but must also undergo intense instruction in unarmed combat and swordplay from the voiceless servant Mutano, a great hulk of a man who thrashes him easily. His first real job comes up when a merchant named Pecunio contacts Maestro Astolfo with a shadow for sale. The names, city-states and level of culture are all similar to Italy in the Renaissance period.

Pecunio asks Astolfo to identify a shadow purporting to be that of the infamous pirate Morbruzzo. Falco is not much help here as he is still learning the trade. In his next adventure, a noble lady has a great jewel which appears to have a shadow in it and her mental health seems affected. On page 40, we learn some of the uses of shadows in this world. They may be used to furnish a pleasant background to a room. Winemakers steep lesser vintages in shadow to add subtlety and depth and they may be used to darken silks and linens slightly. As the novel progresses, there is more about shadows and it becomes clear that Chappell’s fantastical conceit has been well thought out.

By chapter three, some years have passed and Falco has learned enough to take on an assignment of his own. A wealthy rope merchant has twin children, a brother and sister born an hour apart, but has lately noticed that they have only one shadow between them. Sometimes it attaches to one, sometimes to the other. Meanwhile, Mutano, the mute who trains Falco in swordplay, has a scheme to get his voice back from the villain who stole it years before.

Falco, Mutano and Maestro Astolfo are developed as characters over the course of the novel and all of them are changed. The climax is a huge event with the entire city in danger from an enemy without and traitors within. Characters introduced in earlier sections are bought into play and it all ties up very neatly.

If you’re the kind of reader who demands fast-paced stories with lots of action, this might not be for you. The chapters are quite long and demand an attention span greater than that of a gnat. The prose is beautiful but takes its time to tell the story. Fred Chappell has a poet’s vocabulary and love of words but his style also has clarity. Previous poets, who have written fantasy, are sometimes hard work for though the sounds are lovely the meaning is not always clear. I am thinking of Clark Ashton Smith. There are other authors of fantasy who use a low-key understated literary style who can be so boring that one’s eyelids tend to droop. Gene Wolfe, alas, has this effect on me. Two who get the balance about right between style and readability are Peter S. Beagle and Fred Chappell. I would put Chappell ahead by a nose if that much. If I was reading Beagle this week, I might put him ahead. Either one is a joy.

Readers of ‘The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction’ familiar with the parts printed therein will surely snap up this fine novel but I’d recommend it to any fan of sophisticated fantasy.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

This is an excellent book of poetry, just not poetry that sings to me. I kept it on my Currently Reading list because I felt guilty about not finishing it, but life is too short to should all over my reading time :)

Good stuff, just not my stuff.

This book takes place mainly over the course of one day in the life of Joe Robert Kirkman. He is a farmer who is a teacher at the local high school. At the beginning, he wrestles with the wicked devil possum while out in the woods at night with his buddies of the Crazy Creek Wildlife Appreciation Committee, where the membership dues are five hundred dollars a year but are refundable when you see your first fox. Membership is also contingent upon having a hunting dog, which Joe Robert doesn't have since his dog died at some point, but they let him remain on as an honorary member.

He has a big meeting that day with the school board after school so he dresses in his best suit, which gets immediately wet when he rescues a girl in the creek. He is forced to put on a ridiculous outfit because it is all that the town store owner has for him to wear. He is also forced to wear new brogans which are tight on his feet. His day doesn't get much better as he faces more trials and tribulations before the big showdown at the end of the day.

Joe Robert is a liar, as he freely admits unless it comes to talking about certain inalienable facts of life or science. He is also a jokester and prank-puller and philosopher. He's in trouble with the school board for introducing evolution to his students. One of the parents complained and the school board had to respond. He doesn't know how the school board will respond, but as the day wears on he imagines the worse.

This book is a pure delight to read. It's a real yarm of a tale. This book is also the second book in the Kirkman quartet. However, I did not know this until after I had read this book and I feel as though the book stands on its own. I am curious about the other books after reading this one since I enjoyed it so much. I"m interested in finding out what happens to Joe Robert. I highly recommend this crazy book.

Quotes
My grandmother believed that knowledge and wisdom were two separate things entirely and not even closely connected; she thought it possible that knowledge could sometimes be the bitter enemy of wisdom. But for my father, knowledge was the necessary precondition for wisdom; he thought that he needed to acquire a great deal of knowledge to ponder on until he formed it into wisdom, the way a sculptor shapes a statue from his stone.
-Fred Chappell ( Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 7)

“Aw now, Mackail,”my father said, “you’re not an old man yet.” “Well then, I’m disappointed,” he said, “because I’ve sure worked at it long enough.”
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 21)

He had discovered a universal law, one that he felt ought to be enshrined in the physics textbooks along with those of Galileo, Pascal, and Newton: A man falling in space toward the nearest center of gravity will be attacked by a whole bunch of foolish notions.
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 26)

Take away the stuff of tears, there is nothing left to make laughter of.
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 35)

“Is that what I told the class, Janie, that mankind was descended straight from monkeykind?” “No sir. You said that man seemed to be trying to evolve into an animal as nice as a monkey, with an embarrassing lack of success.”
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 70)

“Age,” he said, “before beauty.” “Myth,” my father replied, “before history. Thought before action.”
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 85)

Disappointed with his later colorless years, he would, my father surmised, wind up a dope fiend or a literary critic.
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 139)

The fact is that Dr. Darwin was mistaken. We did not begin as blobs of simple slime and work up to higher states. We began as innocent germs and added to our original nature cunning, deceit, self-loathing, treachery, betrayal, murder, and blasphemy. We began lowly and have fallen from even that humble estate. Dr. Darwin has searched for the truth. It is the nature of the human animal to subject its earnest seekers and most passionate thinkers to humiliation, degradation, imprisonment, and execution.
-Fred Chappell (Brighten the Corner Where You Are p 211-12)

Love Fred Chappell and this was my first book of huis i had read. It's sort of like first love, it always has something special about it. Actually my first Love doesn't seem that special compared to this book: I was laughing and crying for the whole thing I think.

Maybe it's just that I read 'Ill Met in Lankhmar' just recently, but I don't think so. This book really brings Fritz Leiber and his ilk to mind, harking back intentionally to the swords and sorcery of an earlier era. The episodic structure and 'low fantasy' theme are similar to the Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser tales. The language that it's told in definitely references Jack Vance. (Think: a liberal sprinkling of archaic and 'ten-cent' words in the midst of an otherwise informal, chatty narrative.)

As far as that goes, YMMV. I know many people love Vance's writing style and laud it to the heavens. I personally have tended to find his prose stylings annoying. However, I actually found the language here amusing, because it fit with the narrator's personality of a belatedly-educated man with the desire to impress his readers.

This narrator is known as Falco, a onetime 'country bumpkin' who came to the big city with the goal - in which he succeeds - of convincing the notorious shadow master (or thief?) Maestro Astolfo to take him on as an apprentice. In this world, shadows are a commodity. They can be separated from their owners, bought and sold, used for disguise or other purposes. Much of the trade in shadows is less than wholly legitimate.

In this volume, Falco tells us a series of tales, spanning a couple of decades, of his various adventures (and misadventures) working for and with the Maestro. Sorceresses, pirates, burglaries, assassins, booby traps, magicked jewels, double-crosses and suchlike accoutrements of fantasy adventures all make their appearances.

Many thanks to Tor and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinion is solely my own.

I like cats. I have been trying to read more poetry. I have always loved poetry, but it is easy to forget to stop and smell the poetry. I like Fred Chappell's stories too. He is a local favorite. All that aside, I don't care much for this collection of poems which are mostly about cats, though some are about their owners. The selection is hit or miss with none hitting the excellent mark and many striking a very loud false note.

I like cats. I have been trying to read more poetry. I have always loved poetry, but it is easy to forget to stop and smell the poetry. I like Fred Chappell's stories too. He is a local favorite. All that aside, I don't care much for this collection of poems which are mostly about cats, though some are about their owners. The selection is hit or miss with none hitting the excellent mark and many striking a very loud false note.

I like cats. I have been trying to read more poetry. I have always loved poetry, but it is easy to forget to stop and smell the poetry. I like Fred Chappell's stories too. He is a local favorite. All that aside, I don't care much for this collection of poems which are mostly about cats, though some are about their owners. The selection is hit or miss with none hitting the excellent mark and many striking a very loud false note.

Historias contadas por un niño de su vida en una granja de un pequeño pueblo de Estados Unidos. Las historias se entrelazan, mientras el niño crece y empieza a comprender poco a poco, lo que es la vida½

La infancia de Jess, el protagonista de la novela, transcurre apaciblemente junto a sus padres y su abuela en una granja de las montañas de Carolina del Norte. De vez en cuando su vida se ve alegremente alterada con las visitas de excéntricos parientes como su mujeriego tío Luden que buscó fortuna en California; su tío Zeno y sus cuentos interminables; su volátil tío Gurton y su impresionante barba; la cantante de country Samantha Barefoot; o su tío Runkin, que viajaba con su ataúd buscando la frase perfecta para su epitafio; y también con la llegada de Johnson Gibbs, un adolescente huérfano que contratan como bracero, a quien secundará de inmediato en sus travesuras. Estos pintorescos personajes acompañarán a Jess en su atípica infancia, dejando en él una huella tan indeleble que con el andar del tiempo comprenderá que, en realidad, le han acompañado siempre.

"The bright happy days darted past us like minnows."
Jess Kirkman, is a ten year old boy, growing up on a "scratch-ankle mountain farm", in western North Carolina. It is the early years of World War II. He lives with his parents, grandmother and an, older foster brother, he idolizes. Revolving through this wonderful coming of age novel, are a cast of visiting uncles and aunts, each more colorful and eccentric than the next, keeping Jess wide-eyed and awestruck.
The prose is gorgeous; poetic, touching and sometimes very funny. There are also bursts of magical realism, that take the simple rural tale to unexpected places. Also the dialogue, is deft and rich, like this passage, with the foster brother bragging to Jess about his baseball finesse:
"They never got good wood on me and only bad wood when I wanted to give my fielders something to do. I had them looking every place but where the ball was. I had them hypnotized, hornswoggled, and hooligated. They prayed rain on when I was going to pitch and I prayed it off again."
Simply beautiful.½

Good story of a southern mountain teacher, full of beautiful prose and great characters.

An excellent collection of stories about a southern mountain family, centering around the boy they took in, Johnson Gibbs.

I really enjoyed the imagery of this collection of Chappell's poems! I was especially struck by the sounds that some of the poems elicited, especially the ones about music. My favorites in this collection were "The Story" and "Narcissus and Echo."

I picked this up at a local library book sale, and I really got a bargain. This is a wonderful little book. It's written by someone who grew up in my area (always a bonus for me) and the setting is my area, so I can really relate to the characters. It's about a day in the life of a local school teacher, and does he have one heck of a day! Parts of the book had me laughing out loud! Don't let the title fool you--it sounds like something bright, cheery, and cheesy. I would say that the title refers more to the idea that we should each be ourselves, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in. It may also refer to sort of shining a light on ignorance. Either way, I don't want to say too much, just read it if you like well-written, entertaining books that also have a message to them.

This novel is actually a series of short stories tied together by a grandmother's death and a grandson's and daughter's memories. The stories are about simple people who are much more complex than they seem. This is an enjoyable read, one that brought back fond memories for me.

I AM ONE OF YOU FOREVER is a collection of vignettes narrated by Jess, the son of a farmer living in the North Carolina mountains during World War II. The theme for these stories is family; they mostly concern visits by a series of strange aunts and uncles, but they are also about Jess’ closeness with his immediate family, particularly his father and his adoptive brother. The stories are written in a folkloric style, and many take on the aspect of a fairy tale, as Jess describes the amazing, impossible things he witnesses in the course of his everyday life. While I didn’t connect to this collection as strongly as I did to its companion volume, FAREWELL, I’M BOUND TO LEAVE YOU, I always enjoy Fred Chappell’s poetic voice and his quietly charming style.

In Brighten the Corner Where You Are, Chappell returns to the pastoral setting of a small Appalachian farm town in Western North Carolina, and to his recurring character, Joe Robert Kirkman, a larger-than-life farmer, schoolteacher and prankster. (This novel is also narrated by Joe Robert's son, Jess.) But whereas Chappell's other novels were actually collections of loosely connected short stories, Brighten the Corner Where You Are has a more cohesive structure. It describes one pivotal day in Joe Robert's life.

The novel opens with a tall tale and ends with a dream. In between, Joe Robert has a series of misadventures. He faces down a treed wildcat on an early-morning hunting trip. He saves a little girl from drowning. He discusses philosophy with a ghostly janitor in the school basement and with an escaped goat on the roof. All of it culminates in a much-anticipated showdown with the school board over whether Joe Robert can teach evolution to the children of devout parents.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are is quite often funny on the surface, but underneath are musings on science, philosophy, lost youth, deferred dreams, doing what's right and being true to yourself. As with his other novels, Chappell sprinkles his story with just enough magic, folklore and absurdity to create an appealing, idealized world. This is my favorite of Chappell's novels, showcasing his gifts for language and imagery that reveal him to really be a poet disguised as a novelist.

Chappell's protagonist, Jess, the son of a North Carolina farmer living in the mountains during World War II tells the stories of a boy growing up in a rural setting. The stories are populated by a collections of aunts and uncles whose visits read like fables of old. The stories must be read with a light heart because if taken too seriously, the book loses its charm. The work while charming is cast under a pall of subtle sadness. The reader's state of mind at the time of reading will influence how it is received.

folksy collection of tales from WNC

Dagon is a short novel written by Fred Chappell, with a copyright in 1987. I have the LSU Press edition from 2002. It is a standard 5.5" x 8.5" trade paperback with 177 pages, seemingly substantial, but the font is larger than usual with trade paperbacks so it actually reads fairly quickly. Production values are high; there is a cover illustration by Dave Ross showing a half man with a scaly lower body from behind, held captive in chains in some sort of ancient temple. Evocative but no wow factor; there is no interior art (too bad, it might have relieved the tedium). List price when I bought it was $15.95, way too expensive in retrospect. This book was manufactured according to some standard on book longevity (again too bad, it will take that much longer to crumble away).

Spoilers may follow, but who cares?

I tend to buy and read almost anything mythos associated so of course I lapped it up. Just after the title page there is a page devoted to Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Very auspicious! Unfortunately that was also the highlight.

I really did not like this book even a little bit and I have been trying to figure out why. Sometimes mythos books fall apart because the prose is poor, like Other Nations, or the prose, plot and characterizations all stink, like Island Life, or because the book has really nothing to do with the mythos and instead has to do with schlocky gross out horror, like A Darkness Inbred. This novel clearly was living and breathing in the world of the mythos, had a clearly thought out plot and had prose that was highly polished. So what was the problem?

First of all, I couldn't stand any of the characters, particularly the protagonist, I was more concerned about Thomas Covenant than Peter Leland, and I wanted Thomas Covenant to meet an unseemly early end. Second, it was dull, tedious, boring, a chore to read. There was precious little forward momentum here. Finally, although highly crafted, the prose was almost entirely devoted to Peter's tortuous and disinteresting introspection. Also there was no awesomeness of a mythos entity or any sense of terror at all. He was mostly pathetic and worth only the reader's disdain.

In a typical (mercifully only 10-15 pages) mythos story, a protagonist goes to an ancient mansion/estate/farm and falls under the influence of some evil dabbler in mythos books, or their own dabbling in mythos books, who then loses control over their free will and gets used for or comes to unseemly ends. The reader mainly sees it as either their journal entries or from a birds eye third person viewpoint. This novel rather originally places you in the mind of the victim protagonist who doesn't have any understanding of what is going on, who knows nothing of the mythos. He only catches glimpses but does not understand them or what the evil sorceror type is doing. The mythos happenings are never made explicitly clear. This *could* have been so cool. So Peter gradually loses his will and his life to the vaguely fishoid appearing Mina, with his wife an innocent bystander victim along the way. Nice premise, a slow disappointing slog to drag yourself through.

Not recommended to anyone at all anywhere anytime. Go reread Balak or something good instead. If you are not a fanatical collector I advise borrowing it from the library before you buy.

Origin story for Falco the shadow thief. Good fantasy adventure.½