Don't try this at home

"For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter's "Barr-Bag" which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2163 pearl buttons; nor of--in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel--or Suing Sophie!"

—Harry Stephen Keeler, THE RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELING SKULL (p. 3)

And I still think that there can be no neater way of putting in a nutshell the outcome of the super-sticky affair of Nobby Hopwood, Stilton Cheesewright, Florence Craye, my Uncle Percy, J. Chichester Clam, Edwin the Boy Scout and old Boko Fittlesworth—or, as my biographers will call it, the Steeple Bumpleigh Horror.

—P.G. Wodehouse, JOY IN THE MORNING (p. 2)

A new Keeler mystery

My review of P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters is now up on the Bookforum site. Thank you to my editor, Michael Miller, for forcing me to write it!

One thing that got left on the cutting-room floor: For the birth of my second child, the only reading matter I brought to the hospital was...an issue of Bookforum! It was the one with Samuel Beckett wearing shorts on the cover.

*

I did a double-take when I saw (via Facebook) that I was in yet another issue of the Asian American Literary Review. Just yesterday I remembered that I had published a piece in the AALR called "Chinese Whispers: On Writing/Not Writing Asian American Literature." So what was this other article by me? It's "vintage Park"—my review of Harry Stephen Keeler's strange, wildly entertaining, ethnic-studies-ready Y. Cheung, Business Detective (1939). In the piece, I reflect on an odd resemblance it bears to a story by Nabokov. I'm happy to see it reprinted. (It originally appeared in 2000—remember 2000?—in issue 30 of the Keeler News.)

(This has got to be one of the worst Keeler jackets. But it's a terribly interesting book.)

Portrait of H.S. Keeler

In a mystery novel from the 1940s* by the Chicago paper-blackener Harry Stephen Keeler (1890–1967), the greedy children of an eccentric moneybags receive instructions to light a candle and contemplate, for twenty minutes, a hideous self-portrait in the sitting room. One by one they pay the required visit, but finding the demand preposterous and the painting unsettling, each blows out the candle and leaves long before the requisite span. The sole exception—the one child with enough filial piety to hang out for a bit and attempt to commune with the spattered canvas—is rewarded. For at twenty minutes, the wax of the candle has melted enough to reveal a cylinder, in which reposes the codicil of a will. Our persevering viewer inherits everything....

Read the next exciting paragraph at The Chiseler!

Keeler turns 120!

Today would have been Harry Stephen Keeler's 120th birthday! He was born in Chicago in 1890, died there in 1967. Wrote dozens of books.

Years ago, when I started reading HSK, I thought it would be great if the Columbia University library (where his papers—all 33 boxes of ’em!—reside) did a little exhibit when he hit the big one-two-oh. This was in ’98 or so, plenty of time to suggest the idea, organize, etc.

Well...here we are! And no exhibit. Completely slipped my mind. Not to mention the collective or "hive" mind of the Harry Stephen Keeler Society!

Still! This is a good day to do a little Keeler rundown—

I. Some longish pieces by me about various aspects of Keelerology:

A) "How H.S. Keeler Wrote Certain of His Books" (from the PTSNBN's Education Supplement[?!]);

B) The hilarious satire of the poetry world in HSK's The Riddle of the Traveling Skull (from the Poetry Foundation);

C) ...and (from the pages of Keeler News), my lengthy consideration of his rare but important novel Y. Cheung, Business Detective—and its uncanny similarities to one of my favorite Nabokov stories. (Still one of the pieces I'm proudest of.)

II. Here's a small sampling of my Keeler-related blog posts, and some shortish pieces/mentions: props for Thieves' Nights and the Marceau books; a glance at The Peacock Fan, his satire of the publishing biz; my conversation with Rachel Aviv at Triple Canopy; attempt to list (ca. 2005) the Keelers I've read...I'm sure there's more...

III. I've not quite won assorted literary awards—except for the Imitate Keeler Competition! Twice!

IV. Essential overviews (and more links to interesting pieces) can be found at Richard Polt's Harry Stephen Keeler Society webpage and William Poundstone's Harry Stephen Keeler Home Page (which I'm pretty sure was the first Keeler appreciation I read on the web).

V. Dip into his interesting treatise, "The Mechanics (and Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction."

That's all! Happy birthday, Harry!

Portrait of Keeler by none other than the line king himself—Al Hirschfeld!

Crude trade terms

“At least candy is honest about what it is,” she said. “It has always been a processed food, eaten for pleasure, with no particular nutritional benefit.” Today, she said, every aisle in the supermarket contains highly manipulated products that have those qualities. —"Is Candy Evil, or Just Misunderstood?," NYT

*

Sweet that kiss, like our butter-cream-center bar. And blonde she was, like our Crispo Taffy. With eyes as blue as jelly bean No. 18—which goes in the jelly bean mixture No. 9. Dressed all in pink silk, as pink and as crisp as our Silko Spun Crunch.
But I'm talking in crude trade terms—about something too fine to compare with mere candy.
—Harry Stephen Keeler, The Riddle of the Traveling Skull

Parallel lives

The latest issue (#75!) of Keeler News, the gazette of the Harry Stephen Keeler Society, is available online, for free.

This number features a newly discovered Keeler story, that brilliant feature "Chuckles From China" (a page of "Chinese" jokes, from made-up publications like Nankow Military College Topics, that ran in a magazine Keeler edited), the parallel lives of Keeler and Heidegger, William Poundstone on the word "Izzard"...and much more!

Four for Wodehouse

I. "DID Bertie Wooster mean to harm Barbara Geltosky in September 2008? The evidence against him is damning. For instance, the hole that Bertie, Ms. Geltosky’s 5-year-old Norwegian elkhound, dug in the garden was 12 inches across and 12 inches deep — the perfect size for a human foot." —NYT

II. From David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, we learn that David Foster Wallace had a dog named Jeeves and a dog named Drone.

III. "Mr. [Harry Stephen] Keeler is infinitely plausible at infinite speed. He is a serious Wooster of the thrills." —Daily Telegraph.

IV. Annals of Facial Hair

"I have come to a decision Mrs Twemlow."
"What about?"
"Ever since his lordship srted to grow it I have seen the writing on the wall plainer and plainer, and now I have made up my mind. The moment his lordship returns from London, I tender my resignation. Eighteen years have I served in his lordship's household, commencing as under-footman and rising to my present position, but now the end has come."
"You don't mean you're going just because his lordship has grown a beard?"
"It is the only way, Mrs Twemlow. That beard is weakening his lordship's position throughout the entire country-side. Are you aware that at the recent Sunday school treat I heard cries of 'Beaver!'?"
"No!"

—Wodehouse, "Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best," Blandings Castle

"My life is just...jokes"

What do Joan Rivers and Harry Stephen Keeler have in common?

(I love the screen capture: "New York/No Self Worth"!)

* * *

"Harry Stephen Keeler . . . has a filing cabinet bursting with thousands of newspaper clippings, all of a sensational nature; and when a new novel impends he lifts out a dozen of these at random, stirs them in a hat, and selects four or five again at random. The final four (or five), whatever they may be, become the basis of the book." (from Vincent Starrett, Books and Bipeds [New York: Argus, 1947] 72) —The Bunburyist


(Thanks to F.S. Caroline for the J. Rivers vid!)

A sound policy

I don't believe all of the stuff I tweet. I believe in Harry Stephen Keeler, though. Just sayin'.
—Roger Ebert

Glengarry Glen Keeler

I.

There is, fortunately, a simple rule that can be taught with which the plotbuilder may test out the worthiness of his product. It's a very simple rule. It's a rule that will definitely determine if your plot (or novel) can be sold. It is:
Has the plot (or novel)—
(A) Interest?
(B) Convincingness?
(C) Novelty?

—Harry Stephen Keeler, "How to Write Booklength Myster Stories" (from the Writer's 1931 Year Book and Market Guide), Keeler News No. 74 (courtesy Richard Polt and Doug Anderson)

II.

I CLOSE WITH THE ONE THOUGHT: LOOK AT THE SCENE AND ASK YOURSELF “IS IT DRAMATIC? IS IT ESSENTIAL? DOES IT ADVANCE THE PLOT?

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY.

IF THE ANSWER IS “NO” WRITE IT AGAIN OR THROW IT OUT. IF YOU’VE GOT ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME UP.

—David Mamet, memo to writers of CBS's The Unit

(via Matt Singer)

Harry Stephen Keeler and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

He seized a mental pencil out of one lobe of his brain and jerked a mental sheet of paper out of a second lobe. —Harry Stephen Keeler

TNCOM, #3 & 4

3. How strange, it came to me then, are the patterns of human experience! The meaningless life lines that start out singly and so simply from here, from there, draw slowly toward one another over a period of time, until finally they come together, mesh, to form into a design that never could have been guessed at, foretold, by what had gone before. And the completed fabric is the sum of all the threads that have gone into it.
—Cornell Woolrich, The Black Angel (1943)

4. Life, on the larger scale, though full of effects which are the direct results of causes, is apparently plotless. It is too complex. There has never yet appeared in life a causal relationship involving even 80 incidents and 34 strands that can be as unified as one artificially created. And it is this artificial relationship, this purely fictional web-work plot, this bit of life twisted into a pattern mathematically and geometrically true, that fills the gaps in one's spirit which rebels at the looseness of life as it apparently is.
—Harry Stephen Keeler, The Mechanics (and Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction (1928)

Breaking news!

Harry Stephen Keeler only has six followers on Twitter...but one is Levi Stahl, one is William Poundstone, and one is Roger Ebert!

Levi e-mailed me with some important Keeler news: At Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg has blogged about Ebert's love of Keeler! There's some eye-grabbing dustjacket art, too...though I must confess Five Silver Buddhas is one of my least favorite Keelers!

Web developments

I. Levi not only supplements his bookish meditations on I've Been Reading Lately with a Twitter feed (mostly devoted to quotes—his "on-the-go commonplace book")...but he now has a welcome "Notes to I've Been Reading Lately."

II. Speaking of Twitter—everyone's "tweeting" these days, even some of my favorite dead authors! That's right—Harry Stephen Keeler has a Twitter feed! The material is taken from his "Keyhole" newsletters (and maybe some of his correspondence?), which he sent out to friends beginning in the ’60s (I think), after his books stopped coming out in the U.S.

Here's a sample:

Would Duttons [his U.S. publisher] find objection if I shortened my name on future books to either Stephen Keeler, Harry Keeler - or even Keeler Keeler?

Hatful of Hollow

Bill Poundstone dropped me a line this morning:

Speaking of "Land of the Lost" trend pieces… Last night I had a brilliant/stupid dream concerning a novel you were writing about cavemen(!) Then this morning, I looked on your blog, and you mention the glut of troglodyte movies. How's that for a Keeler coincidence?

* * *

[Here's the dream. And make sure you check out Bill's Dream Blog!]

July 1, 2009

Ed was telling me about his new fantasy novel of the Hollow Earth, populated by a picaresque group of bikers, gangbangers, and (near the poles) cavemen. My suggestion was that the Hollow Earthers should send some of their scientists up here and conclude we're a bunch of lowlife degenerates. It should all be symmetrical.

* * *

Tonight at 6:30, Korea Society: Me + Janice Y.K. Lee + Sung J. Woo = What is Korean American literature?

Up in smoke — Rock books

"The Mystery League books were a short-lived series in the early 1930s: lurid thrillers created to be sold through cigar shops rather than bookshops...." —Caustic Cover Critic

Read more about "Gene," who designed the eye-catching covers for the ML books, as well as for one of our man Harry Stephen Keeler's novels...

(From Levi)







Also from Levi, for further research: Richard Sharpe Shaver:

During the 1960s and 1970s, now living in obscurity, Shaver searched for physical evidence of the bygone pre-historic races. He claimed to find it in certain rocks, which he believed were "rock books" that had been created by the great ancients and embedded with legible pictures and texts. For years he wrote about the rock books, photographed them, and made paintings of the images he found in them to demonstrate their historic importance. He even ran a "rock book" lending library through the mails, sending a slice of polished agate with a detailed description of what writings, drawings, and photographs were archived by Atlanteans inside the stone using special laser-like devices.

2660

Who are the super-est supermen of pre-Golden Age SF? Dzyd Joshua has the rundown over at io9, complete with great cover art as usual. Best hero name/book title might go to Hugo Gernsback's 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660.



That name reminded me of this Keeler concoction—probably the only character in literature with not just numbers but fractions, multiplication, and shapes in his name:



(from Richard Polt's essay "Race in Keeler")

(Hmmm, time to read Ch. 20 of Crippled Detectives!)

The insured loneliness, the invisible library

I. In the NYT—would this count as a volume in the Invisible Library?

In a bookcase in a dark hallway there is another book, not well known like the others. In fact, it is unclear whether anyone other than its author has ever read “Where Yesterday Began.”

Ms. Macefield paid to have her novel published in 1994, under the pen name Domilini. It is set against the backdrop of post-World War I Europe.

An introductory page begins, “This story is for all those who have ever loved — truly, deeply, irrevocably — and in the thrust of disaster. For some, love simply dies — and one moves on. But for a few, love is as lasting as the ages — despite the impossibilities, the separation, the insured loneliness.”

The book is 1,138 pages long, not counting the musical references, from Scottish folk songs to a 1915 work by the English composer Albert W. Ketelbey, and a 16-page glossary of the French, German and Italian phrases sprinkled throughout. “I think it was kind of a love story,” said Mr. Peck, the longtime friend. “I never did read it.”

The book is dedicated to “B. Robert Aigner, M.D.,” with no explanation why. Reached by phone at his home in a Seattle suburb, Dr. Aigner, 80, said he remembered Ms. Macefield was a patient, but nothing more.

Dr. Aigner, a neurologist, was amazed and amused that Ms. Macefield would have dedicated her ambitious work to him. He had never heard of it.

“I have no idea what I was treating her for,” he said.

[Ed. note: Among the works of Harry Stephen Keeler are several dedicated to various physicians.]

II. Dzyd Sarah W. mentioned Keeler in her latest Dark Passages column (looking at pan-Asian crime fiction) at the LAT:

Several novels by Harry Stephen Keeler involve Asian characters or settings but are remembered less for them than for the author's wildly pyrotechnic writing style.

III. Meanwhile, my current Astral Weeks column has been completed—but you can't read it yet! I don't know why! Clicking through gets you to a Page Not Found. (The invisible article?)

UPDATE (IV): Who is the winner of the 2008 honorary Harry Stephen Keeler character award?

1,000,000

AJRMS on a Dizzies fave: Daniel Spoerri's An Anecdoted Topography of Chance

* * *

The latest Keeler News (which includes a great Keeler parody by Ken Keeler—no relation to HSK!) tipped me off to Graham Self's short film adaptation of "Strange Romance," the tale-within-a-tale in Y. Cheung, Business Detective.

Watch it here:



Curiously, Self made the movie without having had the chance to read "Strange Romance"; he knew of it only via the aforementioned (Keeler fan) Ken Keeler's commentary on a episode of Futurama.

Gleanings

As a way of getting in touch with my origins,
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born, so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment
—from "Self-Portrait at 28," David Berman, Actual Air

The road was very bleak, wandering like the handwriting of a dying person over the hills.
—Richard Brautigan, The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western

You half-expected fireflies to rush out of his mouth.
—last line of Fleet Foxes concert review, Amanda Petrusich, NYT

Lord Jeffrey Stillingfleete, Earl of Kislingbury, richest man in the en-tire world, gazed troubledly down at the slender American milltown girl, in cheap black cotton dress, with 10-cent-store white trimmings at the neck and elbows, whom he held fast in his arms. —first line of The Crimson Cube, Harry Stephen Keeler