Skip to main content

She-Who-Must-Be-Read: The Platypus Reads Part LXXIII

Following my established routine, I've endeavored to expand my knowledge of Pulp this summer with a some selections from H.P. Lovecraft and Ridder Haggard.  Lovecraft will have to wait for his own post.  In the meantime, I'd like to take a look a truly seminal novel in the history of Pulp: Ridder Haggard's "She."

This one thin volume seems to have exercised a greater influence on subsequent works in a way only surpassed by "The Lord of the Rings."  A quick surface read will reveal familiar elements and scenes from "The Magician's Nephew," "The Lord of the Rings," Robert Howard's Conan stories, "Congo (though that's more Haggard's other great work, "King Solomon's Mines")," "Dune," and the Indiana Jones trilogy.  This is a powerful and diverse influence for a novel that spans only a little more than a hundred pages.

*very minimal spoiler ahead*

One of the great pleasures of reading "She" is Haggard's use of layers of carefully researched detail to build a believable secondary world.  For instance, many pulp writers today, the late Michael Chriton excepted, would be content to give a simple English "translation" of the legend of She and Kallikrates that serves as the protagonists' "call to adventure."  Haggard, however, provides not only an English translation, but the "original" Attic Greek, the revised Byzantine cursive Greek, abbreviated Ecclesiastical Latin, un-abbreviated Ecclesiastical Latin, abbreviated Early Modern English, and un-abbreviated Early Modern English together with a whole history of the transmission of the tale down to the present day.  I'm currently (trying) teaching myself Attic Greek and I can't tell you how much I enjoyed puzzling it and the other translations out.  This is just one salient example of the extra effort Haggard puts into his work to make it believable.  If you're not seeing shades of Middle Earth yet, you should be.

There's much more that could be said about this remarkable and seminal work, but if you haven't read it yet, I don't want to spoil the fun.  If you have read it, I invite you to consider again the links between it and subsequent works of adventure fiction.  Can you find Jadis, Charn, Galadriel's mirror, the Cracks of Doom, Sam Gamgee, the Fremen, the Temple of the Grail?  Can you add to this list? 

  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....

Under the Moon: The Platypus Reads Part LXVI

My wife and I were discussing our favorite books from the Chronicles of Narnia on our way back from lunch.  My wife, true to her sunny personality, is a staunch fan of "The Voyage of the Dawntreader."  I can't argue with that choice but, when push comes to shove, "The Silver Chair" has always been my favorite. I have a bit of a theory.  I think "The Voyage of the Dawntreader" is Lewis' grail legend.  If that's so, then I'd hazard a guess and say that "The Silver Chair" is his "Pilgrim's Progress." -just think about the shape of Puddleglum's hat and the fact that he lives in the Fen Country and you'll see what got me thinking down this line. That brings me to why I like "The Silver Chair" so much.  When I was little, we had a children's version of "Pilgrim's Progress" that my mom used to read to me.  I lived in New England and the Christianity I was raised with had a heavy tin...