August 17, 2006
from the bibliophile's file: an episode
Last week I received another package. I opened it to find a book-sized something wrapped in brown paper with a crude but cute woodcut flower design. How lovely! And environmentally friendly.
It was accompanied by the receipt for the book, which the receipt said was The Episodes of Vathek by William Beckford. O good! I was happy to find it at Alibris, and was now happy to receive it. Upon the receipt, written in long-hand, was a note from the seller, from Happy Hippy Books. He wrote "Thanks for your order. Enjoy your book!" Handwritten! Such nice sentiments. I don't know about you, but I'm more likely to come back when I get nice notes like that.
Then I tore away the brown paper flower, nice as it was, to get at my new book, published, I now see, by Dedalus European Classics. Wow! What a great cover, featuring a really interesting (slightly soft-pornish) collage by Lise Weisgerber.* I would reproduce the cover here, except that it's kind of risque.
I opened it to find that the editor was the same Malcolm Jack who does the decent introduction to the Penguin Classic version of Vathek. This introduction, though good, is much shorter. And there isn't much other critical apparatus. Still this is not an easy book to find. Thank you Dedalus Books for publishing it!
The book was written by William Beckford, a writer of polymorphous perverse Gothic tales in the late eighteenth century. Imagine my excitement!
What is this book about? It's a series of three tales told by damned souls in Eblis--hell, in Islam. The tales were meant as an extension of Beckford's claim to fame, Vathek, published in 1786, which is also a story of damnation (Vathek is the audience for the three tales). The tales themselves feature homosexuality, transvestism, incest, all forms of lust, not to mention great abuses of power. Just the thing, right?
I should state for the record that Vathek in on my reading list for my comprehensive exam, so I have a good excuse for owning this book. It's OK, honey--he's a SCHOLAR.
I took it with me on an errand and read the first tale in pizza-by-the-slice place on 18th St., in Adams Morgan, DC, thinking it was the best equivalent for Eblis, since pizza-by-the-slice places are havens for junkies and drunks, the damned souls of our day--but all that is another story.
I just want to say that now I am a happy hippy with my new, risque copy of The Episodes of Vathek.
JB
*Who I now find, after Googling her, was a French collage artist who did many covers for this publisher and was a member of a cultish group working on artificial intelligence called the London A.I Club. Apparently she was murdered by another member of the group, and the group's leader later committed suicide, expecting to be "resurrected by superintelligence." That's terrible. But very Beckfordian.