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> Merritt's books sometimes took in at least one titanic struggle, with
> armies arrayed against each other. _The Moon Pool_ and _The Metal
> Monster_ were two of these. One of his best efforts, _The Face in the
> Abyss_, leaves images that will persist long after the basic story has
> blurred. His most "literary" effort, _The Ship of Ishtar_, seems to
> me to be one of his colder, more "academic" offerings.
Glad you opened a topic on Merritt, Steve. And, John (Parodi), i agree it's
an acquired taste (like Stephen Donaldson or any of the other current masters
of "overheated" or purple prose).
I read _The Face in the Abyss_ first, and that one got me hooked. _The Moon
Pool_ was tantalizing in the early chapters (the shipboard ones) but got a
little bit ;^) corny after that. _Ship of Ishtar_ was way too purple, but i
find some of the chapters almost worth reading strictly as miniature tour de
force type vignettes still ("The Lord of the Two Deaths" and "The Gods and
Man's Desire" especially). _Dwellers in the Mirage_ is excellent! Who cares
whether its ethnography (American Indians being tied to Uighur tribesmen of
the Gobi desert) makes sense nowadays? And _Seven Footprints to Satan_ seems
like a worthy predecessor to the James Bond/SMERSH books...i know people who
turn up their nose at fantasy and lionize noir detective novels that still
get high on that one. Merritt covered the same ground (lost civilizations
in remote places) as Edgar Rice Burroughs or Otis Adelbert Kline, but he did
it in a more sexually explicit way (which, again, is of some importance when
you're a 12 year old!;-)).
Perhaps thankfully Merritt wrote before the fantasy trilogy became de rigeur,
so each of his novels stands on its own. If you can't "get into" Donaldson
now, on the first book of his double trilogy, you're going to pass up the
terrible poignance of _The Illearth War_ or the amazing (but totally logical
in the sense of there being no other way it really could end) conclusion to
_White Gold Wielder_. I guess that's a limitation of the "series mania" we
see today in fantasy. (I often don't buy books that look interesting just
*because* they say "Book 1 of the _______ Series" on the cover.)
paul
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| Article: 383
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews PS#3: A. Merritt
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 30 Sep 93 03:26:29 GMT
Postscripts to the Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors. The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth. I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special).
Belated Reviews PS#3: A. Merritt
Abraham Merritt was one of the most successful pulp (and pulp-style)
writers of the twenties and thirties. Think of him as the Stephen King of
his day, though his audience was more interested in adventure than in
horror. As with so many authors of that time, I can't think of any of his
books that I would strongly recommend to a mature modern reader who's
simply looking for a good read. Reading his books today, you can see
their power, you can appreciate why they'd have been popular, but you can
also see how they were written to appeal to a particular generation of
readers. Still, if you like Haggard-style adventure, and if you can
appreciate the genre fiction of a previous generation, you might want to
give one or two of Merritt's books a try.
The comparison to Haggard was appropriate, as Haggard seems to have been
one of his main sources of inspiration. Merritt's heroes, like Haggard's,
are forever finding lost civilizations in obscure corners of the world.
(They key differences are that Merritt left Africa to Haggard, and used
the rest of the world for his sites, that Merritt's heroes tended to be
American rather than English, and that Haggard was the better writer.)
"The Face in the Abyss" (***) is my favorite among Merritt's lost-
civilization yarns. Nicholas Graydon is one of four adventurers who
come to the Andes with an old map which they believe will lead to
Atahuelpa's lost treasures. Instead, it leads to what is left of
Atlantean civilization -- with dinosaurs and superscience thrown in
for good measure. (Not to mention spider-people, lizard-people,
snake-people, immortal Atlanteans, and the obligatory love-at-first-sight
love-interest.) There is also the Face in the Abyss -- the imprisoned
Satan-figure who brought down the original Atlantis. In the time that has
passed, this figure has been gaining in influence, while the powers that
defeated him have been waning -- and Graydon's appearance triggers open
warfare.
"The Ship of Ishtar" (***) is structurally the same as many of Merritt's
other novels -- an American finds himself in the remains of a bygone
civilization, finds the love of his life, and proceeds to act heroically --
but the framework of tragedy gives it a power which his lost-civilization
yarns lack. The ship in question is a six-thousand-year-old ship in a
bottle (okay, they used blocks in those days instead of bottles), but when
archeologist (?) Kenton examines it, he finds himself aboard an actual
ship, which has been cursed to sail the seas forever, magically picking up
the occasional sailor. (The priestess of Ishtar fell in love with the
priest of Nergal, to the annoyance of both deities, and their punishment
was one ship each -- in conflict -- and a very long cruise. Since then
priest and priestess have both died, only to be replaced by their seconds
in command.) Kenton, of course, falls in love with the current priestess,
and is drawn into the eternal, and pointless, battle.
"The Metal Monster" (**) is noteworthy for being a lost-civilization tale
with a vaguely science-fictionish twist. (The term "lost civilization" is
a telling one. It's not as if any of the civilizations in question consider
themselves lost.) Actually, there are two civilizations here: A group of
four Americans traipsing through the Himalayas, flees a bunch of Persians
who have apparently been isolated from the rest of the world since the
time of Alexander -- and whose role in the story is relatively minor; Merritt
mostly needed a way to get another alluring white female onto the stage --
and finds a valley inhabited by inorganic life. It's a collective
intelligence made of metal (there is a long expository chapter, with
footnotes, as the characters convince each other that this is possible) and
living on solar radiation. (This intelligence also seems to take an interest,
which is never explained, in comely human females, but I digress.) Rather
than make any serious attempt to communicate with this intelligence, our
heroes go looking for a way to destroy it. I don't think Merritt really
knew what to *do* with his science-fictional premise, so once he'd milked
it for its wonder, he wrote much the same story that he'd have written had
the metal entities been super-intelligent carnivorous butterflies.
Merritt's short stories have been collected in an anthology, titled "The Fox
Woman and Other Stories". They're highly variable in quality. "The Fox
Woman" (***+) -- the novella of the book's title is the best of the lot.
It begins in northern China, with Jean Meredith fleeing her husband's
murderers. She meets a vixen and -- through whatever impulse -- asks for
vengeance. The vixen -- actually a fox-woman which, by the mythos of that
place makes her a devil of sorts -- promises Jean the vengeance she seeks,
and saves her life till her daughter can be born. In a way, the story is
incomplete -- we see the setup for the vengeance (particularly the fox-
woman's possession of the baby), but not the vengeance itself. I don't
know whether this is deliberate or whether Merritt simply didn't live to
finish the story, but it's probably more effective than it would have been
had the details of the vengeance been spelled out.
There are other (lesser, to my mind) lost-civilization novels I haven't
mentioned. Also, two of Merritt's most successful novels (if not *the*
most successful of his novels) are the ones furthest removed from sf/f, so
I'll only mention them in passing. "Seven Footprints to Satan" (**) is
about an explorer who is enmeshed in the toils and coils of a strange
criminal mastermind. And "Burn Witch Burn" (**) is a tale of witchcraft
and horror, featuring a witch who sets animated dolls to committing murder.
I can't say I cared much for either book.
I've compared Merritt to Stephen King and to H Rider Haggard, but perhaps
I'd have done better to compare him to Edgar Rice Burroughs: Both, at
about the same time, were writing very popular bad novels. While those
novels don't stand up that well today, their influence upon the sf/f writers
we *do* read today was considerable. And, in both cases, as long as we
are willing to accept the books on their own terms, as the bad novels of
yesteryear, they can still be fun to read.
%A Merritt, A.
%T The Face in the Abyss
%T The Ship of Ishtar
%T The Metal Monster
%T The Fox Woman, and Other Stories
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Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the
best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills
you! -- Dorothy Parker
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