THE DEEP ONES: "The Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men" by Lord Dunsany

"The Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men" by Lord Dunsany

Discussion begins January 20.

First published in the February 8 1911 issue of Sketch.



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/d_litera.htm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?63199

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

At the Edge of the World
The Book of Wonder
Time and the Gods

MISCELLANY

http://tinyurl.com/j9mravf
http://www.yatterings.com/2014/03/23/re-weirding-the-world-lord-dunsany-as-a-wei...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany
http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/authors/dunsany/index.html
http://tinyurl.com/gpmtfh9

A timely entry for me, having just finished Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter and enjoying it very much. Don't have a print version of this tale so I'll read online, thanks to all concerned for the handy link.

>2 elenchus:

The King of Elfland's Daughter is one of my very favorite weird fantasy novels. It would be interesting to try to arrange a Deep Ones reading of it at some point.

(Somewhat) random candidates for MISCELLANY:

A photo and essay on Pakistan's Fairy Meadows, fittingly melding the alien beauty and real danger to be found beyond the Fields We Know.

A digital reproduction and essay on Bernard Sleigh's Map of Fairyland. Dunsany's Elfland had not yet been discovered at the time of its publication (1918).

The free Amazon eBook version of The Book of Wonder (http://amzn.com/B0082ZF5PK) for me.

>1 semdetenebre:

Behold the Lord! :D

>3 semdetenebre:

I'd like that, since I finally got my hands on a copy.

>5 artturnerjr:

Again thanks for that! I need to remember to look up these older selections. Fabulous Kindle fodder, to be sure.

>6 elenchus:

Yep, no problem. This group is actually one of the main reasons why I got an e-reader in the first place; it's often much easier (and cheaper!) to find these stories in eBook format than in print.

e-book version of Time and the Gods for me.

The OP has the wrong Time and the Gods. It links to the 1906 short story collection, which doesn't include "The Probable Adventure"; it should link to the 2000 Fantasy Masterworks omnibus, which does.

(The Fantasy Masterworks folks have caused a lot of unnecessary confusion with their choice of title here - giving their omnibus the same title as one of the collections contained therein. It doesn't help that the touchstone functionality doesn't find the omnibus if you just type "Time and the Gods" inside the brackets.)

Time and the Gods - that should be linking to the Fantasy Masterworks omnibus - for me.

deleted

The all-important Sime illustration "The Edge of the World":



(See our discussion of "The House of the Sphinx": https://www.librarything.com/topic/186278 )

>12 paradoxosalpha:

Kudos!

I was looking for Sime illustrations, remembering the provenance of the Sphinx, but had completely forgotten each story in The Book of Wonder was bespoke for a Sime original.

>12 paradoxosalpha:

What is your source for that image? My quick online search came up with much poorer reproductions. Hoping the full set of Sime illustrations are also available, ideally together.

The memorious may remember that Slith was namedropped in "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles", which we read back in summer 2012.

Dunsany feels very little need to explain here. Who or what is the Owner of the Box? Possibly a deity, given the mention of "the god that most they feared". But if a god, not one of cosmic reach, as leaping off the edge of the world evidently puts one beyond his vengeance.

Is that the mipt in the middle left of the picture?

>14 elenchus:

I got lucky with a google image search, and found it here:
http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2010/06/sime-no-more-ladies-sime-no-...

I'm updating the image source to maintain it in my LT "junk drawer," though.

ETA: I'm going to let it stand, because the sizing is resisting my attempts to get right. If the blogspot link ever fails, I have a smaller copy in reserve.

Be this as it may, they edged away from the mipt, and came almost at once to the wizened tree, the goal-post of their adventure, and knew that beside them was the crack in the world and the bridge from Bad to Worse, and that underneath them stood the rocky house of the Owner of the Box.

Haha! I think I've been there. This very slight tale drew me in by degrees. Enjoyable Dunsany as usual. The following passage reminded me of what would be a narrated bit in a caper sequence which you might find in a Tarantino or Cohen Bros film:

One man was to wait outside by the crack in the World until the others came out with the golden box, and, should they cry for help, he was to threaten at once to unfasten the iron clamp that kept the crack together. When the box was secured they were to travel all night and all the following day, until the cloud-banks that wrapped the slopes of Mluna were well between them and the Owner of the Box.

But then things go awry, of course. I had to look up "mipt". I was thinking of "mephit", which would have been a fire elemental and so probably not related to the "half fairy and half gnome". Still, I was amused to find the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylisopropyltryptamine

While I agree with paradoxosalpha's decision in the discussion of "The House Of The Sphinx" to be wary of allegorical interpretation, given the story was written to fit the picture, there is a lot more in this brief tale than is supported in the picture itself. Among the many details is Dunsany's description of the three figures as thieves, indeed as Literary Men, and the box containing exemplars of poetry. This is crucial to my enjoyment of the tale, in fact, and I can't help but think Dunsany is commenting on the nature of the work to which he dedicated himself, and perhaps to the unsavory practices of others.

He seems to argue there is nothing more valuable than a good story or song (I'm reminded of his motif in The King of Elfland's Daughter by which he observes the beauty of the elfin towers could be described only in song), and there are no shortcuts. You can't steal it, you have to work at it.

Apart from that perhaps overly-somber reading, I was put in mind of Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

>15 AndreasJ:

A mipt! I'd forgotten that part of the story when I saw the picture, and was trying to figure out what that was. What's the long-tailed creature disappearing behind the structure, though?

I really covet an edition of this book with the Sime illustrations.

>18 elenchus: What's the long-tailed creature disappearing behind the structure, though?

I think it's a "detestable beast" that might have eaten the three, but didn't.

I agree that the identification of the treasure as literature (and the title's tongue-in-cheek characterization of the thieves as "literary men") goes well beyond what can be seen in the picture.

>18 elenchus: I really covet an edition of this book with the Sime illustrations.

Me too!

First of all, I like it that the title of the story is "{The}* Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men"; that's a nice metafictional touch on Dunsany's part.

>15 AndreasJ:

Who or what is the Owner of the Box? Possibly a deity, given the mention of "the god that most they feared". But if a god, not one of cosmic reach, as leaping off the edge of the world evidently puts one beyond his vengeance.

That's definitely the question Dunsany wants to have rolling around in the reader's head long after the story is finished, isn't it? True that the Owner can't seem to follow Slith into the abyss, but let's think about that for a moment, shall we? Slith would rather fall through "the unreverberate blackness of the abyss" for all eternity than to face the Owner's wrath. Clearly this is a being that's capable of doing some damage!

>18 elenchus:
>20 AndreasJ:

Not the real deal, but the next best thing: a digitized version of a 1913 edition of The Book of Wonder at Google Books, with (I believe) all the Sime illustrations:

https://books.google.com/books?id=R7g0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=...

*The story has apparently been published both with and without the initial definite article in the title

And the Box isn't just filled with great poems but new poetic forms.

>21 artturnerjr: Quite! What kind of menace makes that the best option!

Slith seems the wisest of the three. He isn't going to hang around reading poetry before his escape.

>15 AndreasJ: The memorious may remember that Slith was namedropped in "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles", which we read back in summer 2012.

The relevant paragraph:

... in the burglary business the name of Slith stands paramount and alone ; and of this I am not ignorant ; but Slith is a classic, and lived long ago, and knew nothing at all of modern competition ; besides which the surprising nature of his doom has possibly cast a glamour upon Slith that exaggerates in our eyes his undoubted merits.

>21 artturnerjr:

Wasn't able to download the free eBook, but flipping through certainly reinforces my interest in that book and those illustrations.

I note there are 14 stories, and 10 illustrations. Either several stories treat of the same illustration, or there are a number of tales which were not dictated by a Sime original. The front matter indicates 12 stories were published first in Sketch, in abbreviated form, and two in The Saturday Review.

>21 artturnerjr:

Perhaps due to my location, I can't see anything at all in that Google Books version. Bummer.

Agreed about the Owner, of course. While it may have merely local power, while you're in its reach it's clearly something to be feared!

Dunsany's Wikipedia entry says his work went through several stylistic changes through his career (I haven't read enough of his work to see this for myself yet). Wikipedia talks of self-conscious fantasy in relation to the stories of this period. Tonally, this seems somewhere between his early lofty style and classic children's literature ("Rumbly Heath" could be not too far away from the Hundred Acre Wood), albeit bearing a sting in the tale (like the innocuously-named "mipt" that would not baulk at eating the bodies of the thieves).

I can't honestly think of anything I can add to what's already been said here, unless perhaps to note that Dunsany's imagination works on a large scale - Sime's pictures, for this and for "The House of the Sphinx", seem to me as smaller scale affairs taking place within crumbling grandeur...that iron staple across the crack in - what I would have taken as a cliff-face that's been carved into to create a dwelling - I would never have supposed it was holding the whole world together.

>25 housefulofpaper:

The only hint about the crack is the title of the picture: "The Edge of the World". But your point stands, the edge need not imply two pieces precariously held together.

There's a little shout out to Sime in the journal pages appended to this month's issue of Providence: Robert compares the work of "Ronald Underwood Pittman" to "the most delirious imaginings of a Beardsley or a Sidney Sime."