The Black Arrow & The White Moth

A sober afterthought to my praise of Robert Louis Stevenson of three nights ago. You see, I told you all to go read him - and you should - but he has (to my knowledge) one very bad well-known book which you should not read (and there may be others; that man was prolific.) Do not read The Black Arrow. It is wretched and dull and set during the War of the Roses, which is incomprehensible. But if you must, the Wyeth illustrations are rather nice.

I do like the plain style of this Amazon review, although I must dissent from its recccomendation.

In this book you can read about knights, soldiers, action, treachery, and other things from the middle ages. I thought that it was a pretty good book, but I only got into it after a while. I had to read it for school, so I couldn't give up, but I was wary of the lack of "interesting-ness" when I first started. I would reccomend this book to you, but you should beware that you may not be interested for a while. If you are a person who doesn't like a book that takes a while, I would not reccomend this to you. But if you don't mind having to read something a while, I would reccomend this to you. (Sorry if I keep repeating myself.)

Let us all let 'wary-ness' of lack of 'interesting-ness' be our watchword. Life has a 'short-ness' to it and should not fill up with bad books.

I was going to add that one thing that makes me sad about the badness of The Black Arrow is that Arthur Quiller-Couch finished the book for Stevenson. But now I see that I am mistaken. Quiller-Couch finished St. Ives. How odd. I was so sure. But I'll irrelevantly press on. I am a Quiller-Couch fan. He wrote good Victorian horror and fantastic fiction that is little read today. It's all out of print. But here is a poem I like very much, which gives you a gothic taste, "The White Moth". It's good bad poetry.

I poked fun at Michael Moorcock a couple weeks back, so I'll now compliment him for having the discernment to be a Quiller-Couch fan. (There's a bit here; there's something longer elsewhere. Can't find it.)

Oh, and Terry Eagleton has got a thing about how terrible, terrible Quiller-Couch is. That's how I discovered him. I figured anyone Eagleton hates that much is probably a good writer. And so he is.

Comments

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

My grandmother was Arthur Quiller-Couch's second cousin. I revel in this fact.

[bryan]

For a bad writer to like a good writer is obligatory.
That so many fail in their obligations is saddening; nonetheless I cannot find in it me to commend Moorcock for doing something he should be obligated to.
Literature also obligates him to become a garbageman, but so far he has not fulfilled that obligation.

[Doug Muir]

Oh, _The Black Arrow_ isn't that bad. Sort of forgettable, but not /bad/. And a nice glimpse of Richard III in there.

The Wars of the Roses should be a great setting for historic fiction. For some reason, though, they seem to be much more popular as a setting for romance novels -- go figure.

Doug M.

[dave heasman]

Terry Eagleton is a rancid tosser. Hooray.

[Google]

[*As an aside, this is rather disingenuous. What Clarence should have shown George was a picture of what life would have been like if he had done a few of the things he had wanted to do instead of always trying to please other people.]