Fantastic Worlds

  FANTASTIC WORLDS

  Fantastic Worlds

  Myths, Tales, and Stories

  Edited and with Commentaries by

  ERIC S. RABKIN

  Oxford University Press

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  Copyright © 1979 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

  First published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1979

  First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1979

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Main entry under title:

  Fantastic worlds.

  Bibliography: p.

  1. Fantastic literature. I. Rabkin, Eric S.

  PN6071.F25F34 808.83′876 78-11482

  ISBN 0-19-502542-3

  ISBN 0-19-502541-5 pbk.

  Printed in the United States of America

  printing, last digit: 20 19 18 17

  Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all of the copyright notices, the pages following constitute an extension of the copyright page.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHINUA ACHEBE: “Why Tortoise’s Shell Is Not Smooth” from Things Fall Apart. Reprinted by permission of William Heinemann Ltd., London.

  ALEKSANDR AFANAS’EV, ED.: “The Magic Swan Geese” from Russian Fairy Tales, trans. Norbert Guterman. Copyright 1945 by Pantheon Books, Inc.; renewed 1973 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., and Sheldon Press, London.

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: “The Tinderbox” from The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories, trans. Erik Christian Haugaard, foreword by Virginia Haviland. Copyright © 1974 by Erik Christian Haugaard. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Co., Inc., and Victor Gollancz Ltd., London.

  DONALD BARTHELME: “The Piano Player” from Come Back, Dr. Caligari. Copyright © 1963 by Donald Barthelme; originally appeared in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown & Co. and International Creative Management.

  PETER BICHSEL: “There Is No Such Place as America” from There Is No Such Place as America, trans. Michael Hamburger. Copyright © 1969 by Hermann Luchterhand Verlag GmbH, Neuwied und Berlin; translation copyright © 1970 by Michael Hamburger; originally published in German under the title Kindergeschichten by Luchterhand/Edition Otto F. Walter; first published in England by Calder and Boyars Ltd., London. Reprinted by permission of Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence & Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.

  JORGE LUIS BORGES: “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” from Labyrinths, trans. James E. Irby. Copyright © 1962 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions, New York, and Laurence Pollinger Ltd., London.

  RICHARD BRAUTIGAN: “Homage to the San Francisco YMCA” from Revenge of the Lawn. Copyright © 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971 by Richard Brautigan. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, a Division of Gulf & Western Corp., and Jonathan Cape Ltd., London.

  ITALO CALVINO: “All At One Point” from Cosmicomics. Copyright © 1965 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino; English translation © 1968 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Jonathan Cape Ltd.; originally appeared in Playboy. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Roslyn Targ Agency.

  A. W. CARDINALL, ED.: “The Eye of the Giant” from Tales Told in Togoland. Reprinted by permission of the International African Institute and Mrs. Ada Cardinall.

  ARTHUR C. CLARKE: “The Star” from The Other Side of the Sky. Copyright 1955 by Royal Publications. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., the author, and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y.

  ROBERT COOVER: “The Marker” from Pricksongs & Descants. Copyright © 1969 by Robert Coover. Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton, and Jonathan Cape Ltd., London.

  JULIO CORTAZAR: “Axolotl” from End of the Game and Other Stories, trans. Paul Blackburn. Copyright © 1967, 1963 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., and Joan Blackburn.

  JACK FINNEY: “The Third Level” from Short Science Fiction Tales. Copyright © 1950, renewed 1977 by Jack Finney. Reprinted by permission of Harold Matson Co., Inc.

  E. T. A. HOFFMAN: “Ritter Gluck” and “The Sandman” from Tales of E. T. A. Hoffman, trans. Leonard J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight. Copyright © 1969 by the University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press and Leonard J. Kent.

  SPENCER HOLST: “The Zebra Storyteller” from The Language of Cats and Other Stories. Copyright © 1971 by Spencer Holst. Reprinted by permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton.

  NORTON JUSTER: “The Royal Banquet” from The Phantom Tollbooth. Copyright © 1961 by Norton Juster. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc., and Collins Publishers, London.

  FRANZ KAFKA: “The Judgment” from The Penal Colony. Copyright © 1948, renewed © 1975 by Schocken Books, Inc. “A Common Confusion” from The Great Wall of China. Copyright 1946, renewed 1974 by Schocken Books Inc. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, Inc., and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd., London.

  TOMMASO LANDOLFI: “Pastoral” from Gogol’s Wife and Other Stories, trans. John Longrigg. Copyright © 1963 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions, New York.

  H. P. LOVECRAFT: “The Picture in the House.” Reprinted by permission of Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wisconsin.

  OVID: “The Myth of Actaeon,” “The Myth of Narcissus,” and “The Myth of Philomela” from Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes. Copyright © 1955 by Mary M. Innes. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  BRUNO SCHULZ: “Cockroaches” from The Street of Crocodiles, trans. Celina Wieniewska. Copyright © 1963 by C. J. Schulz. Reprinted by permission of Walker & Co., Inc.

  ESTHER SHEPHARD: “On the Columbia” from Paul Bunyan. Copyright 1924, 1952 by Esther Shephard. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

  JAMES THURBER: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” from My World—and Welcome To It. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; originally printed in The New Yorker. Copyright © 1942 by James Thurber, © 1970 by Helen Thurber. Reprinted by permission of Helen Thurber, and Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

  J. R. R. TOLKIEN: “Leaf by Niggle” from Tree and Leaf. Copyright © 1964 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co., and George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London.

  AMOS TUTUOLA: “How I Brought Death into the World” from The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Copyright © 1953 by George Braziller. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd., London.

  KURT VONNEGUT, JR.: “EPICAC” from Welcome to the Monkey House. Copyright © 1950 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; originally published in Collier’s. Reprinted by permission of Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, Jonathan Cape Ltd., London, and Donald C. Farber as attorney for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

  SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER: “The Five Black Swans” from The Kingdoms of Elfin. Copyright © 1973 by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Originally appeared in The New Yorker. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc., Chatto & Windus Ltd., London, and the author’s literary Estate.

  H. G. WELLS: “The Star” from 28 Science Fiction Stories. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of the late H. G. Wells.

  For David

  PREFACE

  This anthology is intended to serve the rapidly growing interest in the literature of the fantastic in three ways: by offering together a full range of materials that mak
e possible an enriched understanding of the fantastic, by outlining a theoretical understanding of the fantastic that both puts these narratives into significant relation to each other and places fantastic literature in the wider field of literature, and by exemplifying a number of analytic methods of general utility that are particularly useful for and clarified by a study of the fantastic. In addition, some new theoretical positions are urged as a consequence of this study. The presentation of a large body of primary materials is intended to make this collection not only enjoyable but representative. As such, it can be used both to build traditional ideas about criticism and fantastic literature and also to test the ideas new to this book. In short, the arrangement of materials and the editor’s essays are intended to offer alternatives to the usual points of view, just as the stories themselves rejuvenate the familiar by transplanting it to the wonderful soil of fantastic worlds.

  E.S.R.

  Ann Arbor, Mich.

  November 2, 1978

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Fantastic Worlds

  Organization of the Book

  Analyzing the Fantastic

  The Fantastic and Fantasy

  Exploring These Worlds

  THE SOURCES OF THE FANTASTIC

  The Sources of the Fantastic

  The Need for the Fantastic

  Notes on Narrative Structures

  Audience Analysis

  MYTH

  Genesis (King James Version)

  The Blackfoot Genesis (1892)

  GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, ed. (U.S., 1849-1938)

  The Eye of the Giant (Togoland)

  ADA CARDINALL, ed. (England, 1890- )

  How I Brought Death into the World (Yoruba, 1953)

  AMOS TUTUOLA (Nigeria, 1920- )

  The Myth of Actaeon (A.D. 2-8)

  OVID (Rome, 43 B.C.-A.D. 17)

  The Myth of Narcissus

  OVID

  The Myth of Philomela

  OVID

  FOLKTALE

  The Ghost Wife (Pawnee, 1889)

  GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, ed.

  The Magic Swan Geese (1855-64)

  ALEXANDR AFANAS’EV, ed. (Russia, 1826-71)

  Why Tortoise’s Shell Is Not Smooth (Ibo, 1959)

  CHINUA ACHEBE (Nigeria, 1930- )

  How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox (1880)

  JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (U.S., 1848-I908)

  Paul Bunyan on the Columbia (1924)

  ESTHER SHEPHARD (U.S., 1891-1975)

  FAIRY TALE

  Little Red-cap (1812-15)

  JAKOB & WILHELM GRIMM (Germany, 1785-1863; 1786-1859)

  The Sleeping Beauty

  JAKOB & WILHELM GRIMM

  Hansel and Grethel

  JAKOB & WILHELM GRIMM

  The Tinderbox (1835)

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (Denmark, 1805-75)

  The Tale of Cosmo (1858)

  GEORGE MACDONALD (Scotland, 1824-1905)

  Leaf by Niggle (1964)

  J. R. R. TOLKIEN (England, 1892-1973)

  THE DIVERSITY OF FANTASTIC LITERATURE

  The Continuum of the Fantastic

  The Diversity of Fantastic Literature

  The Fantastic and Literary History

  The Fantastic and Genre Criticism

  FANTASY

  Our Ideas of Time (1711)

  JOSEPH ADDISON (England, 1672-1719)

  Ritter Gluck (1809)

  E. T. A. HOFFMANN (Germany, 1776-1822)

  The Oval Portrait (1842)

  EDGAR ALLAN POE (U.S., 1809-49)

  The Garden of Live Flowers (1872)

  LEWIS CARROLL (England, 1832-98)

  The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939)

  JAMES THURBER (U.S., 1894-1961)

  The Royal Banquet (1961)

  NORTON JUSTER (U.S., 1929- )

  HORROR FICTION

  The Sandman (1816)

  E. T. A. HOFFMANN

  The Black Cat (1843)

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  The Picture in the House (1924)

  H. P. LOVECRAFT (U.S., 1890-1937)

  GHOST STORIES

  The Hand (1861)

  JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU (Ireland, 1814-73)

  The Moonlit Road (1894)

  AMBROSE BIERCE (U.S., 1842-1914?)

  Lost Hearts (1904)

  M. R. JAMES (England, 1862-1936)

  HEROIC FANTASY

  Golden Wings (1856)

  WILLIAM MORRIS (England, 1834-96)

  The Sword of Welleran (1908)

  LORD DUNSANY (Ireland, 1878-1957)

  The Five Black Swans (1973)

  SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER (England, 1893-1978)

  SCIENCE FICTION

  The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  The Birthmark (1846)

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (U.S., 1804-64)

  The Star (1897)

  H. G. WELLS (England, 1866-1946)

  EPICAC (1950)

  KURT VONNEGUT, JR. (U.S., 1922- )

  The Third Level (1952)

  JACK FINNEY (U.S., 1911- )

  The Star (1955)

  ARTHUR C. CLARKE (England, 1917- )

  MODERN FANTASY

  The Judgment (1913)

  FRANZ KAFKA (Czechoslovakia, 1883-1924)

  A Common Confusion (1931; written between 1917 and 1922)

  FRANZ KAFKA

  Cockroaches (1934)

  BRUNO SCHULZ (Poland, 1892-1942)

  Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)

  JORGE LUIS BORGES (Argentina, 1899- )

  Axolotl (1951)

  JULIO CORTÁZAR (Argentina, 1914- )

  Pastoral (1954)

  TOMMASO LANDOLFI (Italy, 1908- )

  All at One Point (1965)

  ITALO CALVINO (Italy, 1923- )

  There Is No Such Place as America (1969)

  PETER BICHSEL (Switzerland, 1935- )

  The Piano Player (1963)

  DONALD BARTHELME (U.S., 1931- )

  Homage to the San Francisco YMCA (1971)

  RICHARD BRAUTIGAN (U.S., 1935- )

  The Marker (1963)

  ROBERT COOVER (U.S., 1932- )

  The Zebra Storyteller (1971)

  SPENCER HOLST (U.S., 1926- )

  ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bibliographic Tools

  General Theoretical Studies

  Specialized Studies

  Supplementary Readings

  Index

  FANTASTIC WORLDS

  Introduction

  FANTASTIC WORLDS

  The problem with the real world, frankly, is that it is the only one we have. To be sure, the real world is not an intolerably restricted world, at least not for most of us in the industrialized nations with our jet travel and air conditioning and long-distance telephone communication, but once you have been frisked at airport security a few times or have paid those ever-rising electric bills or have been called out of the bath by enough wrong numbers, you might well prefer a flying carpet or changeless Cockaigne or telepathy. Where do you find them? In fantastic worlds.

  Fantastic worlds, when first we enter them, whether with the sigh of relief or the gasp of terror, come alive for us as alternatives to the real world. The real world is a messy place where dust accumulates and people die for no good reason and crime often pays and true love doesn’t conquer much. In one sense all art is fantastic simply because it offers us worlds in which some order, whatever that may be, prevails. In our real lives, street noises occur randomly; they are indifferent to the shape we try to sense in our lives. But in a novel, street noises may keep the hero awake just before some crucial task in order to heighten the fear in the reader that the hero may be unready to meet his test or in order to justify his failure at that crucial task; the street noises may keep him awake before a day of the same old routine so that we can understand that the whole world is an annoyance to our hero or so that he can suddenly realize that the next day promises on
ly the same old routine—and that he wants out. In art worlds, the street noises are never indifferent. The fact that traffic and crying neighbor babies and howling sirens should coordinate themselves in order to add shape to the life of our hero is fantastic, a true alternative to the real world.

  If, in addition to hero-responsive street noises, a story had a dragon marauding in the countryside or a time machine or a cure for death, that story would be more fantastic still. This anthology collects a great diversity of those more fantastic worlds. Such worlds are not merely different from our own, but alternative to our own. Fantastic worlds—perhaps paradoxically—are defined for us and are of interest to us by virtue of their relationship to the real world we imagine to have been thought normal when the story was composed. Even though today we can often restart a stopped heart with a defibrillator, we still understand Frankenstein’s awakening of his demon to be fantastic in the real world to which Mary Shelley’s novel offers an alternative. Read as responses to the real world, fantastic worlds take on great significance. The marauding dragon, destroying farms, may symbolize natural infertility; when the handsome prince kills the dragon he simultaneously wins—and weds—the princess and thus restores fertility to the kingdom. The dragon is a fantastic dramatization of a real-world problem; the simple solution of the story poses a satisfying alternative to the complexities of the real world. In the same way, a time machine may serve to move the story’s viewpoint to a time when something in our own world is grossly exaggerated, just as the dragon may exaggerate diminished crop production. In Jack Finney’s “The Third Level,” the alternative time is a wished-for past. The time machine that shuttles between our time and another makes clear the connectedness of the real world with fantastic worlds. The cure for death, in a similar way, is of dramatic interest for us only because we do perceive death as a significant problem in the real world; one never reads a story motivated by a cure for hangnails. To be allowed a world in which we can contemplate the solution of the problem of mortality may be satisfying, exciting, or—depending upon the treatment—terrifying. Regardless of what makes a particular story fantastic, that story will be important in the measure that it engages in its fantastic ways concerns of the real world.