"The infernal desire machines of Doctor Hoffman" by Angela Carter

Desiderio tells this story as an old man, a war hero, looking back.

Doctor Hoffman has invented machines which can turn reality into fantasy. He attacks the city, threatening the supply of mundane things such as bread and milk, and a war breaks out. Desiderio, assistant to the Minister, is sent out into the countryside to track Doctor Hoffman down.

But Desiderio is haunted by a woman he has met in his dreams and who shifts her shape: Albertine, the Doctor's daughter. So his quest is to find Albertina. He embarks upon a picaresque journey through fantasy landscapes and has fantastic sexual adventures: in the Mansion at Midnight he sleeps with a woman who then turns up dead so he is arrested for murder; escaping he travels with the River People who find him a child bride but plan to eat him at the wedding; he is buggered by nine Moroccan acrobats (twice each) and so on. In the end, it transpires that the source of the Doctor's power is eroto-energy generated by cages of copulating couples.

This is classic 1960's fantasy; fairgrounds and ethnic peoples and centaurs and all obsessed with sex.

I found it very wearying.

She writes with enthusiastic description but there isn't much of a story.

It reminded me of Candide in the way our hero embarked on a remarkably improbably adventure which led to sex and death and mutilation and at the end of each chapter enjoyed the most improbable escape. At least no characters actually came back to life. But, in a way that those of us who remember the 1960s with affection still regret, it ended with a remarkably naff parody of a James Bond film as our hero outwits the man who wants to rule the world.

There were several bits that made me sit up and think although these were not in the end adequate recompense for the silliness of the story:

• "I used to think that the Faust legend was a warped version of the myth of Prometheus, who defied the wrath of god to gain the prize of fire."
• "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."
• "the Procrustean bed of circumstance"
• "Your bill will be presented on departure sir" (there's a metaphor for life!)

June 2015; 271 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Books by Angela Carter that I have read and reviewed in this blog:

• The Bloody Chamber, a brilliant collection of short stories in which fairy tales are brought up to date and given a horrid, and often feminist, twist
• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman: a very sixties psychedelic romp, perhaps too surreal for me
• Heroes and Villains: a post-holocaust fantasy
• The Passion of New Eve: obsessed with mirrors and sex changes and dominatrices
• Wise Children: the reminiscences of one of a pair of show-biz twins; multiple references to twins and Shakespeare
• The Magic Toyshop: a beautifully written coming of age story

"The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter

This is a collection of short stories ranging from 2 pages long to 42 pages long. The stories are, in essence, a retelling of fairy tales: Bluebeard, Dracula, Beauty and the Beast, Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots etc.

They are transformed by the author's sensuous and luxuriant prose and by a powerful eroticism. Puss in Boots is told from the cat's point of view and imbued with the physicality of a feline. The title piece, the Bloody Chamber, reconstructs Bluebeard and describes with delight the mingled pleasure and disgust as the heroine surrenders her maidenhead to her new husband. The Lady of the House of Love is a vampiress who lures young men into her bed, simultaneously seducing and murdering them.

The theme of this book is the interplay between erotic sex and carnal death and Carter's beautiful gems of stories celebrate the animal in mankind.

Wonderful words. November 2012; 149 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Books by Angela Carter that I have read and reviewed in this blog:

• The Bloody Chamber, a brilliant collection of short stories in which fairy tales are brought up to date and given a horrid, and often feminist, twist
• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman: a very sixties psychedelic romp, perhaps too surreal for me
• Heroes and Villains: a post-holocaust fantasy
• The Passion of New Eve: obsessed with mirrors and sex changes and dominatrices
• Wise Children: the reminiscences of one of a pair of show-biz twins; multiple references to twins and Shakespeare
• The Magic Toyshop: a beautifully written coming of age story

"Heroes and Villains" by Angela Carter.

This was my introduction to Carter's work. She writes fantasy novels. This is set after a 'war' (presumably a nuclear holocaust). (June 2015: I now discover that I have already read her Wise Children which is rather different!)

 Marianne lives in a 'white tower' with her father who is one of the Professor's of an agricultural community closely guarded by soldiers. From time to time they are raided by the Barbarians: as a child she watches from her window as her brother is killed. But she finds the safe community stifling and she runs into the surrounding forest with a beautiful Barbarian boy. She joins his tribe which is dominated by a renegade professor turned shaman.

Carter's style mirrors the mythic themes. Moments of lush, gorgeous description is interrupted by arid, sterile dialogue which in turn gives way to sensuous eroticism reflecting the professorial enclosed villages in the barbarian countryside, perhaps echoing a view of stilted civilization and fertile nature. Marianne tries to understand the new world in which she finds herself in philosophical and sociological terms but in the end she is controlled by passion. She, her barbarian boyfriend and the mad guru indulge in a weird power play in which each tries to outwit and kill the other. Throughout, the reader is challenged when characters respond strangely. Thus conversations are rarely dialogues but rather each character states their position (or doesn't because everyone seems to speak in riddles). And the responses of characters to rape, death and betrayal seem intensely unhuman. Finally Jewel  the Barbarian, butcher, warrior, gravedigger and leader, tattooed with temptation, is so educated for a barbarian, sometimes so mundane, but other times so mysterious and so contradictory.

I wondered if he was Mick Jagger as seen by Marianne (Faithful).

Such a strange book; sometimes so unfullfilling and sometimes so profound.

Weird and upsetting at every level. August 2012; 164 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Books by Angela Carter that I have read and reviewed in this blog:

• The Bloody Chamber, a brilliant collection of short stories in which fairy tales are brought up to date and given a horrid, and often feminist, twist
• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman: a very sixties psychedelic romp, perhaps too surreal for me
• Heroes and Villains: a post-holocaust fantasy
• The Passion of New Eve: obsessed with mirrors and sex changes and dominatrices
• Wise Children: the reminiscences of one of a pair of show-biz twins; multiple references to twins and Shakespeare
• The Magic Toyshop: a beautifully written coming of age story

"The Three Emperors" by Miranda Carter

George V looked so like
 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
that they were
sometimes confused.

This book considers the three cousins who became Nicholas II tsar of Russia, George V, King and Emperor, and Kaiser Wilhelm II. All three had similar childhoods, isolated from normal people (although George, as second son, served in the Navy for ten years and so at least met sailors) and brought up to believe that they were special. They were clearly lonely. Able to understand only royalty, their family formed a sort of pan-Europe business with the belief that family loyalties would trump national interests and ensure peace.

But their world was changing. Each empire needed to grow and there were inevitable tensions as their colonists and merchants clashed in various parts of the world. More particularly, the industrial revolution had created a working class that increasingly demanded a share in power. With their educations, isolated by privilege, they were unable to understand and were all fundamentally reactionary.

At least George was powerless. The British constitution ensured that he understood that he had to work with parliament and obey 'his' prime minister. Nicholas and Wilhelm were autocrats. They believed in personal rule (Nicholas was the only man in Russia who could authorise divorces and name changes) and attempted to enforce their will on 'their' people.

Not only was it fundamentally absurd that a single person could possibly rule complex modernising countries such as Germany and Russia but their isolation from the governed both because of the layers of courtiers through whom all information was filtered and distorted and because of the conceptual gaps between emperor and plebeian meant that autocracy was doomed.

In the end they didn't want the first world war. The Russian defeat by the Japanese in 1905 had sparked revolution and the Russian ministers were well aware that another war risked revolution (although Nicholas seems not to have had any idea that he could possibly be deposed). Wilhelm, for all his aggressive posturing, was frightened of war and tried at the last minute to back out of it as he had done several times before. But the Austrian's aggressive response to the Serbians abject apologies after the assassination at Sarajevo tipped the balance. War was inevitable. The colonial clashes and the militarisation of German society (which had been encouraged by Wilhelm) had led to several crises in the previous few years in which last-minute diplomacy had just averted war. At some point the tipping point would be reached.

The war destroyed the idea of empire. Although George V clung on the Tsar had abdicated and been assassinated before the armistice. Kaiser Bill abdicated on armistice day as did the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Also in 1917 the 'tsar' of Bulgaria and the king of Greece both abdicated. The last Ottoman Sultan was deposed in 1922.

A beautifully written book about a fascinating period in history.

June 2011; 500 pages

"Wise Children" by Angela Carter

"What a joy it is to dance and sing!"

I first read this book in March 2009; I re-read it over ten years later in October 2019 and, I am ashmed to say, I didn't remember I had read it the first time.

On her 75th birthday, Dora Chance tells the story of her life with twin sister Nora. The Lucky Chances were a dance act during the declining days of variety but what really set them apart was the interlocking of their lives with the Hazard dynasty of classical actors including their father Melchior, who is celebrating his 100th birthday. Twins, bastards and intra-family affairs permeate this romp through this comedy of the legitimate and the illegitimate theatre.

This is a fantasy, a fairy tale. It is often necessary to willingly and consciously suspend one's disbelief; the pay off in entertainment terms is well worth it. Coincidences abound (there are 5 sets of twins; Nora and Dora share their 75th birthday with their father Melchior (and his twin Peregrine) and Shakespeare. Peregrine is a magician; he arrives out of the blue at key dramatic moments and then disappears (in one case presumed dead) and then returns having made a fortune out of gold, or oil, or... A lot of Perry's back story is secret.

There are many Shakespearean themes (twins, fathers) and motifs:

• Melchior's father murdered his mother and her (presumed) lover and then committed suicide after he had played Othello to her Desdemona (and the presumed lover was playing Iago); later Melchior plays Othello and marries HIS Desdemona
• Tiff goes mad on live TV, carrying flowers, singing a song and subsequently drowning, like Ophelia in Hamlet;
• The twins dance as fairies in a film version of Midsummer Night's Dream starring their father and written by their uncle.
• At the end of the filming there is a triple marriage in which Dora avoids matrimony by substituting for herself the previous bride of the man who wants to marry her; thus more or less replicating the 'bed trick' in Measure for Measure.
• Lady Atalanta is cast out of her house by her two evil daughters, as Lear is cast from his kingdom by his Goneril and Regan.
• The musical show What? You Will! is the alternative title for Twelfth Night which features a pair of twins
• And of course all those bloody twins and the fact that some of them look so alike that lovers don't know with whom they are sleeping.

Birthday parties throughout are excruciating occasions full of betrayal and unhappiness. The funniest moment of the book comes when Melchior gives his twin daughters Saskia and Imogen (who aren't actually his daughters) a present at their 21st birthday: the present is a new step mother.

As well as twins, mirrors crop up as a theme. Deefholts explains in detail that the theme of the twins is in itself a theme of reflection, with the mirror image often being the literally perverted or evil aspect. Dualities include illegitimacy (explicitly characterised as the 'left side') versus legitimacy, Dora versus Nora, the "legit" theatre vs the music halls, north London vs South London, Peregrine vs Melchior, Nora and Dora vs Saskia and Imogen, Tristan vs Gareth etc

This book is immense fun and an exhilarating read. It has been turned into a stage show by Emma Rice.

Books by Angela Carter that I have read and reviewed in this blog:

• The Bloody Chamber, a brilliant collection of short stories in which fairy tales are brought up to date and given a horrid, and often feminist, twist
• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman: a very sixties psychedelic romp, perhaps too surreal for me
• Heroes and Villains: a post-holocaust fantasy
• The Passion of New Eve: obsessed with mirrors and sex changes and dominatrices
• Wise Children: the reminiscences of one of a pair of show-biz twins; multiple references to twins and Shakespeare
• The Magic Toyshop: a beautifully written coming of age story

The real strength of this book is the voice of the narrator, a seventy-five year old ex-showgirl born into the illegitimate side of a great theatrical family and growing old disgracefully in Brixton. This wonderful voice is reflected in so many great moments:

• “She said: ‘Yes!’ to life and I said, ‘Maybe ...” (C 1)
• “We’re stuck in the period at which we peaked, of course. All women do.” (C 1)
• “The habit of applying warpaint outlasts the battle” (C 1)
• “These cheekbones are descended from some of the most profitable calcium deposits in the world. Like all those who spend much time before the public eye, our father has always been dependent on his bone structure.” (C 1)
• “Lovely is as lovely does; if they looked like what they behave like, they’d frighten little children.” (C 1)
• “His stock in trade is boyish charm. God knows what he’ll do when he loses that.” (C 1)
• “Not many people can boast a photo of their grandmother posing for kiddiporn.” (C 1)
• “Ranulph, lean, haggard, bearded, more and more resembled John the Baptist had John the Baptist reached old age.” (C 1)
• “An actor’s inheritance of unpaid bills, paste jewellery, flash attitudes” (C 1)
• “She didn’t so much talk as elocute. She rhymed ‘sky’ with ‘bay’, and made ‘mountaynes’ out of ‘molehills.” (C 1)
• “I couldn’t look a cabbage in the eye after what Grandma did to them. Boiled them to perdition. The abattoir is kinder to a cow.” (C 1)
• “Gareth and Tristram, the priest and the game-show presenter. Not so different, really, I suppose. Both of them in show business. Both, in their different ways, carrying on the great tradition of the Hazard family – the willing suspension of disbelief. Both of them promise you a free gift if you play the game.” (C 1)
• “She’d got it bad and Tristram wasn’t worth the paper she wiped her bum with.” (C 1)
• “Her cheeks give the game away; they’ve got that tight, full, shiny chipmunk look that spells out: facelift.” (C 1)
• “The stately progress of the tram, occupying by right of bulk and majesty the centre of the road, not veering to the left nor right upon its way but sometimes swaying every now and then with a sickening lurch, like Grandma, coming home from the pub.” (C 2)
• “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, as Uncle Perry used to say. I always preferred foreplay, too. Well. Not always.” (C 2)
• “He stripped off only to reveal a gee-string of very respectable dimensions, more of a gee-gee string, would have kept a horse decent.” (C 2)
• “Nora was always free with it and threw her heart away as if it were a used bus ticket.” (C 2)
• “She had a passion to know about Life, all its dirty corners.” (C 2)
• “Each time she fell in love, she fell in love for the first time, no matter how many times she fell in love.” (C 2)
• “Ambition, the curse and glory of the Hazards, who’ll risk everything they’ve got and a little bit more on a throw of the dice.” (C 2)
• “A nudist might be able to grow old gracefully in the company of other ageing nudists, but she had the misfortune to live with two teenage sexpots.” (C 2)
• “Lynde Court was built in the eclectic style, that is, a little bit of this and that.” (C 2)
• “Then I spotted Saskia. She, oblivious of her distracted mother, was tucked away under a rosebush, pigging it. She’d dragged out with her the entire carcass of the swan from the Great Hall. Its feathers were so blackened by the soot it looked more like an upstart crow but that didn’t put the little greedyguts off.” (C 2)
• “Then I understood the thing I’d never grasped back in those days, when I was young, before I lived in history. When I was young, I’d wanted to be ephemeral, I’d wanted the moment, to live in just the glorious moment, the rush of blood, the applause. Pluck the day. Eat the peach. Tomorrow never comes. But, oh yes, tomorrow does come all right, and when it comes it lasts a bloody long time, I can tell you.” (C 3)
• “They kept themselves to themselves, away from the hoi polloi, held tea parties on Saturday afternoons when everybody else was having group sex, played cricket on Sundays, drank pink gin at sundown and talked as if their upper lips wore plaster casts.” (C 3)
• “It’s the American tragedy in a nutshell. They look around the world and think: ‘There must be something better!’ But there isn’t. Sorry, chum. This is it. What you see is what you get. Only the here and now." (C 3)
• "As if Hollywood were the name of the enchanted forest where you lose yourself and find yourself, again; the wood that changes you; the wood where you go mad; the wood where the shadows live longer than you do.” (C 3)
• “Everywhere a threadbare, expensive shabbiness that had a class to which we knew we never could aspire. Not the Lucky Chances. We were doomed to either flash or squalor.” (C 4)
• “We painted the faces that we always used to have on to the faces we have now.” (C 4)
• “Given the history of fathers in our family, it seemed only right and proper we should have finally turned up a celibate one – a non-combatant, as it were.” (C 5)
• “But there you are; no silver lining without a cloud.” (C 5)
• “Saskia ... was ... unique amongst mammals, a cold-blooded cow.” (C 5)
• “Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.” (C 5)
• “A mother is always a mother, since a mother is a biological fact, whilst a father is a movable feast.” (C 5)
• “He was not the love of my life but all the loves of my life at once, the curtain call of my career as lover.” (C 5)
• “‘If the child is father of the man,’ she asked, ‘then who is the mother of the woman?’” (C 5)
• “Has it ever occurred to you to spare a passing thought as to the character of the deceased Mrs Lear? Didn’t it ever occur to you that Cordelia might have taken after her mother while the other girls . . .” (C 5)
• “There was a house we all had in common and it was called, the past, even though we’d lived in different rooms.” (C 5)

Shakespeare with a nod to Spanish picaresques and Voltaire's Candide.

May 2009 and October 2019, 232 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God