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$9.95
21. Let Me Lie: Being in the Main
 
22. In Quest of Cabell: Five Exploratory
 
23. Letters
$87.95
24. From Satire to Subversion: The
 
$1.58
25. James Branch Cabell and Richmond-In-Virginia
26. Jurgen

21. Let Me Lie: Being in the Main an Ethnological Account of the Remarkable (The Virginia Bookshelf)
by James Branch Cabell
Paperback: 286 Pages (2001-04-01)
list price: US$19.95 -- used & new: US$9.95
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0813920434
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Editorial Review

Product Description
When Let Me Lie was first published in 1947, most reviewers missed the double meaning of the book's title. Deaf to James Branch Cabell's many-layered ironic wit, they read the book as a paean to the old South.

Readers of this new paperback edition are unlikely to repeat the mistake. Let Me Lie is indeed a carefully researched and brilliantly written historical narrative of Virginia from 1559 to 1946--focusing on Tidewater, Richmond, and the Northern Neck--but as a fictional scholar remarks in the book, Cabell's history is "both accurate and injudicious." Virginia's story of itself, Cabell claims, depends on illusion and myth, and his skill as a satirist allows him to construct and deflate these myths simultaneously. Ranging from Don Luis de Velasco and Captain John Smith to Edgar Allan Poe and Ellen Glasgow, from Confederate heroes to the oddities of the post-Civil War Old Dominion, Let Me Lie remains compulsively readable, as history, entertainment, or both. Foreward by R. H. W. Dillard. ... Read more


22. In Quest of Cabell: Five Exploratory Essays (The James Branch Cabell Series)
by William L. Godshalk
 Hardcover: 97 Pages (1975-06)
list price: US$80.00
Isbn: 0877002177
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23. Letters
by James Branch Cabell
 Hardcover: 277 Pages (1985-07)
list price: US$19.95
Isbn: 0806112204
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24. From Satire to Subversion: The Fantasies of James Branch Cabell (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
by James D. Riemer
Hardcover: 128 Pages (1989-07-21)
list price: US$87.95 -- used & new: US$87.95
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0313255695
Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

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During the recent resurgence of interest in Cabell's work, literary scholars have given the fantasy aspect of his novels only cursory consideration, assigning them a place in the popular "high fantasy" tradition established by William Morris. Riemer shows us a different and more innovative writer who, though drawing on the medieval, mythological, and folk sources associated with high fantasy, wrote in a darker, satirical vein that is closer in spirit to some of our postmodern writers. Rather than expressing an idealized, heroic view of the past, Cabell's work exploits the tension between those ideals and reality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

1-0 out of 5 stars Terrible book, don't bother
Makes no valid points, is too ridiculously opinionated and seemingly narrow-minded in all analyses . . . don't waste your money on this one. ... Read more


25. James Branch Cabell and Richmond-In-Virginia
by Edgar E. MacDonald
 Hardcover: 373 Pages (1993-04)
list price: US$45.00 -- used & new: US$1.58
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 087805622X
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

Product Description
James Branch Cabell and Richmond-in-Virginiaby Edgar MacDonaldIn his prime Vanity Fair nominated James Branch Cabell for "Immortality" on its pages reserved for acclaiming the most select of notable achievers. Favored by the intelligentsia, Cabell was the author of a series of fabulous, well-told fictions that in the 1920s made him a household literary name. Among his many acclaimed books published by 1930 are Jurgen, The Lineage of Lichfield, The Silver Stallion, Something About Eve, The White Robe, and The Works of James Branch Cabell in eighteen volumes. By the time of his death in 1958 the list of his works had become prodigiously long, but he had been in eclipse for almost three decades. This definitive biography serves to restore to Cabell the recognition he deserves. Here he is portrayed as a jesting critic of southern chivalry, an ambivalent artist whose feelings for Richmond required a lifetime to reconcile. He was quintessentially a Virginian. His native Richmond shaped him, and its social milieu indelibly marked him. He matured as a writer in the climate of the postbellum South and excelled in subjecting the rigid graces of "Richmond-in-Virginia" to satire and burlesque. Like his fellow Virginian Ellen Glasgow, he had mixed emotions about home. Not to love Virginia was an act of betrayal, yet to condone its stultifying, Old South idealism was to betray oneself. With the deterioration of Richmond's Edwardian values in the 1920s Cabell emerged as a major literary figure, hailed as an iconoclast and debunker of myths, but by the 1930s his mannered, self-conscious style was out of fashion. Cabell was dogged by scandal. There was the question of homosexuality. It was charged that he murdered the man reputed to be his mother's lover. After a notorious New York trial his most notable book Jurgen was suppressed for violating antiobscenity laws. In this inclusive examination of Cabell's life and milieu a fascinating literary figure is rescued from the literary shadows and acknowledged as a writer of major worth in the canon of American literature. Edgar MacDonald is Cabell Scholar-in-Residence at the James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

4-0 out of 5 stars Unjustly neglected author...
Along with his own autobiographical writings and a chapter in Joe Lee Davis's Twayne book on Cabell, this is the best coverage of the life of this unjustly neglected author. It is, however not without its flaws. There are a few places where information is unnecessarily repeated, even down to the use of identical phrasing; and there's at least one factual howler: Cabell's early friend the novelist Justus Miles Foreman is said to have died on the Titanic in 1912 -- but actually he died on the Lusitania in 1915! There could perhaps have been more interrogation of the racial and social situation in 19c Virginia. But over all a good job... ... Read more


26. Jurgen
by James Branch Cabell
Paperback: 368 Pages (2009-04-28)
list price: US$13.95
Isbn: 1590200594
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

Product Description

Jurgen--a middle-aged pawnbroker-poet from the land of Poictesme--is given the opportunity to regain his youth for a year.Jurgen takes full advantage, setting off on an amorous journey through increasingly fantastic realms--and even to heaven and hell--seducing women as he goes.As his conquests mount up (including such luminaries as the Lady of the Lake and the wife of the Devil), Jurgen's quest brings him face to face with an array of strange beasts, faraway lands, and foreign gods.Moreover, though, in all its sexuality and hilarity, Jurgen is a satire of American orthodoxies--a satire every bit as significant today as it was then.

Jurgen's influence on mores of his time was significant; the book was denounced by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice on account of what they viewed as the book's "obscenity", which only served to make Jurgen famous and Cabell an icon for progressivism.The influence of Cabell as a writer, though, has proven to be even greater--contemporaries such as Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, and H. L. Mencken cited their love for Cabell, and many modern writers claim Cabell as a primary influence, including Robert A. Heinlein (whose novel Stranger in a Strange Land is patterned after Jurgen), Fritz Leiber, and James Blish--and, of course, Neil Gaiman, who calls Cabell "far and away my favourite forgotten American writer", and who provides a new introduction here.

Jurgen is a hilarious and romantic story of adventure, magic, lust--a true fantasy classic that has impacted a generation of fantasy fans.Here presented in a lavish and beautiful new paperback edition, Overlook is thrilled to introduce Jurgen to a new generation of readers.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

5-0 out of 5 stars Cabell's Masterpiece
For a brief, gin soaked, moment in the 1920s the literati fell in love with Cabell. But although he's remained popular with readers (Jurgen's never been out of print for long, if at all) academics and intellectuals have never embraced or rejected Cabell with the enthusiasm of the 20s. Sober progressive thinkers are put off by his exquisite and affected, albeit pitch perfect, diction. Cabell's eroticism, so elegantly phrased, yet so fatuous and conventional, like a well read Benny Hill, also fails to lend itself to the academic project of boiling down sex into a wholesome social critique, sanitized and neatly packaged for use in transgressive pedagogical strategies. On the other hand, the bow tie wearing cultural right senses an affinity for the conservative Cabell, steeped in high culture, but Cabell's regrettable susceptibility to crass phallic double entendre disqualifies him from a place in the canon.

Cabell has his faults of course. He suffers from the tendency of a consciously high brow author to make his writing a display of sensibility rather than a vehicle for the development of character or thought. All of his characters, improbably, from the meanest rustic to a king, employ the same elegant, oblique diction.

Still, Cabell's tepid reception is puzzling. It is not clear why Cabell rates lower than say, Bronte, whom some plausibly view as another overripe, proto "genre fiction" writer. Admittedly, his distinctive voice will not appeal to every taste, but his erudition and allusiveness should endear him to academia; while his self conscious literary elitism ought to appeal to the never-in-short-supply self conscious literary elitist. Cabell is also a novelist of ideas. Big, elemental ideas, not ham fisted, but still the kind you can sink your teeth into; the kind you expect teachers and students would love to discuss. Yet Cabell appears on no lists of required reading.

But it seems Cabell knew from the beginning this was to be his fate. "Too urbane to advocate delusion, too hale for the bitterness of irony". So Cabell described himself in a spurious, self-penned blurb that appears on Jurgen's dedication page. Pitched at neither the right nor the left, the high or low, Cabell recognizes that he is too accommodating of both sentimentality and cynicism, and too frivolous toward both conventional piety and its earnest, angry critics to win over either hearts or minds, the philistine or the aesthete. But Cabell does not agonize over his divided sensibility, nor does he invite our sympathy. He asks only that we not take it, or him, too seriously; a request guaranteed to ensure the marginal and precarious acceptance Cabell now enjoys among the intelligentsia, but one better suited to win the affections of readers who come to love Cabell's elegance, wit, and humble humanity.

5-0 out of 5 stars Best edition available
The Waking Lion Press (Editorium) edition of Jurgen can well be considered the definitive edition of "Jurgen" available today. In addition to the full text of the novel itself it incorporates the rare "Notes on Jurgen" by James P. Cover, only 850 of which were printed in 1928, compiled and extended by David Rolfe; an introduction by the same; the introduction to the British Edition, by Hugh Walpole; the "Note on the Notes" by James P. Cover; the map of Poictesme, as published in the 1928 edition of "The Silver Stallion"; a photograph of the author; all the wonderful plates by Frank C. Papé; and a short afterword taken from an old Times Literary Supplement. The only things that seem to be missing are Papé's "Dorothy" frontispiece and the small illustrations from within the text. Also, the print of the illustrations seems a bit inferior to the original illustrated edition, which of course stays a valued collector's piece.

Still, you won't get all of this that easy and to such a reasonable price anywhere else. Especially recommended for those brave souls dedicated to taking Cabell back into the seminar rooms. Thanks to everybody involved for making this happen.

5-0 out of 5 stars Tell the Rabble...
It wasn't all that long ago that James Branch Cabell attracted a huge audience for this kind of satire.He's not much read these days, and I can sort of understand why - much of what he pokes fun at here is not taught in the schools anymore, and it's too bad.On the other hand, anyone who enjoys the Harry Potter movies, or "Clash of the Titans" and such, shouldn't have too much trouble with "Jurgen".I can therefore recommend it without hesitation.

Well, with a tiny bit of hesitation, mostly on account of the language.Cabell adopted a courtly tone and some rather archaic vocabulary for this piece - quite suitable to the tale, but not very familiar these days.Not impossible, but it takes a certain amount of concentration.And let's face it, for light reading, most of us prefer not to work that hard.Let me encourage you to give it a try anyway.The rewards are considerable.

Categorizing this novel is pretty nearly impossible.It reads at first like an ancient folktale, with a certain sort of chivalrous adventuring in the pursuit of damsels in distress, battles with fabulous monsters and whatnot, but you can't really take that approach very seriously when the narrative makes it quite clear that our hero Jurgen is a middle-aged pawnbroker of temporarily youthful appearance, and a liar to boot.He bluffs his way into increasingly exalted rank, with increasingly exciting wives and mistresses to match, in increasingly mythic realms, until finally he replaces God for a couple of minutes.That's about all he can tolerate, and he realizes that if being God doesn't satisfy him, nothing will.

I won't go into detail about just how Jurgen gets his youth back - suffice to say that he does, with the help of an ancient god disguised as an old washerwoman, and proceeds to those increasingly wide-ranging adventures.I think you will not be surprised to learn that once the thrill of romance has passed, Jurgen gets a little bored.He's a pretty decent husband to each of his wives, actually, but not exactly faithful.

He's not really faithful to much else, either, except to his own opinion of himself as a "mighty clever fellow".Which he certainly is.He manages to outsmart pretty nearly everyone - women who profess their reluctance to let him anywhere near them, the men he competes with, his parents, nature myths, demons, gods, Satan and God.Lest this makes him seem unpleasant, I should point out that he's unfailingly polite and invariably careful to abide by the customs of whatever country he finds himself in.He makes friends easily and opens himself up to new knowledge on a regular basis.He's actually a pretty likeable guy, just untrustworthy.His motto, in fact, is along these lines: "You may very well be right, and in fact I would never go so far as to say you're wrong, but still, on the other hand...!"In other words, students of folklore will recognize Jurgen as part of the ancient tradition of the Trickster, along with Coyote and Til Eulenspiegel and Anansi the Spider-Man and creatures like that.

Anyway, the story builds and builds through Jurgen's titles and locations until there's nothing left to do but deflate the whole business.You've read books like that before, of course, and most authors who write themselves into that sort of corner give you the impression that all they want to do is put the darned thing down and forget it.Failing that, they stick some kind of exhausted conclusion on and leave us feeling entirely dissatisfied.Not Cabell.He's got something to say, even in a carnival ride like this.It's a trifle conventional, but it works.Let's just say that I have seldom read a fantasy that returns to Earth with this much class.

This may have something to do with Cabell's approach to mythic tales, which strikes me as distinctly American.H.L. Mencken once said of Cabell that his knights tend to slay dragons with the attitude of an accountant adding up a column of figures, and that's just about right; Jurgen does all these mighty deeds mostly because that's what people in his position do, and his reaction to his own prowess is something like "Yeah, whatever."On the other hand, he's also a poet, and at various times (especially at the tale's conclusion) he can express himself with great beauty - which gives the impression that he's less concerned with what he's doing and more concerned with how it makes him feel.Given that, it makes a certain kind of sense that he wouldn't find a knight's life, or a king's or a god's, any more or less useful than a pawnbroker's, and certainly doesn't take one more seriously than the other.

So, you may ask, if "Jurgen" is all about how silly stories like "Jurgen" are, what's the point?Oh, come on, you know the answer to that - it's for fun, as was a good bit of everything Cabell did.Even his response to the fact that people tended to mispronounce his name was for fun - it's up there in the title of this review, in fact.He said "Tell the rabble my name is Cabell".Which may strike us as kind of insulting until you read his work - in things like "Jurgen" it's perfectly clear that if he thought of us as rabble, he also thought of the rabble as the really important people of the Earth.

Benshlomo says, You've got better things to do with your time than slay dragons.

5-0 out of 5 stars A rewarding return trip
Like many others who have written reviews, I read Jurgen long ago and was totally captivated.This hardly meant that I even came close to "totally understaning" it. In my 20's I was able to teach it and other works by Cabell.I am now in my 70's and am able to re-read the great and not so great books of my youth.My advice to new reders is just to read it and don't be intimidated by the blend of history and faantasy, the archaic and fake-archaic spellings, and the constant anagrams.Eventually some things will be clear.They are not "secret meanings," just additional layers.Enjoy, then (if it strikes you) dig more.

Jurgen is not cheap victorian porn as at least one reviewer has suggested. It is a vicious and brutal attack on the prudish and hypocrtical criticism that are as much a reality today as they were in Cabell's day.The brutal kingdom of Philistia destroys as much "evil" today as it did in Jurgen's novel.

A clue to entering Cabell's world here is his return to the garden between dawn and sunrise, where Jrgen starts his second journey through life.This dream of returning to reclaim the beauties and adventures of youth and to get a second chance may be common to all men or just to the lucky few. It was a time when the objects of our desire were not quite as beautiful as they seemed and when even our greatest adventures were not quite as great or as adventurous as they seemed then.Going back allows us to view them from the perspective of age and time, and if we have become wise, to sort them out.

Cabell ended another book (The Devil's Only Son) with one charater observing that "dreams are the disease of youth; growing up is being cured of them."Enjoy reading Jurgen. Enjoy returning to the dreams of youth.Join Cabell in the sadness that comes not from the fact that we are no longer young, but from the realization that these were just dreams. . .

5-0 out of 5 stars Always Loved this Book
I own copies of it in four different editions. One is a really beautiful leather-bound book from Golden Cockerel Press.

It helps if you read it before you hit 15 years old, I think. Like Rabalais and Tristram Shandy. Ooooh, did I just recommend those to 14-year-olds too? I'm in trouble now!

To the fellow who called this "A Victorian Curiosity," I would say... No, I can't say that. But it's Edwardian. ... Read more


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