A Bride for the Devil by Stuart Palmer

A Bride for the Devil by Stuart Palmer from Vol 1, Num 1, 1949

Summary:

Emily Parkinson, a rich, bored woman, buys an ancient scroll from her favorite antiques dealer, because he tells her that it’s a ritual for summoning Satan written on real human skin. And he’s not even lying! She asks him to translate it, and he does.

Together, they form a “Satanist Society,” the membership of which is a gaggle of other bored rich women who follow Emily on her various supernatural phases. They gather the ingredients (the blood of still-born babies proves difficult but not impossible to acquire) and finally come together for the ritual.

Dr. Baynard, the dealer, preforms the ritual, reciting the names of the devil and saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards. When he finishes, there is silence, and Emily thinks it’s failed. She turns to console her followers, but they’re all staring, horrified, at something in the middle of the pentagram. It’s a disgusting creature, anthropomorphic but also frog-like, scabby, oily, and dripping.

It jumps onto Emily, riding her “as a rodeo performer rides a bucking horse” around the room and then out into the night. She was never seen nor heard from again.

My impressions:

Fun fact: This is the first story in this project where I’d heard of the author. I’d never read anything by him, but the name rang a bell. Per Google, he was a popular writer of screenplays and mystery novels. So that’s cool!

Overall, most of this story is just garden-variety good. Good writing, good story, good characters. Nothing that really bugged me, but nothing that I want to spend time extolling the virtues of, either.

There was one stand-out scene, though! As Emily and Dr. Baynard are preforming the ritual, all of the rich women who are part of the “Satanist Society” picture what they expect to appear. The diversity of images of the devil is the coolest thing about the story.  Full disclosure: I’m Jewish, and we don’t have a devil in our theology, so I’d never put much thought into the depictions of Satan. Is he Pan with horns and hooves or Lucifer, a tragically beautiful fallen angel? Does he have a mustache to twirl or a contract to sign? I wish more time had been spent on this moment, because it was absolutely fascinating.

The other aspect of the story that I found interesting was the creative ways they found to modernize the ritual and its ingredients. Replacing unicorn horn with rhino horn because “what was the fabled beast but the result of garbled tales brought back to Europe from Africa by someone who had met someone who had seen a rhino?” Isn’t that clever? I feel like there’s a lot of potential for other stories in that one idea.

We’re clearly supposed to laugh at Emily Parkinson for her foolishness and search for distraction in Satanism and think that she deserves what she got, but it’s hard to tell exactly what we’re making fun of her for. Is the thesis that women are frivolous and kind of shitty or that rich people are? Or that this attitude is a perfect storm the “worst parts” of femininity and wealth? I’m legitimately not sure. It definately comes off as sexist, but I  can’t bring myself to be too mad at it, because I have a little bit of that “fuck the 1%” attitude myself.

That said, Emily gets one (1) feminism point* for having just a heck ton of agency. She makes her own decisions, and she makes sure that her commands are carried out. The other women seem to only follow in her wake, though, so it’s a bit of a wash.

And just to nitpick, at one point the narrator points out that villains are more memorable than heroes with the example, “who battled with Quasimodo?” Um?? I grant you that I haven’t read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I was pretty sure that Quasimodo is a protagonist! Was this a common interpretation of the novel back in the day?

Final Word: Does it hold up? Yes/No/Sorta

This is a fun little story but not quite substantive enough to reccomend wholeheartedly.

*to avoid falling under Poe’s Law, I want to clarify that feminism points do not exist and that feminism cannot be quantified like that. I used the phrase because I think it’s funny.

Men of Iron by Guy Endore

Men of Iron by Guy Endore from Vol 1, Num 1, 1949

Summary:

Anton has worked at a factory making pins for over fifty years. He has a gold crescent on his coveralls to prove it. He’s old, now, and shakes just as badly as the machines he works with. The manager would never consider firing him, even though he makes mistakes. At night he nods to the watchman and goes home to his wife, who is usually already asleep.

Then, one day, an engineer comes in to check out the machine. He says that the way it shakes shows that it’s inefficient and needs repair. They install an automatic feeder and chuck, which not only stops the vibrations but means that there’s nothing for Anton to do  but watch and make sure nothing breaks. He eats his sandwich, barely able to hold the bread for the tremors him his hands, and wishes someone would instal an automatic feeder in him. Then he has this super weird dream sequence where he’s being force-fed pins.

Eventually, the machine is given the same crescent as Anton, with a presentation ceremony and everything. One of the managers has a side conversation where he tells the story of how the ocean became salty, an old parable about a magical salt mill that never stopped. Its owner eventually threw it into the sea, but it kept on churning, and before long the sea was full of salt.

Anton comes in after the ceremony, sees the crescent, and promptly dies. The machine picks itself up from the floor, takes Anton’s body, and carries him home. His wife wakes up just long enough to notice that her husband is back, but he’s changed – he’s much quieter, and he doesn’t shake at all.

My impressions:

This is a reprint, originally published in 1940.

This is an odd little story, with a good twist and fine writing. The attention to detail is super strong, to the point of being kind of gross at times (aging involves bodily fluids that the story is not afraid to mention, which I respect). The message is clear and probably was timely, and the whole thing comes off as tragic, creepy, and kind of heartwarming all at the same time. It’s a really strong piece of writing!

On the other hand, the story was kind of hard to follow at the end – I had to read the last two paragraphs twice to catch the implication that the machine had become Anton, and wasn’t just carrying him home like he was his father or something. It doesn’t break the story for me, though.

I just wish the connection from the main plot to the salt grinder parable had been stronger. I see how it ties in thematically – endless salt, endless pins, it’s not hard – but it doesn’t go anywhere. The story isn’t about over saturating the market through increased efficiency, it’s about how machines are replacing humans. I think the author could have written a longer story about these themes, and to be honest, if he had, I’d read it. But as it stands it doesn’t quite all fit together.

The story itself is topical, and it’s a topic that, where I live at least, has been obsolete since before I was born. The factories here all closed up in the 80’s, if not earlier. Some of them were made irrelevant by new technology, as happens in the story, but more were outsourced to China and India, where the CEOs can get away with paying their workers less. The fear of being replaced by technology isn’t gone in 2017, but it’s not the first thing on most people’s minds, and so the story doesn’t resonate as strongly as I think it deserves to.

Still, stories like this hold up as emblematic of the fears of their day, and it is valuable if for no other reason than reminding us of where we’ve come from.

Final Word: Does it hold up? Yes/No/Sorta

It’s well written with a good twist, but it’s a topical story that doesn’t translate that well to the modern day.

Bells on His Toes by Cleve Cartmill

Bells on His Toes by Cleve Cartmill from Vol 1, Num 1, 1949

Summary:  This story is about a cop named Hank who is in charge of investigating a “scientific cult” to find out if it’s harmful. He meets with the leader, and meditates with him, clearing his mind of everything but a singe thought: “Rings on his fingers, bells on his toes/He shall make music wherever he goes.” To his astonishment, the meditation seems to have been actual magic. Now, music from unseen orchestras plays songs that correspond to his moods, including Beethoven’s Fifth (da da da DUMMMMM) every time he walks into a room. This gets him fired from his job and kicked out of his apartment. Worse, the cult leader seems to have disappeared. After a few desperate days, the cult leader’s receptionist, Helen, helps Hank find a new job, scoring movies. All he does is read the scripts, and the perfect soundtrack pours from the air. Even better, Helen agrees to marry him! All of this happiness makes him useless at his job, though – no matter what he reads, all that plays is “Happy Days are Here Again.”

My impressions: I won’t lie to you guys, this story is funny. It made me laugh out loud at several points, particularly when Hank is talking to his boss and “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead” started playing. I’m sure it’s even funnier if you know all the songs that are referenced, but it’s still effective.

Honestly, most of the story is still effective. Minus the song choices and some language we’ll get to in a moment, it reads like a contemporary story. The setup – normal guy in a normal world ends up with a magical Thing and has to deal with it – is used all the time, for comedic or dramatic or tragic effect. It’s an easy way to build tension, and it’s not hard to do well. It’s all down to getting the real world’s reaction to magic right, and Cartmill does a solid job of it, to the point that, if it were written today, I’d label this Magical Realism.

That said, he doesn’t get everything right. Unsurprisingly, it’s Helen who’s his downfall. She’s not a terribly written character – she has an actual personality, and moments of bitterness and spunkiness that add to the comedy well. Every single time she’s mentioned, though, she’s referred to as a “pretty blonde,” even after we know her name. It’s not a long story, Cartmill, we haven’t forgotten what color her hair is in a page and a half. It’s the kind of subtle sexism that probably was barely noticeable at the time, but now is just grating.

And then this happens. Keep in mind that the story spans less than a week, and this is at the end of the first non-work-related conversation that Hank and Helen have had:

“I can’t tell you, Helen, how honest-to-God happy I am. I’d got used to this screwy situation, and I don’t even hear the music myself, but it bid fair to wreck my chances at any job. I wish I could do something you’d like to express my appreciation.”

She didn’t speak, but her eyes had an expectant light.

Hank Smiley was not one to take the long way round. “I might as well find out,” he said. “The only way I know is to ask. Do you think you could get used to the music, too, and not hear it after a while?”

She aimed at him, but her eyes were serious. “Almost everybody is trying to hide something, Hank. You’ve turned a liability into an asset, but you’re still trying to hide it. As long as you’re conscious of it, I can’t forget it. It’ll be easy for me to forget it as soon as you do.”

“Well, I was ashamed of it for a long time,” Hank admitted. “But that seems silly. I’ll forget it, all right.”

“Then,” Helen said, “Sure I’ll marry you.”

 

What? Where the hell did that come from? I had to reread the passage a dozen times to make sure I hadn’t missed a line where he asked her to marry him. But no, I guess it’s implied that if she spends any more time with him, they’ll just have to get married. It’s baffling to me. I thought they were going to kiss, or start dating. This can’t just be a 1949 thing, can it? This is actually weird, right?

I’ll tell you what is a 1949 thing – turbans. When Helen is introduced, she’s described as wearing a turban, but she’s also described as blonde. This had me solidly stumped. Hair isn’t visible in the turbans I’ve seen.

Then, I did a little research. It turns out, in the 40s and 50s, they used “turban” to mean “wide headband”  or “wrap.” I was picturing her in like a proper Sikh turban, when they meant something like this:

Mystery solved!

Final Word: Does it hold up? Yes/No/Sorta

I enjoyed reading this story, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to reccomend it to anyone else.