A Strange Manuscript Found on a 4th Year Syllabus

I just finished James De Mille’s A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. It wasn’t a poorly written book, nor was it a brilliantly written one. It’s somewhere between “Meh.” and “Ehh.” I suppose that if I had never read H.G. Wells’ Journey to the Center of the Earth, then maybe this text would’ve held my attention more tightly than it did. It almost felt like a knock-off, void of the wonder that the Wells yarn had. I was waiting to see more of the environment, maybe some natural phenomena that would cast the story in an eerie light (something like the electrical storm type thing that was described in the Wells text at length) But no, what I got was a sociology report and a commentary on charity that I actually wrestled with during the Tsunami just after Christmas two years ago. It wasn’t that I came into the text expecting something and finding another, I’d never do that. It was just a knee-jerk reaction to reading something that signaled other texts. Anyway, enough of Wells. On to De Mille.

I’m turning over a new leaf this year. The last time I wrote a blog for a course I was taking at York (last year, actually) I received a comment at the end of the year from my Professor that went something like, “You are quite brilliant and have a wonderful, enticing writing style; however, almost all of your posts amount to you calling the things you’ve read for this course bullshit. Try opening up your mind and understanding something that’s different from how you think.” So instead of focusing on the negative I’ll try and focus on what I liked. First, I really enjoyed how De Mille used the narrative frame to poke fun at himself and in a way, deflected the anticipated criticism. The best example of this is when De Mille has Melick say, on page 225 of my pagination,

“What a pity it is that the writer of this manuscript had not the philological, theological, sociological, geological, palaeological, ornithological, and all the other logical attainments of yourself and the doctor! He could then have given us a complete view of the nature of the Kosekins morally and physically; he could have treated the geology of the soil, the ethnology of the people…”

It works in two ways; he makes light of his limitations as a writer, but also deflect criticism by way of saying in a very transparent way that, “Look, yes I know there are short comings of my descriptions, but it’s easy to say that when the specialties I lack are specialties my readership might have.” It’s a great trick, I should learn that.

Another instance of this, that isn’t as tongue-in-cheek as it is self-deprecating, is on page 217

“In order to carry out properly such a place as this the writer should have taken Defoe as his model, or, still better, Dean Swift. ‘Gulliver’s Travel’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ show what can be done in this way, and form a standard by which all other attempts must be judged. But this writer is tawdry; he has the worst vices of the sensational school – he shows everywhere marks of haste, gross carelessness and universal feebleness.”

I remember in vocal class when it came to final exams that most of the students would preface their solo performance with, “I know it’s going to suck, sorry.” or something like that. My teacher scolded us about that, he told us that doing that makes the audience uneasy. When De Mille does this it makes me uneasy. It makes me ask, why is this relevant? And say I was enjoying this, why is this here?

The second thing that I enjoyed, although it might seem a little formulaic at first sight, was the idea of flipping the conventions, sociological, and psychological norms that exist in our society. The whole thing with how those paupers are higher on the hierarchical ladder, while the “capitalists, Athons, general officer, and finally Kohen” are at the low rung. What might seem formulaic is the fact that the societal norms that drive the Kosekins are the transverse of what drives us to some extent. We are driven by our own self-preservation; we attain wealth to maintain the status quo. In the Kosekin society it is “better to give than to receive,” but there is the twist that it is better to have-not than to have. This is an extrapolated view of a charitable society; no good deed is done without aspirations to the benefits. What makes this aspect of the novel interesting for me is that when we first see the generosity of the Kosekins we take them to be a people kind and true, as is the belief that Almah states on page 116. She says,

“I suppose not, but you will understand better after you have been her longer. At any rate, you can see for yourself that the ruling passion here is self-denial and the good of others. Everyone is intent upon this, from the Kohen up to the most squalid pauper.”

At this point in the novel the characterization of the Kosekins seems spot on, but a diligent reader (such as my self, har har har) notices that something is amiss as Almah explains what she says about the “most squalid paupers” being above the Kohen. When Almah explains that, “In this country the paupers form the most honored and envied class.” It should signal that the charity of the Kosekins benefits them far more than the items they are charitable with. That twists you into a knot if you think about it in respect to our society. Whether we give to charity to feel good or for the tax break, no charitable instance is strictly charity. In that way, the Kosekin society is not much different from ours!

I wish I had a third thing to add here, but I don’t. I suppose that concludes my post on De Mille’s A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.