Revelations In Black by Carl Jacobi

[cromagnonman]

"What a queer creature man is, Mr Carnaby thought, to create a fascination for the unpleasant. He thrust away a desire to leap overboard and, with an effort, began to arrange his tackle."

I know I know, its immature in the extreme to snigger so at the innocent phraseology of yesteryear. But sometimes the temptation is simply irresistable. And considering the way in which many of the people in this book are similarly prone to experiencing sudden strange urges and inclinations to do things out of character it seems not entirely inappropriate to follow their example, just this once.

Carl Jacobi was a mainstay of Weird Tales during its 1930s heyday. But unlike contemporaries such as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch he never made the leap to become a stellar contributor. The reasons for this aren't particularly hard to fathom. For one thing he was simply never prolific enough to garner much of a reputation for himself. Eighteen stories published over a period of eighteen years tells you all you need to know about his productivity. Just contrast that figure with someone like Ray Bradbury for example who churned out some twenty five yarns for the magazine in less than six years, including a purple patch of eleven stories alone between the start of 1944 and the autumn of 1945.

A more intractable failing lay with the fact that Jacobi lacked any sense of a natural flair for storytelling. His plotting was invariably of the production line variety: proof following upon suggestion with vulgar haste. Nowhere is this ponderous mechanical approach to story construction better demonstrated than in "The Spectral Pistol". In this story a narrator called McKay undertakes a journey to the country to visit a friend called Trevellan. Trevellan is a collector of firearms and McKay is delivering him a book on vintage guns which he has found for him. On the way there he hears reports of a "wolf" (oh yes) attacking rustics in the vicinity. Upon arrival he finds his friend eager to show him his latest acquisition, a beautiful antique pistol acquired from one of the resident yokels. Despite his expertise he admits to being unable to identify the weapon. But no sooner does he open McKay's gift than lo and behold he finds chapter and verse devoted to that very piece. And wouldn't you just know it but that its a bespoke piece manufactured in the 18th century for the express purpose of - surprise surprise - killing werewolves. You might have thought that its silver ammunition might just have provided Trevellan with a clue as to its purpose but few of Jacobi's characters are what you might call the sharpest pencils in the pot. And don't even get me started on the set of occult volumes which Trevellan just happens to have lying on the shelf including Milo Calument's I AM A WEREWOLF. Subtle this is not.

This isn't the only instance either of baffled protagonists having fortuitous access to neglected libraries for the purposes of filling in essential background info. This lazy exercise in storytelling shorthand also features in "The Tomb From Beyond", "Carnaby's Fish" and "The Face In The Wind".

Jacobi possessed no gift for characterization either. The stories here are all populated by casts of shallow ciphers and stereotypes. And because Jacobi had no ability to manipulate them plausibly the majority of his protagonists have to be seized by sudden compunctions to do uncharacteristic things to keep his plots on track. In "Revelations in Black" the narrator experiences "an indefinable urge to leave [his] apartment and walk the darkened streets": in "The Satanic Piano" it is "a distinct urge" that takes Bancroft back to the house of Wilson Farber: in "The Tomb From Beyond" it is "a distinct impulse" that prompts a nocturnal rowing exploit, while "an unaccountable reason" is responsible for the unwise expedition to the shores of the stagnant marsh in "Mive". The examples go on and on.

Time and again it is these parochial aspects of the stories that prove infinitely harder to swallow than the fantastical ones. The gruesome monster in "The Tomb from Beyond" is far easier to accept than the notion that an archaeologist would be permitted to rip a mauseleum piecemeal from the sunken city he is excavating, ship it across the Atlantic and relocate it in his own local cemetery.

But if all this criticism appears to contribute to the impression of Jacobi being an incorrigible hack then that perception is misplaced. The fact of the matter is that Jacobi actually wrote rather well, and this signature collection of his work - originally published by Arkham House in 1947 - demonstrates his strengths as well as his weaknesses. The book contains twenty one stories and I would single at least two of them out for classic status. There are also two or three flawed gems and two absolute catastrophes which are all the more entertaining for being so. The rest are a hodge podge of ghost and monster stories of varying competence.

Undoubtedly the best stories in the book are "Carnaby's Fish" and "The Last Drive". Each is every bit as obvious as the worst stories but in these instances the inevitability actually adds to the horror of the situations rather than detracting from them. I especially enjoyed "The Last Drive" in which a delivery driver is marooned in a blizzard with the corpse of a racing driver. Unable to countenance the idea of sharing the back of his truck with his macabre cargo he props the coffin in the cab. Which proves to be a big mistake.

I also quite liked "The Cane" in which a hapless fellow by the name of Grenning finds himself possessed by his walking stick which he eventually discovers has been fashioned from the branch of a Borneo death-tree. On the other hand I absolutely hated "Moss Island" which has to have one of the most laboured and contrived exercises in horror you are ever likely to find. Even the narrator of the story confesses to being bored by the explanation for it all.

But I'll reserve my closing comment for "Cosmic Teletype". This is a story of such staggering ineptitude that it almost defies criticism. An amateur inventor creates a machine which is able to eavesdrop on alien communications from the edge of the solar system. Deciphering these messages he finds a war being conducted by the planet of Lirius against the peoples of Uranus. When the war bogs itself down into a stalemate the inventor takes it upon himself to offer an unsolicited solution. Which proves to be most unwise. There is just so much wrong with this story that's its pointless to catalogue it all. Just sit back and revel in its utter absurdity. This is the sort of story that compelled John W Campbell to inaugurate the golden age in order to save SF from itself.


 


 

[mcannon]

A pretty good summation of Jacobi's work. If anyone wants a little more insight into the man, they could do worse than seek out a copy of Hugh B Cave's 1994 memoir "Magazines I Remember":
www.amazon.com/Magazines-remember-pulps-their-editors/dp/1884449042



The book is based around the decades-long correspondence and friendship between Cave and Jacobi. It gives some fascinating insights into the lives and work of both the two individuals and that of a working author in the heyday of the pulps. It's also quite touching to see the growth of a warm friendship, which appears to have been carried out entirely by mail - I don't think there's any indication that they ever met in the flesh. The book's also ultimately a bit sad, as we can see the gradual decline of Jacobi's health and wellbeing - he died in 1997, some years before Cave.

Well worth tracking down - at least in my opinion.

Mark

[dem bones]

Terrific review, Crom.

Mar 14, 2017 23:59:23 GMT cromagnonman said:

Carl Jacobi was a mainstay of Weird Tales during its 1930s heyday. But unlike contemporaries such as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch he never made the leap to become a stellar contributor. The reasons for this aren't particularly hard to fathom. For one thing he was simply never prolific enough to garner much of a reputation for himself. Eighteen stories published over a period of eighteen years tells you all you need to know about his productivity. Just contrast that figure with someone like Ray Bradbury for example who churned out some twenty five yarns for the magazine in less than six years, including a purple patch of eleven stories alone between the start of 1944 and the autumn of 1945.

Jacobi was prolific enough, just not for Weird Tales. Like fellow WT contributor Hugh B. Cave (twenty stories over same time span), he wrote for virtually every paying market - SF, Adventure, Hard-boiled detective, Jungle, Shudder Pulps, Thrilling Mystery, .... I'm pretty sure there were some Westerns and Romances, too.

I'm guessing Farnsworth-Wright was happy to publish anything CAS and Bradbury sent him, but that wasn't the case with Jacobi. FW initially rejected the since much-anthologised Revelations In Black, only to have second thoughts when the story grew on him. Had he done the same with, say, a Robert Bloch story, a change of heart would have been too late as the author would already have sold it elsewhere.

Here's the running orders (his and hers severed heads courtesy of Les Edwards).

Revelations In Black (Panther 1977)

Revelations In Black
Phantom Brass
The Cane
The Coach on the Ring
The Kite
Canal
The Satanic Piano
The Last Drive
The Spectral Pistol
Sagasta’s Last

Blurb:

Satan, Sorcery and the Supernatural

Ten tales of terror and nerve-splitting suspense await you in this classic collection of stories. Here you will find such memorable and macabre tales as The Satanic Piano, Phantom Brass, The Spectral Pistol as well as other rarer gems of the gruesome.

Travel to the twilight world beyond the tomb and read Revelations in Black at your own risk ….

The Tomb From Beyond (Panther 1977)

The Tomb From Beyond
The Digging at Pistol Key
Moss Island
Carnaby’s Fish
The King and the Knave
Cosmic Teletype
A Pair of Swords
A Study in Darkness
Mive
Writing On The Wall
The Face In The Wind.

Blurb:
“The shadowy mass of the mausoleum rose like a curtain before me. I steadied myself, reached up and strove to see the interior. My curiosity was disappointed. And then – my head jerked back with revulsion. sweeping to my nostrils from the inner recesses of that vault had come a horrible fetid smell, a loathsome odour of unutterable filth. Then, without warning something cold and clammy slid across my hands clenched there on the iron bars, and I whipped them away dripping with blood, gashed to the bone ….”

Just a tormenting taste of the blood-blanching horror that awaits you in this classic collection of horror tales.

[jamesdoig]

Mar 16, 2017 7:48:24 GMT mcannon said:

If anyone wants a little more insight into the man, they could do worse than seek out a copy of Hugh B Cave's 1994 memoir "Magazines I Remember"

This biography is pretty good too, and seems to be pretty cheap online - it has facsimile letters and a full bibliography, photos and ilustrations, as well as an intro by Robert Bloch and Joseph Payne Brennan:

[dem bones]

The Last Drive: (Weird Tales, June 1933). Jeb Waters is driving the encoffined body of notorious road-hog Philip 'Race' Carr home for burial in Marchester when his truck is caught in a snowdrift. As Jeb sleeps out the blizzard, Carr's corpse stirs, takes the wheel ....

Phantom Brass: (Railroad Stories, Aug 1934). A forest fire sweeps through the valley, engulfing Flume Station, killing it's young operator, a believer in the afterlife. The dead man telegraphs a warning to his colleague at Rock River that the bridge is ablaze, preventing a greater disaster. Spiritualism isn't rubbish.

The Kite: (Thrilling Mystery, June 1937, as The Satanic Kite). "This silk has some mystic significance to a Tibetan. The priests call it the cloth of the Fire-God, and all the seven hells are supposed to follow anyone who defiles it." Samarinda, Borneo. Edward Carlin, sadistic and corrupt British Conservation officer, steals a sacred scarlet cloth from the temple of Po Yun Kwan, provoking a Satanic cult to destroy his family. When Mrs. Carlin duly dies, an incredulous Dr. Van Reutter concedes that black magic is at work and the fates of the Carlin's are linked to an unmanned kite. A so-so supernatural thriller redeemed by spectacular climax.