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Post by dem bones on Aug 30, 2021 18:21:54 GMT
Looking over the issues from this period did make me wonder: are the Surgeon of Souls stories by Ivan Brodsky (Victor Rousseau) worth tracking down? Tried a couple this afternoon via various online public domain issues of Weird Tales. Found them good fun, enough so for me to maybe sample more when time permits.  G. O. Olinick: ( Weird Tales, Dec. 1926). "There must be many who remember the sensation caused by the news that Dr. Ivan Brodsky, during the spring of 1908, succeeded in curing nearly 200 out of some 350 insane patients in the Stafford County Asylum. He walked through the wards, talking with the inmates, praying with them, laying on his hands — in short performing precisely what the apostles had been told to do, and achieving that exact result which had been promised to those who had faith." Among the exceptions, Rita Durham, homicidal, suicidal, secretly wed to Ralph Richepin. Two years ago, Rita was engaged to Ralph's brother, Jean. When Ralph returned from college, the pair fell madly in love. Jean jilted Ralph at the altar and married his brother the same day. When they informed Jean, he blew his brains out. Fifteen days after Jean's suicide, Rita suffered the onset of creeping paralysis and her first psychotic episode. "She thought she was my brother, hated me, and tried to assault me," explains Ralph. Her parents saw no option but to have her committed. Brodsky correctly diagnoses a case of possession, but ridding Rita of her heartbroken tormentor is no easy task.  G. O. Olinick: ( Weird Tales, April 1927). "It was like sitting on a red hot poker." Stuyvesant Baron, insufferably pompous politician, has recently purchased a Southern country estate as befits a man of his elevated standing. It had been home to the Darrell's for 150 years, but, the with death of her husband, the current Mrs. Darrell has hit the hardest times. She has been forced to sell at a pittance. Ho Ho, thinks Baron, that's her hard cheese. He now threatening to have her evicted from a cottage on the estate so he can demolish it. Baron also rids the house of its abominable rotting furniture, and replaced it with a classy new suite. But, as title suggests, one particular dirty chair proves tenacious and refuses to leave. Worse, Baron is unable to avail himself of any other seat in the house without it driving invisible tacks into his flesh. It is the same when he retires to bed. "I couldn't go to a doctor and have him call me a lunatic and lose my influence, so I came to you." A supernatural comedy this time. The seemingly perma-irascible Doctor drops his guard a little, proves he's a big softie at heart (and one who occasionally enjoys a good laugh).  G. O. Olinick"Get your employer home in safety and then slip back and chop the thing to pieces before a tragedy supervenes." Turns out I'd read The Fetish of the Waxworks ( Weird Tales, Feb. 1927). A replica of Lord Nelson continuing his war on the French. On evidence of these three, Brodsky is an ill-tempered old git who knows his stuff. "Let only fools scoff at immortal things hereafter!" |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 31, 2021 18:12:44 GMT
Looking over the issues from this period did make me wonder: are the Surgeon of Souls stories by Ivan Brodsky (Victor Rousseau) worth tracking down? Tried a couple this afternoon via various online public domain issues of Weird Tales. Found them good fun, enough so for me to maybe sample more when time permits. Thank you! I'm going to look into the Mike Ashley-edited collection The Surgeon of Souls (Spectre Library, 2006). From what I've read, only 200 copies of it were printed. I'm resisting the temptation to engage in price speculation based on the "Vault of Evil effect." |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 31, 2021 18:28:51 GMT
I'm resisting the temptation to engage in price speculation based on the "Vault of Evil effect." It is sufficient to mention the book, so I am afraid it is already too late. |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 31, 2021 18:41:22 GMT
I'm resisting the temptation to engage in price speculation based on the "Vault of Evil effect." It is sufficient to mention the book, so I am afraid it is already too late. I wish that weren't true, but it likely is. The "Featured in Paperbacks From Hell" effect is even deadlier, as is virtually any title mentioned in a Justin Marriott publication. |
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Post by dem bones on Sept 4, 2021 12:46:17 GMT
"The cello was moaning like a tortured man. Thunderous discords fell from it, the strings grated and crackled as though some lunatic were at the instrument."  G. O. Olinick: Weird Tales, March 1927). Rose Celayne, the world famous cellist, is dead at 35, leaving a devoted husband, Auguste. Both being firm believers in the survival of the soul, each promised the other that, should they die first, they would return as a sign to their partner, in Rose's case, performing Beethoven's seventh. True to her vow, Rose arrives nightly at 1am, the hour of her death, but her version of the symphony is screeching, atonal racket. her playing invariably ceases on striking of a match. August, fretful of being driven to insanity by aural torture, wisely consults the surgeon of souls. Fine up to unspeakably groansome ending. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 1, 2021 22:43:53 GMT
Looking over the issues from this period did make me wonder: are the Surgeon of Souls stories by Ivan Brodsky (Victor Rousseau) worth tracking down? Tried a couple this afternoon via various online public domain issues of Weird Tales. Found them good fun, enough so for me to maybe sample more when time permits. (The Spectre Library, 2006)
Lost Souls (introduction by Mike Ashley)
The Case of the Jailer's Daughter (Weird Tales, September 1926)
The Woman with the Crooked Nose (Weird Tales, October 1926)
The Legacy of Hate (Weird Tales, December 1926)
The Tenth Commandment (Weird Tales, November 1926)
The Major's Menagerie (Weird Tales, January 1927)
The Fetish of the Waxworks (Weird Tales, February 1927)
The Seventh Symphony (Weird Tales, March 1927)
The Man Who Lost His Luck (Weird Tales, May 1927)
The Chairs of Stuyvesant Baron (Weird Tales, April 1927)
Homo Homunculus (did not appear in Weird Tales)
The Dream That Came True (Weird Tales, June 1927)
The Ultimate Problem (Weird Tales, July 1927)Ashley's introduction to The Surgeon of Souls is interesting in and of itself, particularly the revelation that Rousseau wrote the stories in 1909, 17 years before the first one appeared in Weird Tales. Rousseau himself followed an unusual trajectory from a writer for the likes of Harper's and Argosy to the pulps and, finally, the "Spicy" magazines. Ashley even quotes a letter Rousseau wrote to the New York Times in 1935: "I graduated, not from pulp to smooth paper, but the other way around, years ago, because in my opinion the smooth paper magazine was so inhibited that it was impossible to use it as an adequate medium of literary expression." I've read the first two stories, and they're both standard but entertaining occult detective stories (they're also concise, which I appreciated). "The Case of the Jailer's Daughter" is about a murderer who possesses the body of the title character after his execution. I could swear I've read it before, but maybe the concept is just overly familiar. It turns out that I had read "The Woman with the Crooked Nose" in an anthology Ashley edited, last year's Fighters of Fear: Occult Detective Stories (Talos Press, 2020). The story revolves around a haunting with an unusual origin. As occult detectives go, Ivan Brodsky is fairly likable; he's self-deprecating and compassionate, even if he has some weird notions. He's not as bold as Flaxman Low or as colorful as Jules de Grandin, but neither is he as stuffy as John Silence. |
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