Just as the European Renaissance was a transformative intellectual movement marking a transition from the social and cultural stagnation of the Middle Ages to a new age of enlightenment, a similar movement found its genesis in Bengal and gradually spread to the rest of India. Known as the Bengal Renaissance, it is generally believed to have had its genesis towards the end of the 18th century and its culmination in the first decade of the 20th. Like the preceding one, it marked a period of intellectual and cultural awakening in various fields: literature, politics, music, art, society and religion. At its heart was a shift from rigid religious primitivism to an all-embracing humanism. It represented a transformative era in which traditional norms were questioned, and new ways of everyday living were explored. This movement, influenced by Western liberalism, threw up many great thinkers and scholars. Among them were Raja Rammohan Roy, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda. It gradually paved the way for another — the national movement which demanded the end of British rule in India.
But the Bengal Renaissance was not only a period of intellectual and cultural awakening. Like its European counterpart, it also sparked a desire to push boundaries and go in search of unknown spaces and climes. It was a time when travel became a means of self-expression. Travelogues and narratives from this period reflect the colonised Bengali intelligentsia’s desire to assert identity and seek self-definition. While Troilakyanath Mukherjee, Romeshchandra Dutt, Dwarkanath Tagore, Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore are known names in the field of secular travel, there were also those who undertook hazardous journeys in search of a different kind of enlightenment.
Earlier, religious travel was limited to traditional pilgrim spots. To sacred sites like Varanasi, Vrindavan, Mathura and Puri. But now, travellers were filled with new confidence. They became more adventurous and undertook spiritual journeys into the hearts of deserts and mountains. Some crossed miles of icy desert to reach the cave temple of Hinglaj. Some trekked to Amarnath, the twin peaks of Badri and Narayan, to Mount Kailash and Mansarovar Lake in the heart of the Himalayas.
The book under review has been written in the form of a diary. It describes in detail the hazardous journey the author undertook to reach Mount Kailash, believed to be the abode of the Gods, and Mansarovar Lake, a dip in whose waters promises redemption from a hundred years of sin. The height at which these pilgrim spots are located, the rugged terrain and the excessive cold at all times of the year made this journey almost impossible to complete in those days. Reports of deaths by falls from dangerous precipices, of being blown away by blizzards and freezing to death, were far greater than of successful returns. Only supreme faith and dogged determination enabled a person from even thinking of undertaking such a perilous expedition.
One such brave heart was Ramananda Bharati. A Bengali scholar, reformer and ascetic, he set out on a trek to Kailash and Mansarovar lake in the summer of 1898. His travels across Tibet and the experiences he gathered forms the backbone of his book Himaranya aptly translated by the translator as The Forest of Snow. In Himaranya, Bharatichronicles his experience of crossing perilous mountain passes, snowbound peaks and glacial valleys to reach his destination. But he went, not only as a pilgrim seeking divine blessing but as an observant traveller eager to explore the lives of the people who lived in the bordering villages. He notes the clarity of thought and purity of heart in these people. Their patience, forbearance and hospitality despite the acute hardship of living in a snowbound region. This is a conversation he had with an old man in the village of Malhari.
“This country of yours is very cold…If this is your summertime how do you live during winter?”
“One cannot survive here in winter…all our houses will be under snow. No one will stay here.”
“Where do all of you stay in winter then?”
“Eighteen miles below Joshimath there is a place called Lalsangha. We go there.”
“Then it must be very difficult for you.”
“Sir what shall I tell you about our hardship. It is very difficult to travel with our children, cattle, sheep and goats every year.”
“Then why don’t you shift completely and live there?”
“If we lived below during summer, not only would we die, there would be no sign of our animals too.”
Passing through different landscapes, Bharati describes the scenery. This is a description of Donagiri mountain.
“The place was very pleasant. The grand path was in front of us, the cave was located above it. And the fast-flowing river was just below. On both banks of the river were sky-high mountains…at night thousands of bright lights can be seen over this mountain…if anyone climbed up to the top of this mountain, he would become dizzy with the smell of leaves and flowers.”
Bharati regales the reader with an account of the legend associated with this mountain. The Puranic name of Donagiri was Gandhamadan Parbat. When Lakshman fell unconscious during battle, he needed a special herb that only grew there. Hanuman went to Gandhamadan but, unable to locate the herb, he carried the whole mountain on his back and brought it to Lanka thereby saving Lakshman’s life. Bharati writes:
“Till this day there are signs of that. Donagiri doesn’t have a tall peak and looks as if someone has uprooted its peak. Different kinds of medicinal plants are found in Donagiri even today.”
Somdatta’s translation is faithful and apt at the same time. Though the original is written in a Bengali that may sound archaic to the ears of today’s readers the translation flows smoothly. Kudos to her for bringing an almost forgotten but compelling record of Himalayan travel to those who love reading travelogues.
Aruna Chakravarti has been principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with eighteen published books on record. They comprise five novels, two books of short stories, two academic works and nine volumes of translation. Her first novel, The Inheritors (published by Penguin Random House), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and her second, Jorasanko, received critical acclaim and became a bestseller. Daughters of Jorasanko, a sequel to Jorasanko, has sold widely and received rave reviews. Her novel Suralakshmi Villa was adjudged ‘Novel of the year (India 2020)’ by Indian Bibliography published in The Journal of Commonwealth LiteratureU.K. Her other well-known works include The Mendicant Prince which has been shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize, and Through a Looking Glass: Stories. Her translated works include an anthology of songs from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitabitaan, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Srikanta and Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Those Days, First Light and Primal Woman: Stories. Her most recent work is titled Rising from the Dust. Among the various awards she has received are Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar.
Persistent rain soaks my senses, the lively past’s good fortune knocking on memory’s door, or is that just the beating of my heart? Does being surrounded all night by an alluvial tattoo promote this hearkening back? Beckoned as if by a distant porch light when lost in a storm, I embraced rites from times swept by in the long steady dying since Gloucestershire when, open-eyed, I took it all in. An exhilarating melancholy floods me recalling standing inside a Norman chapel in the Cotswolds’ slanting light. I breathed ancient mortar’s microbial odour, imagining a careful congregation in the Middle Ages, rough-sculpted, their murmuring voices long gone into the cold earth, willowherb and meadowsweet dormant. That winter of my naïve yearning, fields of frost under a murderous owl’s moon, I shucked the duvet to fill pages rearranging words. Trying to make sense of life’s stampede instead of slouching off early to work as I had in Australia since I was thirteen, was life changing?
If possible before final darkness, I still want to picture our quaint haven with the snugly warm smoky pub where I bumped my head in the low doorway, and we won a Christmas raffle. I yearn for embedded images of that ilk to which I cling. Yet to discover Edward Thomas’s poem about Adlestrop station written after his friendship with Robert Frost began — I didn’t know that — bereft of trains and poems, it slept nearby. The poem was published days after his death in action. With an adventurous partner, wind and rain rattling our sanctuary, ruffling rooks perched high above the tennis courts, horses sheltering in Larkin’s ‘cold shade’, my blood quickened. Our first bus trip for shopping, the route wending through golden villages of stone between hedgerows hemming narrow roads, was studded with stops. Women wearing hats, carrying baskets, and elderly couples sticking together, filled the bus with their soft, cidery accent. Spotting travellers’ colourful caravans before reaching Moreton-in-Marsh, we messaged with our eyes to attract each other’s discreet attention.
Part-time servants, our Upstairs, Downstairs situation inverted, we hauled backpacks up flights of stairs. In our bower we scrubbed greasy gunk from the stove and bathed in several inches of costly hot water in an antiquated iron bathtub. I blue-tacked maps of our travels to damp walls under the roof where, on hushed evenings, dark so early, we read by lamplight. Borrowing a gas heater on castors, I decorated it with an Olympic pattern of coffee mug rings, starting my blind attempts at a writing apprenticeship. Each lunchtime, my bedmate, younger than me, living her antipodean dream, glowing after exercising hunters across frosted terrain listening to Ted Hughes’ ‘quake of hooves’, listened to me read what I, laughing at my own jokes, had written. She astonished her workmates once, choosing not to hang around after work to see a future king of England ride one of their horses, coming home to my self-congratulatory words instead. At other times she crossed her fingers for Reynard whenever we heard the hunting horn.
Born in England, an early boyhood memory was the story of my missing aunt. My father’s last sighting of his runaway sister was from the bus he was driving. For years I pictured this as a cinematic scene in monochrome with a grainy film-noir quality. A brave woman pushing a pram flees along a street, wet, like the beginning of this piece. Dim lighting casts shadows as she glances over her shoulder (a close-up). She has no-one to defend her, to help. Saddled with this unfinished business of finding her, Births, Marriages, and Deaths became my gripping reading. We bought a cheap, used car with a good heater. London’s records led to Liverpool, a city recently battered by riots. By simply driving there from the Cotswolds we transitioned from poor to posh. Absorbed, I accrued and sorted all this marvellous new material. Gold.
Neither of us adequately masked our scorn of protocol’s scripture, smirking at our employers’ gross snobbery undercut by their practical helplessness. Exacerbating this was my partner’s rising popularity among the local casual workforce, and our now interesting missing person sleuthing. Irked by supercilious nonsense early, ad-libbing po-faced about the difficulty of finding decent racing saddles for kangaroos, my ludicrous irony had been taken as authentic. I believed my Aussie bullshit humour leading the snobs from attempted humiliation to pathos was forever unforgiven. Perhaps it was my multiple errant triggering of their burglar alarms. That magical Christmas Eve, my birthday, befriended villagers invited us for carol-singing by flickering lantern lights from mansion to mansion for charity. The ethereal beginning of We Three Kings was a goosebumps highlight, my missing aunt never far from my thoughts. We also attended a pantomime at Chipping Norton, Jack and the Beanstalk, where I wondered what the Hooray Henrys might have made of this bewitchment.
For a joke when she who still dogs my dreams visits, I squeeze into my naval pea-jacket worn everywhere those years ago. Finger-fiddling a never used spare button in its silken pocket solicits past voices. I could display other memorabilia from then though she sternly advises just sticking to writing in the past tense. My lightweight phone speedily locates those places we slowly discovered, their wonderful names – Bourton-on-the-Water – biro-circled in a bottom drawer heavy with old maps I sometimes sniff to transport me. From there we journeyed all the way across another ocean, and prairies, the sky storybook-sized, hitchhiking to Alaska, sometimes at the edge of danger. And there was more, much more, but it is to that soft privileged borough, despite the more dramatic, risk-laden zones of our sojourns, that my mind constantly returns.
My phone can also conjure up the television programme episode we researched, resulting in a moving family reunion watched from the Green Room. It can’t locate the snappy words my partner exchanged with the famous ex-pop star presenter who complained about people fuddled with age after the show when she entered our descending lift in the studio. I want to grasp the smells, sights, and sounds of where this all began that lure me like a secret love. Time-travelling, from our attic window, transposed unscathed by age’s scourge – that raw cold would fell me now – breath fogging like the future we cannot see, I would gaze lingeringly once more on what shall be lost, therefore precious.
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Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, Griffith Review, North of Oxford, Rundelania, The Spadina Literary Review, Stand, & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.
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TWO HUNDRED YEARS ago mountains were regarded as useless and terrible masses of inert matter where dragons had their lairs and the spirits of the damned lay in wait to claim the unwary. But as man emerged from the superstitions and materialisms of the Middle Ages he began to realise that mountains were beautiful and their summits worthy of attainment. The nineteenth century saw the conquest of the Alps. Unknown difficulties and dangers had to be faced by the pioneers of mountaineering. Disasters occurred, lives were lost, and mountaineering thrown into disrepute. The mountaineer was not dismayed. He knew that beauty was his for the seeking; he rejoiced in a newfound comradeship and in the acquirement and exercise of a new craft.
The great alpine summits fell one by one; traditions were established; a technique was evolved; a literature was born. The ripples of alpine mountaineering radiated outwards, bearing with them mountaineers to other ranges: the Caucasus, the Rockies, the Andes, the New Zealand Alps. On their highest peaks the skill acquired in the Alps was sufficient to ensure success. But there remained one great range that defied invasion of its strongholds – the Himalaya. There, the technique acquired in the Alps was not sufficient. Height alone was a physical deterrent, and coupled to height was steepness and danger. Expeditions had to be organised to reach even the foot of the great peaks; time and money had to be found. Yet, despite these disadvantages, Himalayan mountaineering and exploration progressed steadily. Pioneers such as the Schlagintweit Brothers, Sir Joseph Hooker, The Duke of the Abruzzi, Mr W.W. Graham, Lord Conway, Sir Francis Younghusband, Mr D.W. Freshfield, Doctor T.G. Longstaff, Doctor A.M. Kellas, General Bruce, Mr C.F. Meade, Doctor and Mrs Bullock Workman, Messrs. Rubenson and Monrad Aas, and many other pre-war pioneers opened up a region unsurpassed for its beauty and grandeur, and by their experiences pointed the way to the highest summits.
Many people refer to the Himalaya as though their limitations in scenery and climate were similar to those of the Alps. The tourist who gazes upon Kangchenjunga, 28,226 feet, from Darjeeling returns home saying that he has seen the Himalaya. So he has, but how much of two thousand miles of mountains stretching from the Pamirs to the borders of Indo-China, and beyond these limits, in terms of mountains? A lifetime might be spent wandering about the Himalaya, yet the knowledge acquired would embrace but an infinitesimal portion of that vast labyrinth of peaks, valleys and plateaux scrawled across the map of Asia.
In climate alone there is an extraordinary variety. From hot steamy tropical valleys, filled with luxuriant vegetation, it is but a few horizontal miles to zero temperatures and the highest snows in the world. Between these two extremes is an immense range of climate, the common despot of which is a fierce sun. Added to the complexities of climate due to height alone is the added complexity of seasonal weather fluctuations, due directly or indirectly to the influence of the monsoons and weather conditions emanating from the plateaux of Central Asia.
Racial characteristics are as diversified as the climate. From the people of Hunza and Chitral to the Sherpas and Bhotias of Northern Nepal, the almost extinct Lepchas of Sikkim and the wild races of Bhutan, the Himalaya can show many different types, for they form a natural frontier between India and Tibet, and a pudding-bowl wherein is stirred a mixture of Mongolian and Indian blood.
Politically, only a comparatively small portion of the Himalaya is accessible to the mountaineer and explorer. Democracy is unknown in Tibet and Nepal, and both these countries have closed their frontiers to Europeans and resolutely set themselves against infiltration of European thought and ideas. Some of the finest peaks of the Himalaya lie within the borders of Nepal, including the southern side of Everest, 29,140 feet, Dhaulagiri, 26,795 feet, Gosainthan (Shisha Pangma), 26,305 feet, and many other great peaks. In addition there are other districts where the mountaineer is not always welcomed, owing to political and other objections. The three most interesting districts accessible to mountaineers and explorers are the Karakorams, the Kumaun and Garhwal Himalaya and the Sikkim Himalaya, including the eastern side of Kangchenjunga, and it is in these three districts that the most notable mountaineering expeditions have been carried out, with the exception of Everest (now barred politically) and the northern side of Nanga Parba (forbidden territory to expeditions at present). Each of these districts is magnificent in its own way. In the Karakoram there is no glacier to rival in grandeur the Baltoro, and no peaks surpassing in ferocity the terrific ice- armoured spires dominated by K2 (Mount Godwin Austin), 28,187 feet. From the Kumaun Himalaya rises Nanda Devi, 25,645 feet; the highest peak entirely within the confines of the British Empire, a mountain so difficult to approach that no one has yet succeeded in treading the glaciers at the foot of it, whilst Kamet, 25,447 feet, dominates the ranges of Northern Garhwal. In Sikkim, Kangchenjunga boasts the most wonderful snow and ice scenery in the Himalaya, owing to its exposure to the moisture-laden airs of the monsoon. It has defeated three determined attempts to climb it, in 1929, 1930 and 1931 by mountaineers well versed in the technique of high-altitude mountaineering. The highest point reached was 26,000 feet, by the gallant Bavarian expedition in 1931 and that only after incredible difficulty.*
Geologically, the Himalaya are a young mountain range, due to an uplift of the ancient seabed covering Central Asia. This uplift took place so slowly that rivers such as the Indus and the Brahmaputra, which have their sources to the north of the Himalaya, have been able to carve their way through the range as it rose. This is the only explanation that can account for the deep valleys cutting through from Tibet to India.
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(Extracted from The Great Himalayan Ascents by Frank S. Smythe. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025.)
About the Book
Frank S. Smythe (1900-1949) was one of the greatest mountaineers of the twentieth century, and a celebrated memoirist and adventure writer. This collection brings together three accounts of Smythe’s most thrilling ascents in the Himalayas—The Kangchenjunga Adventure, Kamet Conquered and Camp Six.
The Kangchenjunga Adventure narrates in detail the 1930 expedition to climb the third-highest mountain in the world: how Smythe, as part of an international team of mountaineers, attempts to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga, before a deadly avalanche—which kills one of the Sherpas— forces them to change course and scale the Jonsong Peak instead. In Kamet Conquered, Smythe makes a successful bid at ascending Mount Kamet in 1931, which was at that time still unscaled. On their way back, Smythe and his team chance upon the spectacular and colourful Bhyundar Valley, which they christen the ‘Valley of Flowers’, and which is now a National Park. Camp Six recounts a gripping adventure on the world’s highest mountain—the 1933 Everest Expedition, in which Smythe, climbing alone, ascends to a point higher than any human had reached before. Made without ropes or oxygen to support him, and in terrible snow conditions, the climb is regarded as one of the greatest endeavours in the history of mountaineering.
This majestic omnibus edition offers a fascinating window into early mountain climbing and Himalayan exploration. It is also a rare treat for every lover of fine, entertaining writing.
About the Author
Frank Sydney Smythe was a British mountaineer, botanist and adventurer. Smythe, who began his mountaineering career in the Alps, joined the international Kangchenjunga expedition of 1930 which ended in failure. In 1936, he led the expedition which successfully ascended Mount Kamet, then the highest peak ever to have been climbed. Subsequently, in the 1930s, Smythe was thrice part of teams which attempted to climb Mount Everest. An accomplished photographer and a prolific writer, Smythe wrote twenty-seven books in all, the best known among which are The Kangchenjunga Adventure, Kamet Conquered and Adventures of a Mountaineer. Smythe died in 1949.
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A brief introduction to Rhys Hughes’ Sunset Suite, published by Gibbon Moon Books this year, and a discussion with the author on this ‘Weird Western’ and more…
Rhys Hughes
Perhaps — that’s the wrong way to start a review or any article— but given that this is a book that offers immeasurable possibilities, like sunsets or stars, one could still start with a ‘perhaps’… You might start with another word of course!
Perhaps, Rhys Hughes’ TheSunset Suite is a novel? Or, is it not? It seems to be a group of short, tall tales tied neatly into coffee lore, coming closest structurally to The Arabian Nights — stories told by the Scheherazade, originating around Middle Ages, much after coffee was discovered in Ethiopia by a goatherd in 800 CE. The book departs in various shades from the One Thousand and One Nights, even though magic creeps in every now and then.
Hughes also seems to have a fascination for coffee lores for he redid TheRubaiyatof Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), translated from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald, substituting the wine with coffee a year ago. And here you have two men in the Wild West, telling tall tales, inspired by 26 mugs of coffee.
In The Empire Podcast by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, there are a couple of episodes on coffee. Coffee houses sprouted around the fifteenth century in the Middle East and flourished during the Ottoman Empire, spreading over time to Europe, and even to America… if we are to believe Hughes! In those times, soldiers, among others, gathered in coffee houses, much to the dismay of kings. The warriors started turning to tall tales, philosophy and gossip instead of training all the time. The rulers were unhappy at the turn of events. Germany went so far as to ban coffee. An article on food history tells us: “One of the most curious of these events happened in Prussia, a precursor to modern-day Germany, where it’s leader Frederick the Great banned coffee by decree in 1777. And he did it for a reason that is almost baffling to modern notions of health and what’s good for society: He wanted people to drink more beer.” In the podcast, they do tell us Germany produced beer. In those days, coffee was seen as a suspicious drink, an aphrodisiac with magical qualities. It is these magical qualities that are invoked in TheSunset Suite.
Brand and Thorn are two coffee drinkers under the stars, sitting over a bubbling pot — and each cup from the pot has a tale in it, professes the author. That the tales are part of a dreamscape of darker hues verging on the absurd, bringing out the strangeness of the illusion we call life and its endless possibilities, comes as a surprise.
People turn into corn cobs, biscuits, musical notes, sombreros and are resurrected in paintings of nightmares at the end, tying the characters loosely into a frame. Phoenixes swim underwater and horses turn into boats and ‘a hill of beans’ becomes a ‘mountain of beans’. The transformations seem to be reminiscent of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) or Pinter’s The Room (1957) … but we are left wondering, are they?
The settings are often realistic at the start but head for the absurd as they end. Each story has a punch and leaves the reader open mouthed in amazement. They are imaginative, clever — sometimes playing on words — like the story of a genie who was told by a robber to make money ‘no object’ — a turn of a phrase which should mean that money is so plentiful that anything is affordable. But the genie, trapped in time and traveling over centuries, misunderstands the grave robber. He makes money into a literal ‘no object’— ‘abstractions, vague colours, mental scents and other intangible things’.
Hughes expands the literary world to a frog, a dog and even an armadillo who are yet to publish their books. This seems almost like an inversion of Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an author (1921), where the characters left incomplete by a deceased author are looking for a resolution. Hughes’ reader, who talks of these authors from the animal kingdom, waits patiently for the books to turn up. In another story, evocative of the same play by Pirandello, the characters from his earlier tales are trapped in a painting and talk to the artist, ‘the keeper of Lore’, who paints his own nightmares peopled by the creations of Hughes. One of the last narratives, this one ties the stories into a loosely structured unit.
“I am Grampsylvania. That wasn’t my original name, but it’s my name for the foreseeable future. He changed me, you see, from a man into a gigantic but sapient corncob pipe. I don’t mind.”
“And he changed me into a biscuit,” said another voice. “I was just George Lewis once but now I’m The Biscuit Kid.”
A third voice added, “Turned me into a hat, a sombrero. I was Max Grizzly originally. Not that I dislike being a hat.”
“Wonder what he’ll turn you into?” they said to Henry [the artist inside the painting].
“I don’t want to change.”
“Well, you don’t have a say in the matter.”
The idea of the writer as the ultimate creator stretches through tall tales to experimental forms. ‘The Biscuit Kid’ is a one-and-a-half-page story written in one sentence — is it an attempt at what is known as the stream of consciousness technique (as in James Joyce’s Ulysees, 1918) or just a quirky experiment? A strange tale about a man turning into a biscuit in a sulphurous pond with tea dunked into it with an allusion to the Boston Tea Party has the victim floating in infinite circles … is it a comment on history repeating itself? The narrative of ‘Reintarnation Smith’ maps the history of the world rather randomly through the many reincarnations of the protagonist, from a palaeolithic shaman (were there shamans in that time frame?) to a Napoleonic soldier and a First World War trooper to an intelligent tree in a world where humanity has become extinct! The alternatives offered and suggested are mind boggling…
Each story sees itself as a possibility expressed in a light gripping vein, characteristic of the author, who has ostensibly been seen as a cult writer… though I am not sure what that term means or how Hughes, who has authored more than fifty books and writes up storms of stories and poems, feels about it — Let’s ask him. We start with the most pressing question —
This is on something that has me perplexed after reading Sunset Suite. How do you think a frog, a dog or an armadillo would hold a pen? Can we read frog/ dog/ armadillo — or would one need to download a special app from Google to read their books? Or is it better to have a frogman/ dogman/ armadilloman translate these? Please enlighten us.
Armadillo: Image from Public Domain
I hadn’t really thought about it until you asked the question. They would have to use telekinesis to hold a pen. The power of their minds. Maybe they have bigger minds than we think. Having said that, I don’t know why we always assume that if you have a bigger mind, you will be able to move physical objects just by thinking. When I was young, I often tested my own telekinetic powers. They never worked, of course. Except for once, when I made a cardboard box cover a daisy during a storm. I was staring out the window and willing the box to fall on the daisy and protect it from the wind, and that is what actually happened! All of a sudden, the box rose in the air and came down over the flower. Certainly it was the wind that did the trick, rather than my mental powers, but at the time I wondered if perhaps I had found the secret of telekinesis. Frogs, dogs and armadillos would write books using telekinesis. The real question is how much we would understand of what they had written. I don’t suppose we have much in common with frogs or armadillos. The dog’s books might be more accessible. I guess most of the descriptive writing in a dog’s novel would be smell-based because that’s how dogs map the world. But while reading a dog’s novel, should we dog-ear the pages to keep our places? Or human-ear them?
That’s an astute observation… Maybe we can dino-ear them! Did all dinosaurs have ears…? Let’s leave that discussion for another time. Next, I need to know what is a cult writer? Are you one? Please explain.
I don’t really know, to be honest, and I’m not sure if I am one or not. Many years ago, I was told that I was one. I think it’s another way of saying, “Your books aren’t very popular,” but softening that blow by implying that, “At least some people read and enjoy them.” I embraced the definition for want of any better label. We do like labels, that’s the problem. When I write, I write just for myself. Not quite. I do try to write in a similar mode to the writers I most enjoy, and they have audiences. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t know about them. I adore the books of Italo Calvino [1923-1985], but I don’t know many other readers who read him. Does that make him a cult writer? I don’t think so. I think it’s just more likely that I am a little isolated and simply don’t know the readers who do read that kind of fiction. And yet I am in contact with some people on the internet who seem to share my taste in fiction. In fact, they give me recommendations of authors I’d never heard of, who turn out to be wonderfully in tune with my taste. Apparently, if you are a writer who is more loved by other writers than by readers who don’t write, you are a writer’s writer, and that’s a form of cult writer. Last year, I read the nine novels of the almost forgotten Henry Green [1905-1973], who was described as a writer’s writer’s writer, in other words a cult writer cubed. I suppose that to be a cult writer is simply a stage for some writers as they work their way up to greater popularity. It’s probably possible for writers who were once hugely popular but who are no longer appreciated by a sufficiently wide readership to turn into cult writers on the way down.
Why did you not write of a squonk in this book since it is your favourite fantasy animal? Will you be writing on a squonk soon?
A squonk: A mythical creature in American Folklore. Image from Public Domain.
There are no squonks in The Sunset Suite because I have written too much about them elsewhere. I don’t want to oversquonk myself. I first learned about squonks from Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings [1957] I think. And then I noticed references to the creature in all sorts of places. Years ago, I wrote a short story called ‘The Squonk Laughed’ because squonks are the saddest of all entities. I wanted to write about one that cheers up. And one of my longest ever poems is about a squonk ragtime pianist who works in a Wild West saloon, ‘Honky Tonk Squonk’. The very word is funny. It sounds round but also squelchy, rather like a cream-filled pastry. There is an excellent song by the band Genesis about squonks called simply ‘Squonk’ and it’s a song that will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about squonks if you listen carefully to the lyrics. In my book, it seemed to me that it was time to show some restraint when it came to squonks. You can have too much of a good, weepy thing.
How long did this book take to germinate into a full blown one and how did it come about?
Not long at all. Some of my projects proceed very slowly, they take years or even decades to be completed. But most of my projects are done fast. This is because if I take too much time over them, I worry that I will lose the thread or threads of the plot or plots, or that the mood and atmosphere of the work will change and be lost. That’s not always a disadvantage. I might begin work on a book thinking it is going in a certain direction. Then I put the project aside for a long time. When I return to it, I have often forgotten the direction I had intended to take the book. So I make it go in a different direction, and it seems to me that sometimes this other direction is a superior journey to the original intended direction. Who knows? But that has no relevance to The Sunset Suite because I wrote it in just a few weeks. I can’t recall exactly how long it took, but it wasn’t a drawn-out process. It happened to be one of those projects that flowed easily. Many do, and I am always grateful to them. It is almost as if I am not doing the work but simply acting as a channel for a set of stories that exist in some cosmic cloud. This is probably a fanciful delusion, but it is one that many writers have had over many centuries. We are conduits as well as creators. We are pipelines as well as pipers.
Have you actually been to the Wild West? Why have you set your book against this backdrop?
I have never been to the Wild West. I have never even been to the West. Even the most easterly part of the American continent is west to me. The furthest west I have been is Ireland. Yet I love Westerns, especially so-called ‘weird’ Westerns. Having said that, I have been to Almeria in Spain, the only desert in Europe, where many ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ were filmed. It looks the way I imagine Mexico or Arizona might look, but I can’t know that for sure because I haven’t been there. Maybe one day I will. I have written quite a few Westerns, all of them weird and unusual. The first was a novella called The Gargantuan Legion. I had the idea for that when I was very young. Much later I wrote a novel called The Honeymoon Gorillas [2018], and then a collection of stories, poems and short plays called Weirdly Out West [2021]. Shortly after finishing The Sunset Suite, I wrote a Western novel
called Growl at the Moon that has been accepted for publication. I am currently working on a novel titled The Boomerang Gang. I find writing weird Westerns to be great fun, relaxing too, yet they apply a strong stimulus to my imagination. Next year I hope to write a novel called Fists of Fleece, which will combine Welsh folklore with Wild West tall tales, creating an especially offbeat hybrid.
You have strange names given to characters peopling The Sunset Suite. Why? Please elaborate.
I enjoy giving my characters strange names. I also think it’s safer. Suppose I have a character in a story named Tim Jones and something absurdly odd happens to him. There might be a real Tim Jones out there in the world who will start thinking that I am referring to him and maybe even mocking him. It is better to give the character a name that surely no real person will ever have. Argosy Elbows, for example, or Crawly Custard. Readers can regard these as nicknames, if they wish. I often make lists of offbeat names for characters that I will use in future stories. Some of these names have been waiting decades to be used. Other names I invent on the spur of the moment while writing. Invention on the spur of the moment is an appropriate thing to do when writing a Western. But in fact the names in The Sunset Suite are still fairly conventional. Jake Bones, Shorty Potter, Killy the Bid, Grampsylvania, Max Grizzly, Cowboy Bunions, Dan Flyblown, Lanky Ranter. It’s not beyond the bounds of plausibility that real people out there do have such names.
Why do you keep obsessing over coffee? Please explain.
I hope it’s not quite an obsession. I like coffee, that’s all. I guess it’s my favourite drink. No offence to water, tea or beer! I am in the process of cutting down on my coffee consumption. I have been reducing my intake for the past twenty years, but it’s still not at zero. I am reducing it very slowly indeed, that’s why. Mind you, the reason why there is so much coffee in The Sunset Suite is simply because cowboy films always show the characters drinking coffee around a campfire. They surely told stories to each other at night while drinking the coffee. It occurred to me that I could use this as a frame for my book. A sequence of strange stories set in the Wild West linked together by the fact that each tale was generated by a cup of coffee. At the end of the book, the two tale tellers have drunk too much coffee. The book is a warning that will be heeded too late. But we are all adults. We don’t really need to be warned about such perils as coffee consumption.
Since classification is an important aspect of human existence, how would you classify your book?
It’s a ‘Weird Western’. That’s what I have been calling it. This is a real sub-genre, and I think my book can be labelled as such without any objections. I might also call it a comedy, a picaresque or portmanteau farce, a speculative whimsy. But it remains a Western, that’s undeniable. It makes substantial use of parody, pastiche, paradox and probably other things beginning with the letter ‘p’. At the same time, I don’t mind if the book is classified just as a fantasy or even only as fiction.
What have been the influences on this book? On your writing?
The main influences on this particular book of mine were other weird Westerns by writers I admire, in particular The Hawkline Monster [1974] by Richard Brautigan, which was marketed as a Gothic Western. Brautigan was especially good at writing short but thoughtful passages that are often at tangents to each other but nonetheless do combine with each other satisfyingly. Another influence was probably a collection of stories I read when I was young, The Illustrated Man [1951] by Ray Bradbury, in which a sleeping man’s tattoos come alive one at a time and tell stories as they do so. But in my book, it is the cups of coffee that come alive in a fictional sense. I also think that the pulp Western author Max Brand was an influence on my book, especially his stranger works, such as The Untamed [1918], which seem to blend echoes of ancient mythology with the more conventional cowboy motifs and clichés.
Would you call these stories humorous? They do linger with absurdity and a certain cheekiness.
I like to think they are humorous. I like to think that The Sunset Suite is a comedy among other things. Most of my fiction has some comedic elements, even if the general tone of the story is serious. Real life is a mishmash of tragedy, comedy, indifference, absurdity, beauty, and who knows what else, so it’s only right and proper for fiction to be such a mishmash too. Obviously, in a short story there’s not much room in which to throw everything, so one has to be more careful when it comes to constructing the piece. The mode of the book, which features a framing device in which is found a set of individual tales that echo each other’s themes, is one I especially enjoy using. I am planning other books that follow this structure.
What books are you whipping up now?
I always work on several projects at the same time. I am currently working on two novels. One of them is a satirical thriller called Average Assassins, and the other is another weird Western called The Boomerang Gang, which is about an Australian immigrant to the Wild West in the late 19th Century and it features an experimental aeroplane with boomerangs for wings. I am also working on a large project called Dabbler in Drabbles, which consists of four volumes of drabbles. A drabble, as I’m sure you know, is a flash fiction exactly 100 words in length. There will be one thousand drabbles in total when the project is finished. The first three volumes have already been published and I am pushing ahead with the fourth. Yet another project I’m working on is a collection of short meditations called City Life. These meditations are supposedly written by the cities themselves and there will be sixty of them in total. I am working on other projects too, but I won’t mention those yet.
Thank you Rhys for your fantastic writing and your time.
(This interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)
