“Silence is the only safe answer to Silence,” is a quote
from Talbot Mundy’s
Om the Secret of Ahbor Valley but sometimes you just can’t
be safe with silence.
A couple of years
ago I posted about a writer not often read these days, Peter Saxon and I had
intended to follow up with a post about Talbot Mundy, another influential
writer of the 20s and 30s.
Well good
intentions pave the road to Blogger Hell and although the notes were made for
the post, it was not finished until now:
Peter Saxon: Guardian, Author, and Figment (9 Aug 2011).
Talbot Mundy is one of those writers that seemed to
encompass the old British Empire, but interestingly lacking in the
Jingoism and
Orientalism of writers of that period that irritates the post-colonial,
postmodern lit-crit crowd, who tend to condemn out of hand such works.
In fact, Mundy had a great sensitivity and
sympathy about the cultures he wrote.
Some of his works are on par with
Robert E. Howard’s works such as the
Conan the Barbarian series with his
Tros of Samothrace series, almost in the
vein of
H. Rider Haggard’s
King Solomon’s Mines/She series.
His influence extended to such writers as
Fritz Leiber,
Andre Norton,
Daniel Easterman,
Leigh Brackett, and James
Hilton’s
Lost Horizon was inspired by Mundy’s works.
So you can see how influential his stories were and continue to
be on writers past and present.
Mundy’s biography deserves a close look and his life would
almost appear as a plot from one of his own books.
He was born William Lancaster Gribbon in 1879 in London and ran
away at 16, travelling to Africa, India and the near east.
He eventually moved to America and was a
kind of petty thief and confidence man.
A near death encounter while on one of his sub-rosa expeditions turned
his life around and he walked the straight and narrow ever afterward.
The experiences give his work a realistic
feeling.
There are no supermen in his
books, but extraordinary people who are in exotic settings, amazing
circumstances, and great danger.
An excellent bio on Talbot Mundy is located at
http://theosophy.katinkahesselink.net/talbut-mundy/mundybio.html
His interest in the esoteric religions of the east was
tempered with a genuine regard and a bit of understanding.
He generally didn’t use magic, but
telepathy, psychic powers, and powerful personalities play a subtle role.
Like a stage magician, Mundy never quite
lets you know what is going on behind the scenes, and he doesn’t treat esoteric
practices and religions as humbuggery either.
There is lot of interest in his works on the net and I was
gratified to find some excellent blogs.
A great article about Talbot Mundy is available at
http://talbotmundy.blogspot.com/2012/03/talbot-mundy-first-anti-imperial-writer.html
The Jimgrim/Ramsden stories are particularly
interesting.
This short bibliography
below just touches the surface and just for
clarity I won’t go into the variant titles used in
different countries and at different times, nor the serializations.
I have undoubtedly made
errors, omissions and multiple listings while trying to graft together a
rudimentary listing for the beginning Talbot Mundy reader.
I am gratified to find there is still strong
interest in Talbot Mundy’s works.
See
also
http://www.talbotmundy.com/ and
http://talbotmundy.blogspot.com/2012/03/bibliography-of-talbot-mundy.html
. For a great hard copy, bibliography see also
Winds from the East, a
Talbot Mundy Reader by Donald L. Hassler (2007).
CoastConFan
More links of interest to the Talbot Mundy reader.
Article about Mundy's Tros of Samothrace:
Four biographies with bibliography:
Talbot Mundy, Messenger of Destiny by Donald M. Grant, 1983
The Last Adventurer:The Life
of Talbot Mundy, 1879-1940 by Peter Ellis,
1984
Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of
Adventure by Brian Taves,McFarland, 2006
Winds from the East, a Talbot Mundy Reader by Donald L.
Hassler, 2007.
Update December 2014
Talbot Mundy is supposed to have written for a radio series
called Moon Over Africa in the 1930s and 28 these episodes are available
for free download here:
This is New Year’s Eve if you follow the Gregorian calendar
or even the Julian calendar.
Nonetheless, New Years is a way of sloughing off the old and welcoming
the new with a sense of renewal and expectation. Below are some obverted New Years that are not based on the
Gregorian/Julian calendar. I’d like to
wish each and every person out there a Happy New Year, even if this is not the
date you observe New Year. I’m sure I
have missed more than a few different calendars, but to everybody Happy New
Year.
Since this is a SF & F blog, I thought some New Years
greetings from about 100 years ago showing new inventions with some science
fantasy elements. This is appropriate
since the first Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration began in 1904 and the
first ball drop was in 1907. These are
real greetings cards showing the optimism from the beginning of the 20th
century, in the days before the end of the Modernist Era. I’d like to think we are wiser for the years
and expect brighter days ahead. My
interest in history and cultures also compels me to add some other new years,
which you will see below.
