ARFFF! #4: With the thoughts I'd be thinkin', I could be another Lincoln...

[robotnik2004]

The Arrogant History of White Ben, by Clemence Dane
This is an odd one. Cited by the Great and Terrible Ken Hite in his Suppressed Transmission column about scarecrows, it's a weird forgotten novel from 1938 in which a scarecrow comes to life and becomes the King of England. The scarecrow's name is White Ben, and entirely by coincidence, Ben is also the name of the Scarecrow Who Would Be King in our Unknown Armies game. So obviously I had to track this down.

It is a strange book, musty and seemingly out of its proper history, not unlike good old Harry Smith's anthology. I think I was the first person to check it out of Widener since the late 1940s. In the book, there is a war on, and has been for as long as anyone can remember. With Germany, one presumes, though it might as well be the Hundred Years' War—nobody remembers what the war started for and nobody expects it to come to an end anytime soon. It's just something that England endures. Then Ben, the scarecrow, comes to life. And he hates crows. That's pretty much his sole motivating passion. But when he talks about killing crows, everyone assumes he's talking metaphorically about whoever it is in society they don't like. So they believe he's giving voice to all their hatreds and prejudices, and they love him for it. It's like the Anti-Being There. White Ben is the evil opposite of Chance the Gardener. Ultimately, they make him King or something and he presides over a bloody holocaust where everyone suspected of being a "crow" is killed. It has a storybook quality to it that is a little reminiscent of Oz, but it's dark as hell.

"The night was a noisy one. More were killed than even Ben had proscribed, in his astonished anger that there still existed such monsters, scums, filths, dwarfish horrors. In short that there existed people who would not agree with him. … Ben's plan for testing a crow had become known, and many were flung from roofs and windows to die slowly on the pavements or to be trampled under the looters' feet. Houses were set on fire, and men and statuary shot to pieces. Nevertheless there was a certain good-humoured regret about the business, a general feeling that the fun couldn't last forever."

I must admit I didn't make it cover to cover. I read to page 182, but that took weeks, then skimmed the rest. The musty unworldliness of it all put me to right sleep within pages every time I picked it up. As occasionally happens with books of this sort, the fact that the book exists is probably cooler than the actual activity of reading it. (But I haven't returned it to the library yet—so if anyone local wants to take a crack at it...)

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, weird. I guess this isn't the kind of book I'm going to find down the corner Borders, eh? You know, this sounds a bit Gormenghasty/G.K. Chestertony. British authors were doing all sorts otherworldly things in the 20s and 30s. Psychic residue from the Great War/future echoes of WWII. British weird fiction for some reason always puts me in mind of Moore's V For Vendetta, probably because I read it when I was 12 and I didn't understand a bit of it.

By the way, I am fully in favor of ARFFF! Keep it up!

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Its fairly cheap on places like alibris.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Clemence Dane has a wide body of pulpish fantastic literature. I recommend Flower Girls.

And you do know that Clemence is a she, right? And a rather mid-ranked playwright.

And yeah, I'd borrow it Rob. I haven't read this one.