The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions

I looked up this book in order to see the talisman that lies at the heart of the story: The Sigil of Scoteia. I turned to the shelves of the Boston Athenaeum and Behold!, there this mysterious treasure lay. The central character of the book, Felix Kennaston, a hapless author, who has a gift for extravagant turns of phrase and fantastic romantic imaginings, is turned into a huge literary success by accidental favorable publicity. He finds the Sigil and it opens new and wondrous vistas to him. Cabell's Kennaston is ordinary except that he is touched by the fantastic in his flights of imagination. Cabell uses him to point out curious things about our lives: How we are consumed by considerations of the past and future, even of life after death, while the only directly experienced reality is the present moment. How we think our lives would be better if they conformed to ideals set out in stories in books, fiction, literature. These imaginings both cut Kennaston off from immediate reality and give him a great fulfillment. Indeed, they are the basis for his crowing literary triumph, as the debunking narrator of Kennaston's tale shows the reader. This is an amusing and delightful book. I see that it is available over the Web (http://www.uwm.edu/~mrdunn/cream.frames/cream1.html), but you should have a copy on paper to really enjoy it. It was published early in the 20th Century and there are many copies floating around. A great book, and most amusing. I warn you: Do not stare to long or too intently at the Sigil.

The pragmatic Richard Fentnor Harrowby, wealthy manufacturer of Harrowby's Creme Cleopatre and No. 7 Dental Delight, discussed the life and work of the author Felix Kennason who rose to fame with the publication of "Men Who Loved Alison." Harrowby's evaluation of Kennason: "At all events, I never quite liked Felix Kennason--not even after I came to understand that the man I knew in the flesh was a very ill-drawn likeness of Felix Kennason. After all, that is the whole sardonic point of his story--and, indeed, of every human story--that the person you or I find in the mirror is condemned eternally to misrepresent us in the eyes of our fellows. but even with comprehension, I never cordially liked the man; and so, it may well be that his story is set down not all in sympathy." The book begins in Storisende. Count Emmerick had planned a wedding feast for La Beale Ettarre, his youngest sister, engaged to marry Guiron des Rocques. Horvendile, a servant of Ettarre, also loved her, and attempted to sabotage the wedding. He failed, and had to leave Storisende. Before he departed, Ettarre took the Sigil of Scoteia which hung around her neck, broke it in half and gave him one of its halves to him and said, "You will not always abide in your own country, Horvendile. Some day you will return to us at Storisende. The sign of the dark Goddess will prove your safe-conduct then if Guiron and I be yet alive." After he had completed writing his book, Kennason took a twilight walk in the garden of Alcluid, his estate. He spied a shining bit of metal along the pathway and picked it up and put it in his pocket. The metal was a half of a disk which was three inches in diameter with tiny characters inscribed upon its surface. That disk enabled Kennason, in his dreams, to be transformed into Horvendile and transported to many different times and places in which he met Ettarre, but every time he tried to touch her "the universe seemed to fold about him, just as a hand closes." Kennason sought Harrowby's expertise in explaining the occult aspects of his dreams with ironic results.