A Cautionary Tale

© 1999 Arthur Montague
All rights reserved.

Being a book reviewer is no great shakes. First, it often requires one to read entire books coupled with an ability on the part of the reviewer to occasionally taint the purity of language with real life. Second, it doesn't pay well; many reviewers are obliged to augment their income with day jobs. Third, one's work is often scorned, or worse, ignored, a particularly painful circumstance since it tacitly repudiates the reviewer's role as arbiter of taste, demand, and literary merit. Though I can argue now from experience that being ignored may sometimes be a good thing.
That said—the downside of our calling—I give to you that reviewing books is a noble occupation. Further, I give to you the thesis that reviewing science fiction is the plum of the exercise. Just as surely as we know that yesterday's science fiction has become today's reality, we can regard today's science fiction as opening the portals to tomorrow's reality. All well and good, as far as it goes. Horribly, for me, it has gone further. Thus, I write this cautionary narrative. Not, I hasten to add, with some lofty humanitarian goal of saving other reviewers from the same fate; rather, to let them know what's in store for them if they pan the wrong writer.
In 1949 I was at a peak in my profession. Syndicated, I was fawned over by publishers and agents craving mention, even in passing, for their offerings and their clients. Careers hung in the balance of my judgment. If I pronounced a piece of writing as derivative, unimaginative, a departure from prescribed genre or lacking in this or that, it was instantly seen to be so and hastily chucked into the remainder bin. If, on a slow day, I had to fall back on reviewing old chestnuts, these works would immediately be retooled with fresh cover art and rushed into reprint for the clamorous and sudden demand sure to follow in bookshops, groceterias, and drug stores. For example, I like to think I got some play for Jules Verne in the Classic Comics because of a scholarly piece I did for Look magazine opining as to how the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was really an aggressive Freudian father figure.
Some reviewers would abuse this power, and I know of two who did. One was committed to an eternity of reviewing hard-boiled mysteries. The other met a worse fate. He now reviews philosophic treatises translated from obscure languages on the occasion of philosopher-writers being touted for a Nobel on the basis of either their obtuseness, the degree of difficulty in pronouncing their names or, in the future I am living to see, because they hail from one of those Third World countries unchained by the USA from the life-long shackles of totalitarianism. These horrific fates, however, are as nothing when compared to mine.
My story begins in that early era I have come to remember as my sci-fi salad days. Notwithstanding the implications of this pronouncement, I should warn you this is no trip down memory lane, no nostalgic walkabout in the rose garden. This is the desert: high arid mesas, hard pan, lizards, coyotes, cactus, and a weathered Mobil gas sign on a pole where there is no longer a gas station nor even a road. In a word, desolation.
The book that brought me down was a pathetic little offering from Galaxy International Press, a bit player in the sci-fi publishing industry which to this day probably operates from an abandoned chicken barn somewhere in Arkansas. Its title was Marigolds, Moors, and Mysteries, and its author a chap by the name of Dunstan Crosbie. Crosbie has since risen to the ranks of credible futurists which, to my mind, is fitting. He favors us with predictions, so-called, that I know to be future facts, for he has the power to "make it so." I didn't know this then. Had I, I would have treated his book more kindly.
Marigolds, Moors, and Mysteries, an improbable title for a sci-fi book, had as improbable a plot. The gist of it was that an emissary from the Sun comes to Earth—how, the book does not elaborate—with a flower that will illumine darkness, dispel damp, and generally make our world well again. The emissary appears on the moors near Cornwall during their bleakest season, toward the end of winter. He is seen by no one, a mystery in itself, given the well-known Cornish curiosity about strangers tramping their moors. But, as Spring eventually reaches for Summer, the moors are miraculously carpeted by a never-before-seen flower; of course, marigolds. Thousands, nay, millions of marigolds. How this has occurred is another mystery, though presumably they were sown by the emissary.
Immediately the marigold is adopted by the people for various curative purposes: in teas and soups to soothe and tranquilize; in vinegar baths; and, when dried, powdered and mixed with hog fat, turpentine, rosin, and a pinch of witch hazel, as a chest plaster to bring down fevers and ease palpitations of the heart. Remarkable, but how did the populace know to do this? This final mystery is easiest to solve. The emissary had telepathic and mind control powers.
I think it obvious why Marigolds, Moors, and Mysteries did not justify rave reviews. Nor did it get one from me. Quite the opposite; I pilloried it as a piece of dross and didn't give it another thought until two months later, when I received an anonymous nonsense verse in my mail:

I had no idea who sent me the verse but to identify its sender seemed an amusing challenge. Seeing it to be part of a nursery rhyme, I replied in kind in my column:

The response was immediate:

And, as if I should miss some subtle point of meaning, the anonymous writer added:

That should have been the end of it. Certainly I had no desire to pursue the matter further, whatever its import, and, in any case, the Fall lists were out and I was very busy reviewing advance copies.
That was when Dunstan Crosbie had the effrontery to accost me at my home, not at my doorstep, from which I could have summarily shooed him, but in my study. I was so surprised I never thought to ask how he had gained entry. Nor did I question that I knew who he was without an introduction.
Fortressed behind my desk, I didn't feel the least threatened by Crosbie, and in the moments before either of us spoke, I had an opportunity to look him over. He looked unprepossessing. Neither old nor young, viewers' choice. On the basis of his eyes, I opted for the former; they were too placid, too experienced, too reflective to be young.
His turn-out was leisurely middle class. Today, he'd be driving a Volvo with a "Baby on Board" sticker in its back window. His tan slacks were almost the same color as his hair, which he wore cut to the just right length to secure a fedora in a moderate wind. There was not much to him, in other words, until he spoke, of course.
"You naturally realize we have some things to discuss," he said. This was not a question; this was a statement, and, oddly, I agreed. "I was out of line writing the book," he continued. "Presumptuous of me to think that I could be a writer along with everything else. I stand chastened before you."
As he told me this, he pulled up a chair and sat himself across from me. Having quite forgotten he was an intruder, my impulse was to offer him a drink. Before I could, he said, "No thanks. Perhaps when you're more settled."
"The marigolds," I said. "That wasn't fiction, was it?"
"Certainly not," Crosbie replied. "Which is why I had a spot of bother from my superior. You book reviewers didn't help by drawing attention to it. The three of you. I had assumed the fate of bad books would be not to be reviewed at all."
"It was a slow time of year."
"I realize that now. Not only am I a poor writer but not much shakes as a publisher, either. Fortunately, my calling lies elsewhere."
"You own Galaxy International Press?"
"Oh, yes, it seems almost since the days of the first Heidelberg."
"Why am I not surprised?" I asked.
"Because I'm helping you," he replied. "It makes things more efficient. You know Jackson, of course. Always wants bare bone facts in his fiction. He reviewed my book. Nasty man. Now I have him exclusively reviewing third-rate hard-boiled crime, a genre I thought appropriate. I've also consigned him to live in a seedy hotel on the fringe of the Bowery, where he gets mugged monthly.
"And Smithers? You know him, too. Another bad review. From a man rather full of himself."
"His work seems restricted to reviewing philosophic mumbo-jumbo these days," I commented.
"Yes, you could say it's the Being and he's the Nothingness. Quite a reversal. As an added touch I've obliged him to attend the lectures of these philosophers. For at least eternity, perhaps longer, though I don't see myself as vindictive. Oh, and the same for Jackson in his cycle."
"And me?" I asked.
"Ah, for you. That's taken some serious thought. Your character is more complex than Jackson or Smithers."
"That's gratifying."
"Yes and no. Your review was by far the most scurrilous. On the other hand, its insight suggested some sensitivities in your character. You found more meaning in my modest tale than I'd written into it.
"You would suffer mightily if you were consigned to the slice of life on the gritty side, and as much with the canapés, rolling eyes, and well-couched, compound, complex sentences superciliously delivered over wine glasses brimming with domestic plonk. I refer to the goings-on in the sanctuaries of academia. Smithers anguishes particularly because his opinions are never solicited."
"And the results of your deliberations?" I asked, hoping my identified sensitivity would win the day.
Crosbie smiled. In the telepathic manner of the emissary from the Sun, he allowed me a look at my future. First off, he was no emissary from the Sun, though he was an emissary of sorts and he did truly have a superior. My stomach churned; I gasped for a breath, gulping air to keep my dinner down. Faintness swept away my consciousness. Crosbie waited, saying nothing while my few seconds of darkness passed and I recovered some composure.
Then he asked, "How did I do? Creative enough?"
"Oh, yes," I croaked. "Remarkably so."
"I thought it a good recovery from my lapse into sweetness and light,"continued Crosby. "Marigolds will disappear from the Earth within a decade or so, consumed by a worldwide craze for naturopathic unguents, poultices, and brews. Moreover, marigolds shall be known as a cancer cure. The cancer research industry will guarantee their extinction as surely as the oil companies dealt with the water-powered car invention. A cure is the last thing the industry wants. But this is to stray from our purpose. Others will deal with the marigolds.
"To ensure there is no misunderstanding, I'll verbalize your future. You will become the foremost reviewer of children's books. Your loathing of children will sharpen your critical skills. You will achieve fame on the lecture circuit speaking to parents on the significance of children's literature. You will also lead a movement to rid children's stories of violence, malevolence, and dread. Children must grow up in a warm, fuzzy environment. As you may understand, the capacity to succeed at the devil's work increases in proportion to the extent people are lulled.
"For example, the little old lady who lives in a shoe will no longer beat her children. Instead, she will send the wee darlings to day care where they can learn the relative unimportance of family and the absolutely essential value of professional caregiving in a non-threatening world. This will enable the little old lady to realize her own feminist self-worth by pursuing a career; perhaps hostessing Mary Kay parties in her shoe. I leave the detail to you.
"And one more thing. I am going to become a renowned futurist; a bit of Cayce, a bit of Toffler ... you don't know Toffler yet, but you will. To ensure scurrilous reviews of my efforts are at an end, you shall edit all of my work. If for any reason my work is panned by reviewers, your bookings for lectures to concerned parents groups and PTA meetings in small towns will multiply."
Crosbie had no need to spell out my future. I had seen it plainly. I sensed, too, that he had no need to ask my reaction. for as certainly as he could put images in my mind, he could see what was there already. He had me—of that I had no doubt—booked up and bound to do the devil's work. So much for the god-like power of the book reviewer.
"This is 1949," I said. "If you want cooperation, you'll have to keep your references contemporary. I have no idea what a Mary Kay party is."
Crosbie chuckled.
"No need to be picky. You're an editor already," he said. "You're right to catch me up on that, though. I did catch the datedness of Toffler, you have to admit. As for Mary Kay, she's also something from the future, complete with pink Cadillacs. As for your thought about doing the devil's work, I hope you don't mean it pejoratively. I do insist on warm, open working relations, and I do hold inflexibly to the conditions I lay down. What I have told you is precisely what you shall get.
"By the way," he continued, straying from the subject of my pending enslavement, "if you should wonder about the nursery rhymes, they're something of a hobby for me and have been for eons. There's more truth to be found in old tales and weary homilies than ever to be found in the prattlings of our current times, for now at least.
"Jack, to whom I once referred, was never alive. You forfeited from the start. You should read the rhymes more closely." He rose from the chair as he said, "Youll be hearing from me."
He left in an unconventional manner, just as he had come in. No puff of smoke, no lingering acrid stench of sulphur; he was too laid back, too self-confident for that sort of passé nonsense. He just plain disappeared, but he left his mark on my mind. I'd no doubt he was real.
Now it could be said, I daresay, in the early postwar years I was something of a man about town. I could eat out quite regularly on my professional standing and, while not handsome in a he-man Buster Crabbe way, I had successfully cultivated a very good Orson Wells-esque persona—enigmatic, seething genius, sweating energy and certainty. It swayed enough ladies that I had no lack to meet my prodigious needs of the period, given, too, I was in my prime. These were not affairs of the heart, of course, merely the perks of success, my due, so to speak.
After Crosbie's visit, changes occurred. I say "occurred" because in a sense they were beyond my control. Now some say change is natural and constant and even predictable. They say change is a dynamic resulting from man's compulsion to do as much as he can before he dies. He presses, he tests, and he alters things. In short, man messes around a lot and he is expected to do so. This dynamic disappeared from my life. I had no compulsion to mess around, to change things; no driving need to fulfill anything or satisfy any other person or grand design. Why should I? I was here forever. This was not a matter of believing Crosbie. No one needs to believe if they know with certainty. And I knew. Absolutely.
Crosbie, the ass, to be on the safe side—as if I ever doubted him—decided to provide a few quick concrete evidences of his powers. First off, I lost two successive paternity suits, one to a complete stranger who audaciously winked at me as she departed the witness stand after blatantly perjuring herself. The hefty settlements virtually bankrupted me. Onerous publicity from these setbacks cost me my syndicated "Other Worlds, Other Times" review column. Then Joe McCarthy forced me to rat out as many acquaintances as I could remember, a list that inadvertently included my literary agent. They may have been Commies, I don't know. I do know Joe was offering twenty bucks a head and I was behind in support payments for the two children, including the one that definitely wasn't mine.
I'd normally concede these devastating events could have been happenstance, mere twists of fate or downturns in fortune, then move on. However, a few other events occurred which would have removed doubts of the most hardened sceptic. There was the matter of my hair. My intent for that leonine coif had been silver grey as I aged. Crosbie declared for baldness, except for a fringe at the back and over the ears. In the space of a month I was denuded. My masculinity also fell off, figuratively speaking. I became indifferent to the fair sex. My face reddened and rounded; my belly swelled and my tush lost its sculpted definition. Crosbie had turned me into a cherub, an inconsequential bubble of merriment so innocuous even babes in arms thought me good company. I removed every mirror in my house.
With my syndicated sci-fi column canceled, sci-fi review requests vanished overnight; and what, I ask, is an arbiter without something to arbit? But then, over the transom, advance copies and requests for reviews of children's books began falling into my vestibule like leaves off an elm in October.
At first I spurned them, mainly by suggesting much higher fees were in order than those offered by the publications. My demands were met, as if by demanding a higher fee I was somehow worth it. This was a notion I could live with, as I'm sure Crosbie knew. For a time it comforted me. Perhaps this relationship with Dunstan Crosbie had an upside.
But then came the live children and, worse, their parents. Came, too, the pediatricians and the school teachers—anyone with the equipment to procreate was an expert, whether the equipment was new, used, ready for the scrap yard or not yet quite off the assembly line. Instinctively, by choice throughout all of my conscious, articulate, able-to-think life, I have avoided children. They are noisy, they are dirty, they are argumentative in the face of reason, some are incontinent, some bite, and the same can be said for many, if not most, of the parents. Children filled me with such a glut of bile, they'd have drowned me in it. Thanks to Crosbie, the bile rose only to the top of my upper lip, allowing me to continue breathing. Forever. Is there not a similar fate for some sinners in a circle of Dante's Inferno? I shall some day have to check that out.
My work over the years following the meeting was despicable beyond my imagining, but I was never for a moment so blinded by self-loathing for my easy roll-over that I rebelled against Crosbie. All reviewers know how to compromise, and veterans like me know how to rationalize the compromises. We term them literary exigencies and go from there. The pap from my pen became the manna of mothers; triteness became the order of the day.
I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I helped out Dr. Seuss, in my way ensuring readers saw the inherent humanity of the Grinch, the intrepid goodness of Horton, and the deeper moral meaning of the oobleck deluge. Babar the Elephant and Barney came later and yes, I was there for them too— cutting edge, you might say. Crosbie also arranged that I be among the first to recognize Pacman as a literary form in the guise of electronic mind candy and, moreover, my thesis appeared in no less an authoritative barometer of our times than the rightist Chappaquadick Review of Literary Form and Style.
The writings were one thing, but beyond disgust were the personal appearances booked by Crosbie through Galaxy International Press, and he loved every minute of my revulsion.
He provided me an inventory of monsters, ogres, and other nasties found in children's stories. Some he wanted cleansed, others he wanted purged; revisionism for some, annihilation for others.
Forget truth in fiction; forget free speech; but ensure everything was done in the names of those two tenets. That's what Crosbie said.
"The truth shall be lies, and free speech a chain on the tongue."
He hadn't wasted any time showing me his true colors, deeper dark than maliciousness for sure; evil, pure evil, was what it was.
How many times I started a lecture with, "Many monsters of children's literature are getting a bad rap...," countless, I assure you. Hunchbacks, crones, giants, dwarves, the bewarted and obese, psychopathic royalty, and idiots—all benefitted from my interventions. I was a literary caseworker, loved by childless pediatricians and doting mothers universally.
Along the way, the miscreants became the most challenged people in history, perhaps because the challenger remained vague, but Crosbie said that was the devilish fun of it.
"It isn't enough that everyone try to change the things they cannot change; they must also believe they can do it. That's what'll keep them going," he said.
As the years passed, I could see his plot unfolding, blanketing thought like a London fog. The lowest common denominator in all things was becoming the beacon of excellence in all things. Complacency—the great stifler of initiative, creativity, and watchfulness—was afoot on Earth. Crosbie had recognized that the future is shaped by the past and the present. From that point he had seen that by arranging for people to ignore the past insofar as possible and revising the balance, he has irrevocably shaped their present and, perforce, has their future in his hand.
This movement had to start with children's literature: the fables, legends, lullabies, nursery rhymes. Perhaps Crosbie would have missed this except for his fascination with nursery rhymes which, I discovered, he took as facts. He ranked the Brothers Grimm among the great historians and Hans Christian Anderson as a veritable magus. Thomas de Quincy and Lewis Carroll also had a place in his literary pantheon, as did A.A. Milne and the Kelly of Pogo fame—now that I think of it, quite a mixed bag. Of course, Crosbie had some dislikes. He thought Beatrix Potter pretentious and inaccessible. I was made to spend years, literally years, exhorting the children's presses to modernize her writing. It would have been easier to persuade the presses to rewrite the Bible in Rap. Crosbie could be a fierce, single-minded task master.
If among my tasks for Crosbie was one that made me privy to his grand design, editing his futurist pronouncements was it. The campaigns around children's literature, the legislation to control content and access, the amazing personality transformation of the witch in Hansel and Gretel after electric convulsive shock therapy, the joy in the Cratchett household when the Rotary Club expelled Scrooge from its membership and presented height-challenged Tim with an electric wheelchair, and, particularly revolting to me, the transcendental epiphany for Scrooge in the revisionist version when he realized the business value of Rotary luncheon networking: these only laid the foundation for Crosbie's real work.
Crosbie predicted the decline of the Soviet Union. This fillip didn't make his reputation; others were there ahead of him. His interests were far vaster. He predicted the success of multi-level marketing, the rise of Big Box stores, biogenetic corruption of food, and, best of all, e-commerce. As an aside, he advised early on that urban crime made cities so unsafe that direct mail was the best way to buy, in part because postal people would only do violence to their own.
With any man there is a limit, undefined by most, unknown to most and seldom reached by any, beyond which rebellion is the only course. I must count myself among those for whom the limit was unknown. Crosbie, naturally, had no limit.
Chameleon-like, he could don the trappings of any cause convenient to his purpose. More than an example because it was pivotal, he argued so eloquently the need to farm organically that his thesis inspired a worldwide organic agri-food Movement. Initially there was a glitch when the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture of the day wryly commented, "I fully endorse the value of organic farming and it might be nice if the world farmed organically. My only question is, how do we feed the other half of the population?"
I had never seen Crosbie so ballistic.
"How did he know our objective?" he screamed. "Even you didn't know!"
Given his mental state, I was grateful for my ignorance. A change of the government in power likely saved the Secretary from a fate I wouldn't care to describe.
There was a change in me then, I realize; a change so subtle Crosbie, even with his mind-penetrating skill, didn't pick it up. The magnitude of his design and the probability of its success, given all the seed-work he'd done over the decades, stunned me. The complacent children were now adults. The arguments for sustainability were fueled not with a view to providing for future generations—the stated objective—but with a warm, fuzzy sense that immortality was just around the corner for adults already here, provided they ate healthily and exercised. Tampering a little with socio-cultural mores and economic value structures is one thing—anyone with power tries that—but plotting to have half the world's population willingly wipe itself out was something else. I wanted nothing to do with it.
Yet then, as now, I was slow to boil and slower still to do more than let off a lot of steam. With my hair had gone the energy and creativity of genius or, as perhaps in my case, the guise of it—I harbored the notion during the Forties that a man can be what he appears to be if he eventually believes his own consciously crafted propaganda. You are what you say you are, as long as you keep on saying it. One need only count the Napoleons met over the years, or the Willie Lomaxes, for that matter, to see the gist of my reasoning. Ergo, I simmered. In the simmering, however, I must confess, there resided a kernel of madness, slowly heating to a bursting point. Quietly at first, my madness eventually manifested itself.
The kernel did not seem to trouble Crosbie. With his mind-reading capabilities he had to be aware of its existence. In his subtle way he probably exploited it many times unbeknownst to me. In the simmering was fear. My concern was not so much that half the world's population might expire in a most undignified manner. Rather, it was the sure knowledge that the survivors would be looking for a scapegoat and, when push came to shove, Crosbie would feed me to them. This use of me was unconscionable, yet inescapable.
Coping required madness, and I found that laughable, though not right away. It happened that a year or two later Crosbie demanded I essay a review of a Ph.D. thesis by a scholar from the London School of Economics titled, "Role of the Groat as a Rhyming Word in Fifteenth Century Childrens Fables and Its Consequent Impact on British Fiscal Policy to 1650." Call it impulse—Crosbie made his demand in all seriousness, and I laughed aloud, something I'd not done in nearly half a century. His eyes flashed; I could see my good humor pained him. The penalty for my indiscretion was four lectures to PTA fundraising bean suppers on consecutive evenings. My resulting discomfort was of the sort that amused Crosbie. I applied myself to the thesis at hand.
At the time, Crosbie was busying himself on a new tome predicting that accelerated consumerism would become essential for planetary sustainability, arguing that consumption must grow but that types of goods consumed would change. When he wasn't working on it, and, I should add, his prose was as atrocious as ever, he would sit across from my desk speculating on what a snake will do after its eaten its own tail and worked its way up to its head. He was hoping for a moment of realization on the snake's part, just before swallowing. For my part, the review of the groat thesis was developing nicely.
"Are you actually enjoying your work?" Crosbie asked one day. I looked up at him and grinned.
"When we first began many years ago I was angry, disgusted, self-pitying, hateful, all in turn and sometimes all at once. Now I don't give a damn and I'm having a helluva fine time, no pun intended." With that I laughed.
He eyed me suspiciously, stirring uneasily in the chair. I could feel him picking about inside my mind. He found nothing but glee and a wealth of knowledge of nursery rhymes.
""This won't do," he mumbled. He commenced pacing as I studied, the room quiet except for an occasional chuckle from me. The notion that a groat could have more influence on economics than a crown delighted me. I dared tell him so.
Incensed, Crosbie designed my life for the next months to be as horrific as possible given the terms he had initially set forth, terms which I had assumed were fixed unchangeably for eternity, just as the otherwise duplicitous fellow had first stated. The more he heaped upon me, the merrier I became.
"You're going mad on me," he commented one morning.
"Granted," I said, "it would be an advantage, but not to be. I'm only growing to love my work. Absolutely love it!"
He questioned; he probed; he hung about in my mind like a cobweb in an attic. He was distracted. He cursed me because he was neglecting his own work. I was winning a battle I didn't realize I had engaged. Until the day I came across a common rhyme and read it closely, in part:

Therein was the source of Crosbie's anguish; his absolute faith in the truth of nursery rhymes, a faith, incidentally, which I knew from my research to be well-founded.
Crosbie took me off the groat thesis and put me to affirming that the Teletubbies noo-noo intimidated toddlers. That he rarely assigned me reviews of television programming was a measure of his growing desperation. He knew I loathed television beyond all else. The Teletubbies captivated me. I couldnt get enough of them.
"You ass," raved Crosbie, "they're adults running around in oversize sleepers."
In response I offered him some organic tubby custard produced by a Fair Trader.
The end came quietly. Crosbie appeared in my office as he had that first night in 1949. He looked the same, though his wardrobe was contemporary. Ditto for me; just because one must live forever is no reason not to keep up with fashion.
"You're an empty-headed ass," he said. "You take nothing seriously. You find pleasure in everything you do. I have no use for a man who does not suffer. Accordingly," he concluded, "I am discharging you. We won't meet again. Nor do I wish to see you burning in hell because you would probably enjoy the warmth."
With that, he rose and departed in his typically unconventional manner.
True to his word, Crosbie has never again crossed my path, no mean feat given I'm here for eternity—one piece from which he did not release me. Occasionally I feel him in my mind, as if he's still not sure if there might be something in there. Of course there isn't, for I've achieved the Nirvana of all book reviewers: a totally empty head. And yes, I'm back doing sci-fi.

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