|
|
Author's Note. These tales certainly require explanation.
Though I am the author, I'm not able to supply one - but as nobody else will, let me at least knock the edges off the inexplicable.
If you sense that this collection of misadventures follows no pattern, you will be wrong, for it follows the pattern of a similar group which appeared under the title of A Walk on the WiId Side. What held them together as a discernible |
collection was the cover. This twist of tales follows the same pattern, but less so - and quite differently.
It begins with tales involving Ben (and Big Ben) who are an amalgam of
well-known personages, fictionalised. Then follows a series of
travellers' tales, but they are not what you will be accustomed to.
They are meant to be journeys of the mind.
There can be no explanation for the rest: three dark plots which
started out from a base camp of fact, and inexplicably turned into
fiction. Just when I thought a pattern had been comfortably set, these
dramas unfolded before I could stop them. One started out as a journey
into the exotic past of Zanzibar. Another is about lovers and others,
trapped in a blizzard on a Himalayan peak. The tale is unintentionally
topical in the light of the latest Everest debacles, but I must explain
that this story is less about climbing mountains than about the people
who want to conquer them. The last in the collection is entitled
'Prison, Death and Transcendency' - how can you say more? Personally I
don't understand it. I don't understand how a short story could
suddenly swell into a novella. But there it is. The only overall explanation for this collection seems to be that it is intended to give you a taste of everything.
H. W. T. |
