bulletin of the harry stephen keeler society no. 82 ...site.xavier.edu/polt/keelernews/82kn.pdf ·...

NewsBulletin of the Harry Stephen Keeler SocietyNo. 82 ................................... October, 2013

� KeelerNews No. 8�

Roger Ebert died a few days after the publica-tion of our eighty-first issue, on April 4, 2013. He was beloved and respected by many millions, and we are honored that he turned his attention to our little corner of popular culture. It began with his blog post in February 2010 on “The enigmatic case of the oddly persistent mystery writer.” Ebert had been alerted to the existence of Keeler by Edward Bolman’s Keelerian Twitter feed, and reacted enthusiastically, writing to Edward: “You know, I think Harry may have found his ideal medium. In Twitter, that is, and in you.” Thanks to Ebert’s post, followers of HSK’s twitterings swelled into the four figures. When I asked Ebert whether he’d like to join our society, he replied, “Please enlist me. I sent that link to Guy Maddin the filmmaker and David Bordwell the film scholar and they both wrote back that they knew who Keeler was and in fact had been think-ing about him on the previous day! Maddin’s work, especially ‘The Heart of the World,’ suggests he would be the ideal director for a film version of one of Keeler’s novels. I put his great ‘My Winnipeg’ on my best movies list. Winnipeg, the Chicago of the West.” Later he commented by Twitter: “I don’t believe all of the stuff I tweet. I believe in Harry Stephen Keeler, though. Just sayin’.” And: “I need me a cou-ple of these every day. All lines from the work of this forgotten but, shall we say, unique writer.” See our Letters column for more memories of Roger Ebert.

✍ No es momento de desviar atenciones, los aficionados estarán viendo con gafas de Cagliostro las evoluciones de sendos jugadores, si meten o no el pie. This from a 2012 post on a blog devoted to sports in the Galicia region of Spain. Translation: “This is no time to get distracted, the fans will be watching the evolution of each and every player with spec-tacles of Cagliostro to see if they trip up.” And from the 1981 novel La memoria cautiva by José Antonio Gabriel y Galán: “I hadn’t seen his ter-rorist white cardboard glasses and I did it on pur-pose because they were phantasmagoric glasses in the close night, I took a big gulp, the wine was excellent, then I spat it roundly at the boy with the cagliostro spectacles and hit him in full.” The phrase isn’t one you find everyday, but it’s not every author who manages to leave traces in the collective linguistic unconscious like this. Thanks to Ramón Zoido for alerting me to the phenomenon.

NewsBulletin of the Harry Stephen Keeler Society

It is this artificial relationship, this purely fictional web-work plot, this bit of life twisted into a pattern

mathematically and geometrically true, that fills the gaps in one’s spirit which rebels at the

looseness of life as it apparently is.

No. 82, October 2013

On our cover: the new German

translation of The 16 Beans, courtesy of Joachim Körber

Editor’s Notes .........................................2Keeler in Germany .................................3A Sentence from the Master ............. 5 & 6¡News from Spain! ..................................6The Hands of the Blind Hunter ...............7Keeler in The Chicagoan ........................8 Prologue Books .................................... 11Letters .................................................. 12Membership Update ............................ 16Books for Sale ...................................... 16

Published airy-fairily by theHarry Stephen Keeler Society4745 Winton Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45232 [email protected] • 513-591-1226keelersociety.mondoplex.com

Editor: Richard PoltISSN 1524-2323 • Founded 1997

Keeler News is free. Donations are accepted in the form of checks payable to Richard Polt, cash, stamps, or PayPal to [email protected]. If you receive this bulletin in digital form, print it for longevity. Print full-sized & double-sided for best results. If you would like a black-and-white printed copy by postal mail, simply ask the editor. If you receive this bulletin on paper, a note of thanks will ensure that you get the next issue. All issues can be downloaded from our web site, and can be ordered there on paper. You may copy this document and distribute it by any method. When quoting it, please cite properly and give credit to the author. To join the HSK Society and be added to our mailing list, ask the editor and state your town of residence. To be removed from the list, just ask.

KeelerNews No. 8� 3

For the last three years I’ve belonged to the Harry Stephen Keeler Society—where, by the way, I was accepted as the hun-dredth member—due to my en-thusiasm for Keeler’s preposter-ous novels. Before then, I have to admit to my disgrace, I never knew the name Harry Stephen Keeler. And I ran across him by pure chance—one of those cosmic coincidences which one tends to call destiny rather than accident. Now and then, in quiet mo-ments, I take the time to up-date my author bibliographies for the Bibliographical Lexicon of Utopian-Fantastic Literature that I edit for Corian Publishing, or I look for writers that one could add to this loose-leaf work. In this connection I was researching the publications of author An-thony Gilbert, and landed on a website about lending-library books (Leihbücher).1 I made a list of Gilbert’s publications as well as those of some other authors whose names start with G. Then I was going to leave the site, but I decided to scroll down a bit and went on to the letter K. There, a title drew my attention: Ein Totenkopf auf Reisen, a lending-library book from 1951, as reported there.

1. Leihbücher were either sold or rented. In the 1950s they must have been published by the thousands in Germany, mostly as trivial “trash,” and to this day nobody knows the exact number that were published. In many cases one can’t even be exactly sure when they were published, since most don’t bear any date of publication, proper copyright credits, etc. Much early US pulp fiction was translated in this format. There is one famous “collaboration” between the US’s Raymond Z. Gallun and Germany’s Walter Ernsting (pseudonym: Clark Darlton), who translated a short novel by Gallun for a Leihbuch publication, and since the whole thing wasn’t long enough, he simply wrote some chapters of his own and included them.

The title sounded so inter-esting to me that I did some more research and found out it was a reprint of a mystery novel that had already appeared in 1938. So I consulted the catalogue of the German National Library and found more novels by this “Harry Stephen Keeler,” with titles such as Fünf silberne Bud-dhas, Im Zeichen der zwölf Sterne, and Die Brille des Grafen Caglio-stro. These titles kindled my cu-riosity more, and I researched Keeler in greater depth. I downloaded the texts of two novels from the Harry Stephen Keeler Society web-

site—and I was enthralled. For a while, Keeler practically became an obsession for me—I or-dered some literature about him and some new editions, and read everything. I became a Keeler fan—so much so that I resolved to publish some of his novels. In his homeland and in Great Britain, Keeler was at first pretty successful with his mysteries, but the American and then the English public lost their taste for his increasingly bizarre and extravagant plots. Keeler didn’t care; he calmly kept writing. His final novels appeared only in translation, in Spain and Portugal. In addition, there are some early translations into languages including Dutch and Finnish. Harry Stephen Keeler did not have lasting success in Germany. His first novels appeared in German translations from Auffenberg Verlag of Berlin. The series began in 1935 with Die Brille des Grafen Cagliostro (published in 1926 in the USA under the title The Spectacles of Mr. Caglio-stro, and in 1931 in England under the title The Blue Spectacles) and Sing Sing Nächte (Sing Sing Nights, 1927), Keeler’s third and fourth novels. His debut as a novelist, The Voice of the Seven Spar-rows (published in England in 1924), appeared in

Joachim Körber is the man behind Edition Phantasia and its new edition of 16 Bohnen (The 16 Beans). This article first appeared in his Phantasia Almanach 11.

Keeler in Germanyby Joachim Körber

4 KeelerNews No. 8�

German in 1938 under the title Die sieben Spatzen. The following titles were published in between:

1936: Im Zeichen der zwölf Sterne (The Washington Square Enigma or Under Twelve Stars [1933])

1937: Das geheimnisvolle Netz (The Amazing Web [1930])

1938: In addition to Die sieben Spatzen, Auffen-berg published Der Mann mit der Geige (The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman or The Fid-dling Cracksman [1934]) and Ein Totenkopf auf Reisen (The Riddle of the Traveling Skull or The Travelling Skull [1934])

1939: Diebesnächte (Thieves’ Nights [1929]) and Funf silberne Buddhas (Five Silver Buddhas [1935]).

That—for the time being—ended Harry Ste-phen Keeler’s brief literary career in Germany.

It’s not clear whether Auffenberg stopped pub-lishing him, whether the prorudction of books had to be curtailed due to the outbreak of the Second World War and the ensuing paper short-age, or whether the powers that be simply had no room in their political world view for litera-ture from potential enemy nations. In the 1950s, after the end of the Nazi regime and the war and amid the economic recovery, Germans’ hunger for reading material evident-ly increased; but since funds for entertainment were tight, clever publishers invented the lend-ing-library book. These, one must say, are surely among the ugliest products that the book world has ever thought up. They are printed on thick, almost cardboard-like paper, with washable plastic covers—made to be robust and durable in every way for the lending business. In the ’50s, numerous lending-book publishers sprang up; they primarily offered books in genres such as science fiction, Westerns, and crime. The books


also had standardized lengths, which meant that overlong novels were abridged. Especially in the mystery field, the books were provided with covers featuring stills from successful crime films that had nothing to do with their contents. Auffenberg too tried its luck on the boom-ing lending-book market. At least two titles by Keeler appeared as reprints: Ein Totenkopf auf Reisen (1951) and Sing Sing Nächte (1953). I can’t say with certainty whether any further reprints appeared. Lending-library books were, and still are, a confusing market that, in an age before the introduction of the ISBN and before the German National Library’s complete listing of German publications, was never completely document-ed. In the ’60s, the Heftroman (magazine novel) began its rise to the top.� Here again we find some Keeler novels—again, no new ones but reprints of the prewar editions. Bastei Verlag’s mystery series published Der Angeklagte schweigt! (The Defendant is Silent!), in two volumes numbered 73 and 74. This is a reprint of Das geheimnisvolle Netz with a new German title. It was followed by an abridged reprint of Die sieben Spatzen. These are the last verified Keeler publications in Ger-many.

2. A Heftroman is a digest-sized novel in magazine format, usually with 64-66 pages, perhaps akin to the “complete novels” of about 2000-2500 words in early American pulp magazines. By far the most successful Heftroman series in Germany, if not the whole world, is the science fiction series Perry Rhodan, which start-ed in the early 1960s and today is still going strong with more than 2700 volumes published. (Walter Ern-sting / Clark Darlton was one of the founding fathers of the series.)

In April 2011, in Phantasia Almanach 9, I pub-lished “John Jones’ Dollar”—as far as I know, Kee-ler’s first short story in German translation. N

A Sentence from the MasterThe 126 words contained in a pellet of paper were first received, beyond any doubt, in town itself that day, by the warden’s latest inmate-chauffeur, the German named Fritz Pfaffweiler, who had conclusively proven to those “in the know” that he was “approachable” by friends on the outside—of those on the inside!

The Case of the Transposed Legs


Spanish fan Albert López Aroca has started a Facebook group for fellow keeleristas. It’s a good place to hang out and discover items such as this interesting image posted by Angel Villodre López, showing that some Reus editions repro-duced the “STOP!” page from Keeler’s Dutton editions of the early ’30s. (But does it also appear in the new Azar edition?) If you want to join this group, just search on Facebook for “Harry Ste-phen Keeler España.” In addition to Alberto and Ángel, our new members in Spain include Montse García, An-drés Peláez Paz, and José Vicente Serrano Olm-edo. ¡Bienvenidos! N

¡News from Spain! Thanks to Ramón Zoido for the news that an-other Keeler classic, La cara del hombre de Saturno, was reissued in Spain last year—not by Reus but by Ediciones del Azar, also the publisher of the new edition of Las gafas del Sr. Cagliostro (see KN #80, p. 5). I like this cover design. Ramón comments: “This is very far from be-ing one of HSK’s best creations, but this novel has entered history for the story of its Chapter XII, ‘The Strange Story of John Jones’ Dollar,’ which has attained the status of a symbol, icon, or allegory of our times—or rather, of Harry’s times, which are already a little different. Many people in the US know this little story, this meta-phor, without perhaps knowing its author or ori-gin.” The book gets a very positive review from critic José María Sánchez Pardo in the magazine Prótesis: “A book full of vitality, at times almost naive but with thrilling action, splendid char-acters, and constant plot twists—you can’t put it down. A delightful novel.” The publisher is Igueldo Libros.

A Sentence from the MasterOld arched doorways that marked the Spanish regime, and little low lamp-posts—many leaning crazily awry, and each bearing a lighting unit consisting of a square glass-enclosed lantern; curious stores galore, and green trees, their tops projecting forward over crumbling brick walls, and suggesting hidden interior courtyards, composed a city removed a hundred years in time from that Ameri-can edge of Canal Street, now thousands of miles away.

The Scarlet Mummy


Years ago I published two articles in a newspaper, El Pueblo de Albacete. Those two texts have been re-issued in a recent work of mine, “Sherlock Holmes en Rancho Dracula”—a work mainly Sherlockian. Here is an excerpt from one essay in which the Mas-ter of Chicago crosses paths with the Master of Baker Street.

—Alberto López Aroca

One of Keeler’s lost works is one of his first short stories, written between 1914 and 1917, which was never incorporated in one of the long novels. (One of the author’s less inno-vative tricks consisted in inserting his stories into his longer narrations. There are many well-known precedents for this technique; it’s enough to mention Part I of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.) Our investigations have led us to “The Hands of the Blind Hunter,” a story that appeared in 1934 in the pulp magazine Outré Tales, which had published the work of authors such as Robert H. Blake and Jonathan Swift Sommers III. “The Hands of the Blind Hunter” takes place in the Chicago of 1912. The protagonist is a young writer, Herbert Simon Kennell (obvi-ously, a standin for Keeler himself). In the twi-light of his own living room, Kennell witness-es the mutilation of a stranger. Consequently he finds himself embroiled in a tangle of ap-parently absurd events: the theft of a golden hammer, the appearance of a blue woman and a talking skull, a confrontation between a Jewish gangster and a Chinese thief, and the constant tapping of an enchanted typewriter, among plenty of other nonsense. Throughout the story, young Kennell-Kee-ler enjoys the company of an outlandish crimi-nal of Irish origin named Altamont, a garru-lous man who constantly spits out his phrases in the slummiest slang and moves among the

thugs, secret societies, and evil geniuses who appear in the story like a fish in water. In fact, it is Altamont who guides the tale, and the writer Kennell simply finds himself dragged along by the Irishman, amazed by the fantastic events that take place before his eyes. It is Al-tamont who leaps between the threads of the spiderweb and resolves the ultimate mystery of the severed hand of Ephraim Jacobus, the blind hunter. In the course of the story (much as in The Mysterious Mr. I and The Chameleon), Altamont reveals himself to Kennell as a German spy, a member of an Oriental tong, a ship’s captain, a Norwegian explorer, a fortune teller, a plumb-er named Escott, and finally, to the surprise of the young writer and above all the reader, as the English detective Sherlock Holmes. Curiously, Holmes’ presence in Chicago was confirmed in “His Last Bow,” a story by Arthur Conan Doyle which narrates how, just before the First World War, the Great Detective trapped a German spy (Von Bork) who had in-filtrated English high society. For this, Holmes had passed some years in Chicago, disguised as an Irish-American, involved in the most di-verse criminal circles, and finally becoming a servile agent of the German state. This infor-mation tells us that our Keeler’s tale fits per-fectly with the Holmesian chronology. Nonetheless, we must point out one more detail: the readers of Harry Stephen Keeler are well acquainted with the author’s eccentrici-ties in dedicating his many books. Some are dedicated to Hi-Diddle-Diddle (his Siamese cat), or to an unknown surgeon, or an optom-etrist. The dedication that appears in “The Hands of the Blind Hunter” reads: “For a good English friend who taught me the way to un-ravel tangles: by pulling on the string.” N

The Hands of theBlind Hunter


February 23, 1929: “‘The Spectacles of Dr. Ca-gliostro’ [sic], by Harry Stephen Keeler, another Chicagoan, is said to have prevented all house-work in the home of a young Chicago novelist for a complete eight-hour day. He came home in the evening and there were the dishes and beds just exactly as he’d left them in the morning.”

March 2, 1929: “The Spectacles of Dr. Cagliostro, by Harry Stephen Keeler. One of those myster-ies that hold you to the very end, regardless of sleep, housekeeping, social engagements, or what have you.”

March 30, 1929: “For Chicago, in fact, two books a year is regarded as the comfortable and natu-ral rate. Witness … Harry Stephen Keeler, whose ‘Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro’ is only six months younger than his previous mystery story.” (Also cited by Ed Park in his letter in KN #69.)

Bill Manthey drew my attention to the searchable online edition of The Chicagoan, a beautiful Second City rival to The New Yorker published 1926-1935 (chicagoan.lib.uchicago.edu). Ed Park had already alerted

us to a mention of HSK in The Chicagoan (KN #69, Letters), but the searchable edition suggests that Keeler was a familiar figure to many in his hometown and got regular attention in this local magazine. —Ed.


April 26, 1930: “Harry Stephen Keeler still call-ing Chicago ‘the London of the West’ in his mys-tery novels.”

September 13, 1930: “Somebody happened to mention Sam Putnam’s Mercury article of about five years back, an article which put the bee on Chicago writers, if you remember, by showing that the only ones who had made good on Broad-way had left Chicago …. we wondered if an ar-ticle might not be timely about those … who had since opened sumptuous bank accounts in Hol-lywood, like Gene Market and Bartlett Cormack, done something of sizable importance like Lloyd Lewis or at least dashed off a couple of best sell-

ers like MacKinlay Kantor. [But] the prophetic Mr. Putnam had not included these names on his rollcall at all! As writers, at that time in Chicago, they were as non-existent to Putnam as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ashton Stevens, Harry Stephen Keeler, and James Weber Linn.”

September 13, 1930: “Local Touches … Then there’s Harry Stephen Keeler’s new Chicago mystery novel, The Green Jade Hand. On page 68 the young lady decides to put an advertise-ment in ‘all the evening papers.’ ‘From the Daily News,’ writes Mr. Keeler, ‘she drove in turn to the Evening Journal, the Times and the Evening Amer-ican.’ If it helps any, the author times his story in 1931.” [None of these newspapers existed in 1930. The Chicago Times had ceased publication in 1895, and the others were HSK’s inventions.]

March 1932: “It would be possible to have a five foot shelf of Chicago mysteries alone. … Harry Stephen Keeler produces a new local mystery about every six months.”

December 1, 1933: “…such frank manipulators of the Chinese puzzle as the late Edgar Wallace and the local Harry Stephen Keeler need hardly be mentioned; and American literature is indebt-ed to the Chinese puzzle for the emergence of such writers as Faulkner, who, carelessly trained in childhood, have a habit of chewing up a few of the pieces of their intricate plot, so that they can never quite put the thing together.”


May 1, 1934: “The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracks-man: A Graustarkian romance of suburban Ra-venswood, interrupted by a slightly insane Ori-ental, the complicated plottings of diplomats, and a nasty old play producer who is about to pirate the brain child of the heroine. It all comes out happily, as Graustarkian novels should, and the happy couple set up housekeeping in Hyde Park.”

October 1, 1934: “The Riddle of the Traveling Skull: How sad it is to find Chicago’s famous Secret Six, all glamour lost, becoming just a bunch of book recommenders.1 Don’t be frightened away by the books that they have praised in the past; for this story is fast-moving, clever, and ends with an unexpected twist. A Chicago locale, and characters closely resembling some prominent Chicagoans, make this story of especial interest to local readers.” N

1. Who were the Secret Six? Originally, they were wealthy Americans who funded abolitionist John Brown. But in Chicago, they were a secret group of businessmen who launched an offensive against Al Capone. Eliot Ness writes in The Untouchables, “These six men were gam-bling with their lives, unarmed, to accomplish what three thousand police and three hundred prohibition agents had failed miserably to accomplish: the liquidation of a criminal combine which paid off in dollars to the greedy and death to the too-greedy or incorruptible.” The 1931 film The Secret Six fictionalized this dramatic event. Mike Gallaher adds, “‘Secret Six’ was a pulp magazine with science fiction lead stories and non-sf backup stories, published in October 1934 through January 1935 in Chi-cago. Pulp magazines like this often featured reviews and recommendations. Since ‘Secret Six’ was published in Chicago, it is quite reasonable to suppose that Keeler, himself the editor of a Chicago pulp magazine, could have arranged for an advance review from ‘The Secret Six’. ‘The Secret Six’ could possibly have even originat-ed from the same publisher as Keeler’s ‘10 Story Book’ magazine, making the recommendation even easier to obtain.”


We’ve already noticed Prologue Books, which has slyly joined Ram-ble House in offering e-versions of some of our hero’s most popu-

lar novels (KN #80, Editor’s Notes). Ramble House is still far ahead, offering the Komplete Keeler Korpus with original cover illustrations by Gavin L. O’Keefe. Still, I think Prologue has done a competent and color-ful job of illustrating these titles. But who are Prologue Books? Are they prospering? How did they find out about Keeler? Do they read this publication? Are they members of the Harry Stephen Keeler Society? Or are they members of that nefari-ous rival organization, the Tillary Steevens Society? We need to know.

—Ed.


Although I never met Roger Ebert, I did help to write some dialogue he and Siskel performed on an episode of “The Critic.” The story I tell when his name comes up, however, is about the “At The Movies” episode on which they re-viewed both “Full Metal Jacket” and “Benji The Hunted.” Ebert, knowing full well the difficulty of his position and the certainty of Siskel’s mock-ery, gave thumbs-up to the third sequel to the feel-good dog movie and thumbs-down to the first film in seven years by one of the acknowl-edged geniuses of cinema because, as he care-fully but uselessly explained, he felt one movie succeeded in what it was trying to do and one movie did not. It was an unforgettable display of bravery and integrity (and possibly stupid-ity). I guess it doesn’t shock me that he appreci-ated Harry’s work.

Ken KeelerNorth Carolina

Most of HSK’s Twitter followers were sent by Roger. I was motivated to keep up the account these last three years largely by his evident de-light. He is missed, for these reasons and thou-sands more.

Edward BolmanLos Angeles

I used to live in Boulder and every year Ebert would attend the week long World Affairs Con-ference. He would speak on a wide variety of subjects and host a very popular film program. One film would be shown over the week and anyone could speak up to stop the projector and ask a question or discuss the scene. I fell in love with Fellini when he showed “La Dolce Vita” this way.

Fred CleaverGreeley, Colo.

One of Roger Ebert’s curious accomplishments, through his accessible and unpretentious writing, was to ignore and flatten the class distinction between art film and entertainment. I felt he’d give as much thought to “Bridesmaids” as to “La Dolce Vita,” and do so not to be postmodern or populist or to prove a point, but to share his love of film as filtered through his own generous,

honest tastes and love of art rather than through class boundaries, erudition, studio favors (or so I like to believe), or to show how sophisticated he thought he was. I sometimes avoided his reviews of movies he adored, because his writing was thorough and I didn’t want spoilers—I wanted to experience the film as raw as he did—but I always like reading what he wrote. I can’t offhand think of anybody who can fill his shoes as critic, in film or any other art form, as an honest, sentimental enthusiast who wants to share the joy of responding to art, rather than to pursue some murky, self-seeking agenda.

William GillespieUrbana,, Ill.

RIP and goodbye Roger Ebert. You sent me such nice emails over the years. I loved your twitter feed, enjoyed your reviews. Thank you.

Neil Gaimanvia Twitter

Keeler things have come in threes this week for me. First the newsletter, then, strangely (or perhaps not so) I dropped my favourite coffee mug on the patio yesterday. And now this sad news. Vale Roger Ebert.

Peter MillerMelbourne

Letters


I was “friendly” with Ebert, via Guy Maddin. I grew up reading his writing and watching his reviews. When I studied film in my late teens, I learned more from his critical essays than I did from any text type book. He retweeted and re-Facebooked all my Keeler-related writing. And even my last music video. It sucks to lose a mind like his.

Jeffrey BützerMarietta, Georgia

Check out Jeffrey’s new album at jeffreybutzer.bandcamp.com.

The most interesting part of the latest issue for me was Katherine McKee’s letter about Vera, and the family story of her being murdered by gangsters. I presume autopsy records would still be around which could be checked (I think it is more likely to have been suicide) but whatever the truth, it adds another layer to an already haunting story. Oh, when I think about what might have been destroyed in that bonfire...

Chris Mikul Haymarket, NSW, Australia

I had a dream last night of a Keeler novel that included a whole play by Enrico Arrigoni, an Italian anarchist who wrote this incredible book of plays on yellow paper (hot pink cover)!

Daniel RiccuitoBrooklyn

Thanks for another first-rate KeelerNews. I think HSK really does have a shot at the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. They’ve been adding 4 to 6 inductees a year and have already run through many of the obvious big names. Do the math—at some point they are going to have to, ahem, look outside the canon. In my facetious campaign to get a Keeler com-memorative postage stamp, I wrote U.S. Sena-tors and nobody, but nobody said, “I’ve never heard of this guy.” They all wrote back pretend-ing to know who Keeler was and calling him “a great American writer.” Of course, the Chicago selection committee is likely to be a little better informed. For the Society’s amusement and inspiration, here is a letter from then-Senator Alan K. Simp-son, turning down my invitation to a party com-memorating the Keeler Centennial.

Bill PoundstoneLos Angeles


Keeler’s Constrained Style Caused By Strict Rules! Many have conjectured that when Harry S Keeler wasproducing sentences that, while grammatically A-OKfrom A to Izzard, read like they’ve got nowhere inparticular to go and are in no particular hurry toget there--they have posited that our Harry pouredout those erratic exercises in oddball phraseologyfrom the sheer joy of wordplay, from the pure gagahe experienced when he turned out quintessentiallyKeeleristic prose. I don’t think that’s it at all. I have come to believe that Keeler not only mappedout his stories using the specific rules forced onhim by his webwork method, but that as his writingflowed from hand to typewriter he followed anotherset of rules as specific as, though quite distinctfrom, the rules of webwork. Those rules, slavishlyfollowed, were entirely responsible for most of orall of that turn of phrase that we readers readilyrecognize as 100% Keeler. Of course, I haven’t thefaintest idea what Keeler’s rules might have been! But I do know, from my own experiments with my ownconstrained writing, that when I apply one rule tomy prose, say that of making every line of text beexactly fifty characters long, like this text thatyou are reading, the contortions required to forceevery line to come to exactly the right length canresult in phrasing that comes closer to the Keelerstyle than anything I might have come up with wereI not being so constrained. Why, just yesterday ina letter constrained to thirty-character columns Iwanted to use the word “monetized”--but I couldn’tmake it fit exactly into the line no matter what Itried. So I replaced it with a synonym--one that Ifeel is a hundred times more evocative than sayingmonetize: turned into tall carefully stacked pilesof dollars. Which, basically, is exactly what I dowhen I succeed in monetizing any of many projects. Wouldn’t Harry use, unhesitatingly, a writing toolthat could force him to use such a turn of phrase? Harry was proud of his webwork crutch. Or else whyexplain it to the world? Perhaps he was less proudof his grammar crutch and even ashamed to announceto the world that he needed constant help in orderto produce his unique stylings. But I do not thinkso! I think he reveled in the stylistic contortionforced on him by his secret rule, and to safeguardthe secret he shared it with no one, neither wivesnor editors. Unless some nutcase, er... genius andhis computer puts all of Keeler’s text into a pileof matrices to analyze and he discovers that Harrywrote his books like a Bible Code, full of secretsand forced into a particular mold, we’ll never seemy theory proved. But my heart says it’s all true! Jim Weiler, Lifetime Member of the Keeler Society.

I don’t buy occult code notions about Keeler. That’s just looking for bones in animal crack-ers. The influence of Harry’s screwball con artist uncles seems a more likely source of his wacky wordy sleight of hand. Vaudeville and fairy dust to confuse the rubes and separate the chump from his change.

Daniel SchroedlMinneapolis

I have published a dozen books (novels, Sherlockian essays, short stories, etc.), and I’m a Keeler reader since I was a teenager. I was born in Albacete (La Mancha, the land of Don Quix-ote), and now I live in Madrid with my wife and my cat. (Yes, all writers have cats, don’t ask me why.)

Alberto López ArocaMadrid

I’ve been reading Keeler for four years and now own nearly 40 titles, including some that were published only in Spain. I’m a compulsive book buyer and am always looking for HSK’s books in used bookstores. Thank you for pub-lishing an article by Francis Nevins in KeelerNews no. 2 which is my guide to the Spanish editions. One of my projects is to find out how many reprints were made of the various titles in Spain.

José Vicente Serrano OlmedoMadrid

I’ve been an unconditional reader of Harry Stephen Keeler since adolescence (I’m now 25), and a buyer (well, collector) of all his works; I now have about 50. I’m part of the group created by my friend and colleague Alberto López Aroca on Facebook, and I’m very interested profession-ally (and as a freak) in the new Keeler editions. I have finished my studies of English literature and literary criticism and I’m very seriously con-sidering starting my own publishing company from nothing—translating and designing nearly everything that interests me and that hasn’t been done before. I know it’s a crazy dream, but I’m very excited about it; we’ll see how it turns out.I’d also like to write my dissertation on some topic related to HSK.

Montse GarcíaSpain

I was looking for information on Maurice C. Johnson, the author of a 1932 novel, Damning Trifles, and was not having much luck when I thought of looking in Google News. To my sur-prise I found a snippet from The Sun, May 13 1932:

... in New York, bearing the title “Damning Trifles,” and with its authorship attributed to one “Maurice C. Johnson,” was written by the re-doubtable HS Keeler.


I can find no other reference to the attribution and have been unable to find the article in any other newspaper archive I have access to. Can you tell me if the attribution is correct, as I can find no other reference to it.

John HerringtonWoodbridge, Suffolk, England

I find the claim very dubious (re-doubtable?), but one of our clever readers may turn something up.

There’s a new series on FX called The Bridge. I wanted to watch it because it takes place in El Paso/Juarez, an area I lived in for a couple of years when I was in the army. It’s actually quite good. The season’s crime is a murder that takes place exactly on the border, on a bridge. A wom-an’s body is found half in the US, half in Mexico. Who has jurisdiction? But the story gets more in-teresting when they take the body away and find that it’s been cut in two at the waist. And that the top half is a white woman judge, and the bottom is a Mexican prostitute. Where the hell do these TV writers get their ideas? I’ll tell you where. Here is the blurb for The Case of the Crazy Corpse, written by Harry Ste-phen Keeler sometime in the ’40s and published in 1955. Then again in 2003 by Ramble House.

Ho hum. Another day; another corpse dredged up from the depths of Lake Michi-gan. This time it’s a body having the bottom half of a negro man and the top half of a Chi-

nese woman joined together at the waist by some kind of greenish glue. But we don’t linger long at this unpleasant scene because Angus MacWhorter and his Mammoth Mo-torized Show are in another pickle. If Angus can’t pay back $3000—in $100 bills whose se-rial numbers must be evenly divisible by 13!—he’ll lose the circus to the dastardly Geispitz Gmohling. But the needed bills are on the other side of Old Twistibus, the windingest road in the world, and Giff O’Dell, who has the bills, is obsessed with solving the Crazy Corpse murder. Now that is a pickle!

I tried to check out the credits to see if they gave a shout out to Harry but I can never read credits on TV. They didn’t, though.

Fender TuckerVancleave, Miss.

I have no recollection of comparisons being made between Harry Stephen Keeler and O. Henry, though this could be due to faulty mem-ory or lack of exposure. However, I’m making my way through O. Henry’s collected works, and a number of similarities present themselves offhand: twist endings involving lots of coinci-dence and unexpected duality (one example: I think O. Henry’s “The Hiding of Black Bill” bears more than a passing resemblance to “The Services of an Expert”, though the latter is far superior), “Bagdad-on-the-subway” (vis-a-vis “London-of-the-west”), the occasional safecrack-er (Jimmy Valentine in particular), the jaunty and sometimes laboredly comic tone, etc. (No skulls though.) Based on what I’ve read so far, it’s plau-sible to me that Keeler was consciously trying to emulate him. With that as preamble, I just finished reading, and strongly recommend to Keeler fans, “Cab-bages and Kings,” which is sometimes described as a short story collection but qualifies, I think, as a (highly episodic) novel. It possesses a whole slew of features of interest to the Keeler scholar, including:

• The banana republic setting (in fact, O. Henry apparently invented the term “banana re-public”) • A valise with enormous plot significance • A lot of not-so-great “comic” dialect • Whole chapters that seem inserted unneces-


sarily (although I guess if you consider it a short story collection, that’s not really fair) • Denouement via “Marceau Case”-type tele-gram.

But the elements that most strongly remind me of Keeler—and “strongly” may be an un-derstatement; “startlingly” might be better—are things that would ruin a good part of the plot, so I won’t mention them, not even with spoiler tags. Even to say which Keelers they remind me of would be giving too much away.

Ken KeelerNorth Carolina

New MembersGarcía,Montse, SpainLópezAroca,Alberto, MadridPeláezPaz,Andrés, MadridSerranoOlmedo,JoséVicente, MadridVillodre,Ángel, Albacete, Spain

THE MURDERED MATHEMATICIAN. Ward Lock, 1949, 1st, good in fair dj, £38. Any Amount of Books, [email protected], 56 Charing Cross Rd., London.

If you can (a) read this and (b) guess which Keeler novel Harry was signing, you are officially a worthy member of our Society. Send a correct solution to the

editor and win 5 postcards.

Your editor was in London this summer and poked around Russell Square in Bloomsbury, a site men-tioned in numerous Keeler novels. In the Marceau books, for instance, Aleck Snide is a guest at this magnificent late-Victorian palace, The Hotel Rus-sell. Harry and Hazel apparently stayed nearby, at a boarding house on Guilford Street, “garnering

atmosphere for a Bloomsbury boarding-house mys-tery which, alas, never got written!” (“Kats I Have Known,” in The Case of the Transposed Legs).

Test your Keeler-Fu!

bulletin of the harry stephen keeler society no. 82 ...site.xavier.edu/polt/keelernews/82kn.pdf ·...

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