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Le Roi en jaune
The cursed French play Le Roi en Jaune, the King in Yellow with a new English translation, introduction, essays, and notes. Includes an essay on the writing of the play and its place in art history. (Paperback, hardback also available)
- GenresClassics
106 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1893
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 17, 2016
(Once again, I apologise to those following my blog through Goodreads, who will end up seeing this twice.)
This is a review I should have written a long time ago. Simon Bucher-Jones, a writer I admire very much, sent me – more than a year ago – a preview copy of his book The King In Yellow, and I have shamefully neglected to say anything about it up to now.
This is not, to be clear, because I dislike the book – I nominated Simon's similar Charles Dickens' Martian Notes for the Best Novel Hugo this year, and only didn't do so for The King In Yellow because I wasn't sure of its precise publication date (I think it may have been very late 2014 rather than early 2015) – rather the opposite. I've been wanting to give Simon's book a proper, good, review, and frankly for much of the last year I was in no fit state to do so. I kept waiting to be in a better writing mood, or to be less tired, so I could actually do the job properly. But the best is the enemy of the good, and frankly it's much better to have a review out there than to have it be the perfect review.
Now, as so often, a disclaimer. Simon is a friend of mine, and a supporter of my writing, and he sent me my copy of this book for free. But as is so often the case, we became friends precisely because I like Simon's writing, and so I don't think I'm being unduly biased here.
The King In Yellow is a scholarly edition, in French and English, of a play by the French playwright Thomas de Castigne. Up until Bucher-Jones' edition, the only evidence that we had that this play even existed was in the work of the same name by the American scholar Robert Chambers, widely regarded as a piece of pulp fiction until Bucher-Jones' rediscovery of the text. Chambers' book recounts the lives of several people who were affected by reading the text itself, driven mad by its revelations about the nature of the universe and the Yellow King. The play itself is deemed to have caused their madness, and to be unreadable without causing such insanity. Later, the play was influential in the tormenting of Sir John Babcock by the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley – a persecution which took the combined genius of James Joyce and Albert Einstein to uncover – and one can see clear relationships between the events depicted in the play and those discussed by the American journalist Howard Philips Lovecraft in later years.
…Or at least, that's the kind of thing one is meant to say in this kind of review. Of course, there's no real truth in Chambers' account. No such play could possibly exist. The very idea is foolish. Of course. Keep telling yourself that and maybe you'll sleep tonight.
Apart from a brief endnote, Simon's book presents itself quite seriously as a work of scholarship – the French of Castigne's “original” text on one page, an English translation facing, annotated with thirty-four footnotes, and some historical notes on the text, its provenance, and its original performance. The play itself is written in very convincing blank verse, and while I can't judge the quality of the French, my GCSE-level understanding suggests that it works both as verse and as narrative about as well as the (excellent) English “translation”.
Possibly the closest comparison I can make to the book is Kim Newman's Anno Dracula. Both books involve recreating fin-de-siecle decadence, and creating a world out of elements of other pulp fictions – in this case, however, Simon combines the influence of Lovecraft and his imitators (who were of course working in a tradition based partly on Chambers' book) with Chambers' romantic/decadent contemporaries – Wilde and Jarry both figure heavily in the annotations, and their influence is clearly felt in the text itself. But there are also passing mentions of the actor Merridith Merridew and a 1973 biopic about him, as well as to more consensus-reality figures like Liane de Pougy or Mme Curie.
The result is an artefact that seems to come to us from a slightly different reality, one in which Hastur and Carcosa have meanings far greater than the mere horror fiction they are in this world.
The book isn't perfect – my copy has a few minor typographical oddities and some idiosyncratic punctuation at points, though no more so than many other self-published books I've recommended before – but it's about as good a job as one could do of reconstructing, from the textual hints in Chambers' book and scattered references in later stories inspired by Chambers, something that is very, very close to the play described. Obviously, it won't send you mad when read in the English, but as I'm monolingual I'll make no claims for the French. Caveat lector.
In a truly just world, Simon Bucher-Jones would be regarded as one of our great authors – he's certainly one of the very best writers working today in terms of fecundity of ideas. Unfortunately, for some reason, self-published annotated plays based on 19th-century horror fiction don't tend to become bestsellers, any more than the Doctor Who and Faction Paradox fiction which has been much of Simon's output thus far. He's writing for a niche audience, and he knows it.
Nonetheless, it's a niche that could comfortably expand to accommodate several more readers, and I suspect that anyone who likes my more outlandish blog posts will find this very much to their taste, as will anyone who loves macabre fiction.
And so my child is born,
After the passing of requisite time,
After exquisite tearing of the womb,
After the world has drowned within the Lake,
And all is silent under the black stars.
This is a review I should have written a long time ago. Simon Bucher-Jones, a writer I admire very much, sent me – more than a year ago – a preview copy of his book The King In Yellow, and I have shamefully neglected to say anything about it up to now.
This is not, to be clear, because I dislike the book – I nominated Simon's similar Charles Dickens' Martian Notes for the Best Novel Hugo this year, and only didn't do so for The King In Yellow because I wasn't sure of its precise publication date (I think it may have been very late 2014 rather than early 2015) – rather the opposite. I've been wanting to give Simon's book a proper, good, review, and frankly for much of the last year I was in no fit state to do so. I kept waiting to be in a better writing mood, or to be less tired, so I could actually do the job properly. But the best is the enemy of the good, and frankly it's much better to have a review out there than to have it be the perfect review.
Now, as so often, a disclaimer. Simon is a friend of mine, and a supporter of my writing, and he sent me my copy of this book for free. But as is so often the case, we became friends precisely because I like Simon's writing, and so I don't think I'm being unduly biased here.
The King In Yellow is a scholarly edition, in French and English, of a play by the French playwright Thomas de Castigne. Up until Bucher-Jones' edition, the only evidence that we had that this play even existed was in the work of the same name by the American scholar Robert Chambers, widely regarded as a piece of pulp fiction until Bucher-Jones' rediscovery of the text. Chambers' book recounts the lives of several people who were affected by reading the text itself, driven mad by its revelations about the nature of the universe and the Yellow King. The play itself is deemed to have caused their madness, and to be unreadable without causing such insanity. Later, the play was influential in the tormenting of Sir John Babcock by the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley – a persecution which took the combined genius of James Joyce and Albert Einstein to uncover – and one can see clear relationships between the events depicted in the play and those discussed by the American journalist Howard Philips Lovecraft in later years.
…Or at least, that's the kind of thing one is meant to say in this kind of review. Of course, there's no real truth in Chambers' account. No such play could possibly exist. The very idea is foolish. Of course. Keep telling yourself that and maybe you'll sleep tonight.
Apart from a brief endnote, Simon's book presents itself quite seriously as a work of scholarship – the French of Castigne's “original” text on one page, an English translation facing, annotated with thirty-four footnotes, and some historical notes on the text, its provenance, and its original performance. The play itself is written in very convincing blank verse, and while I can't judge the quality of the French, my GCSE-level understanding suggests that it works both as verse and as narrative about as well as the (excellent) English “translation”.
Possibly the closest comparison I can make to the book is Kim Newman's Anno Dracula. Both books involve recreating fin-de-siecle decadence, and creating a world out of elements of other pulp fictions – in this case, however, Simon combines the influence of Lovecraft and his imitators (who were of course working in a tradition based partly on Chambers' book) with Chambers' romantic/decadent contemporaries – Wilde and Jarry both figure heavily in the annotations, and their influence is clearly felt in the text itself. But there are also passing mentions of the actor Merridith Merridew and a 1973 biopic about him, as well as to more consensus-reality figures like Liane de Pougy or Mme Curie.
The result is an artefact that seems to come to us from a slightly different reality, one in which Hastur and Carcosa have meanings far greater than the mere horror fiction they are in this world.
The book isn't perfect – my copy has a few minor typographical oddities and some idiosyncratic punctuation at points, though no more so than many other self-published books I've recommended before – but it's about as good a job as one could do of reconstructing, from the textual hints in Chambers' book and scattered references in later stories inspired by Chambers, something that is very, very close to the play described. Obviously, it won't send you mad when read in the English, but as I'm monolingual I'll make no claims for the French. Caveat lector.
In a truly just world, Simon Bucher-Jones would be regarded as one of our great authors – he's certainly one of the very best writers working today in terms of fecundity of ideas. Unfortunately, for some reason, self-published annotated plays based on 19th-century horror fiction don't tend to become bestsellers, any more than the Doctor Who and Faction Paradox fiction which has been much of Simon's output thus far. He's writing for a niche audience, and he knows it.
Nonetheless, it's a niche that could comfortably expand to accommodate several more readers, and I suspect that anyone who likes my more outlandish blog posts will find this very much to their taste, as will anyone who loves macabre fiction.
And so my child is born,
After the passing of requisite time,
After exquisite tearing of the womb,
After the world has drowned within the Lake,
And all is silent under the black stars.
March 17, 2015
So, if you want to know if I think you should read this book, check out the star rating. The original anthology by Robert W Chambers was always a curate’s egg to me, inspiring curiosity but sidestepping satisfaction. From such frustrations come the natural desire to reconstruct and explain, and this is what Simon Bucher-Jones has set out to do.
There have been previous attempts at presenting the very same play, but Bucher-Jones' book, in my opinion goes one step further by presenting the pseudo-play and it’s translation side by side, along with supporting faux-scholarly notes that, irony aside, could almost persuade you that the play was real.
It is an interesting, if confusing, experimentthat tries to be too many things at once. In doing so it has a high cool factor, but the end result feels somehow diminished by this. I was constantly asking myself the question: is this a vanity resource for a highly intelligent Call of Cthulhu GM?
From a literary point of view I have to ask myself “is this a play that drives men mad?” The answer (thank goodness) is no. On some level this seems to be what the author hoped to achieve, and in part – through twists and nods – it does so, but the task is surely hampered by the things that Chambers already told us were contained within (that the first act was mundane, and that it’s significance doesn’t become apparent until the second act. What playwright would want to do that?).
I think my difficulty with the book is that the reader’s expectations set the bar too high. At the very idea of this book I was looking for something specific. There were certainly flashes of what I hoped for, but ultimately my satisfaction came from witnessing the attempt (and its detail) rather than from embracing the content.
That said, Le Roi en Jaune is cool. As cool as a bow tie. I’m jealous of Simon Bucher-Jones' achievement, and the end result is as unique a literary curiosity as the book upon which it is based.
There have been previous attempts at presenting the very same play, but Bucher-Jones' book, in my opinion goes one step further by presenting the pseudo-play and it’s translation side by side, along with supporting faux-scholarly notes that, irony aside, could almost persuade you that the play was real.
It is an interesting, if confusing, experimentthat tries to be too many things at once. In doing so it has a high cool factor, but the end result feels somehow diminished by this. I was constantly asking myself the question: is this a vanity resource for a highly intelligent Call of Cthulhu GM?
From a literary point of view I have to ask myself “is this a play that drives men mad?” The answer (thank goodness) is no. On some level this seems to be what the author hoped to achieve, and in part – through twists and nods – it does so, but the task is surely hampered by the things that Chambers already told us were contained within (that the first act was mundane, and that it’s significance doesn’t become apparent until the second act. What playwright would want to do that?).
I think my difficulty with the book is that the reader’s expectations set the bar too high. At the very idea of this book I was looking for something specific. There were certainly flashes of what I hoped for, but ultimately my satisfaction came from witnessing the attempt (and its detail) rather than from embracing the content.
That said, Le Roi en Jaune is cool. As cool as a bow tie. I’m jealous of Simon Bucher-Jones' achievement, and the end result is as unique a literary curiosity as the book upon which it is based.
November 19, 2021
I purchased Le Roi en Jaune hoping to find a uniquely dark and surreal work of theatre inspired by Robert W. Chambers' original stories. That is partially what I received, but moreso, I found the product of a man intensely determined to craft the illusion that this is the real text of the real play spoken of in the Chambers stories. I am still conflicted as to whether or not I "like" this approach considering most people reading this know it's not "real" and that no writer could actually pen a play that drives all its audiences to madness, but I cannot deny that Simon Bucher-Jones was successful in his effort.
He is remarkably thorough. The book contains the full text of the play in both French and English along with scholarly annotations and essays; meaning the author had to essentially analyze and praise his own work as if he were a different persona entirely. This "supplementary" material demonstrates that Bucher-Jones went far above and beyond in his research. It is laced with deep intertextuality with the work of other writers who would have been Thomas De Castaigne's contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde and Alfred Jarry as well as those who could have been influenced by him had he actually existed.
Although, we of course know, he didn't. Simon Bucher-Jones successfully realized a fascinating fictional history which seems to have been his goal based on his statements at the end of this book. However, I can't shake the feeling that the play itself might not have been so darn short had more of the effort been put into it instead of the mythology surrounding it. Still though, what is there is well-written, unique, and could easily be mistaken for "the real thing."
He is remarkably thorough. The book contains the full text of the play in both French and English along with scholarly annotations and essays; meaning the author had to essentially analyze and praise his own work as if he were a different persona entirely. This "supplementary" material demonstrates that Bucher-Jones went far above and beyond in his research. It is laced with deep intertextuality with the work of other writers who would have been Thomas De Castaigne's contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde and Alfred Jarry as well as those who could have been influenced by him had he actually existed.
Although, we of course know, he didn't. Simon Bucher-Jones successfully realized a fascinating fictional history which seems to have been his goal based on his statements at the end of this book. However, I can't shake the feeling that the play itself might not have been so darn short had more of the effort been put into it instead of the mythology surrounding it. Still though, what is there is well-written, unique, and could easily be mistaken for "the real thing."
January 17, 2015
It is with some trepidation that one approaches the text of "The King in Yellow". After all, all men know that the banality and innocence of the first act only allows the blow of the second act to fall afterward with more awful effect. Those who experience Act Two will go mad, in any number of ways...
Luckily, I escaped any such ill effect of the play (though admittedly the frequent typos throughout this book came close to leaving me a gibbering wreck; let us leave that aside, at least for now) and so can offer my thoughts on this intriguing book by Simon Bucher-Jones.
To begin with, for those not in the know: what is it about? In 1895, Robert W Chambers wrote a book of short stories titled "The King in Yellow". Within that book, many stories reference or quote a play of the same title which opens the reader (for such a horrid text would never be performed) to such hidden monstrous truths and images that he or she is driven mad by it. It is described as being the "true essence of art", and that although it contained no specific violations of morality, its essence was pure poison - presumably from the depth of truth, revealed in all its vileness. Its unnamed author reportedly shot himself after completing it.
So, then, what is this book that I am discussing - confusingly also titled "The King in Yellow", although the author gives the French title supremacy? It is Bucher-Jones' attempt at recreating the play itself (done once or twice before now) but also (and, for me, more interestingly) his creation of the author and his life, the history of the text of "The King in Yellow" and how it came into being. It attempts to present "The King in Yellow" as an extant work (including the full text of the French "original", intertwined with the English "translation") and analyzes and discusses it and its author.
The research and thought put into this is the most entertaining part of the piece (at least for this reader). The play itself could never, of course, live up to its reputation (though Bucher-Jones gives it a damn good try) but the creation of it as a piece of history (and a piece of some larger truth, parts of which are revealed elsewhere) is where the genius of this book lies.
For this review, I will make no attempt to organize my thoughts into some kind of structured analysis, but instead lay them out as haphazardly as they come to me.
First, let us tackle the text of the play itself - which is, of course, the bulk of this book:
The French portion does not interest me. I speak no French myself, and did little more than glance at it from time to time, instead skipping over each French page to the subsequent English one. (They are interleaved, placed one after the other.) My small amount of ability to pronounce the language, however, leads me to determine (possibly incorrectly?) that there is no strict meter in the French text as there is in the English. Which means that the fictional Simon Bucher-Jones (that is, the translator of the French text, not the real one who invented both) has chosen to impose on his translation a poetic meter that is not present in the original. For the purposes of this discussion, I will ignore this and treat in all cases the English text as if it were the "original" (which, in reality, it was).
In English, the poetry of the dialog is beautiful. I get picky about metric consistency, and it pleases me that Bucher-Jones largely sticks to the same meter throughout - when a different rhythm is chosen, or when it is broken entirely, there is usually a reason behind it (and not, as is usual in a long-form poetic text such as this, mere laziness and boredom with the approach). The language is beautiful, the imagery evocative, and the tone generally solemn and haunting (but with some nice humor as well).
Bucher-Jones gives himself the unenviable task of having to create a consistent play that follows the (admittedly not vast) collection of descriptions given in Chambers' text - as well as the actual quotes provided in the same. Act One is, in a sense, the harder of the two as it necessary for it to be traditional and engaging, while setting up the horror of the second act and indeed containing some horror itself (ending, according to Chambers, with a scream).
Act Two is where the "fun" of the play is, but in a sense this is the easier of the two tasks in that the writer is essentially unrestricted in his choices. It is obviously an impossible task to create an Act Two that has the impact that the fictional play had, but Bucher-Jones does an admirable job of creating something that has the sense of revealed and horrific truth. He also (by way of multiple text fragments and "eyewitness" accounts of the early stagings of the cursed play) has crafted a way in which the Act can be presented several different ways with different impacts, while not diluting the effect on the reader of it in its entirety. This allows for a further sense of a chaotic but guided revelation on the "original" audience.
I do not wish to ruin the experience of the play for the reader of this review, but I will allow some slight summation of the play as presented here. Cassilda, a princess, is being prepared to receive suitors - seven brothers arriving from a related family line. The party is "crashed" by a mysterious stranger, Y'htill, whose announcement heralds doom. In the second act, identities fracture and merge (in way that I, as a fan of film director David Lynch, much appreciate), and time itself is out of sync. Ultimately, the future is ushered in (as is the past) in a way that alters everything.
I would have to read the play several more times to fully appreciate it (first time was largely to experience its beauty, for me) - although I did glance back at some of the passages after I completed the book - but I certainly know that I enjoyed it. Is the text as presented anything close to the world-shaking play it was supposed (per Robert W Chambers) to be? Absolutely not, but it is engaging (far more so than I expected), beautiful, haunting, and disturbing. In lieu of the real thing, I will enjoy this substitute reality as the "true" "King in Yellow".
So that's the play itself. What is the rest of the book? Well, the remainder (and here I will refer to some of the ideas behind the writing of the play itself, even if they are not expressly stated in the early and later parts of the book) is about the play itself, as it "exists" in history. That is to say, the writing of it, its influences, what it has itself influenced, the author himself, and so on. The "non-fiction" of it all - fictional as it may, in reality, be.
This, to me, is where the true enjoyment of this book lies. I enjoy this in much the same way that I enjoy, say, Costa Botes and Peter Jackson's documentary Forgotten Silver about early New Zealand filmmaker Colin McKenzie. McKenzie never existed - he was created by the documentarians, along with all of his films - but the genius of an invented historical figure presented as reality (many viewers were taken in, "War of the Worlds"-style, and believed that McKenzie existed) and bearing all the hallmarks of something real, is what makes that movie so compelling.
Another comparison I could draw (in concept, not in quality) is with Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire". That book, about a lengthy poem annotated by a friend of the deceased poet, has a few things in common with "The King in Yellow": mainly the presentation of a poetic text, alongside commentary about it. Now, while "Pale Fire" has hidden within it a remarkable story about the man doing the annotations, "The King in Yellow" makes no such story structure out of its commentary. But the depiction of the man behind the original play (Thomas de Castigne in this presentation) and the position of "The King in Yellow" among real works of fiction in our world, is meticulously and cleverly constructed, making the fake history of the play as much of a highlight as the play itself.
I made some notes about it, but decided not to go into so much detail as I had planned, to leave the experience of this more up to the reader. But I will note that the presentation of de Castigne as effectively (though it is not outright stated in the book, only baldly implied) the reincarnation of Charles Baudelaire, the remarkable real-world proximity to the play "Ubu Roi" which Bucher-Jones incorporated similarities of into the text of his play, "Les Fleurs du Mal", the work of Rabindranath Tagore, and more, all play into the way Bucher-Jones has invented the context of the play "The King in Yellow".
Basically, "The King in Yellow" is part of a hidden truth that is finding ways to reveal itself; or is it a case of difficult-to-spot-at-this-distance influence of one text on another, in a much less remarkable fashion?
A few more thoughts about the play, now. The post-intermission warping of time and identity is very (as alluded to earlier) Lynchian. Mulholland Dr. played with several of the same ideas (including the sapphic result of the identity-merging, alluded to in "The King in Yellow") but in quite a different way.
One of the creepier moments in the play, for me, was the perverted Lord's Prayer that Cassilda intones in Act Two, Scene 3. Along similar lines, I note that Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi" is tied up with "The King in Yellow" thematically and chronologically. William Butler Yeats supposedly attended the sole (and riotous) performance of that play. And what is "The King in Yellow's" Thomas but a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem?
Also, there is a nicely Shakespearian bit in Act Two, Scene 5 (chronologically - or is it? - taking place during Act One) with Ubu interacting with Prince Thales. The latter is annoyed with constantly finding the former loitering in corners. Ubu replies:
I mentioned typos up near the top of this commentary. They do, indeed, abound - but occasionally I cannot tell if they are intentional or not.
Consider the character mentioned in Chambers' text as "Uoht" and referred to outside Bucher-Jones' actual text of the play as such. Within the text itself, though, it is rendered "Uotht". Is this meaningful?
Similarly the single instance of Rabindranath Tagore's "The King of the Dark Chamber" as "The King in the Dark Mirror", when discussing its mirroring of "The King in Yellow". A purposeful alternate, or a slip? I'm not sure.
There are other examples, too, of things which I cannot quite decide whether or not the "mistake" is deliberate, as the slips could have hidden meanings. Amid the other typos, though, they cannot be determined to be useful.
Is Bucher-Jones' "The King in Yellow" any good? Can it be recommended? This is difficult to answer. It is a text that seems so specifically designed to appeal to my personal sensibilities that I have little way of knowing how attractive it would be to other people. If you enjoy cleverness for its own sake, it seems hard to argue other than that you should pick this book up. If you enjoy gloomy, portentous horror then it seems also a surety. If your tastes do not exactly align with mine, though, it is impossible for me to say whether or not you will enjoy reading this.
Let me put it in a few more words: Is the play itself a work of earth-shattering genius? No, although I found it extremely compelling. Do the commentaries regarding the text have some revelatory narrative that will astound you? Not really, though the work that went into the construction of the world they describe is astounding in itself. I could easily imagine a version of this book that's even "better", with "clues" hidden in the annotative text that reveal a clever sub-narrative that reflects back on the main play in such a way that twists it and present it in a new light.
But for what Simon Bucher-Jones was aiming to achieve, it is difficult to imagine anything more effective. It is ingenious, beautiful, and compelling. Put it this way: Bucher-Jones will not require the services of the Repairer of Reputations.
I struggled back and forth over what to rate this, as I really want to give it four-and-a-half stars. Since that is not possible, I eventually decided that four just sounded too low, and plumped for five.
Give it a try. What do you have to lose? (Besides your immortal soul?)
Luckily, I escaped any such ill effect of the play (though admittedly the frequent typos throughout this book came close to leaving me a gibbering wreck; let us leave that aside, at least for now) and so can offer my thoughts on this intriguing book by Simon Bucher-Jones.
To begin with, for those not in the know: what is it about? In 1895, Robert W Chambers wrote a book of short stories titled "The King in Yellow". Within that book, many stories reference or quote a play of the same title which opens the reader (for such a horrid text would never be performed) to such hidden monstrous truths and images that he or she is driven mad by it. It is described as being the "true essence of art", and that although it contained no specific violations of morality, its essence was pure poison - presumably from the depth of truth, revealed in all its vileness. Its unnamed author reportedly shot himself after completing it.
So, then, what is this book that I am discussing - confusingly also titled "The King in Yellow", although the author gives the French title supremacy? It is Bucher-Jones' attempt at recreating the play itself (done once or twice before now) but also (and, for me, more interestingly) his creation of the author and his life, the history of the text of "The King in Yellow" and how it came into being. It attempts to present "The King in Yellow" as an extant work (including the full text of the French "original", intertwined with the English "translation") and analyzes and discusses it and its author.
The research and thought put into this is the most entertaining part of the piece (at least for this reader). The play itself could never, of course, live up to its reputation (though Bucher-Jones gives it a damn good try) but the creation of it as a piece of history (and a piece of some larger truth, parts of which are revealed elsewhere) is where the genius of this book lies.
For this review, I will make no attempt to organize my thoughts into some kind of structured analysis, but instead lay them out as haphazardly as they come to me.
First, let us tackle the text of the play itself - which is, of course, the bulk of this book:
The French portion does not interest me. I speak no French myself, and did little more than glance at it from time to time, instead skipping over each French page to the subsequent English one. (They are interleaved, placed one after the other.) My small amount of ability to pronounce the language, however, leads me to determine (possibly incorrectly?) that there is no strict meter in the French text as there is in the English. Which means that the fictional Simon Bucher-Jones (that is, the translator of the French text, not the real one who invented both) has chosen to impose on his translation a poetic meter that is not present in the original. For the purposes of this discussion, I will ignore this and treat in all cases the English text as if it were the "original" (which, in reality, it was).
In English, the poetry of the dialog is beautiful. I get picky about metric consistency, and it pleases me that Bucher-Jones largely sticks to the same meter throughout - when a different rhythm is chosen, or when it is broken entirely, there is usually a reason behind it (and not, as is usual in a long-form poetic text such as this, mere laziness and boredom with the approach). The language is beautiful, the imagery evocative, and the tone generally solemn and haunting (but with some nice humor as well).
Bucher-Jones gives himself the unenviable task of having to create a consistent play that follows the (admittedly not vast) collection of descriptions given in Chambers' text - as well as the actual quotes provided in the same. Act One is, in a sense, the harder of the two as it necessary for it to be traditional and engaging, while setting up the horror of the second act and indeed containing some horror itself (ending, according to Chambers, with a scream).
Act Two is where the "fun" of the play is, but in a sense this is the easier of the two tasks in that the writer is essentially unrestricted in his choices. It is obviously an impossible task to create an Act Two that has the impact that the fictional play had, but Bucher-Jones does an admirable job of creating something that has the sense of revealed and horrific truth. He also (by way of multiple text fragments and "eyewitness" accounts of the early stagings of the cursed play) has crafted a way in which the Act can be presented several different ways with different impacts, while not diluting the effect on the reader of it in its entirety. This allows for a further sense of a chaotic but guided revelation on the "original" audience.
I do not wish to ruin the experience of the play for the reader of this review, but I will allow some slight summation of the play as presented here. Cassilda, a princess, is being prepared to receive suitors - seven brothers arriving from a related family line. The party is "crashed" by a mysterious stranger, Y'htill, whose announcement heralds doom. In the second act, identities fracture and merge (in way that I, as a fan of film director David Lynch, much appreciate), and time itself is out of sync. Ultimately, the future is ushered in (as is the past) in a way that alters everything.
I would have to read the play several more times to fully appreciate it (first time was largely to experience its beauty, for me) - although I did glance back at some of the passages after I completed the book - but I certainly know that I enjoyed it. Is the text as presented anything close to the world-shaking play it was supposed (per Robert W Chambers) to be? Absolutely not, but it is engaging (far more so than I expected), beautiful, haunting, and disturbing. In lieu of the real thing, I will enjoy this substitute reality as the "true" "King in Yellow".
So that's the play itself. What is the rest of the book? Well, the remainder (and here I will refer to some of the ideas behind the writing of the play itself, even if they are not expressly stated in the early and later parts of the book) is about the play itself, as it "exists" in history. That is to say, the writing of it, its influences, what it has itself influenced, the author himself, and so on. The "non-fiction" of it all - fictional as it may, in reality, be.
This, to me, is where the true enjoyment of this book lies. I enjoy this in much the same way that I enjoy, say, Costa Botes and Peter Jackson's documentary Forgotten Silver about early New Zealand filmmaker Colin McKenzie. McKenzie never existed - he was created by the documentarians, along with all of his films - but the genius of an invented historical figure presented as reality (many viewers were taken in, "War of the Worlds"-style, and believed that McKenzie existed) and bearing all the hallmarks of something real, is what makes that movie so compelling.
Another comparison I could draw (in concept, not in quality) is with Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire". That book, about a lengthy poem annotated by a friend of the deceased poet, has a few things in common with "The King in Yellow": mainly the presentation of a poetic text, alongside commentary about it. Now, while "Pale Fire" has hidden within it a remarkable story about the man doing the annotations, "The King in Yellow" makes no such story structure out of its commentary. But the depiction of the man behind the original play (Thomas de Castigne in this presentation) and the position of "The King in Yellow" among real works of fiction in our world, is meticulously and cleverly constructed, making the fake history of the play as much of a highlight as the play itself.
I made some notes about it, but decided not to go into so much detail as I had planned, to leave the experience of this more up to the reader. But I will note that the presentation of de Castigne as effectively (though it is not outright stated in the book, only baldly implied) the reincarnation of Charles Baudelaire, the remarkable real-world proximity to the play "Ubu Roi" which Bucher-Jones incorporated similarities of into the text of his play, "Les Fleurs du Mal", the work of Rabindranath Tagore, and more, all play into the way Bucher-Jones has invented the context of the play "The King in Yellow".
Basically, "The King in Yellow" is part of a hidden truth that is finding ways to reveal itself; or is it a case of difficult-to-spot-at-this-distance influence of one text on another, in a much less remarkable fashion?
A few more thoughts about the play, now. The post-intermission warping of time and identity is very (as alluded to earlier) Lynchian. Mulholland Dr. played with several of the same ideas (including the sapphic result of the identity-merging, alluded to in "The King in Yellow") but in quite a different way.
One of the creepier moments in the play, for me, was the perverted Lord's Prayer that Cassilda intones in Act Two, Scene 3. Along similar lines, I note that Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi" is tied up with "The King in Yellow" thematically and chronologically. William Butler Yeats supposedly attended the sole (and riotous) performance of that play. And what is "The King in Yellow's" Thomas but a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem?
Also, there is a nicely Shakespearian bit in Act Two, Scene 5 (chronologically - or is it? - taking place during Act One) with Ubu interacting with Prince Thales. The latter is annoyed with constantly finding the former loitering in corners. Ubu replies:
Besides your Lordship oft has cornered me,
And driven there, I claim the primacy,
Of Angles over Angels, for my rest.
I mentioned typos up near the top of this commentary. They do, indeed, abound - but occasionally I cannot tell if they are intentional or not.
Consider the character mentioned in Chambers' text as "Uoht" and referred to outside Bucher-Jones' actual text of the play as such. Within the text itself, though, it is rendered "Uotht". Is this meaningful?
Similarly the single instance of Rabindranath Tagore's "The King of the Dark Chamber" as "The King in the Dark Mirror", when discussing its mirroring of "The King in Yellow". A purposeful alternate, or a slip? I'm not sure.
There are other examples, too, of things which I cannot quite decide whether or not the "mistake" is deliberate, as the slips could have hidden meanings. Amid the other typos, though, they cannot be determined to be useful.
Is Bucher-Jones' "The King in Yellow" any good? Can it be recommended? This is difficult to answer. It is a text that seems so specifically designed to appeal to my personal sensibilities that I have little way of knowing how attractive it would be to other people. If you enjoy cleverness for its own sake, it seems hard to argue other than that you should pick this book up. If you enjoy gloomy, portentous horror then it seems also a surety. If your tastes do not exactly align with mine, though, it is impossible for me to say whether or not you will enjoy reading this.
Let me put it in a few more words: Is the play itself a work of earth-shattering genius? No, although I found it extremely compelling. Do the commentaries regarding the text have some revelatory narrative that will astound you? Not really, though the work that went into the construction of the world they describe is astounding in itself. I could easily imagine a version of this book that's even "better", with "clues" hidden in the annotative text that reveal a clever sub-narrative that reflects back on the main play in such a way that twists it and present it in a new light.
But for what Simon Bucher-Jones was aiming to achieve, it is difficult to imagine anything more effective. It is ingenious, beautiful, and compelling. Put it this way: Bucher-Jones will not require the services of the Repairer of Reputations.
I struggled back and forth over what to rate this, as I really want to give it four-and-a-half stars. Since that is not possible, I eventually decided that four just sounded too low, and plumped for five.
Give it a try. What do you have to lose? (Besides your immortal soul?)
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