Books in Brief: Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales

Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales, by Isak Dinesen (University of Chicago, 338 pp., $4.95). Baroness Karen Blixen, who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen, died in 1962, leaving behind a pile of first drafts with a warning not to rush them to press. Her executors held off for twenty years, but, as several stories demonstrate, first drafts still are first drafts. The title story, “Carnival,” rambles its entire length of 64 pages without establishing anything in the way of dramatic tension. Fortunately for the collection, at least a couple of the stories exemplify the strength of the Baroness’s finished work. “The de Cats Family” shows her flair for creating plausibly eccentric characters who pursue peculiar ends in highly entertaining fashion. Pillars of the Amsterdam social edifice, the de Catses are shocked to learn that the black sheep of the family, Jerimias, has turned goody-goody. “‘One can serve the world in two ways: one can make virtue attractive or vice repulsive,”’ explains a family patriarch. Jerimias, he says, did the latter. “‘We are so much better than other people only because we always have among us one member of the family who takes on the burden of all the family’s sins.’” First they try to re-corrupt him on the sly. But these self-made saints have a devil of a time promoting mischief. Among other failures, the courtesan hired to bring Jerimias down uses her fee to go respectable herself. The direct approach finally succeeds, and Jerimias agrees to be wild for the sake of the clan. In “Uncle Theodore,” a young couple of criminal temperament almost live happily ever after on the fortune of a long-lost relative. They are strung out on credit at a resort hotel when, completely unexpectedly, the uncle of the husband, Jacques, moves in upstairs. The realization that his long struggle with debt might be over shakes Jacques to the roots. “It had really happened . . . the world must be different from what one had assumed. Then one ought to try to do what is right. . . . The girl in Lourdes really had had visions, and kings were kings by the grace of God. As if these comprised the conditions for his true happiness, Jacques felt a great, tranquil harmony permeate his entire being.” This is the essence of fiction: the translation of revelation to the printed page. Not many writers can do it, and of them few equal Karen Blixen at her best. This example nearly outshines the story’s end: Theodore’s will ignores all but a survivor in swaddling, Jacques’s infant son.

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Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales, by Isak Dinesen (University of Chicago, 338 pp., $4.95). Baroness Karen Blixen, who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen, died in 1962, leaving behind a pile of first drafts with a warning not to rush them to press. Her executors held off for twenty years, but, as several stories demonstrate, first drafts still are first drafts. The title story, “Carnival,” rambles its entire length of 64 pages without establishing anything in the way of dramatic tension. Fortunately for the collection, at least a couple of the stories exemplify the strength of the Baroness’s finished work. “The de Cats Family” shows her flair for creating plausibly eccentric characters who pursue peculiar ends in highly entertaining fashion. Pillars of the Amsterdam social edifice, the de Catses are shocked to learn that the black sheep of the family, Jerimias, has turned goody-goody. “‘One can serve the world in two ways: one can make virtue attractive or vice repulsive,”’ explains a family patriarch. Jerimias, he says, did the latter. “‘We are so much better than other people only because we always have among us one member of the family who takes on the burden of all the family’s sins.’” First they try to re-corrupt him on the sly. But these self-made saints have a devil of a time promoting mischief. Among other failures, the courtesan hired to bring Jerimias down uses her fee to go respectable herself. The direct approach finally succeeds, and Jerimias agrees to be wild for the sake of the clan. In “Uncle Theodore,” a young couple of criminal temperament almost live happily ever after on the fortune of a long-lost relative. They are strung out on credit at a resort hotel when, completely unexpectedly, the uncle of the husband, Jacques, moves in upstairs. The realization that his long struggle with debt might be over shakes Jacques to the roots. “It had really happened . . . the world must be different from what one had assumed. Then one ought to try to do what is right. . . . The girl in Lourdes really had had visions, and kings were kings by the grace of God. As if these comprised the conditions for his true happiness, Jacques felt a great, tranquil harmony permeate his entire being.” This is the essence of fiction: the translation of revelation to the printed page. Not many writers can do it, and of them few equal Karen Blixen at her best. This example nearly outshines the story’s end: Theodore’s will ignores all but a survivor in swaddling, Jacques’s infant son.