Freglz and the Vicious Circle (or, a Heart-Warming Hearths-Warming Tale) · 2:14am Jan 23rd, 2020
Freglz wrote a lovely little thing called “A Town that Time Forgot.” It’s what you’d get if “anyone lived in a pretty how town” had been rammed and boarded by Cold Comfort Farm.
* * * *
I met Freglz at the writer’s dinner last BronyCon. He arrived at our table just as Bad Horse, Bookplayer, and several others of that ilk were well into our second drinks. He sat there, taking in our (as I recall it) decorous and witty banter in total silence, looking like a cat who’s just been introduced to a pack of playful rottweilers.
I have this tendency to suck all the oxygen out of a conversation so I’ve learned to watch for people who look like they’re gasping for air. I said something of the sort to Freglz when I noticed how quiet he’d been, trying to jolly him into the conversation. He replied “Oh no, it’s not you—I just don’t know what to say. You all seem so literate and erudite.”
That was really very kind of him but it sounded so over-the-top that I reflexively made a joke of it: “Oh yeah,” I said “we’re a regular Algonquin end table!” I pointed at Bad Horse: “He and I are fighting over who gets to be Alexander Woollcott.”
Upon reflection, it probably wasn’t the best way of putting the man at ease.
* * * *
“anyone lived in a pretty how town” is a poem by e e cummings. Yes, that’s spelled correctly. Americans of my age are likely to have read it in high school. We shouldn’t have. That’s exactly the wrong age to first meet with it.
“anyone” at first reading is a nonsense poem, and childish nonsense at that. It sounds like a two-year-old prattling on about his imaginary playmates and the lives he’s made up for them. But the prattle conceals a grown-up message, very serious and very sad (did you know those two words once meant the same thing?)
As such it’s of a piece with Edward Lear’s “The Jumblies,” which is also a nonsense poem with a childish air, and which also is actually full of good sense for adults (and children, for whom it was meant—“anyone” was written for adults but I think a bright child could grasp its meaning). Lear’s message is: if you’re brave and adventurous you will go places and do things that will make life brighter for you.
And cummings’ message is the the same, only negatively stated: if you are not brave or adventurous you will go nowhere, be you never so good, and life will darken for you. cummings doesn’t say that’s fair or happy. He seems to think it’s unfair and unhappy. But that doesn’t mean it’s untrue, be you never so good.
Which is right where Freglz starts his story: when someones marry their everyones, what’s left for those who are left? Only his protagonist isn’t having any of it—not in her life, not in anyone else’s. And encountering an old friend stuck in the Slough of Despond, she promptly starts looking for an appropriate place to attach the tow chains...
* * * *
Cold Comfort Farm is a self-insert fanfic inside a parody wrapped in an English Farmhouse Gothic novel.
A Farmhouse Gothic novel is like a Gothic novel, only the characters have less fashion sense. Other than that it’s the same thing: remote house, dysfunctional family, dark secrets etc. If the writing’s good it illuminates the blind alleys down which human behavior can wander and become trapped, unable to turn around. The problem is that that can look an awful lot like people just being stupid, especially if the writing’s crap.
And 90% of everything is crap.
So away back in the 1930’s someone named Stella Gibbons evidently got tired of shouting WHY DON’T YOU IDIOTS JUST at book after book, so she went and wrote her own called Cold Comfort Farm and in 1995 it was made into a movie (featuring Sir Ian McKellan in his pre-Gandalf days). I’ve never read the book but the movie is hilarious: the protagonist, Flora Poste, walks into the dark and ominous old manse and just starts talking sense to its variously overtorqued inhabitants. And eventually, they listen. And they get better.
“Now wait,” you say “isn’t that a Mary Sue?” Not quite: in a Mary Sue the focus is on the author’s character. In Cold Comfort Farm, the focus is on the other characters. That’s because the movie—in the place of the author—genuinely cares about them. It laughs at their problems, but those are the result of absurd genre conventions. It’s the suffering caused by those problems that really concerns the movie, and it takes that suffering seriously. Flora wants to lead them out of that dead end. She wants to see them get better.
And so does Freglz in “A Town That Time Forgot.” His protagonist is basically Flora Poste. And that’s striking because his protagonist is Diamond Tiara. Which makes more sense than you think.
* * * *
I knew Diamond Tiara, once long ago. I still follow her on Facebook.
When I first met her she was young and wealthy and spoiled and sarcastic, and something of a beauty as well. I was young too so I didn’t see anything beyond that. After a few years we dropped out of each other’s circles and grew up. She more than me.
Because when I reconnected with her a few years ago I found that not only had she successfully raised two children as a single mother, but that having acquired these child-raising skills she’d decided to use them as a state-sponsored foster-mother, all while working a full-time social-services job (that she really didn’t need, given her family’s money). I wondered at the change in her, and when we finally got together again I wondered even more. For she seemed the same person I’d always known: strong-willed, acerbic, distinctly inclined to take no crap and suffer no fools.
And in fact she was, for all the things that had made her the way she was then, made her the way she was now. She was strong-willed. She saw through lies. She had her limits. She spoke her mind. All of which are excellent qualities in a parent.
I hadn’t seen those things in her when she was young because I was young too, but also because I was inclined to dislike her (along with the rest of the little troupe of primates I followed after—so much for my independence of mind!) Of course kindness and compassion were in there too, but they had to have been in her youth, as well. Maybe I just hadn’t seen them. Or maybe I had, but I’d ignored them.
I couldn’t ignore them now because I benefitted from them. Just like the character that Diamond Tiara helps in “A Town that Time Forgot,” I was stuck in my own Slough of Despond. And for much the same reason. But over the course of a long day in my new-old friend’s company, she began to pull me out of it. Not (entirely) with tea and sympathy, but by talking sense to me with the slow, steady, sarcastic traction that an experienced mother will use on a sulky child. Which I suppose I was, because it worked.
She just wanted me to get better.
I haven’t seen her since that day, some six years ago, but we keep in touch.
And reading “A Town That Time Forgot” was like getting a nice long letter from her.
* * * *
I had to leave the Writer’s Dinner before it was over—a panel I, think it was—and by that time Freglz had warmed to our company. The last I saw of him he was happily regaling the table with his plans for a truly epic fanfic, something like that “big air, land and sea novel” Hemingway kept pursuing in his final years.
Hemingway never quite fit in with the Vicious Circle. He was too busy writing, and for that we should be glad. I’m certainly glad Freglz has been. He may have yet to land that big marlin of a fanfic he was talking about, but in the meantime he’s given us a pearl worth the diving for.
So go have a look. And enjoy.
I was at that table! You planted the idea in my head that Americans are in love with Australia.
In that light, this journal makes a lot of sense, but also that's just a darn good story.
Darnit. Cold Comfort Farm isn't available on US Netflix.
(The conventions are awesome. I'm a terrible introvert. I've met, in person, exactly zero authors before I went to my first con. If you (or anybody reading this) ever see me at a con or real life, come over and I'm more than happy to share or listen. I don't care if you've never written a word, or you're secretly George RR Martin.)
You really should read Cold Comfort Farm! The satire in the book is razor sharp, and quite a lot of it doesn't translate to film. (Like the starred passages to draw the attention of reviewers!)
Yup, that is a good story.
Now, I had read and liked it already, but who cares? This is an excellent reason to give it a re-read. And your story suggestion posts are, on their own, a delight!
Already seen and enjoyed the story, but thanks. :)
(And as did Lurks-no-More, I enjoyed the post, too. :))
5190533 satwcomic.com/art/i-guess.png
You make a blog post about me and fail to offer a notification regarding it. My good sir, I am shocked and appalled.
But really, I'm glad you enjoyed it, and being a young adult with a comparatively infantile reading list of mainstream stories I can reference, I assure you that any and all similarities to said works are completely coincidental. So in a way, I guess I'm just a natural literary genius.
Mayhaps I shall regale you with more wholesome horsewords in the future, and mayhaps you'll stop speaking in bookish riddles, but one thing is for certain: it was a pleasure getting to meet you and everyone else in person, all the way from Australia. I didn't think I'd make that much of an impression, but I'm elated to know that my name is now something of a meme.
Cheers.
5192260
"How do I get my leading lady's name into your newspaper?" "Shoot her."
The actual Round Table (modern photo):
algonquinhotel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2019/07/the-algonquin-hotel-autograph-collection-round-table-centennial-1440x900.jpg
Its most notorious habitués:
pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/files/2008/10/610_algonquin_about.jpg
(Can't you just hear the Mos Eisley cantina theme? N.B.: Harold Ross shot first)