Daniel P. Mannix, The Wolves of Paris

Daniel P. Mannix's The Wolves of Paris was recommended by a friend, or I'd surely never have picked up a copy (I got a 1978 hardback first edition for $2 on Amazon). Based on a kernel of historical information, The Wolves of Paris tells the story of a half-wolf, half-alaunt known as Cortaud (Cut-Tail) who, in the bitter winter of 1439 laid siege to the city of Paris. People within began to starve to death rather than face him and his pack.

The novel is highly anthropomorphizing, with Mannix granting the animal protagonists the full range of human emotions. The wolves love, hate, lust, fear, plot, harbor resentments and plot revenge. The writing style used to convey these emotions is utterly gaudy, matched by the narrations (and there are a great many of these) of extreme violence. The wolves' natural prey of deer and the like have been depleted and mismanaged, and so in desperation they to eating corpses left from the constant state of war that plagued France throughout the fifteenth century. From this, it is only a small step to hunting the living. Mannix gives us scenes in which men, women and children are torn limb from limb, and eaten before they have quite finished dying.

Pitted against a remarkable (quite improbable) series of foes, including a leopard and an eagle, before it is all over, Cortaud shows time and again his fierce, fearless nature. The narration is fairly informative -- filled with medieval hunting terminology and tactics, as well as information about wolves -- but is also absurd, over the top, often laughable and tacky.

And yet, I kept reading. Straight through. Enjoyable, lively, bloody, silly fun. It is something of a folly of a book, well worth the $2 I spent on it.

Embers -- Sándor Márai

I have just closed the covers of Sándor Márai's Embers, translated from Hungarian by Carol Brown Janeway. The novel was originally written in 1942 and so the setting was at the time it was written current, though now it reads as a period piece. Márai was obscure, unknown, until the recent burst of interest in his writing, and this is the first of a planned run of new translations.

The entire plot unfolds in a day and a night, though riddled with reminiscences. Two friends, separated for 41 years, reunite to settle the unfinished business that led to their estrangement. The embers of the title have burned steadily, and provide enough heat to bring about one last fire. When Konrad returns to the General's decaying castle, it is clear both have remained alive through war and disease in order to have this greatly deferred conversation.

After the initial set-up of 75 pages, the remaining 12o or so of this short novel recount the conversation between the friends -- boyhood companions, regimental fellows. But for a few sentences, though, the conversation is a cold monologue, with each image, each phrase, overly considered through the 41 years of waiting. The guest is still and nearly silent. Great questions build, gaining force page after page.

If the mysterious cause of their feud is not a great surprise, if many questions go unanswered, this is well beside the point, by the end. The deep wounds have little to do with the particulars of this or that betrayal. They cut not because of their effects but because of their source.