Literally Blogging

   Dahl ain’t a pretty person (as seen above) but his fictional short stories are pretty damn good. The past two weeks I have drowned you guys with all things Dahl. For you readers who don’t dig Dahl, we still have one more post to go. For today, I want to introduce to the hidden side of Dahl’s work which are comprised of his short stories for adults. By adult stories, I don’t mean gratitious sex and violence but rather intelligent and well written ones that don’t insult the intellect of its readers. This is his because his work is actually worth ruminating on, talked about and shared till days end. His style and genre is what I consider “human interest” which is fiction that is close to Sterling’s Twilight Zone but tries not to go too far out there in terms of science fiction. These are stories also distinctly marked by its bittersweet aftertaste like M. Night Shymalan’s movies but even better. If you want to find these stories, they are mostly compiled by the The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl by Penguin Publishing House(my copy is lost in limbo with a friend. Please send me a copy! :( ). If that isn’t enough, the rest of his stories are completed in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. Below are some short stories that are worth mentioning. I am Dahl fan so I will try to be fair and keep the list short:

“The Great Automatic Grammatizator”

 - The narrator recounts creating a machine that produces stories. The ending leaves the narrator with a moral decision about the fate of art turned into mass production. This was the story that made me fall in love with Dahl.

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” (from Wikipedia)

- This is the central, largest story in the book, and claims to be a true account of a rich bachelor referred to as “Henry Sugar.” While reading a forgotten book documenting an Indian Yogi’s powers (possibly based on the actual Indian mystic Kuda Bux), “Henry” discovers he is one of the rare people who is able, through years of concentrated study, to gain special “yogic” powers that allow him to see using any part of his body, and also to see the reverse side of playing cards. Being an addicted gambler, he uses this power to cheat in casinos. He finds, though, that his desire for money has been greatly diminished. He throws all of his recent winnings out of his London apartment window, causing a near-riot, and is scolded by an indignant police officer who suggests that he give away his winnings in a more useful way, for example by founding an orphanage. “Henry” then sets off around the world with two accomplices (an accountant and a make-up artist) in order to get as much money from as many casinos as possible, and subsequently uses his winnings in order to set up orphanages around the world.

“Genesis and Catastrophe: A True Story”

- The story is really short and too good to give away but all I can say it is that is about a baby who is on the brink of dying.

There are a lot of other great stories but you have to dig for it yourself. If you don’t like risque and racy stories, don’t pick up Dahl’s Switch Bitch and My Uncle Oswald. They are a bit too offensive for my taste.

ciao

According to C.S Lewis, reality is indeed more beautiful than the land of imagination because it is true. This statement applies true to Dahl because I consider his biograhies Boy and Going Solo far more fascinating than his works of fiction. This is because working with the ordinary really fleshes out Dahl’s knack for carefully choosing words to make a great story out of simple things like his childhood. In his first autobiography entitled Boy, we encounter Dahl’s childhood experience and start to get glimpses of where he practiced his writing skills (writing letters to mumsy) and how got his michievous mind (placing dead rats in candy bowls). Thus, we get to piece together Dahl’s psychological makeup. Yet, what makes Dahl magical is that he has had the same childhood as most of us but he seems to have the power to convey that his was more special than ours. We all went through pulling pranks to our friends, causing trouble and meeting our cousins during the summer but Dahl seems to make his experience simply more memorable.
On the other hand, Going Solo is a harrowing adventure in itself and is a far cry from anything ordinary. This is because it recounts Dahl’s time in Shell Africa and as World War II Pilot. We get to vividly ride a jeep with Dahl and watch him pass by the towering giraffes and feel the hot sun of African Dessert. The latter part gets better as he writes about his near death experiences as he pilots his way around enemy lines and struggles to survive. This book actually inspired me to take hold of my youth and try to travel as Dahl did.
On a side note, Dahl’s experience as pilot was the reason why he providentially became a writer. Upon arriving to the U.S, he was interviewed by C.S Forester of the Saturday Evening Post on his adventures in Africa. Before meeting, Dahl first wrote a summary of his experience to give as a primer to Forester’s article. The summary was so good that C.S Forester told the young Roald that it was perfect and had no need for editing. He even received $900 to boot! The story can be found in Dahl’s Henry Sugar and Six Other Stories as “A Piece of Cake” and his meeting with Forester is also documented in this compilation too as “A Lucky Break”.
I guess the long and short of Dahl’s life is that sometimes some people are just born writers.

p.s Quentin Blake illustrated the covers above.
Next: We have two more Dahl Posts to go! His fictional works and his legacy! Ciao!

  Roald Dahl’s eccentric stories wouldn’t have ever worked without the magic hands of Quentin Blake. I honestly did not know much about him before this post and I wanted write a little bio in this little space. However, I think his personal history would take spotlight from what I wanted to feature which is his artistic work. Blake’s art as you see below is really quirky and lighthearted and is a perfect match for insanely wild children’s books like Dahl’s. It truly expresses the essence of the whole “funness” of being a kid.

  It is indeed a wonderful site when you see authors and artists find themselves insynch in the whole creative process. Aside from Dahl and Blake, I can only think of great graphic novel partnerships at the moment such as Neil Gainman and Dave Mckean, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, and Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. Yet, I know there are more. I am having a mental block now so please help me remember by posting other great teams I left out.

 As we end this post, let us leave with a brief quote from Quentin Blake on his collaboration with Dahl from his website http://www.quentinblake.com:

What was it like working with Roald Dahl?

To begin with, I was a bit nervous. He was quite a powerful figure. But we got on very well. He liked winding me up - only in the most harmless way. I often wore these white shoes, and he’d say ‘Here’s old Quent’ - no-one else ever calls me that - ‘here’s old Quent, he’s going out for dinner in his plimsolls!’

What was so nice about Roald was that he actually wanted the pictures - he didn’t like it if there weren’t enough. Not all authors are like that. We worked together for 15 years from 1975, until he died.

Roald Dahl has a penchant for inventing infectious and quirky words for his stories. Examples are the Automatic Grammatizor (a machine that automatically makes stories), BFG (Big Friendly Giant), and Esio Trot (Tortiose spelled backwards if you didn’t find it out from the last post). Yet, one of the most memorable word he has invented and which I personally use from time to time is Oompa-Loompa. In the world of Dahl, Oompa-Loompas are “natives from the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before” and reliable assistants of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. These cute creatures have been always been objects of contraversy. To begin with, how does one spell Oompa-Loompa when one hears it? This was further added with poltically-incorrect indiviuals crying Roald Dahl foul for writing and allowing his fictional characters such as Willy Wonka to illegally have his own pack of pygmy slaves in an imaginary candy factory.

To make up for this, I present a little diddy by the real Oompa Loompas…
“Augustus Gloop…”

(from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

“Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop!
The great big greedy nincompoop!
How long could we allow this beast
To gorge and guzzle, feed and feast
On everything he wanted to?
Great Scott! It simply wouldn’t do!
However long this pig might live,
We’re positive he’d never give
Even the smallest bit of fun
Or happiness to anyone.
So what we do in cases such
As this, we use the gentle touch,
And carefully we take the brat
And turn him into something that
Will give great pleasure to us all–
A doll, for instance, or a ball,
Or marbles or a rocking horse.
But this revolting boy, of course,
Was so unutterably vile,
So greedy, foul, and infantile
He left a most disgusting taste
Inside our mouths, and so in haste
We chose a thing that, come what may,
Would take the nasty taste away.
‘Come on!’ we cried, ‘The time is ripe
To send him shooting up the pipe!
He has to go! It has to be!’
And very soon, he’s going to see
Inside the room to which he’s gone
Some funny things are going on.
But don’t, dear children, be alarmed;
Augustus Gloop will not be harmed,
Although, of course, we must admit
He will be altered quite a bit.
He’ll be quite changed from what he’s been,
When he goes through the fudge machine:
Slowly, the wheels go round and round,
The cogs begin to grind and pound;
A hundred knives go slice, slice, slice;
We add some sugar, cream, and spice;
We boil him for a minute more,
Until we’re absolutely sure
That all the greed and all the gall
Is boiled away for once and all.
Then out he comes! And now! By grace!
A miracle has taken place!
This boy, who only just before
Was loathed by men from shore to shore,
This greedy brute, this louse’s ear,
Is loved by people everywhere!
For who could hate or bear a grudge
Against a luscious bit of fudge?”

* There really is a conspiracy to squash the existence of the real oompa-loompa. I had a really terrible time trying find a picture of the real oompa-loompas. The figurine above is made by Robert Harrop. He has a website @ http://www.robertharrop.com/.