The rift in the lute

by Noel Langley

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Noel Langley (December 25, 1911 – November 4, 1980) was a successful novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director. While under contract to MGM he was one of the screenwriters for The Wizard of Oz. He was chosen for the job on the basis of his children's story, The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger — a children's classic which has seldom been out of print since it was first published in 1937. However, his finished script for The Wizard of Oz was somewhat revised by Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, revisions that Langley himself strongly objected to, but which appear in the finished film. Langley is on record as saying that he hated the completed product, an opinion not borne out by the general critical and public consensus. The Wizard of Oz has become one of the best-loved films ever made. He attempted to write a sequel based on The Marvelous Land of Oz using many of the concepts he had added to its predecessor, but this was never realized.

Born in Durban, South Africa, he was first an author and a successful Broadway playwright. Langley began writing for films in the 1930s. After World War II, Langley worked on many British films including the film noir They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), the remake of Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951), the Alastair Sim Scrooge (1951), The Pickwick Papers (1952), Ivanhoe (1952) and the Technicolor The Prisoner of Zenda (1952). (His contribution to Zenda, however, was minimal, since the 1952 film followed the script of the 1937 film version, on which Langley did not work, nearly word-for-word.)

In 1964, Langley made a series of tapes for New York radio station WBAI, reading "The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger" in its entirety. He subsequently edited it down to fit on an LP, which was issued by the listener-sponsored station and offered as a fund-raising premium. Langley continued to write novels and plays throughout his life. He also wrote short stories for the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines.

Langley died in 1980 in Desert Hot Springs, California, United States.

Reviews

[TalkinHorse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Candide in China (sort of)

Actually, I enjoyed "Rift in the Lute"/"Innocent at Large" more than Candide, which I found sort of bitter in a nihilistic way. "Rift" is an absurd and touching novel that rakes its protagonist over the coals but, unlike Candide, seeks light around the edges. It's about an innocent who is forced into the world, and his subsequent misadventures. Here's a sample; read and see if they grab your attention (and I'll bet you laugh loud enough for anybody in the vicinity to ask whether you're okay).

Chapter 1

Lao-Ti is my name and I was born in the year of the Amorous Dragon, a good year, in the province of Qui-Tung, in the Middle Kingdom, in a month with no "r" in it, of respectable but misallied parents whose hearty antipathy for each other gave bountiful impetus to their antipathy for the reproduction of their incompatible characteristics of myself.

Left entirely to my own devices, I pursued a sheltered, retired life of my own, given mostly to the reading and writing of innocent and ennobling versus, upon which slender philosophy I based my conjectures of the great world without; but neglect and lack of demonstrative affection took their toll upon me, and I found myself with no confidence.

Self-doubt, acquired too young, gnaws like a hungry caterpillar upon the young green shoot of self-esteem.

Our natures, moreover, dictate our destinies; for by the manner in which our natures respond to a problem set by Fate, so do we set in motion the logical consequences of that response.

To do nothing at all is by far the wisest reaction to a problem set by Fate.

This I learned much later in life.

At the age of sixteen, much to my father's modulated gratification, my mother died choking upon a fishbone whilst disparaging him to the cook, and after a respectable period of two days had elapsed, he offered himself in marriage to a young concubine whose price was high but tongue discreet.

She refused him on the ground that a son of my age made the discrepancy in their ages too ostentatious: whereupon I was rapidly submitted by my father, through the agency of a marriage-broker, to the family Quon as a suitor for the hand of their daughter Tu-Lio-Tiu, meaning Innocent Bringer-About of Too Much Celestial Ecstasy to be Borne without Screaming like a Horse. My suit being indignantly rejected and the marriage-broker set up by pekinese, my father thereupon sent for me and spoke as follows: "I cover my face with my fan in shame for you and cross my legs in penance upon the inadvertent source of your origin. Our stately and honorable line comes to an unprepossessing halt in you, my son. I tremble to appear before my ancestors in the next world for fear of their chagrin and displeasure. I am forced, in brief, with the painful necessity of cutting you off with a yen and sending you into the world to fend for yourself. Please do not take this personally. You did not deliberately cause yourself to be born a runt, any more than I precipitated you into the Jug of Doubtful Joy with any such unspectacular aim in view. It is in the hands of the Gods. We are but clay beneath the inscrutable workings of their fingers. When they worked upon you, my son, they were all thumbs."

I accepted this obediently and with humility, convinced that such a venerable and educated old man could not be anything but correct in his assessment of my shortcomings, and not unnaturally found myself much saddened and somewhat forlorn of spirit.

"Have you any parting words, honorable father?" I requested apologetically. "Some few grains of sage advice? The world is large, strange and hostile. My mind is oversensitive, retiring, and unaggressive."

"My son," he said pensively, "if I were to tell you those especial things you should avoid to ensure a full and contented life, I would merely lend undue lustre to those snares and delusions that will, in any event, seek you out (if you have not already sought them first) and undo you.

"Only a blind man senses the pitfalls before him and avoids them. Only a dumb man is sure of winning an argument. Only a deaf man can love a woman. Only one thing alters when a stupid woman marries a clever man -- the man is no longer clever. Speak as little as you can; ignore other people's imperfections as tactfully as you can; and admire women only from afar, with a third party always present.

"Never trust an ungrateful man, nor bestow friendship upon a mean one.

"Drunkenness reveals the true nature of most men, but merely heightens a dishonest woman's self-assurance. Help a lame dog over a stile and he will defecate in your hand. Never kick a man except when he is down. Never even kick a man when he is down, until you are quite sure he is unable to get up again.

"Lastly, you are credulous: you do not possess so much as a jot of guile. My poor son. Honesty of nature is the greatest dishonesty of the lot. You will equip the silliest rogues with the wherewithal to misconstrue and annihilate you, and they will be honestly within their rights to take advantage of it.

"Nevertheless, you will labor forever under the delusion that you must always blurt out the truth, and that some obscure and mystical good will come of it somehow. None will. Here is your yen. Good-bye."

Author Noel Langley apparently had a taste for the outlandish and supernatural. (If I'm feeling strictly traditional, I might express a concern that his worldview is fundamentally pagan. I won't say this is a bad thing in the context of this amusing satire, but I recoil at New Age kookiness, so I thought I should mention this point.) Langley's biggest claim to fame was his (shared) writing credit for the "Wizard of Oz" screenplay. He also wrote a popular book about Edgar Cayce and reincarnation, Edgar Cayce on Reincarnation (which is more readily available than anything else he wrote -- I suppose I'll want to take a look out of curiosity, although I'm highly skeptical about such things). Also, look for his short tale of Desbarollda the Waltzing Mouse.