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The Skull in the Box #1-4
The Skull In The Box TPB
Trade paperback. In 1937 Harry Stephen Keeler wrote a huge novel about a skull in a hatbox, but his publisher insisted it be published as four separate books. Now, for the first time, all four novels are in this mammoth, two-columned tome.
438 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2009
9 people want to read
About the author
Harry Stephen Keeler
167 books55 followersBorn in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929):
"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
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September 28, 2014
Harry Stephen Keeler is a genius. He's also insane. So, although this book is much too long, rambling, filled with dead ends and pointless red herrings, complex to the point of needing a spreadsheet to keep track of all the subplots, and filled with page after frustrating page of unreadable dialect writing, the conclusion is so brilliantly tied together that it's hard not to love it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review