Here Be Dragons

by Alfred Chester

Alfred Chester's first collection of short stories, which was published in a limited edition of 1125 copies.

The collection comprises of: The Head Of A Sad Angel; A Dance For Dead Lovers; Here Be Dragons, and Rapunzel, Rapunzel.

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Alfred Chester was born on September 7, 1928 in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a family of Jewish-Russian immigrants. He received his B.A. at New York University in 1949 and completed some graduate study at Columbia University. In 1951, he left for Paris as other bohemian expatriates had done before him, most notably, Gertrude Stein.

While living in Paris (1951-1958) he began his career as a serious writer, composing such works as the collection of short stories, Here Be Dragons (1955) and his first novel, Jamie Is My Heart's Desire (1956). During this time, Chester also met and began a relationship with an Israeli pianist, Arthur, with whom he lived in Paris and, for a short time, in New York City. While in Paris, Chester befriended other literary figures, such as Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, and Princess Marguerite Caetani.

Upon returning to New York City in 1959, Chester enjoyed considerable success and fame throughout the 1960's, and was very much a part of the avant-garde literary scene. He continued to write essays and criticism for various magazines, and also published the works Behold Goliath (1964), The Exquisite Corpse (1967), and Head of a Sad Angel (1953-1966). During this time, however, Chester was afflicted with deteriorating health and psychological instability, and was as well a serious drug user and alcoholic. In 1963, he sailed to Morocco on the advice of his friend Paul Bowles, and this marked the beginning of a series of erratic travels all over the world. On August 2, 1971, in Israel, Alfred Chester died in obscurity; by this time, he had become alienated from most of his friends and the literary circles of New York.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant collection of stories but I doubt I will ever again see a copy - Chester's stories even later editions are becoming expensive and hard to find - and the library copy I read has subsequently disappeared. Under the circumstances instead of a review I am going to print a piece by Sam Jordison from the Guardian newspaper in London from January 19, 2007 about Alfred Chester:

"I've recently been indulging in the literary equivalent of schadenfreude. Not so much pleasure in someone else's misfortune, as pleasure in everyone else's lack of knowledge.

"It's not an admirable emotion, I know. Even so, I can't help it. I've just started reading one of the finest writers I've encountered for a long time - and my enjoyment is only heightened by the certainty that very few others in the UK have even heard of him, let alone shared the delights of his superb prose.

"His name is Alfred Chester and, while I'm in confessional mode, I might as well admit that I was attracted to him through ambulance-chasing as much as the hope that he might be a good writer.

"I first came across Chester's name a few years ago in Diana Athill's most enjoyable autobiography, Stet. The fact that the famous André Deutsch editor named him as one of the most talented writers she had worked with (no small claim, given that she edited both VS Naipul and Jean Rhys) piqued my interest. But it was her account of the man rather than the writing that first fascinated me.


"Here was someone who was courageous enough to be openly gay in the 1950s, but who vainly tried to hide his baldness (brought on by a childhood disease) under a crazy ginger toupee, and who forbade any words relating to hair or wigs to be mentioned in his presence.

"After shining briefly, his supernova-like talent burnt out when he was still a young man. Unrecognised by the public, and not enough loved by the critics, he was driven to despair and madness. Athill says that the last contact she had with him was when he demanded that she contact the prime minister so that the UK premier would "stop the voices". Other accounts reveal that he eventually died in Jerusalem in a seedy hotel room surrounded by pills and bottles. He was only 42.

"This irresistible combination of genius, madness, tragedy and red hairpieces has had me scanning AbeBooks for his books for the last couple of years. So rare are they, however, that it was only recently that I managed to secure a few. I'm now the delighted owner of Jamie Is My Heart's Desire and The Exquisite Corpse. Reading them has been little short of thrilling. Although not given to bouts of romantic ecstasy, I understand a little better how Keats claims to have felt when he first looked into Chapman's Homer, or indeed, to borrow the poet's metaphor, like Cortez must have when first looking at the Pacific Ocean.

"They are strange contradictory books. Marked out by Chester's superb prose, they're both surreal and unflinchingly true to life, at once light, witty and imbued with heavy existential angst. They deal with everything and nothing. They are sometimes brutal and hilariously waspish, but always humane. Essentially, for all their 1950s existentialism, they are unlike anything else. As Chester himself said in description of The Exquisite Corpse: "... it is probably the most unlike book you have read since childhood. And probably also, the most delicious."

"Of course, my hope that readers of this blog will seek out this excellent writer does somewhat diminish my selfish pleasure in being a literary pioneer. So, in exchange, if anyone else is keeping an unsung genius to themselves, do let me know...I'll buy their books and feel smug about them instead."

Let me simply add that I also think Chester is author you need to read.