Remember Me

by David Stacton

'King Ludwig has fascinated me ever since I was a child, yet fascination is not quite the right word. Fellow-feeling would be the proper phrase...' David Stacton, 1957

With his fourth published novel - and his first on historical themes and personages - David Stacton's writing career took a decisive turn. Remember Me, over which he laboured for four years, is an extraordinarily vivid and felt portrait of the infamous Ludwig II of Bavaria, evoking with assurance the strange and poetic landscape that shaped him. Stacton described the book in genesis to his editor as 'a study in madness, of the regal temperament and its reflexes, pushed to that point when it has nothing but the past to govern.'

'A tour de force...An extraordinary feat of dreamlike identification. The compression is masterly.' Observer

'[Stacton's] prose, alternating... between stabbing vigour and florid ornament, powerfully suggests the frustrations of that unhappy spirit.' Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Historical Fiction

Hardcover

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Aka Bud Clifton

David Derek Stacton (1925–1968) was a U.S. novelist, historian and poet. He was born on 25 April 1925 in Minden, Nevada. Stacton attended Stanford University from 1941–43, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951. He served in the Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector then lived in Europe from 1950–1954, 1960–1962, and 1964–1965. Stacton wrote under the pseudonyms Carse Boyd, Bud Clifton, David Dereksen and David West. Most of his books were originally published in England. He died of a stroke 19 January 1968 in Fredensborg, Denmark.

Stacton's novels are often low in dialogue, and his better novels are instead full of his witty scornful comments on his characters and life. At his best Stacton had an epigrammatic style and enjoyed a sophisticated irony, although antipathetic critics took him to task for pretentious vocabulary, a tendency to florid paradoxes, and anachronistic allusions (i.e. describing a 14th century Zen garden using phrases from Marianne Moore and Peter Pan). In 1963, Time magazine praised his work as "masses of epigrams marinated in a stinging mixture of metaphysics and blood" and suggested that "something similar might have been the result if the Duc de la Rochefoucauld had written novels with plots suggested by Jack London". His other literary influences include Walter Pater, for his choice of characters with frustrated artistic and emotional longings, and Lytton Strachey for his witty attention to history. Several of Stacton's novels feature homosexual characters prominently. Fans of David Stacton include John Crowley, Thomas M. Disch, and Peter Beagle.

Reviews

[Mitchie Baudelaire · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book will arise a wave of emotions in every reader that has at least once felt the same way as ludwig did.
The narrative power mr. Stacton uses to envelope our senses and immerse us in Ludwig's mind and how it changed throughout the years of his short, yet sorrowful life, will bring you to tears, from the beauty, saddness and misery can be described in.
Ludwig didn't make a history ground breaking contribution to our society, and that's why he is rarely being praised of, except in Germany, where tourism is flourishing from arhitectural monumetns he made.
However, He left us his life story to learn something from it. To learn how to be gentle toward those who see things differently than us. How to appreciate that difference. How to be little bit more understanding to ones around us who are overflowing with abundance of feelings in a world that has in store worst of punishments to everyone who dares to show any sign of sensitivity.
His legacy are big castles that today feed a greeat part of German's economy, bit it he also left us his persona terrible judged and prosecuted and condemned to forevermore as being one of lunatic who had too much money and not enough wits. Part of his reality that history unrepentantly forgot lies in his young heart that never got a chance to be seen for itself, which resulted in king that hid his whole life in fairytales, and never grew up.
He lived long time ago. When kings were beautiful secrecy and pirates lurked from hidden depths coming after those who were mean.
But is today any better?
They don't scare us anymore with monsters and witches coming after us if we do not finish our lunch, no one anymore believes in monsters under bed either, and king is anyone today, who gathers most virtual people following their daily rutines of doing nothing but making fun of themselves and others around them. And they live from it, pretty good. One can argue that some of those slackers, have more money than it was left to king ludwig when we finished his lavish projects.
But, children are growing up even now, years after Ludwig lost his battle with people and their selfishness rather than oblivion, because it was visible that ludwig was not for throne and reign from early age, but was being thrown in it nevertheless, to rather turn a blind eye than let a boy be himself, being thaught that concealing their real feelings is the only way they can survive in real world. How many times all of us heard a phrase, that will echo in our developing, still sensitive, vulnerable minds at time, long after they came from our parents in a heat of argument that has been risen after we dared to voice our wishes for our lives and our futures that might've been divering from things and hopes they believed were right for us and therefore absentmindedly took it for granted that we believed in too just as hard as they did, ofc in the best intention, how „farytales do not exist and that we have to toughen up and wake up from fantasies“ (later we will reveal they actually talked about dreams) How many of us cried ourselves to sleep thinking that there is nothing in this world that we can, as little beings as we were, do to free ourselves from expectations brought unfairly upon us from the moment we were brought in this beautiful, yet merciless to anything that breaths and thinks.
but what if what they really warned us about was „your feelings are gonna get crushed and you will be hell of broken mess and there wont be anyone to pick you up because no one will care. Why? Because we are all boken messes just telling each other to be careful. Because we all need that devastating hope that there is someone out there who will care enough to not reprimend us for who we are who we want to be.
Ludwig was a mess and people back then weren't anymore honest or sympathetic then they are now. Reading this book, that examines his conscious while trying to give us an insight and explain all the reasons that brought to that infamous fall that for history is everything this boy is supposed to be remembered for, reader is left wondering why is it so hard to accept the obvious notion of our world that maybe instead of blaming that poor planet we are all obviously stuck on, for demises and impossibility of happy endings, we could to so much for everbody on it if we just let each other be the true versions of ourselves and stop pretending that rules imposed once were the right ones for world to be in perfect order or to be the best of all the palces.
Maybe, teaching our children to be dreamers is not always working. but teaching them to never be afraid of who they are, and to never settle for anything less than what they imagined life should look like in their stary-lights covered rooms before going to bed, they will never stop looking for a way to find it and when they don't find it , they will not be afraid to create it. And that is what Ludwig wanted us to remember. Not his castles. Nor his fairytales. Definitly not maddness that took him when there was no one else to find him. To remember that being yourself hurts, most of the time. That fighting doesn't always mean we will win. Especially when fighting with humans who rarely undestands motives that drive us, sometimes in our own downfall. Even tough world will not understand us, there will always be place, a safe one, for our dreams, beliefs and everything else that makes us who we are.
For Ludwig that place were his fairytales full of heroes, his castles where he could be a hero his people needed but weren't keen on seeing it in young boy with too big heart, castles which he undoubtedly wouldn't be able to built if he wasn't a king.
Today we shouldn't anymore be forced to hide and look for safe places. Why we wouldn't turn real world into one? A place for everyone to be happy and themselves.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

[update 2025 - I am now a huge David Stacton fan, I think he is one of the greatest unknown 20th century English language authors. I will read 'Remember Me' again, but leave my review until then. If you want to know why Stacton is great writer read my review of his 'Old Acquaintances'.]


(I am in the process of reading some of Stacton's other books because I can't believe he isn't, at least some of the time, a great author. I have reread my review and standby it, but I do want to read the novel again. My suspicion is that a second reading will not changer my overall opinion. But then I have approached the novel from my knowledge of the real Ludwig and my dislike of the Ludwig of legend' that so many of obsessive 'fans' have created. It may be that to appreciate this novel you need to deal with Ludwig as the fantasy creation of others not the man he was. I will certainly bear that in mind when I read 'On A Balcony', Stacton's novel about Akhenaten, another historical figure who has attracted an after life in myth and mediocre literature. Who can forget 'The Egyptian' by Mika Waltari or the terrible Hollywood film made from it.)

Although a three star rating should mean that I liked this book - well I didn't dislike it - I wanted to like it - but I was disappointed in it - but others think highly of it and I don't want to stop others reading it and making up their own minds. Honestly my problem with the novel is threefold:

1. Ludwig of Bavaria - over the years he has acquired a rather creepy fan-club whose members refuse to recognize that there was anything wrong with Ludwig - but let's be real - he built castles and palaces and built up a cult around Louis XIV (amongst other various Kings and Queens) but he did not want to carry out even the nominal public functions of a constitutional monarch in the 19th century and certainly had no desire to live like or rule like his absolutist hero. There isn't much point to a King who wants to hide away and doesn't like to be seen - who even has his Operas performed in empty theatres at night - certainly such a King hardly needs a load of new buildings (considering he already has a large number of palaces) to act out his desire not to see anyone. When he eventually ran out of money (in the sense that no one would lend him any more) he considered, seriously, robbing banks and other very harebrained schemes to get his hands on cash. Perhaps the most obvious complaint that can be made against Ludwig is utter absence of taste - anyone who sees the vast, ugly, murals that were completed before he died can only be grateful that there was not time to foist more on the world. Although he built a copy of Versailles he managed to make his interiors even more overblown and vulgar then the gimcrack edifices of Napoleon III. He was a totally, spoilt, selfish man who did nothing for anyone and whose only excuse can be the mental instability that was well known in the house of Wittelsbach - The mother of Emperor Franz Josef didn't want him to marry the Wittelsbach princess who became the gruesome eccentric and self centred 'Sisi' because of the insanity in the dynasty, and she was Wittelsbach herself!

2. Objection, or maybe disappointment, is what I feel about the writing in this novel. I really hoped that the talent that Stacton displayed in his pulp and other pseudonymous novels for a rich and devilish eccentricity and flamboyance would be reflected in his literary novels. It isn't and while well written the story line is at best white washed or pedestrian while to be charitable it might be called worthy and reflective of the times.

3. This bring us to the final problem - there is no point being a camp outlandish author and writing about an over the top camp and outlandish royal if you going to produce a dull book. I know homosexuality was a delicate and controversial subject but I couldn't help feeling that Stacton repressed his flamboyance and that of his subject because he wanted to be taken seriously. Unfortunately only really good novels are those that are true. I just feel this novel isn't and I am sorry because I so much wanted to praise and like it.

[Ronald Chevalier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I certainly enjoy Stacton’s turns of phrase and diction. His writing in Remember Me is solid. I did struggle a bit in the first third of the novel, as I had no knowledge of Ludwig II and his rule. I didn’t catch for a while the sudden hints of his growing mental illness. Not realizing that was where the novel was headed, I felt, at firs, like the story lacked direction. Once I did a bit of research on the life of Ludwig, it became much more clear where the Stacton was headed. That would be my only criticism of this book would be that Stacton might have failed to realize that many of his readers would not have that knowledge going in.

Once again, I look forward to reading more of Stacton.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being well received in his time, David Stacton is one of those American writers who seem to have been forgotten over time. Most of his work was out of print for years until his original publisher, Faber & Faber, republished several of his best novels in 2012.

Remember Me is the first of Stacton's "Invincible Questions" trilogy and was inspired by a trip that Stacton took to Munich shortly after WWII. He connected with the myth of King Ludgwig II of Bavaria and wrote a fictional account of Bavaria's last real monarch, as it was swallowed up by Bismark's efforts to unite Germany.

Stacton does a great job of delving into the mind of the Mad King as he descends into a self-imposed isolation and eventual downfall and mysterious death. Along the way he becomes Richard Wagner's great patron and the builder of magnificent castles that nearly bankrupted the treasury and led to his being deposed by his own ministers.

The prose is top-notch and the philosophical pondering is packed full of wisdom and human observation. Unfortunately, the narrative is often obscure and I would imagine that someone unfamiliar with Ludwig's life and death would have a hard time following it. Although Stacton wrote this as a way of honoring Ludwig's memory, Ludwig often comes off as very unlikable, especially if someone has no previous knowledge of the man.

It is curious that Stacton, who was an out gay man in the 40s and 50s, chooses to dance around Ludgwig's homosexuality, referring to his encounters in a subtle and surreal way. Perhaps that was the only way to get it published as legitimate fiction and not have it reduced to the pulp gay genre -which Stacton also wrote under a pseudonym. But in the end you can see this was a labor of love for Stacton who may have felt the same alienation from society as Ludwig.

I definitely plan to read more of Stacton's forgotten novels.

[bookish_rat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really liked this book and I'm very happy I stumbled over it at my work.
In some way it is a biography of Ludiwg II of Bavaria, but it is written like fiction. Stacton follows the young king, explains his feelings and shows his whole life by meeting different charactes like Wagner, Hornig or Kainz. Stacton's way to write is very well to read, not too difficult or exhausting, but most of the time there is no dialogue, only Ludwig's monologue and some notes of the narrator. One should prepare for dark and depressing thoughts of Ludwig, most of all in the part that describe his last years.
All in all Remember me is one interpretation how Ludwig's life could have been, but I think it is a very good one.

[Tom Sos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The inner story of the "mad king" of Neueschwanstein. When the story opens, Ludwig, a neurasthenic aesthete, is the newly-crowned 18 yo king of Bavaria. The main conceit is that Ludwig identifies (all you millenials can read "self-identifies") with Elsa Brabant and is waiting for, perpetually searching for, attempting to construct from assorted hunks, pretty boys, and even the Master of Bayreuth himself, a Lohengrin. Thus: fairytale castles, with ersatz woods, artificial lakes, mechanical swans. Meanwhile, the author very much identifies with his subject.

The writing -- the narrative style -- is non-sequential, fevered, the mind of Ludwig at work (though not in the first person). A stray phrase in a previous paragraph is later recognized to be the scene changer. It may have been a conditional but later a major declarative. (Would you call this Kaleidoscopic?) Sometimes it seems that the paragraphs are arbitrary or chosen at random by the typesetter.

It is worth listening to this author: "He thought that exile must sound very like the echo of a carriage over empty streets. It had a tired and futile sound." That is not the way it sounds to me, but it is important for the author to make that claim. Ludwig (or is it the author) never goes very far but is always lamenting his exile, especially in the middle of the city of Munich.

We get a play by play of Ludwig's life. But also Stacton has a lot to say about many things -- happiness, self-worth, love (a whole chapter is devoted to a philosophical discourse on love). The novel's style is modern, but the substance is 18th century... certainly it must have been old-fashioned for the 1950s.