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A Bright Green Field
Admirers of Kavan's work will not be disappointed. The title story is allegorical writing at its best and bears the stamp of the author's compulsive power. Other stories show her grasp of the conflict between dream and reality, and an acute awareness of human dignity constantly threatened by insensitive unkindness.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1958
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215 people want to read
About the author
Anna Kavan
39 books478 followersAnna Kavan was born "Helen Woods" in France on April 10, 1901 to wealthy expatriate British parents.
Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.
Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.
Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.
Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 29, 2017
Anna Kavan's primary characteristics are her cold seemingly-objective voice, her fevered surrealist description of situations nonetheless imbued with real pathos, her use of landscape as psychology. She's become a definite favorite, to the point where I've been trying to hunt down all of her (largely out-of-print) work for some time now. This was one that I wasn't sure I'd find without shelling out $60 or more on the rare book market. Instead it's turned up no further than the Brooklyn Public Library, available by request from the ambiguously located "Central Storage". I envision a vast subterranean vault, cramped shadowed stacks precarious and overflowing, accessible only through some hidden back stairwell or rickety dumbwaiter of an elevator. Anyway, it has coughed up this marvelous book, and far more importantly, it's confirmed that hunting out the lost Kavan works (and this is the most lost of any I've found yet) is indeed totally worthwhile.
Originally published in 1958 (and that may well be the edition I have here), this falls in the middle of the surrealist second act of Kavan's career. The stories vary pretty widely in tone and content, but they're pretty unmistakeably of a set with the stories in Asylum Piece and Julie and the Bazooka. Highlights asterisked:
*"A Bright Green Field": a hallucinatory account of a certain unearthly, verdant plot of land that the narrator finds inescapable wherever she goes, and fears may overrun the earth.
*"Annunciation": the stifling forces of misguided propriety on a confused young girl, prisoner-like in her home, at the threshold of adulthood.
*"Happy Name": the past consulted for current insight, as dream-walk through the labyrinthine house of memory.
"One of the Hot Spots": brief and enigmatic, with some memorable landscape.
"Ice Storm": long before the glacial phantasmagoria of her masterpiece, mundane Connecticut ice as indecision and interlude.
*"Mouse, Shoes": a child's vision out of a dystopian orphanage at the point of departure, but too deftly ambiguous to be sure that the dystopia does not extend beyond the facility walls. One of my favorites here.
"The End of Something": a dying seal and interpersonal deterioration.
*"The Birds Dancing": one of the best Anna Kavan stories I've encountered, mythic and weird, and almost like a subtler Thomas Ligotti story (I've been alternating between the two for the last few days). Trapped in an ill-chosen vacation destination that resembles the ugly suburb-sprawl of Hannington (in Kavan's first novel, A Perfect Circle) our nameless protagonist seeks some outlet to the countryside. But unlike in the novel, no transit options exist, and she is drawn, instead, towards a mysterious sunken landmark at the town center. Imbued in eerie mystery with suggestions of conspiracy and doom, and then, suddenly, a surge of brutal beauty. And actually pretty unique, for Kavan, in its sudden burst of activity.
"Christmas Wishes": isolated and dreamlike and so rather ironically titled, like an account of the holidays from a lost bit of Sleep Has His House.
"A Visit to the Sleepmaster": when modern consumerist/societal manipulation has taken over even our most basic rights.
"Lonely Unholy Shore": vivid Pacific island travelogue supplanted by less interesting expat dialogue.
"All Saints": poetic stream-of-concious diary-ing, perhaps? Apparently Kavan destroyed most of her diaries before death, except for one stretch of some months, which she doctored somewhat, apparently, and set aside. Have these been published somewhere yet? Will they ever? Please?
*"New and Splendid": the longest story by far, a kind of high-anxiety conflation of the first chapter of Kafka's Amerika with Metropolis and her own Asylum Piece, as a kind of dystopian/utopian sci-fi with dazzling cityscape description.
Originally published in 1958 (and that may well be the edition I have here), this falls in the middle of the surrealist second act of Kavan's career. The stories vary pretty widely in tone and content, but they're pretty unmistakeably of a set with the stories in Asylum Piece and Julie and the Bazooka. Highlights asterisked:
*"A Bright Green Field": a hallucinatory account of a certain unearthly, verdant plot of land that the narrator finds inescapable wherever she goes, and fears may overrun the earth.
*"Annunciation": the stifling forces of misguided propriety on a confused young girl, prisoner-like in her home, at the threshold of adulthood.
*"Happy Name": the past consulted for current insight, as dream-walk through the labyrinthine house of memory.
"One of the Hot Spots": brief and enigmatic, with some memorable landscape.
"Ice Storm": long before the glacial phantasmagoria of her masterpiece, mundane Connecticut ice as indecision and interlude.
*"Mouse, Shoes": a child's vision out of a dystopian orphanage at the point of departure, but too deftly ambiguous to be sure that the dystopia does not extend beyond the facility walls. One of my favorites here.
"The End of Something": a dying seal and interpersonal deterioration.
*"The Birds Dancing": one of the best Anna Kavan stories I've encountered, mythic and weird, and almost like a subtler Thomas Ligotti story (I've been alternating between the two for the last few days). Trapped in an ill-chosen vacation destination that resembles the ugly suburb-sprawl of Hannington (in Kavan's first novel, A Perfect Circle) our nameless protagonist seeks some outlet to the countryside. But unlike in the novel, no transit options exist, and she is drawn, instead, towards a mysterious sunken landmark at the town center. Imbued in eerie mystery with suggestions of conspiracy and doom, and then, suddenly, a surge of brutal beauty. And actually pretty unique, for Kavan, in its sudden burst of activity.
"Christmas Wishes": isolated and dreamlike and so rather ironically titled, like an account of the holidays from a lost bit of Sleep Has His House.
"A Visit to the Sleepmaster": when modern consumerist/societal manipulation has taken over even our most basic rights.
"Lonely Unholy Shore": vivid Pacific island travelogue supplanted by less interesting expat dialogue.
"All Saints": poetic stream-of-concious diary-ing, perhaps? Apparently Kavan destroyed most of her diaries before death, except for one stretch of some months, which she doctored somewhat, apparently, and set aside. Have these been published somewhere yet? Will they ever? Please?
*"New and Splendid": the longest story by far, a kind of high-anxiety conflation of the first chapter of Kafka's Amerika with Metropolis and her own Asylum Piece, as a kind of dystopian/utopian sci-fi with dazzling cityscape description.
October 18, 2017
As with I Am Lazarus and Julia and the Bazooka, this collection of Anna Kavan's short fiction offers stops all along her style spectrum, ranging from Kafka-leaning Modernist to Gothic and Surrealist, though threaded throughout with her own thematic and symbolic references. It is these references which enhance Kavan's shorter prose, especially when they prefigure her two masterpieces, Ice and Sleep Has His House.
When contrasted with the other two collections, this one is more cohesive than Julia and the Bazooka though slightly less so than I Am Lazarus, yet it still contains some of Kavan's best short fiction work, particularly the ending novella 'New and Splendid', a dystopian tale narrated by a young orphan taken in by his powerful uncle who lives in a city where society is divided by a cloud layer, the upper caste living in the High City and the lower caste down below in the Lanes. In this story, the tight pacing and spare yet evocative descriptions carry Kavan's themes to a haunting level of fruition, placing this in the highest tier of her work.
Throughout the collection, many of her familiar themes arise: futility in the face of bureaucracy/authority, the sometimes blurry line between dream world and waking life, isolation, alienation, inability to truly connect with others, children living at the mercy of cold sadistic adults.
Hopefully Peter Owen will reprint this collection, as it is certainly as strong as the others of hers that remain in print, and it offers an important, engaging look at Kavan's continuing thematic development. Used copies of the book are currently hovering in the US$200-300 range, so interlibrary loan is likely the best way to access this one for the time being.
January 15, 2022
A Bright Green Field boasts a crazy, awesome mix of stories; it is incredible and shameful that it is so long out of print.
The title story, and first in the collection, "A Bright Green Field" has a similar conceptual feel to Kavan's novel Ice, yet it is an overpowering, surreal form of life, rather than the harsh, barren cold, that is inexorably washing over all, consuming, exposing the hopelessness in our resistance, the fragility of our sense of control.
The reader is then bounced between "Annunciation", a disturbing account of a girl who is locked away by her grandmother after her first period, and "Happy Name", in which an old woman wanders the strange, melancholy dream-halls of her Victorian childhood home.
Then we have "One of the Hot Spots", in which a ship purser tells a passenger a story about a man he once saw jump overboard on a cold morning while the ship was anchored, with what the purser believed was intent to drown himself, but then immediately climbed out and ate a hearty breakfast of fried eggs. I don't know why the image of him scarfing down those eggs really stuck with me.
"Ice Storm" follows, which details a woman's indecision about whether to move abroad, her sense of being lost without a firm set of values, while a freak ice storm wreaks a surreal sort of havoc in the background.
"Mouse, Shoes" then sweeps the reader darkly along a child's ambiguous perceptions while preparing to depart an orphanage. The reader is jolted back to reality by "The End of Something", in which a couple witnesses a gored seal slowly dying on the shore outside their ocean-side home.
Kavan then reels in the reader and explodes in the "The Birds Dancing", the dazzling masterpiece in the collection, in which a vacationing woman comes to realize her eerie destination might as well have been designed by a more overt Kafka, before experiencing a mind-shattering spectacle of searing, uncertain significance. I'm still mending the hole blown in my skull.
"Christmas Wishes" follows with a disturbing, swirling account of strangers attempting to force into a woman's home on Christmas, and then "A Visit to the Sleepmaster" confirms that dire bamboozling lies close at hand, for how can one protect against a sleepmaster?
Finally, we have the relatively drab narration of two English women and two American men on a tropic island in "Lonely Unholy Shore", followed by the puzzling stream-of-consciousness in "All-Saints", before Kavan concludes with the longest story in the collection, "New and Splendid", a conspicuous tribute to Kafka's first three chapters in what Max Brod dubbed Amerika, though with a healthier helping of evil.
All in all, "A Bright Green Field", "Ice Storm", "Mouse, Shoes", "The Birds Dancing", and "New and Splendid" stand atop the rest in my book. My descriptions above are sadly inadequate, but one day I will afford a proper study and reflection.
In case you're wondering, I coughed up a gross amount to add this book to my collection. No regrets, as it now sits among my prized possessions. Unfortunately the only other option at present is to peruse it at one of the few libraries that have it -- the Toronto Reference Library has a copy, but being so rare you can't remove it so would have to read it there.
The title story, and first in the collection, "A Bright Green Field" has a similar conceptual feel to Kavan's novel Ice, yet it is an overpowering, surreal form of life, rather than the harsh, barren cold, that is inexorably washing over all, consuming, exposing the hopelessness in our resistance, the fragility of our sense of control.
The reader is then bounced between "Annunciation", a disturbing account of a girl who is locked away by her grandmother after her first period, and "Happy Name", in which an old woman wanders the strange, melancholy dream-halls of her Victorian childhood home.
Then we have "One of the Hot Spots", in which a ship purser tells a passenger a story about a man he once saw jump overboard on a cold morning while the ship was anchored, with what the purser believed was intent to drown himself, but then immediately climbed out and ate a hearty breakfast of fried eggs. I don't know why the image of him scarfing down those eggs really stuck with me.
"Ice Storm" follows, which details a woman's indecision about whether to move abroad, her sense of being lost without a firm set of values, while a freak ice storm wreaks a surreal sort of havoc in the background.
"Mouse, Shoes" then sweeps the reader darkly along a child's ambiguous perceptions while preparing to depart an orphanage. The reader is jolted back to reality by "The End of Something", in which a couple witnesses a gored seal slowly dying on the shore outside their ocean-side home.
Kavan then reels in the reader and explodes in the "The Birds Dancing", the dazzling masterpiece in the collection, in which a vacationing woman comes to realize her eerie destination might as well have been designed by a more overt Kafka, before experiencing a mind-shattering spectacle of searing, uncertain significance. I'm still mending the hole blown in my skull.
"Christmas Wishes" follows with a disturbing, swirling account of strangers attempting to force into a woman's home on Christmas, and then "A Visit to the Sleepmaster" confirms that dire bamboozling lies close at hand, for how can one protect against a sleepmaster?
Finally, we have the relatively drab narration of two English women and two American men on a tropic island in "Lonely Unholy Shore", followed by the puzzling stream-of-consciousness in "All-Saints", before Kavan concludes with the longest story in the collection, "New and Splendid", a conspicuous tribute to Kafka's first three chapters in what Max Brod dubbed Amerika, though with a healthier helping of evil.
All in all, "A Bright Green Field", "Ice Storm", "Mouse, Shoes", "The Birds Dancing", and "New and Splendid" stand atop the rest in my book. My descriptions above are sadly inadequate, but one day I will afford a proper study and reflection.
In case you're wondering, I coughed up a gross amount to add this book to my collection. No regrets, as it now sits among my prized possessions. Unfortunately the only other option at present is to peruse it at one of the few libraries that have it -- the Toronto Reference Library has a copy, but being so rare you can't remove it so would have to read it there.
October 28, 2012
After searching for anything by Anna Kavan for months, this finally turned up. Strange, beautiful and lonely, her writing often reminded me of a cross between Jane Bowles, Leonora Carrington and a fever nightmare. A sleeping sense of blurriness, unable to hold onto anything long enough to make sense of it. Can't wait to read a full length novel.
October 16, 2024
Esse livro me pegou tanto que eu tive que bolar um outro lugar onde eu pudesse escrever sobre ele mais livremente: https://open.substack.com/pub/naterce...
Phew, pronto. Se eu não me demorasse nele o tanto quanto eu acho que ele merece, traduzisse as seções para tentar me fazer mais claro, buscasse algumas fontes e referências sobre a vida da autora, comentários de alguns contemporâneos dela, uns poucos estudiosos (a leitura não é nada densa, prometo) eu não ia conseguir ler mais nada porque isso ia ficar me correndo por dentro: não dar a devida atenção a um livro que foi tão impactante para mim quanto a descoberta das Ficções do Borges.
Tirando uns trechos da publicação:
“A Kavan escreve fantasia como se fosse a mistura do Kafka com a Clarice. (...) O Bright Green Field, como um todo, é uma viagem. A literatura da Kavan é uma viagem — não sabemos bem para onde, mas é. É impossível você não sentir nada, permanecer impávido, de cara limpa, conforme experimenta essas variadas narrativas. Foram poucas as vezes que terminei um livro e senti imediatamente tristeza por terminar, um misto de nostalgia com alguma outra coisa; compaixão por ela e por todos aqueles narradores, talvez; encanto, sim, definitivamente. Ainda que seja uma incursão às profundezas da gente, a fatos e sensações que não queremos pensar ou sentir, é gostoso de se experimentar.
Ao terminar, você entende o que ela quer dizer quando crítica o escapismo. Inicialmente, pode parecer estranho uma autora que usa tantos elementos fantásticos e especulativos dizer isso. Mas, depois de um ou dois contos da Kavan, você compreende perfeitamente o que ela quer dizer…”
Phew, pronto. Se eu não me demorasse nele o tanto quanto eu acho que ele merece, traduzisse as seções para tentar me fazer mais claro, buscasse algumas fontes e referências sobre a vida da autora, comentários de alguns contemporâneos dela, uns poucos estudiosos (a leitura não é nada densa, prometo) eu não ia conseguir ler mais nada porque isso ia ficar me correndo por dentro: não dar a devida atenção a um livro que foi tão impactante para mim quanto a descoberta das Ficções do Borges.
Tirando uns trechos da publicação:
“A Kavan escreve fantasia como se fosse a mistura do Kafka com a Clarice. (...) O Bright Green Field, como um todo, é uma viagem. A literatura da Kavan é uma viagem — não sabemos bem para onde, mas é. É impossível você não sentir nada, permanecer impávido, de cara limpa, conforme experimenta essas variadas narrativas. Foram poucas as vezes que terminei um livro e senti imediatamente tristeza por terminar, um misto de nostalgia com alguma outra coisa; compaixão por ela e por todos aqueles narradores, talvez; encanto, sim, definitivamente. Ainda que seja uma incursão às profundezas da gente, a fatos e sensações que não queremos pensar ou sentir, é gostoso de se experimentar.
Ao terminar, você entende o que ela quer dizer quando crítica o escapismo. Inicialmente, pode parecer estranho uma autora que usa tantos elementos fantásticos e especulativos dizer isso. Mas, depois de um ou dois contos da Kavan, você compreende perfeitamente o que ela quer dizer…”
June 16, 2023
she literally does not ever miss
January 25, 2017
Labākie Kavānas stāsti ir kā fantastiski sapņi, kas lēnām pārvēršas iekšējos murgos, bet švakākie - kā tipiski vecās raudzes fantastikas gabali, kuros cilvēks ierodas svešā pasaulē un apraksta redzēto (tikai šeit viņš pēc tam parasti tiek padzīts no visa skaistā).
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