The Great Victorian Collection

by Brian Moore

On a weekend visit to Carmel, California, sober and respectable Anthony Maloney has an extraordinary dream which is to change the pattern of his entire life. He dreams that outside his hotel window, on a previously empty parking-lot, an open-air market has appeared containing dazzling collection of priceless Victoriana. Laid out before him he sees a vast array of exquisite furniture, paintings, jewellery, tapestries and musical instruments - a fantasy beyond measure for Maloney, a lifelong enthusiast. Waking from this strange reverie, he crosses to window, only to discover that his dream has come true... Set in fantastic, surreal world, The Great Victorian Collection is a fascinating exploration of the disturbing, intangible nature of reality.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Canada, Irish Literature, Literature

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”

Reviews

[Laura McNeal · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that nothing happens in this book is like saying nothing happens in "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka. It seems to me the novel is an allegory, and it has tremendous tension if the existential dilemma of the main character is frightening to you in some personal way, which I think is most likely if you're a nostalgist by profession--if you're a novelist, say, or a literature professor, or a historian, or a curator. It asks you to consider what would happen if your dreams of a bygone world became reality, specifically if the objects that you treasure from the past and have devoted so many years to understanding were to suddenly materialize and belong to you in every sense, especially in the sense that you must protect them from harm. All of those places that you have visited so often in books and in your mind, the things you have longed to see and hold but which have been dispersed or have utterly disappeared--imagine them at your feet. What would you do with them? How would you take care of them? What would other people think of them, and of you? These are the dilemmas that beset Maloney when the Victorian Collection appears overnight in a field beside his hotel in the same matter-of-fact way that Gregor Samsa wakes up as a giant cockroach (and in the way that such things happen in The Twilight Zone, too). In Moore's version of the dream-turned-nightmare, a history professor essentially wakes up and discovers that he has turned into a disenchanted, insomniac, booze-guzzling movie star: "Far away, a siren cried in the night as an ambulance rushed across the city. He heard it like a knell. Sleepless, his body abused by drugs and alcohol, would he, like others who could no longer dream the dreams which had made them famous, end his days in a madhouse or lie in a suicide's grave?" I'm not going to lie. The end is not pretty, but perhaps that's because it never really is.

[Joan Harthan · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I'm somewhat of an expert on our dreaming life, a writer friend wanted me to read this book. He was interested to see what I would make of it. Mmmm. . . ? As I read, I was desperately trying to find clues that would indicate that the protagonist's manifestation of his dream was all in his mind (an hallucination) - and that he was progressing very quickly into insanity. Or perhaps it was that he was somehow 'living his dream' in the daydream sense of the word and, like many rock stars, found himself unable to cope with the success, turning to drugs and alcohol, which in turn caused him to retreat into a make believe world. Everything in the book points to this as well as the fact that other people are attempting (very successfully it seems) to make money out of him and his dream - we all know this happens to many rock stars; the vultures start to gather. So does this mean that the victorian collection was metaphorical? Or allegorical?
If the manifestation of the collection was supposed to be 'real', as the author seems to want to portray, then I have to conclude that the implausibility of this happening left me cold. Perhaps the author wanted the reader to explore the possibility of this actually happening but, even in fiction, one needs to be plausible. There are, of course, theories about dreams that state everything that happens in waking reality is foreshadowed in a dream (Edgar Cayce was the first to propose this I believe). And dreams (the nighttime sort) certainly do manifest on a regular basis but certainly not in the way portrayed here - which is more on the lines of a grand case of an 'apport'.

I didn't find it an enjoyable read and finished the book asking, "Okay - what was his dream?" For me the book was disappointing as so much more could have been done with this theme by ditching the way the collection was presented - IF it really did relate to a nighttime dream. If it didn't, then the characterisation of other characters in the book left a lot to be desired. As it is, I still go with my impression that the protagonist is descending into obsession and psychosis yet, in this respect too, the characters are confusing. I'm aware that in academic literary circles it's quite fashionable to make simple themes convoluted and confusing, I just live in the hope that this phase soon passes.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is something a little different. When contemporaneous novelists sit down at a blank sheet of paper with all the infinite possibilities of the Universe before them, why so many of them choose to write gloomy variations of their own lives is beyond me. How many more New Yorker stories about the supposed struggles of comfortably-off middle class college students aspiring to write for a living must we endure? Here, at least, Moore does something genuinely different, well paced, very well written and, in sum, entertaining.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really a disappointment, but can't be a 2-star book because both the quality of prose and my expectations were so high. I'd been convinced this might just turn out to be one of my favourites (love the title and premise), but such a let down. I suppose I wanted more plot--how to protect the Collection, why did this happen, etc., and instead most of the plot was about some dreary non-girlfriend with all the effervescent personality of a dishcloth, and the highest stakes were about whether to go dancing or dreaming instead.

I'd love someone to take the premise and really run with it, the way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer the TV show ended up 1,000 times better than Buffy the movie.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

[Scott Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an unusual but clever read which caused me to wrestle with the many elements woven throughout out the story. The very premise of this dream-cum-true reality, with its particularly odd dimensions and characters makes the story surreal yet compelling. The emotional content of the story is fairly believable and is easily able to draw you into what ends up being a fairly quick read.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMARY - 50p well spent! The 1970s meets the 1890s in a hallucinogenic Wildean novella on the dark manifestation of dreams.
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I read this as a bookend to Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. A young history academic from McGill travels to Carmel CA, and finds he has manifested a priceless collection of Victoriana. The antiques include objects previously considered destroyed, from the 1830s through the Great Exhibition of 1851, and beyond. Both Wilde and Moore deal with ego. In Wilde's book the focus is on personal beauty, as Gray uses a mirror to recapture his youth. In Moore's book, the focus is on the academic mind, where it is Maloney's thoughts that are responsible for the appearance of the stupendous collection. Ego creates beauty in both cases, to the pride and then downfall of their creators.

Other parallels can be drawn between the two Irish authors. Hedonism pulses through their writing, which in Moore's book includes clubs, pills, vintage pornography, shopping malls, alcohol, fast cars, and inter-city jet-setting. Despite a title that sounds like a catalogue for a dusty auction house, Moore gives us high-octane 1970s America, a tyre-squealing skid away from 1968's Bullitt, and thundering towards The Dukes of Hazard. Wilde would most definitely have approved.

Wilde himself gets the briefest namecheck in Moore's book, in the kitschy menswear shop created to celebrate the Great Victorian Collection. It would have needed a rebrand much after 1975, but there is is - 'Oscar Wilde's Way Out' (p.160).

The few other reviewers on Goodreads have commented on the oddity of 'The Great Victorian Collection'. The psychokinetic, academic and hedonistic make for an unusual mix, and the cover of my edition featuring charity-shop curios and a yellow-vested dude is another jarring addition. It's certainly hard to place between its pulp fiction imagery and melange of serious and flippant themes. The very name given to the lead character - Tony Maloney - sounds daft, but he's fleshed out in Moore' nightmarish tale.

Odd yes, but engaging, and ultimately the winner of the 1975 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. I didn't know that when I found this for 50p in a secondhand bookshop, but I would defend the jury's decision. It's a world apart from Moore's next novel, his Booker-nominated 'The Doctor's Wife', and testimony to his creativity.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really one of the more disturbing allegories for being a writer that I can imagine. Stephen King has written so many stories about the notion of creativity as a terrifying existential burden all its own, much less what happens to your stories when they find their way out into the world and people do what they want with them, and with their notions of you. I heard Stephen Graham Jones on a podcast describing his need to get stories out of his head; he talked about writing almost as a gesture of self-preservation that protected him from the fertility/burden of his own imagination. Moore's novel would seem to literalize this--what if you dreamed something into existence, and while it seemed like an immediate act of magic, how would that materialization age? What would it do to you? Would you feel responsible for its integrity? Would you defend its originality? Would you make money from it, or just treat it as art for art's sake?

Given that this came out in 1975, it's got that 60s-holdover aura, especially since it's set in Carmel, though it could be anywhere, really, since there's not much particular evocation of the town itself, which I sort of conceptualize as being like Cyra McFadden's Serial, the Marin satire from around then. Also very Other Victorians in concept, in that whole secret sections of the Collection deal with the various and ramified specialist pornographic subcultures abounding in Victorian England. The central notion is pretty pungent, I would guess especially because the culture lag between Victorian England and 1975 Northern California made them feel like such opposites in so many fundamental ways, but it also feels a bit underdeveloped, in that there are interesting notions about repression and sexuality and perversion out there for use that Moore doesn't develop; there's some unfortunately period-standard treatment of the one central female character (I don't think this does real well on the Bechdel test) that could have been turned into a resonant metaphor for Victorian sexual standards as connected to and possibly unchanged even in supposedly liberated times and places. But I don't think that's going on, and so she feels like another index of the protagonist's failing faculties and despairing sense that his dreamed-of Collection is in essence possessing him.

I can see why Joan Didion loved this, because it IS such a powerfully despairing vision of how your creations can hang a noose around your neck, but I think it could have done a lot more with the idea.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

8 / 10

I love Brian Moore’s writing, and this was an unexpected delight that really felt unlike a lot of his other novels. There are the elements that I expect from him, with the wonderful character interactions between very odd people, gorgeous environmental descriptions, lots of focus on family, etc (the etc is horniness). But it was really interesting to see him take on more explicitly fantastical elements in here than I’ve seen him do elsewhere. I think it’s a really neat approach as well, with an early introduction to the fantasy, and then a straight-faced commitment to that fantasy throughout the entire book. It’s a novel focused on the human reactions to the unexpected more so than getting bogged down in any explanatory detail, which makes things feel pretty light and character focused in a way that really works for Moore. Part of me thinks that this stretches on slightly too long even at its short length, but I won’t nitpick since this is pretty delightful.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting concept - what happens if you wake up and your dream is real? It's not a riproaring dream - merely a collection of Victoriana - but it is a compelling story. The next question is whether you want to dream to become real? The character Mahoney has to find out and also needs to sort out relationships.

[Jo Birkett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usual clear writing style but less point to the story than usual and also some repetition (many mentions of elegant coltish legs). Strange central idea and even when you suspend disbelief over that, what follows is an affecting study of disappointment and powerlessness but doesn't justify the initial magical event. Bit odd really.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 2 out of 5]

On a visit to California, Anthony Maloney dreams that an open-air market has appeared containing furniture, paintings, jewellery, tapestries and musical instruments from the Victorian era has appeared outside his hotel window. He awakes to find this has happened. Kind of a far-fetched tale and in my opinion not one of his best works.

[Lila · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Canadian scholar, just out of grad school, is so absorbed with items from the Victorian period that he while visiting Carmel, CA dreams a collection based on everything he has read about or seen, then it becomes real and he is obsessed as the rest of the world tries to cope with what happened.

[Paul Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Jonathan Cape] (1975). HB/DJ. 1/1. 224 Pages. Purchased from Oxfam Books (St. Albans).

A plainly but adeptly written allegory. Reminiscent of David Wheldon or Zoran Zivkovic (when firing on all cylinders).

[Stephen Ring · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual ingtroduction of Victorian into modern day. Sad ending, but Brian Moore has dealt in sad ending before (The Luck of Ginger Coffey).

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Odd, didn't quite understand it.

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read a bit of it and felt no interest in continuing. Not my thing I guess. Seemed too fanciful and deadpan to be very interesting.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who reads fantasy this is a must read book. What starts off as an esoteric idea evolves into a masterclass on how to gain the most out of a single idea and by the end I feel satisfied knowing Moore had said all he could, something that from the fantasy books I have read fail to do.

[Eithne Darragh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best Moore, in my opinion. The premise is interesting, but I just didn't find anything deep in this one. I hope to reread it at some point though.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 2 out of 5]

In “The Great Victorian Collection” one unbelievable thing happens in the first chapter. Assistant professor of history Anthony Maloney of Montreal’s McGill University, staying overnight in a Carmel, California, motel, dreams that an unused parking lot behind the motel is filled with a vast collection of items of British industry, arts and science from the Victorian period; he awakens to find his dream become a reality. The rest of the novel adheres as closely to realism as possible, imagining the reactions of the professor and the wider world to this miracle: skepticism, wonder, fear, and desire for commercial exploitation. The Collection consists of some actual objects which are duplicates, indistinguishable from the originals, of existing items in museums, others are objects which were lost or only existed heretofore in written descriptions.

The novel starts in a sort of detached third person voice, as if the recounting of events relied on a review of published and broadcast accounts and interviews, but moves into a standard third person novelistic style, where we are given direct access to the thoughts of Professor Maloney. This style is broken only for one chapter, which reproduces letters and interview transcripts, and at the end where the more detached mode of narration returns. The descriptions of the Victoriana which Maloney conjures up are fascinating, but many of the later pages of this short novel are taken up describing visits to all-too-modern bars and dance clubs.

Two cover blurbs from the NYT use the word “erotic” and another from Newsweek refers to “sex and violence”, but the one violent incident I recall is of the mildest, punch-in-the-face type and the eroticism is limited. A certain portion of the Collection consists of items with a sexual purpose: the recreation of the parlor of a famous brothel, a hidden flagellation chamber, and a large collection of pornographic books. Though these are referred to at several points, they play only a small role in the story. There is one scene where Mary Ann, the girlfriend of a reporter and potential love interest for Maloney, tries on some clothing, including undergarments, from the collection (this 1975 novel was published two years before the founding of the “Victoria’s Secret” chain), and an intentionally un-erotic sex scene occurs later in the book. I may have been misled by these blurbs into expecting an erotic thriller of some sort, but the book is nothing of the kind. David Pringle in “Modern Fantasy: the 100 Best Novels”, calls it “an elegant, ironic, and touching parable”; I agree that it is a parable with a degree of irony, but I found that the stylistic inconsistency and narrative digressions diluted the elegance and emotional impact of the novel.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bought a copy of this book at one of those "95% off!" temporary stores in a vacant store-front. You know, where they're trying to dump publishers' remainders rather than pulping them straight away... This was OK, and I'm only luke-warm primarily for the ending, otherwise I might have given it 3.5 stars or more. In my opinion only, of course. I really enjoyed the writing and have no quibble with the prose -- in fact, it was charming. The premise is delightful, and the execution is marvelous... Up to a point. And then... I don't know, I was disappointed at the end. I suppose you could say, oh, well that's life it's not all happily ever after, blah blah, and this is "Literature". My recommendation, for those who might possibly care, would be to tear out the last 15 pages of this book and toss 'em. Then read the first three quarters of the book, and when you're done, conveniently lose it in the subway. Trust me; you'll be happier that way, and so will the reader who picks up the book as a time-filler... And I do apologize for spending this many words, and your time, on something that I couldn't lavish with more starry love.

[D-day · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholar of the Victorian era visits California. One night he dreams that there is a great collection of Victorian era artifacts in the hotel parking lot. When he wakes up he finds that his dream has come true. I will leave it to the literature experts to say whether The Great Victorian Collection falls into the category of Magic Realism or not. At any rate this type of story really isn't my thing. It was well written, clever and had a couple of funny scenes. It also had the virtue of being fairly short, but over all- meh.

[Karen Hogan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A man dreams up a collection of victorian treasures in a parking lot. Not much here.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit boring at times, but the psychological concepts of "inception" is mind-boggling!

[The Master · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprised I finished this one, shouldn't have bothered. Barely anything happens.