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The Biography of Manuel #11
Something About Eve
Something About Eve, an entry in the Poictesme series, "shows its non-hero feebly intending to gain promised glory awaiting in the land of 'Antan' but forever delayed on Mispec Moor (anagram: 'Compromise'), wearing literal rose-colored spectacles and beguiled by the woman Maya, while bolder folk like Solomon and Odysseus pass by on the road to Antan." -The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1927
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196 people want to read
About the author
James Branch Cabell
256 books125 followersJames Branch Cabell was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. Cabell was well regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was "the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but against human welfare."
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February 4, 2025Ursula Le Guin spoke for me when she wrote of James Branch Cabell: "He mocks everything: not only his fantasy, but our reality. He doesn't believe in his dreamworld, but he doesn't believe in us, either. His tone is perfectly consistent: elegant, arrogant, ironic. Sometimes I enjoy it and sometimes it makes me want to scream..."
This novel made me want to scream. Cabell makes his point early, then makes it again and again and again. Then, just when you think he'll finally leave it be, he makes it yet again. The point Cabell keeps making, again, and again, and again, is this: men are easily and stubbornly and tragicomically misled by flattering illusions. They believe what they want to believe.
This is hardly revelatory, let alone profound. Sure, the idea might still be worth exploring, within the context of the story. But its incessant, obsessive, verbatim repetition frayed my nerves and made my head hurt. Knowing Cabell, that might have been his intention. But that didn't make it any less frustrating. If anything, it made it worse. If I hadn't been trapped on a train with nothing else to read, I might not have even finished this book.
Something About Eve is the novel that made me question the high opinion I'd formed of Cabell after Jurgen and The Silver Stallion. To its credit, it does contain some striking passages, some witty observations, and is written in the author's singular and inimitable style. I don't quite regret ever reading it. But I wouldn't read it again.
This novel made me want to scream. Cabell makes his point early, then makes it again and again and again. Then, just when you think he'll finally leave it be, he makes it yet again. The point Cabell keeps making, again, and again, and again, is this: men are easily and stubbornly and tragicomically misled by flattering illusions. They believe what they want to believe.
This is hardly revelatory, let alone profound. Sure, the idea might still be worth exploring, within the context of the story. But its incessant, obsessive, verbatim repetition frayed my nerves and made my head hurt. Knowing Cabell, that might have been his intention. But that didn't make it any less frustrating. If anything, it made it worse. If I hadn't been trapped on a train with nothing else to read, I might not have even finished this book.
Something About Eve is the novel that made me question the high opinion I'd formed of Cabell after Jurgen and The Silver Stallion. To its credit, it does contain some striking passages, some witty observations, and is written in the author's singular and inimitable style. I don't quite regret ever reading it. But I wouldn't read it again.
April 20, 2016
Another relatively cynical book about something of a cad. Gerald Musgrave is living a comfortable existence in the early 19th century but finds himself nonetheless dissatisfied -- the book he's writing (a romance about his famous ancestor Manuel) isn't going well, and his affair with his cousin, Evelyn Townsend has become more of an obligation than anything else. So, when a devil appears and offers to take his place in this world while sending him elsewhere, Gerald leaps at the chance, and sets out on a journey filled with allegory and anagrams, at the end of which he plans to present himself in the land of Antan as the prophesied and newly-arrived god, the Fair-Haired Hoo.
As with all Cabell (at least, all that I've read), elegantly written and filled with terrible things only hinted at or alluded to. And some of the illustrations (by Frank C. Papé) are fairly ... unsubtle.
As with all Cabell (at least, all that I've read), elegantly written and filled with terrible things only hinted at or alluded to. And some of the illustrations (by Frank C. Papé) are fairly ... unsubtle.
September 26, 2009
Been a very long time since I've read this, but I do remember not anticipating liking this one very much--because of the cover or the blurb?--reading it last after Jurgen, Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Cream of the Jest and maybe one other Cabell book I could conjure up . . . But I ended up liking this, along with the Silver Satllion, best. These two books are what I'd recommend to anyone curious about Cabell.
October 21, 2025
Something About Eve by James Branch Cabell was first published in 1927. It was reissued in 1929 by John Lane The Bodley Head in the large format edition with 12 photogravure plates with illustrations by Frank C. Papé. The novel was was revived in 1972 by Lin Carter, with cover art by Bob Pepper, as the 27th volume in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. Unfortunately, as with all the Ballantine editions of Cabell's books, only Papé's page decorations are included, and none of the full-page prints. I chose to read the illustrated Bodley Head edition because Papé's gloriously ironic (though sexually suggestive) artwork adds to the reading experience.
Significantly, Cabell had Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen, The High Place, Something About Eve, Domnei, and The Cream of the Jest reprinted in the same format in the 1920's, with illustrations by Papé. Perhaps Cabell himself considered these books to be his best work. These are also precisely the Cabell fantasies that Carter chose to revive for the Ballantine series—though sadly without the full-page Papé illustrations.
At the end of the 1920's Cabell himself had the entire output of his writing career up to that time rearranged and reprinted as the 18-volume Storisende Edition of The Biography of the Life of Manuel, in which Something About Eve is #10. These Storisende Edition books do not contain artwork either by Papé or Cabell's first illustrator, Howard Pyle. Lack of illustrations aside, the major problem with the Storisende Edition is its unsatisfactory blending of the supreme creations of Cabell's genius—mostly those books he chose to republish a few years earlier with the Papé illustrations—with works of inferior quality. For example, Cabell's dreadful first book, The Eagle's Shadow, ended up as #15 of the Storidende Edition.
Even among those seven fantasy novels reissued with Papé illustrations, Domnei and The Cream of the Jest are perhaps peripheral. At the absolute core of Cabell's work are his five pure fantasies, Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen, The High Place, and Something About Eve—all written in the same vein of fantastic inspiration that started with Jurgen in 1919. Something About Eve in 1927 was the last of these inspired creations.
Nevertheless, the high-point of Cabell's artistry continued after Something About Eve, almost up to publication of the Storisende Edition, with the three "witch-woman" novellas: The Music from Behind the Moon (1926) illustrated by Leon Underwood, The White Robe (1928) illustrated by Robert E. Locher, and The Way of Ecben (1929) with page decorations by Papé but unfortunately no full-page plates. In my opinion, The Music from Behind the Moon is the best thing Cabell ever wrote—somehow, Underwood's otherworldly, ethereal visions are more appropriate even than Papé's irony.
Something About Eve, as the last of the "big five," very much has the sense of Cabell saying goodbye to this phase of his literary inspiration. We follow the career of Gerald Musgrave, who is descended from both Dom Manuel and Jurgen. The initial setting of the novel has moved on from the eighteenth century France of The High Place to the early nineteenth century Southern United States. Gerald is a "Southern gentleman"—as was Cabell—and is writing the histories of Manuel and Jurgen—as did Cabell. Gerald is a young man at the beginning of the book; by the end he is in advancing middle age—as was Cabell when he wrote Something About Eve. It struck me that Gerald Musgrave is an alter-ego of Cabell himself.
On the other hand, Horvendile steps into the story at the beginning and at the end of the book, and Horvendile is usually taken to be a representative of the author in Cabell's great fantasies. Horvendile, however, is the author in a godlike role among his creations. Gerald Musgrave, definitely subject to human failings, is more of an autobiographical character, distinct from the godlike Horvendile. Interestingly, at the end of the book, Horvendile is accompanied by a herd of swine, as is Manuel at both the beginning and end of Figures of Earth, where I think they represent the swine of Eubouleus from mythology.
Something About Eve frequently recalls the other four volumes of the "big five." Many characters from the earlier books make a reappearance: Queen Freydis, for example, from Figures of Earth; Monsieur Janicot, Cabell's version of the god Pan, from The High Place; Maya (a.k.a. Mother Sereda or Aesred) from Jurgen; Guivric the Sage, become Glaum, from The Silver Stallion; and so on and so forth. The flow of Gerald Musgrave's adventures throughout the book strongly recalls the flow of Jurgen's adventures. Cabell's books are complex and interrelated, and I'm sure that I could spot only a small portion of Cabell's references in Something About Eve to the other fantasies.
I could spot here and there, also, Cabell's wordplay. Thus various locations in Something About Eve are anagrams: Doonham is "manhood," Dersam is "dreams," Care Omn is "romance," Lytrei is "reality," Turoine is "routine," Mispec Moor is "compromise," and so on and so forth. No doubt, there many more little puzzles in Something About Eve than the ones I found; identifying more of them is an academic exercise for another time.
The book starts off with a meeting between Gerald and the spirit Glaum. In The Silver Stallion, Guivric the Sage is persuaded by "Glaum without Bones" to swap his body for freedom in the life of a spirit. Some centuries later this now "Glaum of the Haunting Eyes" takes his turn in persuading Gerald Musgrave likewise to give up his body to Glaum for the life of a spirit. Freed from the awkward social conventions of a Southern gentleman, Gerald sets off on the divine steed Kalki (the very silver stallion from the book of that name) to claim the kingdom of Antan from the Master Philologist.
"Antan," French for "yesteryear," is the place where defunct gods and heroes retire. I'm not sure how better to define this location, which plays such a large role in the book, because I don't think Cabell ever gives a clear definition. Perhaps Cabell is playing with the idea of the Master Philologist, ruler of Antan along with Queen Freydis, in a Biblical sense: "In the beginning was the Word." Actually, there is much in this book that is baffling, perhaps even more so than in the other great Cabell fantasies.
The "Eves" of Something About Eve start of with Evelyn, a lady in Gerald's home town with whom he has an adulterous relationship. The agreement with Glaum permits him to escape from Evelyn, only to encounter a series of other "Eves" in his new existence—Evashareh, Evaine, Evadne, and Evervan.
Eventually, on Mispec Moor (i.e., "compromise") in the Marches of Antan, Gerald meets with Maya— Mother Sereda from Jurgen. Gerald abandons his journey into Antan to claim his kingdom as a god, swapping it for a pair of rose-coloured glasses and a life of domesticity. While living in the farmhouse with Maya, Gerald keeps an eye on those still heading to Antan. He has conversations with the likes of Nero, Villon, Solomon, Odysseus, Merlin, and Tannhäuser. I found the first half of the book and the adventures with the various "Eves" to be more difficult to follow. Once Gerald has met Maya and settled down, and he's interacting with these other travellers to Antan, the story is more straightforward.
Gerald never does get to Antan. In the end, Horvendile gives him a magic word to claim his body back from Glaum, now become the body of a man in advancing middle age. Nevertheless, Gerald is content, and he judges,
"There was no hope for this preposterous, doomed, chuckling Gerald Musgrave,—who would always now be finding one or another rather beautiful idea to play with, and who must remain, so long as life remained, a fribbling poet whose only real delight was to shape and play with puppets." (pp. 375-376)
Surely this is Cabell himself in the role of Gerald Musgrave.
In the first half of Something About Eve, I felt that it wasn't as good as the other four of the "big five." By the end, however, I was really enjoying it. It's written in the same vein of pure fantasy as the others; Cabell's writing is always beautiful, no matter that I often encountered paragraphs that needed careful reading and rereading. Something About Eve certainly stands with the four other great fantasies. Cabell constructed in these five books something special that is greater than the sum of its parts. On its own, Something About Eve is perhaps not as significant as Figures of Earth or Jurgen. Alongside the others, however, it shines as a classic of early fantasy.
Significantly, Cabell had Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen, The High Place, Something About Eve, Domnei, and The Cream of the Jest reprinted in the same format in the 1920's, with illustrations by Papé. Perhaps Cabell himself considered these books to be his best work. These are also precisely the Cabell fantasies that Carter chose to revive for the Ballantine series—though sadly without the full-page Papé illustrations.
At the end of the 1920's Cabell himself had the entire output of his writing career up to that time rearranged and reprinted as the 18-volume Storisende Edition of The Biography of the Life of Manuel, in which Something About Eve is #10. These Storisende Edition books do not contain artwork either by Papé or Cabell's first illustrator, Howard Pyle. Lack of illustrations aside, the major problem with the Storisende Edition is its unsatisfactory blending of the supreme creations of Cabell's genius—mostly those books he chose to republish a few years earlier with the Papé illustrations—with works of inferior quality. For example, Cabell's dreadful first book, The Eagle's Shadow, ended up as #15 of the Storidende Edition.
Even among those seven fantasy novels reissued with Papé illustrations, Domnei and The Cream of the Jest are perhaps peripheral. At the absolute core of Cabell's work are his five pure fantasies, Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen, The High Place, and Something About Eve—all written in the same vein of fantastic inspiration that started with Jurgen in 1919. Something About Eve in 1927 was the last of these inspired creations.
Nevertheless, the high-point of Cabell's artistry continued after Something About Eve, almost up to publication of the Storisende Edition, with the three "witch-woman" novellas: The Music from Behind the Moon (1926) illustrated by Leon Underwood, The White Robe (1928) illustrated by Robert E. Locher, and The Way of Ecben (1929) with page decorations by Papé but unfortunately no full-page plates. In my opinion, The Music from Behind the Moon is the best thing Cabell ever wrote—somehow, Underwood's otherworldly, ethereal visions are more appropriate even than Papé's irony.
Something About Eve, as the last of the "big five," very much has the sense of Cabell saying goodbye to this phase of his literary inspiration. We follow the career of Gerald Musgrave, who is descended from both Dom Manuel and Jurgen. The initial setting of the novel has moved on from the eighteenth century France of The High Place to the early nineteenth century Southern United States. Gerald is a "Southern gentleman"—as was Cabell—and is writing the histories of Manuel and Jurgen—as did Cabell. Gerald is a young man at the beginning of the book; by the end he is in advancing middle age—as was Cabell when he wrote Something About Eve. It struck me that Gerald Musgrave is an alter-ego of Cabell himself.
On the other hand, Horvendile steps into the story at the beginning and at the end of the book, and Horvendile is usually taken to be a representative of the author in Cabell's great fantasies. Horvendile, however, is the author in a godlike role among his creations. Gerald Musgrave, definitely subject to human failings, is more of an autobiographical character, distinct from the godlike Horvendile. Interestingly, at the end of the book, Horvendile is accompanied by a herd of swine, as is Manuel at both the beginning and end of Figures of Earth, where I think they represent the swine of Eubouleus from mythology.
Something About Eve frequently recalls the other four volumes of the "big five." Many characters from the earlier books make a reappearance: Queen Freydis, for example, from Figures of Earth; Monsieur Janicot, Cabell's version of the god Pan, from The High Place; Maya (a.k.a. Mother Sereda or Aesred) from Jurgen; Guivric the Sage, become Glaum, from The Silver Stallion; and so on and so forth. The flow of Gerald Musgrave's adventures throughout the book strongly recalls the flow of Jurgen's adventures. Cabell's books are complex and interrelated, and I'm sure that I could spot only a small portion of Cabell's references in Something About Eve to the other fantasies.
I could spot here and there, also, Cabell's wordplay. Thus various locations in Something About Eve are anagrams: Doonham is "manhood," Dersam is "dreams," Care Omn is "romance," Lytrei is "reality," Turoine is "routine," Mispec Moor is "compromise," and so on and so forth. No doubt, there many more little puzzles in Something About Eve than the ones I found; identifying more of them is an academic exercise for another time.
The book starts off with a meeting between Gerald and the spirit Glaum. In The Silver Stallion, Guivric the Sage is persuaded by "Glaum without Bones" to swap his body for freedom in the life of a spirit. Some centuries later this now "Glaum of the Haunting Eyes" takes his turn in persuading Gerald Musgrave likewise to give up his body to Glaum for the life of a spirit. Freed from the awkward social conventions of a Southern gentleman, Gerald sets off on the divine steed Kalki (the very silver stallion from the book of that name) to claim the kingdom of Antan from the Master Philologist.
"Antan," French for "yesteryear," is the place where defunct gods and heroes retire. I'm not sure how better to define this location, which plays such a large role in the book, because I don't think Cabell ever gives a clear definition. Perhaps Cabell is playing with the idea of the Master Philologist, ruler of Antan along with Queen Freydis, in a Biblical sense: "In the beginning was the Word." Actually, there is much in this book that is baffling, perhaps even more so than in the other great Cabell fantasies.
The "Eves" of Something About Eve start of with Evelyn, a lady in Gerald's home town with whom he has an adulterous relationship. The agreement with Glaum permits him to escape from Evelyn, only to encounter a series of other "Eves" in his new existence—Evashareh, Evaine, Evadne, and Evervan.
Eventually, on Mispec Moor (i.e., "compromise") in the Marches of Antan, Gerald meets with Maya— Mother Sereda from Jurgen. Gerald abandons his journey into Antan to claim his kingdom as a god, swapping it for a pair of rose-coloured glasses and a life of domesticity. While living in the farmhouse with Maya, Gerald keeps an eye on those still heading to Antan. He has conversations with the likes of Nero, Villon, Solomon, Odysseus, Merlin, and Tannhäuser. I found the first half of the book and the adventures with the various "Eves" to be more difficult to follow. Once Gerald has met Maya and settled down, and he's interacting with these other travellers to Antan, the story is more straightforward.
Gerald never does get to Antan. In the end, Horvendile gives him a magic word to claim his body back from Glaum, now become the body of a man in advancing middle age. Nevertheless, Gerald is content, and he judges,
"There was no hope for this preposterous, doomed, chuckling Gerald Musgrave,—who would always now be finding one or another rather beautiful idea to play with, and who must remain, so long as life remained, a fribbling poet whose only real delight was to shape and play with puppets." (pp. 375-376)
Surely this is Cabell himself in the role of Gerald Musgrave.
In the first half of Something About Eve, I felt that it wasn't as good as the other four of the "big five." By the end, however, I was really enjoying it. It's written in the same vein of pure fantasy as the others; Cabell's writing is always beautiful, no matter that I often encountered paragraphs that needed careful reading and rereading. Something About Eve certainly stands with the four other great fantasies. Cabell constructed in these five books something special that is greater than the sum of its parts. On its own, Something About Eve is perhaps not as significant as Figures of Earth or Jurgen. Alongside the others, however, it shines as a classic of early fantasy.
May 8, 2024
The books in this series that I've read so far are pretty formulaic, usually about a somewhat sleazy guy who philosophizes a lot without doing much of anything, and has multiple women fall for him. This one largely follows the pattern, with a magician named Gerald Musgrave, who's a descendant of Dom Manuel, but lives in the United States in the early nineteenth century instead of in Poictesme itself. A demon offers him the chance to separate from his body and go on a journey to the magical land of Antan, where he'll take over the country from Freydis and the Master Philologist. And he declares himself a god pretty much just because he can, naming his horse after Kalki, the steed of the future avatar of Vishnu. Along the way, he runs into a bunch of women with names that are varieties on Eve, starting with his cousin Evelyn, and resists most of them. He ends up marrying a woman named Maya, who gives the two of them a son with magic, and the child goes on to destroy Antan. So he never gets there, but he finds contentment, and that the demon who had taken over his body had become a noted writer. During the course of his stay with Maya, he chats with Odysseus, King Solomon, Merlin, Yahweh, and Satan.
July 6, 2015
A kind of alternative take on Cabell's best-known protagonist, the lecherous poet Jurgen: Here the poet resists the seductions of women but winds up in the same domestic situation just the same. Unlike most of Cabell's stories, this is meant as a happy ending (Cabell notes in the intro that what Gerald loses by not achieving his dream he makes up for in contentment. Probably 3.5 stars
October 29, 2024
Amazing start that gets incredibly boring after like page 100.
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