Ghost from the Past

THERE WERE TWO PIRATES (121 pp.)--James Branch Cabell --Farrar, Straus ($3).

"So complete was my affection for the indomitable old gentleman that I blew his brains out in a warm glow of admiration."

"The report is still current that, while in a state of drunkenness, [I] struck off the head of [my mistress]. . . . That any such behavior . . . would be inconsistent with my well-known courtesy toward members of the gentle sex, I need hardly point out to you, my reflective reader; and besides, I was not wearing a sword at the moment . . . I used one of [my] two pistols . . . and moreover, I was entirely sober."

Thirty-odd years ago, passages such as these--from 67-year-old James Branch Cabell's new novel--had given their author a reputation for wit, sophistication and brilliance that was unrivaled by even the most precious work of such contemporaries as Elinor Wylie and Joseph Hergesheimer.

In those days, so sharp a critic as H. L. Mencken believed that Cabell's novels were becoming "ever more subtle, finer in surface, profounder, more savory, more penetrating." Critic Benjamin DeCasseres was dazzled to the point of describing the author of Jurgen and The Cream of the Jest as "the Watteau of ironists, the Debussy of prose, the Spinoza of word-magic, the Prometheus of an American Renaissance."

New Times, New Tastes. Author Cabell's forty-seventh book is remarkable chiefly as a reminder of how American highbrow taste has changed over three decades. A short romance, Two Pirates is tattooed all over with the once-famed Cabell imprints of glossy fantasy, stylishness, naughty innuendo, bittersweet world-weariness. Its hero, 18th Century Pirate Captain Jose Gasparilla, sails the Main from a base in Florida, cutting throats with exquisite irony, committing rape with scholarly detachment.

After seven years, Jose returns to claim the only lady he has ever loved. He finds her fat-&-fortyish, with five brats. But under Jose's piratical exterior beats a heart of Cabell. With the aid of a magic jewel he convinces himself that this plump creature is still the trig damsel of his dreams. Like any other retired businessman he settles down with her in Florida. The moral of this fantasy, says Author Cabell (rhymes with babble), is that "it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." But most readers will find Two Pirates as transparent and embarrassing as any other ghost from the past.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.