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• W318431103 abstract "When, in 1940, Joe Lee Davis set about to predict the course of American fiction in the following decade, he chose Cabell's phrase as descriptive of the 20's, a period which Davis was using as a key to the future. (1) one sense, resolute frivolity meant the affectation of a deliberate skeptical irony as a mask underlying uneasiness and disillusion.... But, in another ..., the `resolute frivolity' of the 20's was a genuine manifestation of the play spirit (39). John Barth's character Joe Morgan asks: where the hell else but in America could you have a cheerful nihilism, God's sake? (2) The difference between Cabell's resolute frivolity and Barth's cheerful nihilism is, of course, an index to a shift in tone in American fiction and generally in American culture. This shift in tone was predicted by Davis. He felt that America was prepared for a new kind of `resolute frivolity.' a medium this new frivolity, he looked a revival of the fantasy novel which characterized the 1920's. I think this type of novel will be needed ... writers and readers who are profoundly disturbed by the meaning of it all and doubtful, beneath any seeming of assurance, of the value of life itself. The of some possible fantasist of the 40's, some American Franz Kafka ..., may mask a bitterness far more intense than Cabell's and may soar to heights of mysticism that Cabell was incapable of achieving (44). The accuracy of Davis's prediction is remarkable. Of course, his dating was off by a decade or so; possibly delayed by World War II, the new frivolity did not emerge until the 50's and 60's with the advent of Ellison, Gaddis, Heller, Barth, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Percy, and those writers who mix despair with bitterness and comedy with fantasy. Although these authors are as different as they are similar, taken as a group they apparently mark a new direction in American fiction. But as Davis's commentary suggests, the direction is not that new, and the blend of skepticism, fantasy, and comedy which we feel is unique in recent fiction is also distinctly Cabellian. From one point of view, at least, Cabell is technically and thematically the forebear of the fiction of the 50's and 60's, and not the mauve humorist he is often said to be. A good deal of this assertion can be illustrated by considering a central novel in Cabell's works, The Cream of the Jest (1917). (3) The novel purports to be the spiritual biography of Felix Bulmer Kennaston, a novelist, written by his acquaintance, Richard Fentnor Harrowby, a manufacturer of soaps and cosmetics. Harrowby sets himself the task of understanding and explaining how Kennaston changed from a minor poet to a major novelist, and in the course of his inquiry into the sources of verbal genius, he becomes (influenced by Kennaston's preoccupations) interested in the relationship of the artist to his creation. After a brief foreword, Harrowby narrates Kennaston's rejected conclusion to his best-selling novel, The Men Who Loved Alisoun. Ironically, this rejected ending becomes the beginning of Harrowby's exploration of Kennaston's psyche. The rejected ending is set in medieval France, in Cabell's mythical Poictesme, and deals with the marriage of La Beale Ettarre and Sir Guiron des Rocques. However, more important than the marriage is Horvendile's plot to introduce Maugis d'Aigremont, Guiron's enemy, and his men into the castle at Storisende. During the blood bath which follows, Horvendile contrives a series of startling reversals and finally confronts Maugis, the character he has ultimately betrayed. As knave and madman, Ettarre saw the double-dealer and his dupe confront each other.... In the hand of Horvendile a dagger glittered; and his face was pensive, as he said: `My poor Maugis, it is not yet time I make my dealings plain to you. It suffices that you have served my turn, Maugis, and that of you I have no need any longer. …" @default.
• W318431103 created "2016-06-24" @default.
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• W318431103 date "1973-03-22" @default.
• W318431103 modified "2023-09-28" @default.
• W318431103 title "Cabell's Cream of the Jest and Recent American Fiction" @default.
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