The Earl’s Latest Book Gets the Treatment
Gulliver Langston, the feared literary critic, has rendered his judgment on the Earl’s most recent novel, Rimbaud. “From the opening pages Rimbaud seizes the reader by the throat, applies pressure, choking off oxygen to the brain.”
Young Arthur Rimdaud, Twenty Second Earl of Watership Down, must secure his love, Faire Olive, from the clutches of the Dauphin. Without thought for his own safety Rimbaud boards the frigate Forthright, battling the French Navy, Armenian Pirates, and a sinister group of Ukrainians until he sails through the Pillars of Hercules. There he duels a Bourbon prince, invents electricity, and topples a Pretender before sailing onward. In the straights of Sardinia he sees Olive aboard the mighty tuna trawler Von Klausewitz. Rimbaud sinks the trawler but the Forthright is damaged by a Luftwaffe assault. He endures eleven years of exile posing as a Greek poet earning very little pay.
When word cometh of Olive’s proposed nuptials to the Dauphin’s deranged nephew, Rimbaud can wait no longer; he travels to the Isle of the Sirens where, bedeviled by distractions, he drinks absynthe and writes haikus. He mails these blunt missives to the Court where Olive reads them aloud to a coterie of critics. Incensed, the Dauphin launches his entire fleet. Rimbaud, somewhat out of shape from all the poetry writing, is taken in chains to Castle Gauche where chintz and brocade conceal a dark secret: Olive is vacationing in Turkey.
Rimbaud dons an ornate headband, enabling him to crush a Byzantine army, cross the Dardanelles and storm Istanbul. He reties the Gordion Knot, freeing Olive from her delusional belief that the Dauphin’s nephew is Alexander the Great. In a final climactic battle Rimbaud crushes Parthian forces seeking to spirit Olive away. He invades France and embraces Olive on the Pont Neuf. Then it’s off to Reno for a much deserved holiday.
Gulliver Langston’s column appears in the Druidical & Literary every third Wednesday of the month. His ongoing feud with The Earl may cloud his judgment, but he remains devoted to protecting the reading public from inferior prose. He does wonder if Rimbaud is off to Reno alone or in the company of Faire Olive since her vacation was interrupted by the novel’s somewhat improbable denouement. Could she get more time off on short notice? Also the pacing of the book suffers from the eleven year hiatus as virtually nothing happens for close to six hundred pages. Why a Greek poet? Does the main character understand Greek? Would the Luftwaffe attack a tuna boat? Aren’t tuna valuable?