Zanoza, a Borzoi Story by Ralph G. Kirk (1920)

If only a little while ago I complained about Philip Verrill Mighels being hard to find information on, Ralph G. Kirk is a near complete enigma.

There is no information on the man whatsoever apart from his date of birth and death (1881 & 1960) and a listing of stories he published in various magazines over thirty years. Two of these stories, Malloy Campeador and United States Flavor were made into films, though they appear to be melodramas, while the title of another, A Poem as Lovely as a Blast Furnace, at least has an amusing title. Kirk also seems to have had a thing for dogs, as he published at least 5 stories dealing with dogs, two of them as novels before they were collected together in his 1923 "Six Breeds" collection.

This was also the last time the chief item of interest today, Zanoza, saw a reprint, being originally published three years prior.

The book is odd to say the least. The first part deals, in very great detail, with a legendary hunting-dog-aided wolf hunt taking place in 19th-Early 20th century Russia. It's chief point of interest for the story as a whole is that, right at the conclusion of the hunt, a bitch named Zanoza gives birth to a pup who inherits the same name.

Then all of a sudden the book switches time period, location and the person in which the story is told, so suddenly in fact it's bound to give you whiplash. The setting itself is infinitely less interesting then the snowy expanses of Russia that Kirk managed to evoke very well without very many words, and the now first-person narrator never really bothers to introduce himself. In fact the whole thing is written as if we're supposed to know many of these things already, as if this was a sequel to something. Zanoza, for instance, is reffered to at almost the very end of the novel as the granddaughter of another bitch bearing the name Zanoza, and the narrator reffers to her cunning, but it's the first time the author even mentions the existence of this particular dog, as I don't believe she ever comes up in the first part, in fact within the first section of the book Zanoza II doesn't really have that much to do with the plot either.

The reader is unsettled by the sudden lack of interesting things happening, as well as the author's excessively keen interest in the poetic beauty of dogs, which Kirk writes about in such detail in this story that I was a little worried.  Only a sudden mention of the narrator's obsession with werewolf mythology even hints at anything fantastical maybe happening, and distracts us from questioning the inner workings of Kirk's mind.

To sum up the plot of Part II: The narrator, who has just had a baby child, and is the owner of Zanoza III, is visited by a strangely smelling man called Doctor Lupus. He shows up for no other reason then a social visit, arranged by a mutual friend, but mid-coversation a messenger boy comes about and hands the narrator, who has yet to change out of his bathrobe, a note from said friend who apparently assumes this may be a wereworlf and so he assumes the narrator can deal with him, somehow.

Then Doctor Lupus, for no real reason, turns into a wolf, steals the narrator's infant child and leads him and Zanoza on a mad car chase, (wherein the werewolf is driving a car) that ends with him splattered on the ground and strangled by the narrator. After a distressing discovery, he returns home with heavy heart, but finds out that everything he experienced was just a dream. And while this is a cliché, it certainly explains the weird logic which characters follow in the story, as in the content of the note, or why Doctor Lupus even showed up, or in fact the very being of a Doctor Lupus who is also a werewolf. It's a sort of strange non-logic one oftentimes finds in dreams, and one I've experienced myself.

I believe the most fitting way to summarise the story is to note that it is, in fact, not Lupus.

No I could not resist.

The Crystal Scepter (1901) by Philip Verrill Mighels

The person of Philip Verrill Mighels is a bit of a mystery to me at present. I didn't find a single photo of the man for starters. I found pictures of his parents, his wife, even his wife's second husband but none of the man himself.

Mighel's family grave

His personal details are limited to the year of his birth (1869), the year and place of his death (1911 in Carson city) and the fact that he married Ella Sterling Mighels, a pioneer and historian. And a handful of choice anecdotes: the fact of his being raised in Nevada, the second son of Nellie Verrill Davis and Henry R. Mighels, who both worked as editors on Carson city's "Morning Appeal"/"Carson Daily Appeal", his being a lawyer and journalist, a snippet from the publically available section of the New York Times concerning his wife's divorce from Mighels, which states that Mighels had deserted his wife in Nevada under some circumstances and another NYT article which lists him as one of the people present for the funeral of Mark Twain. According to "No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California" by Ida Rae Egli he died at the age of 42 in a hunting accident a year after their divorce.

Philip's parents Henry and Nellie Mighels

Of his novels, most seem to deal with the old west and the frontier, and seeing the place he died at, the fact that he wrote some novels about prospectors doesn't come as much of a surprise. The only other work of his that seems to have some immediate interest beyond the fields of period adventure and gold digger fiction seems to be"When a Witch Is Young", his 1901 historical novel taking place around the time of death of Metacomet, the so called "King Philip".

The only piece of his fiction that is known to me to deal definitely with anything fantastic, beyond the elusive 1896 story "The Polar Magnet" from the Black Cat magazine mentioned on the SF encyclopedia page for Mighels, is his 1901 tale "The Crystal Scepter".

In it Mighels describes the journey of the narrator, who remains nameless for more then half the book, where thanks to a ballooning mishap hefinds himself in the middle of somewhere, on a tropical island, face to face with primitive early humans which he dubs "Missing Links". The novel focuses on him forcing improvements onto the poor savages, including better cooking, housing and defense mechanisms. The narrator never actually explains his own backstory in any way, but seems strangely knowledgable about archery, mixing explosives and boat building.

The tribe of Missing Links good old John Nevers finds himself sharing his lot with are white, and constantly besieged by a horde of other Missing Links who are black. Now there seems to be some racial bias in the way these latter ones are treated, beyond the one good natured black Link who was raised by the white Links and who, for his athletic figure, is dubbed "Fatty" by the narrator. However at least Mighels clears them of the charge of having murdered a traveller whose skeleton the narrator finds in their camp, as it turns out to have been an accident.

The novel, while it could have opened up to far more fantastic things, is a solid read regardless, though the Crystal Sceptre of the title, being the chiefly insignia of the head of the tribe the narrator joins forces with, is a rather miniscule part of the novel, though it's a good title I suppose. Oh and there's a woman who ended up crashing on the same island and was the unwilling guest of the black Links. I can't really say anything about her as she comes into the story in Chapter 36 (out of 45) and there's not much space actually given her.

The book is written in an amusing way, and Mighels is good with an occasional quip or two. Still there's a certain thing that happens at the end which I hope he wouldn't have done because it was a bit sad and it was also kind of a clichéd thing to do, and seems rather tacked on to the ending.