Great writing is a turn-on in and of itself, as
surely as lively intelligence and a wicked sense of humor. I’m far less
particular about subgenre, erotic flavor or kink than I am about quality of writing.
Tell me a story about anything you like, but tell it well, tell it articulately,
assuredly, vividly, and, most of all, originally. Do all this and I am likely
to be delighted.
I was decidedly pleased to spend time recently with
a couple new-ish titles from two gifted and highly intelligent writers: Highland
Pursuits by Emmanuelle de Maupassant and The Gueschtunkina Ray Gun
by Spencer Dryden. These two stories are
about as different from each other as it’s possible to imagine, nothing
whatsoever alike in terms of length, narrative sensibility, style, point-of-view,
or character development. But both gave me extended moments of pleasant
laughter even as they impressed me with their craftspersonship and their
respective authors’ assured command of language.
Highland Pursuits by Emmanuelle de Maupassant
Set in the Britain of 1928, Highland Pursuits
begins as a feather-light Wodehouse-ian romp liberally crossed with elements of
Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. Lovely, young, and reluctantly eligible Ophelia rejects her upper-class twit of a suitor in
London and is summarily packed off to the Scottish highlands to “come to her
senses” spending the summer on her grandmother’s manor estate. Ophelia hardly
fits the mold of a typical Wodehouse leading lady; she is neither an
insufferable battle-axe nor a doe-eyed ditz, though she encounters her share of
the like in her travels, along with effusively pretentious artists, foreign
scoundrels, loudmouthed Americans, dirty old men, titled eccentrics, and divers
members of the aristocratic huntin’-shootin’ set.
But it’s the handsome estate manager Hamish who
catches Ophelia’s eye. Hamish, of course, possesses all the characteristics of
the perfect romance hero; impossibly good-looking (especially in a kilt), macho,
sometimes gallant, but also brooding and darkly aloof as he nurses a broken
heart from his past. You KNOW how this is going to turn out, right? Yet, it’s
in the “getting there” that this superbly crafted story shines.
If I have any complaints about Highland Pursuits,
it is that the tone becomes decidedly less lighthearted towards the middle,
whence, consequently, the pacing seems to flag. Where do all the wonderful
jokes go—even the delightful antics of Ophelia’s cairn terrier Pudding? It’s
all-too serious of a sudden, perhaps because, knowing how stories like this are
supposed to end, it’s necessary to spin out the dramatic irony for a spell.
This inconsistency in tone is ameliorated to some degree by the quality of the
writing, and, perhaps, most people, who read considerably faster than I, won’t
even notice. Still, 'tis ne’ bu’ a wee quibble considering the excellence of
the whole.
Highly recommended!
The Gueschtunkina Ray Gun by Spencer Dryden
This wry little tale riffs on one of the oldest and
most familiar of all male fantasies, the quest for a magical shortcut to the
heart of female desire. Drawing on the tradition of pulp sci-fi and classic men’s-magazine
entertainments, Spencer Dryden gives readers a lighthearted fantasy about a
horny grad student’s encounter with a time-traveling monk from a bleak
matriarchal future. (Dryden’s use of natural, snappy dialogue is most
impressive!) In a last-ditch effort to save some vestige of male-ness, the monk
gifts the grad student with a mysterious artifact, the gueschtunkina ray gun,
which, when fired at a female subject, makes her instantly amenable to just
about anything a guy is up for. According to the monk, a certain ball-busting female
professor is in dire need of a good “gueschtunkining” if the balance between
the sexes is to be preserved, and it falls to our valiant grad student to do
the honors—or take one for the team as the case may be. Fun!!!
As much as I enjoyed this story, I wish Dryden had
taken better advantage of his entertaining premise. There are all sorts of
possibilities for erotic hijinks and bawdy humor here, but the storyline is so
rigidly linear, so focused on getting in and getting out, that the notion of artful
complication, conflict, a bit of trouble along the journey, making the final
reward so much sweeter, seems to have eluded the author. The story,
entertaining as it is, is simply too short.
Nonetheless, this is a highly enjoyable, rewarding, and
occasionally even thought-provoking effort, perhaps Spencer Dryden’s best to
date. Enthusiastically recommended.
