Here we have another ho-hum entry in this volume. Nothing much really happens, so it’s hard to care about the characters themselves. Not only that, but it’s also another example of polite horror. Some of the characters are referred to by initials only, to preserve their innocence, as if they were actual people.
This tale mainly concerns a fellow by the name of Augustus Barber, who is kind of a blah kind of guy. Suddenly, he starts acting weird, like he’s a different person. He remembers being places everyone knows to a moral certainty he’d never seen. It all seems to build up to a past life experience. He’s remembering these places as if he’d seen them in the distant past. He speaks Greek when he shouldn’t, for example, and it’s such a strange Greek that modern ears don’t really understand it.
But he seems to have other powers. When he’s like this, people tend to yield to him, and in one remarkable instance, the narrator describes an incident in which Barber interrupts a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh to perform it himself. This time, the narrator describes a sensation of visual hallucinations, as if he’s been transported back in time.
That’s kind of cool, but the problem is, the story goes absolutely nowhere. The conflict never gets resolved, and as a result, the story suffers a great deal. It’s almost as if the narrator gives up and says, “Fuck it, Dude. Let’s go bowling.”
Aside from the one scene concerning Beethoven, there is not much to recommend this story. Ultimately, give it a pass.
[This story first appeared in THE SMART SET and can be read here.]
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