"The Exploits of Engelbrecht: Chronicles of the Surrealist Sporting Club," by Maurice Richardson, is one of those books that sneaks up on you. You hear it being mentioned here and there; Michael Moorcock gives it a rave write-up in the end-notes to Wizardry and Wild Romance, and Dave Langford does a short appreciation of it for F&SF. But the damn book is out of print, ABEBooks quotes prohibitive prices, or no prices at all, and you put it out of your mind. Eventually, an enterprising publisher like Savoy Books, best known for their run-in with the Manchester constabulary over Lord Horror, comes out with a reprint, and you discover that it was worth the wait.
"The Exploits of Engelbrecht" is unclassifiable. Fifteen short stories, involving the eponymous boxing dwarf in assorted sporting ventures involving combative grandfather clocks, plant theatre, voracious pike, thousand mile golf drives and the like. Similes fail me. Imagine Wodehouse's golf stories rewritten by George Perec on a mean streak, but much more so, and you're half way to getting there. But only half way. The stories are very, very funny, and Ronald Searle and others have done some spiffy illustrations. Savoy Books has kindly put the first chapter, the unforgivably tasteless "Night of the Big Witch Shoot," up as a .pdf, so you can sample for yourselves. Me, I'm going back to re-read "Ten Rounds with Grandfather Clock."
Posted by Henry at May 7, 2003 04:12 PM | TrackBack“Unclassifiable” is too strong. Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land is “Belles Lettres”, according to its cover. The two books could share a shelf. (With The Space Child’s Mother Goose, too.)
Posted by: clew at May 7, 2003 07:48 PM