Review – A New Universal History of Infamy

A New Universal History of Infamy

By Rhys Hughes
Ministry of Whimsy, 2003

“I should define as baroque that style which deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) all its possibilities and which borders on its own parody.”
—Jorge Luis Borges

Preface
Written by the Welsh fabulist Rhys Hughes and published by the wonderfully named Ministry of Whimsy Press, A New Universal History of Infamy is a sequel to Borges’ classic collection of rogues and scoundrels. In order to take the full measure of this audacious book, it is first necessary to review the history and structure of Borges’ original. 

The Idolized Dead Man
Historia universal de la infamia is a collection of sketches that first appeared in the Buenos Aires newspaper Crítica from August 1933 to January 1934, along with the additional story “The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan,” penned specifically for the 1935 collection. Consisting of “falsifications and distortions” of stories Borges read elsewhere, Borges used these sources to inspire his first forays into literary invention, each sketch outlining the career of a legendary scoundrel. Influenced by his reading of Robert Louis Stevenson and G.K. Chesterton as well as the gangster films of Josef von Sternberg, the tales are lurid but cheerfully ironic, filled with sudden violence, witty paradox, and the occasional delightful twist. The seven “histories” were followed by five short parodies collected under the heading of “Etcetera” – fragments of original writing that Borges brazenly attributed to authors such as Burton and Swedenborg. While not considered part of the mature Borges canon, Historia clearly display the elements of the “Borgesian” style that would come to fruition the following decade—each sketch is imbued with a surreal sense of authenticity, a fusion of fact and fiction reported with deadpan objectivity. Indeed, several Latin America writers have cited Historia universal de la infamia as a personal inspiration, and it’s widely seen as a precursor to so-called “magical realism.”

Borges revised Historia universal de la infamia in 1954, at which time he added three additional pieces to the “Etcetera” section: “Mahomed’s Double,” “The Generous Enemy,” and “On Exactitude in Science.” This revision included a second preface, which begins: “I should define as baroque that style which deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) all its possibilities and which borders on its own parody.”

A Character Sketch
So who then is Rhys Hughes, this fellow who comes along fifty-odd years later with the impudence to publish a sequel to Borges’ venerated Historia? Surely one would need to be a bit, what—reckless? brilliant? mad? Not that modern literature doesn’t have its share of Borges disciples, imitators, and parodists; but while their work varies in quality from dreadful to luminous, no one has yet possessed the nerve to toss out Más Ficciones or El Beta. Nor is Rhys Hughes exactly a household name. Although he has numerous books in print in the UK, his reputation (and it is a good one) in the States rests on a few stories found in anthologies such as Leviathan, Breaking Windows, and Album Zutique.

Rhys Hughes is no Pierre Menard, setting forth to recreate a previous work from scratch. His intentions are neither to slavishly duplicate Borges, nor to use him as a crutch for his own creative failings. Striking a balance between self-confidence and respect, Hughes confronts his own project in a disarmingly direct preface: “I define as Borgesian that excessive interest in possibilities which never (or rarely) succeeds in exhausting itself with awe, terror or time… The very title of this little book flaunts its Borgesian character. To apologise for it would be tantamount to admitting I am incapable of paying the great man tribute.”

The Virtues of Disparity
Happily, Rhys Hughes is correct in his self-assessment. His imagination is astonishing, and there is much in A New Universal History of Infamy that equals or even surpasses the original. But, to quote William Gaddis, its force is also its flaw: Hughes’ imagination is so wildly prodigious it sometimes outpaces other key elements of Borges’ mature work: refinement, subtlety, and control. There is an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to Hughes’ fiction, and at times his imagination would be better served by a measure of discrimination. Hughes’ writing is sharp and vigorous, but his sentences are telegraphed in a staccato rhythm, marching too rapidly from one idea to the next. His imagery ranges from evocative and startling to awkward and inscrutable; from “Perhaps her silence is like a pair of unused scissors leering at a tapestry,” to “so full of sadness that if her eyes burst, lobsters could scuttle up the ladders of her tears.”

This last sentence is a good bellwether to predict one’s reaction to his overall style. Hughes has a fondness for absurdity that leans into the broader strokes of parody rather than the rapier precision of satire. Like intrusions of crude magical realism, his sketches feature such improbable elements as a dictator whose brain has become permanently saturated with chocolate syrup; a tyrant who wears a medal so large it prevents him from moving; and a highwayman sentenced to death by being planted in the ground, seeded with vegetables, and watered until crushed by the weight of growing parsnips. Fortunately such cartoonish images are balanced by a fine appreciation for irony and paradox. The droll manner in which Hughes begins and ends his histories is deeply satisfying, and the sketches abound with marvelous touches of sardonic humor. For instance, a list of “rewards” for piracy which begins: “Rum, Girls, Parrots, Pieces of Eight…” and concludes with “…Immortality, Fetters, Prison, Gallows.” Another fine example is Hughes’ observation, “And forgetfulness is a vital tool, equal to blades and dungeons, for honing and seasoning tyrants.” This deliciously dry tone of irony appears throughout A New Universal History of Infamy, and feels more consonant with the original than the comic moments of pure silliness.

Not surprisingly, Hughes enjoys literary in-jokes, and A New Universal History of Infamy contains numerous references to Borgesian characters, plots, and situations. At one point, Hughes describes a play that “anticipates the techniques” of Herbert Quain, one of Borges’ many fictional authors. In the process, Hughes produces a passage that would not seem out of place in Ficciones:

In ten acts, Realms of the Lost shows how all objects which can no longer be found have actually skipped into another dimension, a world which contains nothing but these objects. So all the lost men and women must dwell among all the lost furniture of our dimension, telling the time with lost watches and eating crumbs of lost food. However, when objects in that dimension become lost they end up in yet another dimension which contains even fewer things, and this process continues until the tenth act (and tenth dimension) is reached. Everything there has been lost ten times and in fact very few objects have made it that far. Indeed, that dimension contains nothing but a bare landscape, a road, a tree and two men with the appearance of tramps.

A charming idea with a Godot punchline, this illustrates Hughes at his most compelling. As previously mentioned, Hughes has a prolific imagination, and ideas fly from each page like a shower of sparks—if one falls flat and another quickly fizzles, the next is sure to dazzle and delight. On the “dazzling” side, we have an alchemist who conceals his true talent by debunking his trade; a plucky arms dealer who escapes death by purchasing the rifles pointed at his head; and a curse that is both refuted and confirmed by the final sentence of the sketch itself. There is something appropriately Borgesian about Hughes’ fascination with “awe, terror, and time.” When Hughes writes, “Sometimes I suspect that finishing a book and starting it, whether as reader or author, are the only two defining moments of existence,” he is not simply mimicking or channeling Borges; it is a sentence as natural to Rhys Hughes as to “the great man” himself.

The Lunatic Ride
After the titular infamous histories have been concluded, Hughes continues to follow Borges’ structure. The original “Streetcorner Man” was one of Borges’ earliest stories, a tale of machismo and revenge set among the hoodlums of Buenos Aires. Hughes answer to this youthful tale is the colorful—and extremely bizarre—“Streetcorner Mouse.” Perhaps realizing the impossibility of capturing the earnestness and naïveté of the original, Hughes shifts the story in the opposite direction, creating a parody so extravagant it borders on reinvention. While the notes of Borges’ original melody are still recognizable, Hughes has transposed them to a more surreal key. Gone are the knife-wielding compadritos and their seedy tango hall; the setting is now a Welsh pub frequented by shape-changing bards, with “Wenglish” dialogue taking the place of Borges’ lunfardo slang. The plot remains essentially the same, but the characters are comically inflated to mythic proportions, and events unfold in an overly vivid, almost hallucinatory space. Despite the fantastic alterations, Hughes has remained faithful to the original story in the truest sense, taking free reign to re-imagine and even celebrate his own cultural mythos.

Other Names
A New Universal History of Infamy continues the layout of the original in “Et Al,” a collection of pieces corresponding to Borges’ “Etcetera,” with “Surplus Parodies” standing in for the three 1954 additions. Unlike the previous works, these pieces are not exact parallels. Although Hughes maintains the convention of ascribing their authorship to other writers, they are highly original stories, boldly written and filled with color.

“Et Al” begins with “City of Blinks.” Perhaps the best work in the entire collection, it is attributed to Herbert Quain. Taking the form of a fable, the story describes a city structured as a feudal panopticon, with a central ruler keeping watch on his subjects through a geometric progression of observers arranged in concentric circles. On one level, the story functions as an allegory depicting the futility and dangers of maintaining a police state, but it also works on a purely imaginative level, evoking the exact sense of awe and terror described as “Borgesian” in Hughes’ preface. Hughes develops his conceit brilliantly from start to finish, the final sentence delivering a perfectly timed master stroke.

After “City of Blinks” comes five more ficciones, each showcasing Hughes’ ability to blend remarkable ideas, unpredictable twists, and offbeat humor: “The Landscape Player,” which speaks to the impossibility of understanding music through metaphor; “The Spanish Cyclops,” a simple but mischievous tall tale; “The Unsubtle Cages,” a parable of solitude pitched somewhere between Franz Kafka and Thomas Ligotti; “Celia the Impaler,” a bawdy story of a woman with an insatiable lust for monuments; and “Alone with a Longwinded Soul,” which accurately describes itself as “the shortest ghost story in the world extended by pretentious turns of phrase and unnecessary similes.”

The section closes with a pair of alleged nonfictions: “Monkeybreath,” an outtake from the Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, and “Of Exactitude in Theology.” The latter is a pitch-perfect companion to Borges’ “Of Exactitude in Science,” his famous fragment describing a map that eventually covers the globe. The shortest piece in the book, it is attributed to another Borgesian creation, the philosopher Jaromir Hladik, and bears quoting in full:

IN THAT LAND, the art of Theology attained such perfection that to discuss even the smallest aspect of one of the gods took the study of a lifetime. It was thus decreed that the full nature of such gods was wholly beyond the understanding of man and that all metaphysics was therefore worthless. In the course of time, the college of Theologians continued to encourage further religious speculations with the sole aim of dismantling them as essentially inadequate. Succeeding generations came to judge such a system of dismantling as inadequate, and, not without irreverence, they dismantled it in turn. In the western deserts, a few dissolute scholars are still to be found, muttering an ontological proposition or two; in the whole nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Theology.

A New Universal History of Infamy concludes with a trio of “Surplus Parodies.” Freewheeling fantasies exploding with flamboyant style, these stories are similar to “Streetcorner Mouse” in tenor. In “Finding the Book of Sand,” Borges’ book of infinite pages is positioned as a real object, subject to the laws of physics. As the ramifications of such a book are explored, it soon leads to a series of catastrophic events. “The Hyperacusis of Chumbley Mucker” is “a parody of John Sladek in the style of a John Sladek parody.” Like the previous story, it imagines an unlikely subject—in this case, a boy with hyper-acute hearing—and proceeds to pursue the idea through increasing levels of absurdity. The final story is “Ictus Purr,” about a Welsh rock band invited to play a gig in another dimension. Subtitled as “A parody of myself in the style of you,” the story is the most forthright comedy in the book, and brings to mind a glorious confusion of elements, from Monty Python to Douglas Adams to Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. It is also reminiscent of Michael Moorcock’s “Jerry Cornelius” series, in which Moorcock fictionalized his various musician friends and shuffled them through outlandish multidimensional settings. (It evokes another Moorcock story as well: “The Stone Thing,” a self-parody in which Moorcock took his eccentric characters, cosmic plots, and unpronounceable names and cheerfully dialed the volume up to “11.”) Whether “Ictus Purr” is perceived as a madcap, zany romp or a self-indulgent, incoherent mess may be purely a matter of taste. It’s sure to gain as many new fans for Rhys Hughes as it will raise the eyebrows of more sober readers, drawn to the book by its title and expecting something more faithful to the source.

The Simulator of Infamy
Of course, this is part of the problem. Borges’ original looms large; and though no reader would desire an exact replica, it remains important to evaluate whether or not Hughes’ book engages on the same level as Borges’ Historia. While it’s neither useful nor fair to use Historia as a hammer to bash Hughes’ every misstep, his book necessarily invites comparisons to its namesake.

For this very reason, A New Universal History of Infamy reveals its flaws most clearly when placed closely aside the original, and the titular histories are the weakest part of the book. Even allowing for differences in style and content, Hughes falls short of Borges on several critical points. The seven sketches in Borges’ Historia have the quality of a rapier: quick-witted and sharp, they draw blood through the maneuvering of a dexterous hand. Hughes’ profiles leave the impression of a savage cutlass, its blade crusted with dried blood and damp with the decay of the deep jungle.

In the original Historia, Borges assembled a cast of multi-faceted characters, scoundrels of all natures and temperaments. For every crime of shocking violence, there was an act of cowardice or subterfuge, and along with its sensationalism, Historia also served up moments of quiet wonder, such as the rain of paper dragons upon the Widow Ching’s fleet; clever deceptions, such as Lazarus Morrell’s intricate system of slave stealing; and unexpected mysteries, such as the spectral cosmogony and ultimate identity of Hakim of Merv. Hughes’ infamous histories have neither the variety nor the subtlety of Borges. Despite the occasional flash of wit, most of Hughes’ rogues are insane sociopaths, responsible for much useless death and misery, their misdeeds all too easily accessorized. Not much differentiates one villain from another—all seem to be variations of the same wicked, insane character, with attributes and adventures arbitrarily assigned. There is no sense of personality in the profiles, no reason that this particular scoundrel should have performed that particular atrocity.

The Mysterious, Logical End
Which returns us to the difficulties of appraising this book—a work that will appeal most to two groups of readers: fans of Rhys Hughes, and fans of Jorge Luis Borges. Naturally, one of these groups has a head start over the other, and so this book stands to bring Hughes a considerable number of new readers. But will they end up as new fans? Will an enthusiast of the original be startled at Hughes’ departures from Borges, or delighted to discover a kindred imagination? Is A New Universal History of Infamy an act of hubris or a loving tribute?

Make no mistake; Rhys Hughes is a talented writer with a very distinct voice of his own. To cast his own fictions into Borges’ mold may take a certain amount of brilliance, recklessness, and madness, but Hughes seems well aware of this, and his writing proudly embraces all three. Although one may wish his sense of refinement and control were on par with Borges, this Welsh fellow has nonetheless created a remarkable book; and in the end, audacity and irreverence are more welcome than timidity or idolatry. To paraphrase Martin Luther (and if Borges can quote St. John, surely this indulgence may be permitted?), Rhys Hughes may have sinned boldly, but only because he believes and rejoices more boldly still. Whatever expectations a reader may bring to A New Universal History of Infamy, it is a work that deserves to be read.

Additional Information

A New Universal History of Infamy
You can purchase Rhys Hughes’ book at Amazon.com.

Rhys Hughes Homepage
The author maintains a blog with numerous links to his work.

Night Shade Books
Sadly, Ministry of Whimsy is no longer extant, but their books used to be distributed by Night Shade, which was acquired by Sky Horse Publishing.

Author: Allen B. Ruch
Original Upload: 20 March 2004
Last Modified: 12 August 2024
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