A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder by James De Mille is one of those rare feats: a CanLit novel (even if/though unfinished) that actually deserves to be in a literary canon. The novel, appearing first in serial form in the late 1880s, is a fantastic adventure story along the lines of Verne, Wells and others writing about lost worlds in alternate human(ish) settings accompanied by the general oddities of creation that seemed to obsess so many writers/thinkers at that time (another example: Conan Doyle's The Lost World, published after De Mille).




Mr. Inkslinger was the first to recommend I read this tale. About two or three years ago we were talking about Atlantic Canadian novels that were undeservedly understudied and this was the first that came to his mind. I had never read it (I had never heard of it, in truth), and must admit that the title did little to attract me, but it went on my TBR shelf all the same (Mr. Inkslinger's taste in books may be eccentric, but he rarely steers me towards anything uninteresting). Once I began reading it I couldn't put it down. Fascinating from so many angles. It's an interesting testament to the obsessions and fears of a given era (Imperialism and the ideological justifications attendant thereto, for a start), but it holds its own as a rip-roaring adventure tale as well.

Four men come upon a strange manuscript at sea and resolve to read and dissect its meaning. The manuscript relates the first-person account of a sailor named Adam More who came across a strange land in the Antarctic region of the world. The strange land with its unearthly horizon is inhabited by incomprehensible people and what appears to be pre-historic beasts. And he has inadvertently stumbled upon a group of people organized around what appears to be a kind of obverse of his own society. Since he considers his own society as representing what is intrinsically human, this new society is quite a shock to him. Of course, as outsiders to the tale, we notice things that he does not seem to notice (more on this inside/outside approach in a moment).

There are, inevitably for the time period, racial issues as the protagonist comes in contact with what is perceived (by the protagonist) as the racial 'other', but De Mille pays less attention to race and more attention to the protagonist's expectations of what it means to be human (and how those expectations are challenged). There are gender implications, too, as More struggles to come to terms with new ideas about the possible roles for women in a society, just as he struggles to come to terms with what humans are capable of (and, indeed, what defines humanity).

The commentary provided by our readers (the four men in the novel who come across More's account) acts as a chorus for what we should be noticing as well as a foil against which we can see our own assumptions as readers. An interesting narrative device, and one which serves to put More's straightforward observations under scrutiny. This switch in the narrative itself from inside the action to the observers' seat outside the action is useful for a number of reasons, but one effect it certainly achieves is the subversion of More's authority as narrator.

I really enjoyed this novel, even if it does break off rather abruptly at the end (narrative experiment? Or the result of its possibly unfinished nature?).