In this stylistic tour de force, Stephen Marche creates the entire culture of a place called Sanjania—its national symbols, political movements, folk heroes, a group of writers dubbed “fictioneers,” a national airline called Sanjair, and a rich literary history. Sanjania is an island nation whose English-speaking citizens draw upon the English, American, Australian, and Canadian literary traditions. This brilliant story is an anthology, taking the reader from the rough and tumble pamphlets of 1870s Sanjania to the burgeoning Sanjanian nationalistic awareness in the 1930s literary journal, The Real Story, to the extraordinary longing of the writings of the Sanjanian Diaspora. These works develop into a Rashomon-like story, introducing us to illustrious Sanjanian figures such as the repentant prostitute Pigeon Blackhat and the magically talented couple Caesar and Endurance. The result is a vibrant evocation of a country— from the birth pangs of its first settlers and their hardy vernacular to is revolutionary years and all the way to the present—all told in Stephen Marche’s innovative and accomplished writing.
the destruction of marlyebone, the private king
F. R. Fisher
no dates
For the sake of readability and accessibility, the spelling and in some cases the syntax of this story have been normalized.—s.m.
Wherever they may be, and wherever they may be from, all men do relish a hanging. The Drama of Law, with its Crime and its Punish and its splendid gibbet Finish, musters healthy crowds alltimes, but when Marlyebone hung, no bell clung, no bottle glugged on the greengrass, no flowerpath strewed to the noose. No crowd, not a body, overwatched the Destruction of that Private King. Here’s why so.
In his eighteenth year, Marlyebone oxchopped and mangled the other wolfheads Goodfriday Martins, Samuel Baker Deloney, Abraham Crisp and Lover Gomes, and claimed the overward. In his nineteenth year, the Crown pursued him. Crownagent Keagan Poulter took a bulletsmash in the face and could not be regaliated. Agent Will Champion’s moniker fibbed everafter his failure. Robert Strunk sunk. In Marlyebone’s twentieth year, the pamphlets and early fictioneers his Scourge Sally Parkman, a Woman Crownagent, grabbed the pirate fleet, and yawled it against the waves of Portuguese Cove, and Marlyebone scuppered with his sister Virginia and his good-friend Moses Tumbledown overhill byland toward his homecove Restitution, flittering.
In that Fatal Fight, Tumbledown had connived to scape the ravages of their Vessel’s Capsize but Marlyebone was grazed over the bellyfront, and a Crown ball caromed his sister Virginia above the hip. She was truly near dead, so Tumbledown and Marlyebone hamperlegged Virginia between them. Gutshocked, windundered, brinesoaked, our three stopped in the Forestblankets to staunch wounds panting and shivering in the starlessness, and that’s where they talked one to another.
Tumbledown, first, to Marlyebone. “Sally Parkman owns this Wildness.”
“The nearest haven?” Marlyebone, patting his still-bleeding flank with tohand Slushmoss.
“Waiting Cove. Command me.”
“Oath me no oaths,” Marlyebone, “but go to it and wait.”
Moses Tumbledown was so monikered because Marlyebone had rescued him from flotsam on open sea, shipwrecked, so Tumbledown left brother and sister in a Silence dark and daft to him, Godlike.
Marlyebone turned to his Wound, turned to his sister who moaned in the Dark beyond Words. In her todeath eyes which seemed to scrape the coraline Mysteries, Marlyebone, softly, simply, “Virginia, our Fates are grappled together and I will never leave you but Sally Parkman slides by morning so if you want me to live, don’t die tomorrow, die tonight.”
Thus Sally Parkman shackled and darbied the Private King next dew. The scenario is tattooed on many sailor backs, but it has as many meanings as muscles roiling under it. Sally Parkman rises to clap wires on the wrists of the pirate. Only sailors with Shipwrecks and Lostloves behind them may have that scenario inked on their fleshes, a wellknown. Here was a man who once dragged a mutineer under keel, until skin flayed from the poor man’s roundbits, the faintest whisper of a crosspurpose to him on the sea and the whisperer was soon whispering through a cutthroat, but Marlyebone waited by Virginia’s side, still-and-always, until his lockup, and they massacred his crew, all but Tumbledown, and they chummed his sister’s afterdeath, for spite.
Avoid the Finger of Oblivion, that’s half the bigness, two-thirds of the surface of the earth Oceanshrouded, the horror of it. Maybe there’s another truth to the Shipwreck of Marlyebone too.
I mean rough men tell rough tales. Church and Crown sleep well in our Coves, if they do toss-me turn-me in strange dreams also. Seamen and schoolboys gathering around spilled liquor or liquorice laugh at the Marlyebone murders and lawflights, finestanders as they are.
Ask any covefellow to tell the true end to that atrocious man. He will account that the Trial lasted one Clockround solo, that the criminal Private King was summary hanged on the twentieth anniversary of the day of his birth, refused the chance for Famous Last Words. Not one from Waiting Cove came out to his Crown-murder by hanging, and reports do tell that even the figuremen turned their heads away when that body, so fraught with Hope and Corruptness, undertrapped the whole world.
Not a body overwatched the Destruction of the Private King, I’ve said why so.
pigeon blackhat
Camden Mahone
1881 – 1963
As with “The Destruction of Marlyebone,” spelling has been normalized. See the biographical note for a brief description of the “scandal of identity” (Trampasano’s phrase) surrounding Mahone’s work.—s.m.
You have already heard my story through another’s mouth I imagine, for there is no covetown without its crashedwoman, and mine is a tale not so new as lamentable and true. The freshness resides in its purpose and conclusion, which I hope to make the common ending, for Jesus Christ has spoken that
Salvation is open to all
and my story is proof.
As a young one, I never knew the city but by report. The village of Lydiat on the Western coast of Sanjan Island gave me life, a cove so removed from the urbane commerce of the nation that a mere two or three in a decade might hazard the journey to Port Hope, lengthy by sea and mazy overland through the tolly rock centre of the country. The buildings in Lydiat, which might more readily be called stackings, were a quiet strewn of casual flotsam along the shore. My mother was the proprietress of the inn, though it is the merest charity to call it so. I mean that we possessed a yard filled with crates of various sizes, which our custom, principally the government vessel men, would sit upon when required to eat what foodstuffs we prepared for them. Out of lazy ease, the establishment took the family name, “Blackhats.” My mother must have christened me, but the name was swiftly lost: they called me Pigeon because I was always delivering messages from one goodwife to another.
I should tell you about my parents, who were no better and no worse than others. My uncle Charity had the kind, sea wearied expression of the fish sailor; his eyes shone like a glisten of sharp pearls. He was of that kind of man who speaks with seamen roughly and hangs tenderly to any woman’s whim. My mother enjoyed nothing but booklets, brandy and beach conversations, her face nicely fattened from sugar and her eyes fi nely brightened by tealeaf. She rarely spoke a hard word to anyone, and never to herself. In our cove, and for all I can say in the outlying districts as well, her vanity was a watchword. She was most careful about her hair and her jewelry, always brushing the one and polishing the other, and the pleasures of her life were principally superfi cial, her cruelties accidental, her satisfactions brief. As for my Christian education, my uncle Charity found it too expensive to espouse “that silly claptrap Godspeak,” as he termed it, and my mother did not spend money unless it was compensated by sailors’ attentions. They saved money on tithes and I was the one to pay.
The child who has never been to a strange town says its mother cooks best.
But let me pass briefly over my childhood, which is not to the point. Let me pass on to my fourteenth year.
It is difficult to say when the first step of my destruction was taken, for every time I pause at one moment, another earlier clambers to the front. Let me then slip over myself, and say that I was always vain, but my fourteenth year gave occasion to that vanity when I turned viewlysome. While I was ripening in all places and all senses, none of the sailors were satisfied unless I was resting my hips against their table to balance the tray. None wanted to bite into the beef saltporridge and stew unless I put down the plate. With a look I could make the youngest or oldest squirm like bait shrimp.
“What lips!” one said.
“What hips!” said another.
“What can the rest be like!” All the men hung their heads in wonderment, for certainly, I knew what I was doing with my other vaingames. My good uncle warned me: “You must heed such rough men, Pigeon, for they are not looking at you, but at your things! Careful now!”
“Uncle, I am just playing!”
“Fish think they are playing with hooks, until they are caught, chopped and basted!” His words were sincere, but they brought only a fuller laughter to my mouth, for it was all a vaingame to me.
Beside, he, hypocrite, was in the main a disturber of the cove womanhood. “Well, you are still a fi ne figure of a fi sherman!” I retorted to uncle Charity, who smiled. So I have known since I was merely fourteen that men take odd pride in their fortitude for vice.
My mother also half-tried to avert me from dangerous paths. “Don’t run into those sailors, kiddie!” she said. “Sailor’s arms are their true nets, I know it better than you can know.”
“Bitten by a snake, and afraid of the rope!”
I said, for she was known to be mankeen, but I said it solely inwards, to myself, for she could slap a fury when the mind overran her. I replied outwards to mother by showering the table with the silvers and coppers which the sailors had left me for gratuities. As the coins jingled and rolled to a stop, into her face flitted an overhappy glint, as much to say it was reply enough. So it was with me that vanity was at first happy to course on its own power, without the need to open the topsail.
Crooked wood makes crooked ashes,
and in the spring of my sixteenth year, as a band of fishermen had blown off course and onto our piece of island, I found my ill match in a seemingly superficial amoret.
“That Pigeon girl is more welcome than a black diamond in hog-filth,” opined one of a crew after I had served them their drinks.
The captain stopped him with a sip of brandy and a weighted word. “A fingernail of gold for her.”
“She a whore?” divers asked him, expecting his usual randy reply, for it was a common joke that captain made about all women, aspersing the best with the brush of the worst, and he was ready to vent no doubt, but the youngest of the crew, whose name was Goodman Harvey, the name slips a sigh under my tongue even now, had dropped in love with me at the merest glance.
“Captain!” he interrupted. “Not this one!”
“Why not this one?” asked the Captain, firming his drink down.
“She’s she, sir captain!” said Goodman Harvey, living up to his name then, brave good man.
The truth, and I will give you only the truth, as Jesus Christ would wish it, the truth is that I did not notice the missing sailor when I returned with food platters, so slyly did they undo the poor fellow in the dark. But the next morning lay a half-chawed fellow on our portion of beach, with his crew already departed. Fate was always malleting poor Goodman on the forehead and he did his best through the stuns of his time on earth. His mangled words whispered through cracked bloody lips when I found the boy: “Love of you,” were his mere three words. Remembering the words, my heart is too freighted with the winds of nostalgia to give breath to speech, so let me only say... But the cask of feeling is plugged with its own outpouring: I loved him too! In an instant. What sixteen-year-old maiden could find such a shipwrack and not! My heart was not my own, my thoughts were for nothing but Goodman, and my vanity was sent tingling forever forward from the moment he spoke. Jesus, forgive my weak heart!
Mother and uncle knew too well how a young sailor and voluptuous daughter under one roof might teach each other that pleasantly impossible mathematics whereby one plus one adds up to three or four. My tears pled for the wounded sailor boy, my tears were countered a dozen ways. I think wheedling little availed, but he nonetheless joined us; there was nowhere else to put the boy. It could not be gainsaid that the sick man required a woman’s fingers to stitch up his unravelment, so mother and uncle eventually did concede Goody, as I soon called the lad, into the house to recuperate.
Mother’s eye constantly on us in a ramshackle habitation which held no secrets for or from anyone did not end our business together. “How did you like the look . . . of your fishstew tonight?” I might ask him carrying out his dirty bowl, and he might say, “It was all a man could find on the ground.” And we had many more tricks.
Water always finds its way.
Mother kept her ears high the while, but she could not hear my clever glances. “The soup was perfectly delicious in every detail,” Goodman might say with his eyes drifting across me instead of his fingers.
“It cannot possibly taste as eloquently as the food you have eaten elsewhere?”
“I have eaten in Port Hope and eaten in other coves too,” he admitted without being troubled by the fact of sugared perdition too much, “but the food was nothing like what I see here.”
“You mean tasted,” I said, but left quick after, since even mother could stitch up those torn threads. I had crossed a line, though, I must say, if she had lain one down, I never received my invitation to the ceremonials.
A week or so passing, Goody said, “Pigeon, there appears to be a debate in this cove on travel to Port Hope. I have spent the long forenoon with your uncle on the question of my return, whether by waftage or overland. Which do you favour?”
The fellow was asking whether I would elope with him. Remember I was only a young girl, serious love matters seemed only a cheery vaingame to me, and I was sunfaced to involve myself. After a moment’s thought, I declared: “Some of the older, wiser men claim that overland is best.” My age asks my youth for the secrets of its boldness. Witness how I gave away life and wellness as if they were novelty shells at a barker tent. It follows that I would fleck my soul away like a reamed lemon pip as you will see.
Thus, strand by strand, Goodman and I knitted together an escape. We departed at once. In the open sky, the moon guided us almost as well as the sun, and all nature was quiet, but still how grim! How terrible!
“Marche writes so gracefully… that in only 254 pages, he leaves us thoroughly enchanted.”
—Powell's Books: Review-A-Day
"The truth is, we've all been to Sanjania — it's a country shining at the bottom of the sea in each of our souls. Stephen Marche reminds us of all the disparate, roaring voices deep within. In a world that demands us to be of one opinion, it's refreshing to remember that we are many, and crazy, and eight things at once."
—Michael Winter, Author of THE BIG WHY and THIS ALL HAPPENED
"The stories have commonplace plots, but their twisted diction is brilliant…Marche’s concept is fascinating."
—Publisher’s World
"... a delightful new novel…a wonderfully convincing portrait…halfway between the satirical geography of Jonathan Swift and the futuristic fantasies of Doris Lessing."
—Alberto Manguel, Literaturen
"Shining at the Bottom of the Sea is completely unexpected but no less a delight...Stephen Marche is capable of writing...any darn thing he wants."
—The Globe and Mail
"Marche delivers a surprisingly complete overview, given that this entire literature - folk tales, detective stories, sparse modernist pieces - is a figment of his imagination. This broad scope is complemented by extensive detail: Sanjanian proverbs, competing dialects, recurring given and family names. That is what makes Shining at the Bottom of the Sea so enjoyable. The book is clearly the result of a "lively mind," to borrow a term from real-life novelist and critic Francine Prose. Readers have to work to keep up, especially at the beginning, where they are assumed to have some basic knowledge of Sanjanian culture (that it exists, for example). The rewards, though - humour, insight, romance - more than justify the effort...As the author reminds us, storytelling is not a science: "Joy is the point." If so, this book should be wildly successful."
—The Montreal Gazette
"...may be the most exciting mash-up of literary genres since David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas."
—New York Times Book Review
"Literary fiction, by its nature, rises above genres, aiming to say something new in a new way. But rarely is a novel as refreshingly different as Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Canadian Stephen Marche...In a triumph of postmodernism, Marche has created a novel that can - and will - be read an incalculable number of ways."
—The Chicago Tribune
