Tue 17 Jun 2008
Reviewed by Walter Albert: H. BEDFORD-JONES – Fang Tung, Magician.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Pulp Fiction , Reviews[3] Comments
H. BEDFORD-JONES – Fang Tung, Magician. Detroit, MI: Beb Books, 2007.
This oriental thriller by a prolific and popular pulp writer was originally published in the All-Story Weekly issue for 2 August 1919. Brian Earl Brown, the entrepreneurial chap behind Beb Books, specializes in cheap reprints (the text, in stapled wraps) that he was selling at the table opposite mine at Pulpcon last year.
This entertaining novelette, about a Chinese messianic magician who wants to chase all foreigners out of the country, in its often careless style betrays the pressure under which pulp writers worked, but the writer’s imagination carried this reader over the rough spots.
Bedford-Jones was no Sax Rohmer, but he’s working somewhat in the same vein, and the combination of a charismatic villain, a pure and feisty heroine, and an adventuresome journalist is a winning one here. And the $5 price was just right for this minor adventure thriller.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Honestly? Bedford-Jones was better than Rohmer.
Actually, let me revise. Bedford-Jones was more consistent as a pulp writer than Rohmer, whose highs were good but whose lows were far worse than B-J’s. I’d far, far rather chance a B-J serial, sight unseen, than a Rohmer serial.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:38 am
To be utterly candid, I’ve read relatively little of either Rohmer or Bedford-Jones, even though I have a fairly substantial collection of Rohmer firsts and reprints that I’ve picked up over the years.
I did enjoy “Fang Tung, Magician,” as I think the review makes clear, but Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, based on what I have read of his escapades, strikes me as more charismatic than Fang Tung, and has certainly captured the popular imagination in a way that I’m not aware that any of Bedford-Jones’ creations have done.
I will, however, accept that Mr. Nevins undoubtedly bases his assessment on a more substantial knowledge of both writers, and I will certainly be open to finding that I prefer Bedford-Jones’ writings to Rohmer’s if I ever have time to acquire a wider familiarity with the two writers’ works.
Which I probably won’t.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Oh, without a doubt, Fu Manchu is the more charismatic Yellow Peril character, and is justly celebrated as establishing the modern Y.P. archetype. I just think that, as a writer, Rohmer wasn’t as consistent as Bedford-Jones (whose work is hard to find unless you make a point of searching out the pulps they are in).