Tue 30 Dec 2014
Reviewed by David Vineyard: P. M. HUBBARD – The Dancing Man.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[7] Comments
P. M. HUBBARD – The Dancing Man. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1971. Atheneum, US, hardcover, 1971.
That evocative moment is the true voice of P. M. Hubbard, one of the most interesting thriller writers of his time and one too little known on this side of the Atlantic.
Philip Michael Hubbard made his debut with the fine thriller Flush as May, and continued at the same high level throughout his career as a writer. Among his many books were the spy thriller Kill Claudio, the Gothic The Tower, Hive of Glass, High Tide, Whisper in the Glen and others.
His novels have remarkably well drawn settings that are characters in themselves, Gothic atmosphere of the true definition of the term without a governess to be seen, often good bits about small sail boats, and interesting heroes who tend to be on the amoral side and not always the nicest of people. His secondary characters are often exceptionally well drawn and his villains human but with a Luciferian air.
The Dancing Man is perhaps the best of his thrillers on all these accounts, the cast stripped down to a handful of individuals; the hero Mark Hawkins; his missing brother Dick; Merrion on whose land Dick has gone missing; Merrion’s virginal sister; Merrion’s sexy wife; and a local madman (according to fiction every village in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales has one) of the lurking threatening type.
And of course two other characters: a Victorian house in northern Wales, and a megalithic statue on which is carved the figure of a dancing man: “Someone had carved a human figure, a matchstick man sketched in single strokes but still horribly alive. It danced on the stone holding its stick-like arms over its head and kicking its legs outward, its enormous penis stiffly in front of it.â€
Hubbard was a master of evoking and using settings, and here he has been compared to M. R. James and Arthur Machen in his ability to suggest something evil lurking just beyond the ken of the average man. A large neolithic circle also figures in the action, and a 9th century Latin edict.
Hubbard also has a happy facility with words, calling the figure a “happy little ithyphallic manikin … consciously and deliberately devilish.†It’s a good example of the pleasure of reading the highly literate Hubbard, at once evoking the absurdity of the figure and the horror lurking behind it.
Hubbard is a minimalist, his novels short, to the point, deftly drawn without burying the reader in extraneous detail. You learn just enough about Mark and Dick Hawkins and the people surrounding them to care what happens so that the suspense and atmosphere have real impact. Kill Claudio, a Buchanesque thriller, is practically a novella, and a hundred times more suspenseful than today’s overwritten over long thrillers. Above all the writing, the vivid settings, and often the hint of brimstone and sulfur lingering in the air make his novels unique among the thriller writers of his era.
Dick Hawkins is fascinated by prehistory and the sinister megalith. Merrion is an archaeologist more interested in Medieval history and a Cistercian abbey that once stood near the house. The two men are at loggerheads in their obsessions. Into this walks Mark Hawkins, a catalyst like all Hubbard protagonists, who will trigger ancient violence and modern murder, and as in any Hubbard a novel hints of the erotic as obvious as that “ithyphallic manikinâ€, among the often amoral and violent set of characters. Merrion’s sister may be virginal but you can’t expect that to last in a Hubbard novel and may not mean quite the same as in other gothics.
The Dancing Man builds to a fine creepy violent ending, happy of course, or as happy as Hubbard’s less than admirable heroes are likely to find.
Anthony Boucher and other critics championed Hubbard, and with good reason. He was a superb writer and an exceptional storyteller capable of weaving a spell that held the reader for the short span of a Hubbard novel. If ever there was a ‘can’t put them down’ writer it was him. You may be grateful they are short, because I read most of them in one sitting.
Flush as May, High Tide, and Kill Claudio all had American paperback editions, and The Dancing Man was a choice of the Mystery Book Club so those at least should not be too hard to find.
If you don’t know Hubbard’s work look him up, I think you will be entranced by his dark atavistic world, amoral heroes, and sinister settings. He spun a good plot as well. I really can’t think of anyone to compare his work to, he’s an original, and unique in that I cannot think of another Gothic writer I would call a minimalist.
Editorial Note: P. M. Hubbard, the man and his work, has also been covered on the primary Mystery*File website. Check it out here.
December 30th, 2014 at 10:57 pm
I’ve never quite been able to put into words exactly the feeling I get when reading a book by Hubbard, but David, I do like this line from your review:
“…he has been compared to M. R. James and Arthur Machen in his ability to suggest something evil lurking just beyond the ken of the average man.”
I’m not sure why, but British authors have the ability to do this kind of writing. It seems well beyond what American writers are able to do. David (or anyone else), can you come up with the names of American writers who can, or even come close?
December 30th, 2014 at 11:31 pm
Steve,
Not many in this century, but there are a few, William Sloane, Russell Kirk, Peter Straub, Tom Tryon, A. Merritt, Frances Stevens, Fritz Leiber, Jack Williamson (in DARKER THAN YOU THINK), but of those Kirk is the only one who wrote a book that is a fair comparison to Hubbard (THE OLD HOUSE OF FEAR) in that the supernatural is — in the true Gothic tradition — never concrete but only suggested by setting and atmosphere and you can honestly say it has that Jamesian and Machen like sense of lingering darkness at the edges (and like Hubbard it isn’t terribly long).
Everyone else that comes close is British and a fairly distinguished lot like Buchan and Household.
Most American writes seem to feel the supernatural has to be made concrete and spelled out in big letters rather than suggested at the edge of a dark wood. Poe, Hawthorne and Melville may be the last American writers to truly have that gift of profound unease.
Even then I find Hubbard unique in doing what he does and in so few words. Drawing those settings with only a few phrases and a whisper of a suggestion of something just out of reach is something no one did as well as he did.
I can’t think of anyone else who could be half as violent can be and at the same time maintain that delicate sense of other.
December 31st, 2014 at 1:27 pm
David:
“I can’t think of anyone else who could be half as violent can be and at the same time maintain that delicate sense of other.”
I can. Charles L. Grant at his best in the Oxrun Station novels and stories.
December 31st, 2014 at 1:50 pm
Yes! I loved those Oxrun books.
David mentioned Peter Straub. I haven’t read enough of his books to be sure, but my sense is that he fits the category very very well.
But Russell Kirk did that kind of story so well that if you’d have asked me without my thinking about it, I’d have said he was British.
December 31st, 2014 at 2:20 pm
American writers of the ‘unease’:
John Farris, (really only his first book) Shirley Jackson, Robert Aikman, Rachel Ingalls, Anne Rivers Siddons (just one book), Richard Adams (at least one title), Ambrose Bierce, Charlotte Gilman, T.E.D. Klein.
December 31st, 2014 at 3:28 pm
I’ve heard nothing but good reviews regarding Hubbard’s books, but have never had the chance to read one of his books yet. Will have to change that soon.
Would you compare him to Patricia Carlon in the way he writes?
December 31st, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Agree with almost everyone mentioned. Though a few were British. Certainly agree about Grant and Oxrun and might add Karl Edward Wagner and Darrell Sweitzer, but in Hubbard the supernatural never materializes, its offstage, suggested but not voiced. Nothing jumps out and says boo save his amoral people.
Steve,
Russell Kirk was a well known Conservative American economist much better known for that than his fiction. He was a favorite of Buckley and other conservative pundits and politicians.
Re unease, no one did it like Robert Arthur, whose stores always seemed to be to be in that same company as James — not to mention Collier and Shirley Jackson.