Under the Hill

Under the Hill, or the Story of Venus and Tannhauser, in which is set forth an Exact Account of the Manner of State Held by Madam Venus, Goddess and Meretrix, under the Famous Horselberg, and Containing the Adventures of Tannhauser in that Place, His Journeying to Rome, and Return to the Loving Mountain by Aubrey Beardsley and John Glassco, 140 pages

Aubrey Beardsley is better known as an artist than as an author.  This is understandable - while his illustrations provoked comparisons with Durer and Dore, Under the Hill, his only attempt at a novel, only had three non-sequential chapters published during his lifetime, and was only halfway finished at the time of his death at age twenty-six.  Glassco wrote the second half himself over fifty years after Beardsley's death, attempting to mimic Beardsley's style.

 

This book is, frankly, disgusting, full of aimless erotic tableaux presented with an air of nonchalance reminiscent of parts of Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time.  Whatever the limits of each individual reader's taste may be, Beardsley was clearly determined to exceed them.  Indeed, it may be that the only interest this book holds is as an experiment in excess and transgression.  The second half of the novel, written by Glassco, tones down the transgression but also loses the hallucinatory, fever-dream quality of Beardsley's work, with the result that over-the-top perversion is replaced by the merely prurient and tawdry.  A plot appears briefly near the end, but while Beardsley might have been able to use it to tie the work together, Glassco was not.

 

Someone, somewhere will like this book.  I do not want to meet them.