“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche
An old friend and customer, at least as old as I, used to love this quote and bring it up often as a measure of what he was seeking to find again. This was in my shop on Newbury Street, in Boston. I had read that book when I was a teenager and had always loved the flourish of Sabatini’s words, like swordplay, but never knew of another writer who could match it—Haggard, Dumas, Stevenson—I tried again and again but failed. My friend liked some of my suggestions, and not others. He worked in an office, and I think he wanted something that might give him relief from the hum drum of cubicle walls—well, he was the president of the company, so his office was not a cubicle, but that is the sense of it.
Raphael Sabatini is one of the great forgotten authors of the Twentieth Century. His works sold by the million. That fact alone would be sufficient for the typical mediocre professor of literature to condemn him to the depths. Worse, a dozen Hollywood films were made from them. 34 novels and each of them is a delight to read. Scaramouche is one of the best. Sea Hawk is as terrific as the better-known Captain Blood. Born in Italy to an English mother and Italian Father, both opera singers, he lived all over Europe and died in Switzerland. I bring him up here because his sense of life is such a contrast to what I see filling the bestseller lists today.
And because the world is no less mad today, and arguably worse.
And because most people, by which I mean the greater majority, are quite willing to live in their cubicles and are easily disturbed by anything that threatens the coffins of security in which they bury themselves long before death. This subject, itself, is verboten. How dare I pass judgement on their festering, bloated lives—Festering? Yes, like maggots they live off the flesh of others. Bloated? Yes. Empty lives inflated by objects and store-bought Disney-fried experience. And desiccated souls. Yes. They have even made politics a religion for lack of a better thought. And if they are Americans, likely overweight because food is their sacrament. They are prone to sickness. And unhappy. The list is long and tedious. But the most important thing is their souls. Lost to the shallow dogmas of repetition and forgetfulness.
They dress up in the clothes of heroes, never bothering to learn what makes a hero true, nor ever calling evil by name.
Yet, Sabatini, as his wife attested on his gravestone, was prone to laughter.