Stones of obsession

I've just read the entire Mushroom Planet series by Eleanor Cameron: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, Mr. Bass's Planetoid, A Mystery for Mr. Bass, and Time and Mr. Bass. (The Terrible Churnadryne, sometimes incorrectly listed as part of the series, is an unrelated novel by the same author.)

Time and Mr. Bass is unlike the rest of the series. The other four are basically sci-fi in orientation (flying to other planets in a rocket ship); there are hints that the superstitions of the Mushroom People may have some basis in realty, but only hints. In Time and Mr. Bass, the reality of the spiritual becomes explicit and central to the story -- and with it, supernatural evil. There is no evil in the first four books; such "villains" as they feature -- the word is really too harsh to apply to them -- are self-important bumblers who mean no one any real harm and whose moral shortcomings are ultimately venial. No one seriously tries to harm anyone else, and no one dies. This changes in Time and Mr. Bass.

Despite the title, it's not a time-travel story. There's a bit of paranormal precognition and retrocognition, but the "time" element isn't really central, and I'm not sure how it made it into the title. Most of the plot revolves around supernatural stones, the jewels of Basidium. As Tyco Bass explains,

I do not know how this power works I know only the results of stealing the stones, which is to deepen and strengthen any passion or obsession a person might have, and even to give it some new and strange twist.

It is only when they are stolen property that the stones exert this power. The "new and strange twist" always relates somehow to the Mushroom Planet, although the obsessed are not consciously aware of this. The stones are initially stolen by an amateur philologist who becomes obsessed with translating an ancient Mycetian scroll which he has also stolen. He makes no progress, but to finance this mad endeavor he begins selling individual stones to others, who in turn become obsessed. A doctor becomes obsessed with researching the medical properties of various mushrooms. An architect scraps plans for a church and instead begins working on "a beehive building with five frilled towers on it" -- a duplicate, unbeknownst to him, of a structure standing on Basidium. A fashion designer begins designing dresses that look like "raincoats" to the public but actually resemble the robes worn on the Mushroom Planet. A sculptor with the interesting name Sarsen Rollright, who had been known for his colossal heroic figures, begins sculpting stick-thin men and horses instead. ("All the animals are little and skinny.") Tyco tries to reason with him:

"But, my friend," said Mr. Bass, setting down his cup, "you know, you cannot go on putting together these metal sticks with knobs on the top and selling them to people as art . . . ."

"And why can I not, if you please, Mr. Tyco Bass? I shall do anything I am jolly well moved to do, because I have a vision."

"No," said Mr. Bass, "you have not got a vision. You have got a stone."

While in a sense these stolen stones are revealing truths about Basidium, their effect is wholly negative, ruining the lives and careers of those into whose hands they fall. It becomes a matter of some urgency for the protagonists to track down and buy back all the stolen stones and return them to their rightful owner.

Reading this, I of course found it impossible not to think of William Wright and his obsession with Stones. (In the novel, though, no one is obsessed with the stones, but with other things because of the stones.) The name Sarsen Rollright particularly stood out. David Topman even comments on how perfect the name is: "Mr. Rollright, how come your names are just right for you? I don't see how they could be any better." He explains that he was named after the sarsen stones of Stonehenge, and of course sar means "stone" in the Elvish languages to which William so often refers. As for the surname, the relevance of the second half of it is obvious, while the first half suggests "Good Times Roll."

The stone with which William is particularly obsessed is the one he calls the Sawtooth Stone. With this in mind, the wording used here to describe the voice of the stone-obsessed architect is interesting:

"Well?" he demanded of them in a voice that went through David like a saw blade. "What rubbish will you be selling with you?

"Selling nothing, Dada," said Rhondda. "These boys are Daffyd and Chuck and they have come to tell you that . . . they have come about the stone -- it is magic, just as I told you, but wicked magic and I don't want it any more --"

Despite what Rhondda says here, the stones themselves are not wicked, but their effect is deleterious in unauthorized hands.

I mentioned a supernaturally evil villain in Time and Mr. Bass. Seeing as how my name is Son of Tycho and all, I have naturally tended to identify with the benevolent character of Tyco Bass as I've read these stories, so it was a bit of a shock when the name of Tyco's demonic enemy was introduced: Narrow Brain.

Narrow is of course part of the name of this blog. It's true that it's a reference to a poem about coming out of the narrow desert and (like the Wise Men) "into the house, so high and wide." Nevertheless, narrow desert is the part I chose for my title. As for the Brain part, I wouldn't have thought anything of it had I not recently revisited the "Banana Man" period of my childhood. Shortly before moving to Ohio, I started to feel that the nickname Banana Man was too childish and that I should "upgrade" to the "edgier" moniker Banana Brain. Why exactly I thought that would be cool I have no idea, but I did. The rebranding was extremely short-lived. As soon as my father found out about it, he took me aside for a stern talking-to about how fun nicknames were fine but not at the cost of basic self-respect, and then in a few months we were in Ohio and I had left all banana branding behind. Bananas are the narrowest of fruits, and a banana-shaped brain would be a very narrow one.

Elsewhere in the novel, Narrow Brain is referred to as "the snake-pale, narrow-faced one" -- an odd expression, as snakes are not notable for their pallor. I immediately understood it, though, as one of my very earliest memories is of a dream of a many-headed snake with extremely pale, translucent skin. I will probably go into that dream in more detail later, as it also features "little men" and other possibly relevant details, but that's a subject for another post.