Nate D's Reviews > Chasm

So I have a specific interest in surrealist lady novelists, apparently. There weren't a lot of them, but to current favorites Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun (and Anna Kavan, unofficially, in a pinch), add Dorothea Tanning, who had to go and tantalize me further by not only writing a novel, but by writing some kind of gothic horror novel about an ill-fated dinner party at a desert mansion. Or maybe two novels: though Chasm was published in 2004 when Tanning was 96*, it had an apparent predecessor in her long-forgotten mid-40s work Abyss. Hard to judge if this was just a new publication, a reworking, or a variation, as next-to-no information seems to be around on the older verison, but the fact that Chasm is set in 1965 suggests that it can't be entirely the same story. In any event, probably only I care about these questions, but either way, this book exists and it's good.


(The Witch, 1950)

Plotwise genre tropes abound: the house, the party guests, the hints and rumors, the foreboding is all the stuff of classic hollywood hauntings, and though the 40s original would have pre-dated the examples that spring most readily to mind, I can't help but picture the weird host as Vincent Price, emblem of that era that he is. Of course, this isn't actually pulp, and the guiding forces are much more mysterious than this all suggests, which gives the story the roving, oblique allure that never quite reaches satisfaction (and is all the stronger for it). More than anything, this seems to be a certain collapse or dissolving of identity that guides the action to its bloody conclusions.

Incidentally, my copy arrived with an invitation to the 2004 book release party tucked into the pages, and the title page is inscribed, in cursive black ink: "for dear Mary Power with a million memories + hugs. Dorothea"

(or maybe it's "Mary Rowen". Who was she? Who would get rid of this?!)

"The desert is full to bursting. The sand talks to you but its words don’t rhyme, the stones shed and, I promise you, the commonest glass turns to amethyst. So tell me, what is the past? I’ll tell you. It’s a tide of ice that came and went, and little toads that still live buried in deathless breathing. They wait, yes, and their memories keep roaring of light and liquid air. […] You can smile, go on, smile! But men forget their names in the crevices of the desert wind; they crumple like burning paper with frozen throats and eyes that roll in the sun. Their bones turn to chalk, but they still come to lie down and feel the hot breath on their faces and stars fall on their mouths. […] Stub your toe on a stumbling stone and cry. There’s no harm done. Shake the sand from your hair and pick the cactus spine from your shirt. Laugh and say it isn’t true. But in the red rock chasm, you’ll not have time to cry out. Your words will be heard only in the world you are coming to, wrapped in the dust of this one."

*Surrealism is good for longevity. Tanning passed away earlier this year, sadly, but was 101. Carrington was, I think, 96 at her death last year.