The Giant Slug of Sumatra
As usual my reading is destined by the mundane rather than the cultivated dictates of such as the New York Times (although to be fair I sometimes succumb to that siren song). The companion duplex antique shop to the Beans and Leaves shop (a wintery scene of same is shown in the blog proper) has a $1.00 book trough outside. And that price sirens me every time I purchase a $1.00 cuppa of the coffee of the day – which may range from the smooth North East Blend to the robust Sumatra Mandheling and all superior to the bitter Star Buck – at Beans and Leaves. a grand small time gourmet competitor here in my tiny town of North East. Back to the book in trough so to speak, this vintage book with the author Gutzon Burglum was like a magnet. I am sure you know – but just in case – Gutzon Burglum is the chap that carved Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. How many Gutzon Burglums can there be. It has to be him – (John) Gutzon de la Mothe Burglum, b 25 March 1867 – St Charles, Idaho – and d 6 Mar 1941. I had no idea that he had ever written a book. After purchasing the book (and all you do. to do that, is stuff a one dollar bill down a little tube in the shop window and walk off!! Neat eh?) and on arrival home I did the Wiki- thing with nary a reference to his writing said Giant Slug etc., or any book for that matter. Well the publication date seemed about right for a young man not yet settled in to his life’s work, and that name Gutzon doesn’t bring too many other people to mind. And in retrospect his carvings did tend to the grandiose – who knows maybe this giant slug thing caught his fancy about the impressive right off the bat of youth. Again Wikipedia gave me a nice run down on slugs and they can become large but it is the sea slugs that are the giants, with some ranging over a meter in length. I am sure that it was the sea slug that had so impressed Burglum though in the novel it was a giant land slug that fell from the coffee tree in the mountain plantation that so affected the young heroine – Samatra (Sammy) Mandheline – driving her into the arms of her mother’s lover. Her father, a Belgium minor nobility sort, had landed in Indonesia as manager of a Dutch Kaffee and KaoKoa exporting firm. Her mother, a native from a countryside tribe, the Mandhelings (an older Dutch spelling of Mondailing) that eventually gave all the coffee from Sumatra the name Sumatra Mandheling, epitomized the allure of the far east – slim, golden, sensual in appearance – and was all eyes for the young European nabob van der Arschoot. The novel takes place as their daughter Sammy approaches young adult hood and her father, old van der Arschoot (the small v in van and d in der indicate decent from ancient nobility) increasingly involved in the Kaffee Kao Koa export spends long hours at work, leaving Sammy and her mother alone and to their own devices at their rambling plantation home. Well as is the case in turn of the century books, love intervenes both with Sammy and Bialicti her mother. The giant slug plays a minor but important role and the book comes to a happy and conventional (for that day and time) ending. What is most interesting is the amount of detailed information; descriptive, learned, and ranging about the flora and fauna, with historical accuracy (to the best of my Wiki knowledge) of Indonesia and its ongoing contact with the western world. Three stars out of five – but only if you have the rare patience to accept turn of the century conventions and writing styles.
I will leave with a final Wiki note, to wit:
“- the best known giant rat in fiction comes from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , who in The Adventures of the Sussex Vampire has Sherlock Holmes declare, as an aside, to Dr. Watson:
‘Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, . . . It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.‘ “
which said comment has long since been expanded upon many times by numerous authors and performers (e.g. see Firesign Theatre and its 1974 comedy album The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra for one).
Could it be that Gutzon Burglum writing in 1892 predicated those many tales with his novel ‘The Giant Slug of Sumatra‘? Could Sir Arthur have read this strange romance and unwittingly influenced his 1920’s Vampire of Sussex tale? Is this the one and the same Gutzon Burglum of Mount Rushmore? And more importantly from my point of view – is this seemingly first edition novel of Gutzon Burglum worth big bucks? I doubt if we will ever know.
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