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Banshee, whole no. 7, March 1945
Page 2
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conclusive in that the former vessel is a jar of much greater weight than the latter, though both are relatively empty when opened. Hannes is extravagantly fond of painting, though his knowledge of artists and art other than Bok is sketchy to say the least. He makes a consistent show and flurry of being vitally interested in music, but it is true that he cares for nothing in it but the weird and lushly sensual. This musical bottleneck is, of course, a trap into which he has stuck his head and from which he cannot extricate it. Failure to wring loose of his imprisoning hydra has made it necessary for Hannes to nurture an obsession for this kind of music that beggars description. A minor shank of his artistic nature revealed itself in recent years in the production of several stories in the fantasy genre, one a long novel, the others short yarns. The novel, published in Unknown, was widely ignored. It was not only completely out of this world, but also of several others, and might have made his reputation as a serious threat to Hannes Christian Andersen back in the 1830s. In modern times, it gives out a noise like any empty kettle drum when kicked. Bok's shorter pieces have been wickedly previous, largely built of cardboard and aimed at the type of reader who faints at the sound of the word "charnel." His characters are necessarily flat, having no substance other than Hannes himself whose own connection with reality has the consistency of a tired shadow. There have been rumors of vast novels, some in the detective field, at least one supposed to have been a blown up version of the lead novelette in any issue of a love pulp. For a time Bok also produced and sold a number of science fiction magazine covers in color, and a plethora of black and white inside illustrations for the same market, all highly successful and the true basis for whatever reputation as an artist he possesses, which is considerably in the fantasy fan field, taking in about 500 people at most. All in all this cannot be considered a paltry sum. It is not likely to alter much for better or worse, but there it is. He became a kind of fixture and destined for an odd immortality in 1942 when he was mentioned as an off-stage character in a pot-boiling detective yarn written by the young-hopeful Anthony Boucher, concerning itself with murder in the rocket tense. This accumulated virtuosity could hardly fail to give me an expanded sense of my own importance when it will be remembered that brother Bok illustrated a humorous story of mine with a number of delicious caricatures. According to recent uppage in the price of Bok drawings they have multiplied their value many times and I would not part with a single fragment for anything less than a bent dime. Aside from this my personal interest in Hannes Bok cannot be said to have differed a jot or tittle from any similar interest on the part of other devotees of the weird and fantastic. During the past five or six years I have been afforded, on various Bok holy days, rare glimpses of work in progress. His rate of production has been slow, limited to four or five non-commercial pieces a year, all meticulously hidden from my eyes until completion, due to a serious super- p2
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conclusive in that the former vessel is a jar of much greater weight than the latter, though both are relatively empty when opened. Hannes is extravagantly fond of painting, though his knowledge of artists and art other than Bok is sketchy to say the least. He makes a consistent show and flurry of being vitally interested in music, but it is true that he cares for nothing in it but the weird and lushly sensual. This musical bottleneck is, of course, a trap into which he has stuck his head and from which he cannot extricate it. Failure to wring loose of his imprisoning hydra has made it necessary for Hannes to nurture an obsession for this kind of music that beggars description. A minor shank of his artistic nature revealed itself in recent years in the production of several stories in the fantasy genre, one a long novel, the others short yarns. The novel, published in Unknown, was widely ignored. It was not only completely out of this world, but also of several others, and might have made his reputation as a serious threat to Hannes Christian Andersen back in the 1830s. In modern times, it gives out a noise like any empty kettle drum when kicked. Bok's shorter pieces have been wickedly previous, largely built of cardboard and aimed at the type of reader who faints at the sound of the word "charnel." His characters are necessarily flat, having no substance other than Hannes himself whose own connection with reality has the consistency of a tired shadow. There have been rumors of vast novels, some in the detective field, at least one supposed to have been a blown up version of the lead novelette in any issue of a love pulp. For a time Bok also produced and sold a number of science fiction magazine covers in color, and a plethora of black and white inside illustrations for the same market, all highly successful and the true basis for whatever reputation as an artist he possesses, which is considerably in the fantasy fan field, taking in about 500 people at most. All in all this cannot be considered a paltry sum. It is not likely to alter much for better or worse, but there it is. He became a kind of fixture and destined for an odd immortality in 1942 when he was mentioned as an off-stage character in a pot-boiling detective yarn written by the young-hopeful Anthony Boucher, concerning itself with murder in the rocket tense. This accumulated virtuosity could hardly fail to give me an expanded sense of my own importance when it will be remembered that brother Bok illustrated a humorous story of mine with a number of delicious caricatures. According to recent uppage in the price of Bok drawings they have multiplied their value many times and I would not part with a single fragment for anything less than a bent dime. Aside from this my personal interest in Hannes Bok cannot be said to have differed a jot or tittle from any similar interest on the part of other devotees of the weird and fantastic. During the past five or six years I have been afforded, on various Bok holy days, rare glimpses of work in progress. His rate of production has been slow, limited to four or five non-commercial pieces a year, all meticulously hidden from my eyes until completion, due to a serious super- p2
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