John Tibbetts: The Furies of Marjorie Bowen

i'm j mcintyre you're listening to play pierre presents on kansas public radio and now one of the most prolific authors you haven't heard of the series of marjorie bowen is the latest book by john tibbets of kansas city done time in the film and media studies program at the university of kansas has written numerous books about music art and culture is a former radio man and our frequent guest and keep your prisons done it it's always a delight to see you always good to be here janet i'll be the first to admit that i had never heard of marjorie bone before reading your book and i'm going to quote her biographer edward way good night how can anyone who has written so much managed to escape the notice of so many people who was marjorie bowen adding why haven't we heard of her well as i say in the introduction and still much more because it's a subject that it keeps opening up an opening up an opening up and sometimes i find myself in a strange place how did i get here at other times i feel confirmed that are at last getting a grip on this woman's

character but she remains very elusive and later on a few well under a quote from a little play she wrote where i think she describes herself actually quite nicely i've never encountered a woman with such a formidable body of work an indomitable will an amazing self taught person who made her own way despite many many obstacles personal and private marjorie bowen was a devout mom she loved her three sons she was the breadwinner of her home even though she was married twice somehow she was a word upon whom felt the burden of making a living self taught product of an abusive childhood made to feel alienated to herself into her world as a young lady had to go to museums archives libraries to get any kind of an education

made her way as a writer not using email pen name as one might expect with a woman or shortly after the turn of the century you know making away in the male dominated literary world know she use the pen name but it was a woman's name marjorie bowen her real name are you ready for this verdi gabriele margaret veer campbell long small wonder if we have the name marjorie bowden and it's only after she made her way and career and some celebrity as a writer that in the nineteen forties she began writing under several male pseudonyms she reversed the process that i really like that i think the sheraton productivity of her work meant that let's get some more names out there before the market gets tired of the name marjorie bowen and she continued to be very prolific up until eighteen excuse me nineteen fifty two when she

died of an accident concussion still going strong after hundred and fifty two books showing no signs of slacking off so there was marjorie barnwell shoes all those things but what i've heard neglected to mention she possessed and most dark an infernal imagination i mean go figure i'm convinced that at heart she was a pagan i she may have followed the anglican church abroad her children up in a very rigorously maintained spiritual another new uplifting household an honor on and on but you look at your work there is something going on an almost subversive character that comes forth and frankly her best works that is very compelling and a darkened chapters of dread to somebody once called some of her more horror like stories and sharon a handful of some of the very best would you describe her as writing in the tradition of the female guards say yes

that mean well especially in this year of two thousand nineteen two thousand twenty we're coming up on two hundred years of mary shelley the other of frankenstein yes it's easy to see her as inheriting the light is city of mary shelley and the parallels between her and mary shelley both in their personal lives and in their works are many what is the female gothic am quite simply a woman writing about women writing about women as wives and mothers and sisters and yes as the self trying to navigate a world of patriarchal oppression of limitations on a woman's rights especially and in the working world maintaining a kind of satirical at times devastatingly angry attitude towards the plight of women and by the way in mary shelley's time and margery ballance time

were those conditions so greatly different especially in the nineteen forties the boeing produces a series of novels under a male pseudonym joseph shearing that are about women who seem to be oppressed but you also are agents of change agents of controlling their own life sometimes to the detriment or the yen or the problems of the men around them this idea of the fury is dominating her life my title of the book the furious of marjorie bowen takes its meaning from a comet she herself made many times that her muses were the furious of greek tragedy the plays and ask it was the arrest ear the three women who would wreak revenge upon the hapless man who had the mistake of getting in their way and so there's a lot of anger there's a lot of agency feminine malevolence going on

in her work to that is that part of the female gothic yeah i think so women as a press but also women as agents taking control of their own lives and soul from mary shelley on through people like our destiny to mali a more recently joyce carol oates i'm marjorie bone very definitely belongs in that sisterhood she's an admirable member of that group tell us how did you first become aware of her writings it's almost a fluke i grew up very blessed with a father who had a wonderful library of works of science fiction and fantasy and horror and all of that it's a slim little book in one of the shells called the bishop of hell short stories by marjorie bowen and i plucked it out of the shelf one day as a kid read the title story was greatly impressed but the book back and

decades later i was asked by a friend of mine a writer named s t josh she has a renowned figure in gothic literature is there a subject that i could write about for one of his magazine said maybe is not so well known and so yes over the years i've written james and berries ghost stories ever done jack finney the fantasy writer peter straub and then i thought you know that little book by marjorie bowen i was pretty cool but what do i need to know about this woman and so that impetus to write this essay ended up catapulting me into well here i am with you talking about a book this obsession about what you know i love that i used to tell my students that all the time don't write about things you know write about something you don't know let the process of writing be your voyage of discovery when she discovered then you can backtrack and maybe get more of an overview but let that search b exciting and you're always learning stuff and so as i delved into marjory

ebola it it's almost like my jaw kept dropping holy smoke that little story the bishop of help that was nothing compared to what i was about to find the novels the essays are commentaries on the on the orthodox church commentaries on feminism you can tell me this why are so many important women in our culture past and present kind of deny that they're feminists and yet they are in practice if not in subscription to a philosophy and that was marjorie by one she was out there doing things as a woman and so at any rate i learned so much from reading her books that marjorie both books about history for example the historical novels oh my goodness i ask your listeners have never heard of william of orange when the third king of england i had barely heard of this guy i quickly found out that she loves this character she writes about him and book after book novel after

novel and darn if i don't think she was on to something so i just plunge ahead into all of these books thrilled by the uncanny stories of excited by the revelations of history and always i pull back and say she was not a professional historian she was not alerted educated woman she did it on her own how did she come to be invited into several major historical societies and burned the acclaim of riders like mr waggoner wants it mark twain and graham greene had a love fest you think nate marjorie bowen is just someone that john tibbets is interested and she attracted their the praise of nature writers of her time well i reproduced and the fear is of marjorie bowen a number of letters that i found in the yale archives letters from graham greene letters from mark twain rebecca west

sir arthur conan doyle oh i'm glad you mentioned the of the graham greene because in nineteen oh six when sheen is not yet out of her teens she publishes a historical novel called the viper of milan still one of her best known books and graham greene read this when he was a teenager and said this book's set me on my course as a writer it also taught me that evil walks among us up and the letter from our mark twain he cobbles readers a mash note i'm going to be in london you must come and see me here for a pulse and that's all accounts marjorie bonus a very attractive young lady and so it goes so yeah it's a wonderful was five the accolades of people and in this book i'm working on now hold them archery bow and reader i'm including a section called appreciation and which i regret some of

these articles by the people i just mentioned john i want to introduce our listeners to the work of marjorie bowing in her own words and then have you read one of her sordid stories if you could turn to that accident murchison was amazed at the speed with which he escaped the flaming car across the common for he can now see the red place on the lonely road in the distance they were fools to coral he and are grave and send the curse of vehicle over like that he had not ceased running since he had felt the first shock of the released fire from the wreckage he wondered why they had argued the frightened serious marriage but he certainly knew that he load that the bar grave the landscape was awfully dim like the dimness of an eclipse murchison still fleeing suddenly sob are grave in front of you also hurry at attenuated gray wisp of a bar grave blown

thin by the forward breeze murchison yelled and tried so you were killed you silly fools do you think that your allotted jeered the ghost mr grave then murchison new that he also have nobody and that the red flames were not the blaze of the burning car but the light of their future destination but marjorie valley as one of the one of the story that john tibbets writes about in the theories of marjorie bowen that story it's so short and it's so haunting yeah i call that kind of story they've become to cruel it's a time honored well maybe a rather dubious a part of literary genres if you think about any episodes from alfred hitchcock presents on tv stories of roald dahl john collier people like that's saki you know that these

stories are very sardonic kind of dark glimpses of the human behavior with that sharp twist at the end that brings you up up right the county cruel was a specialty of marjorie born when you're lucky enough to find the collections of short stories you find that many of them whether they are super naturally inspired or not or just simply cynical looks at marriage and relationships you realize that this is a person and the tradition of an o henry deliver the goods and then bring you upright with a snap at the end great fun to read a devilishly hard to pull off a writer writing reminds me a little bit of edgar allan poe yeah i think so because theirs up and essentially mordant turn in the psyche of their bombed and she certainly was a student of all things gothic but term oddly however

i find no references by her to her sisters in the female guards namely the daphne du my ace at the elizabeth bowen not to be can do this with marjorie bow and they were contemporaries surely they knew of each other but theres no references to them in her book semifinal references to her in their books that to me is one of the great mysteries yet to be solved what was her place among her contemporaries now the critics but among the other women who were writing in the kind of thing that she was writing at that time i'm visiting with john tibbets he's the author of the theories of marjorie bowen and i'm hoping this conversation has waited your interest in reading some work of marjorie bowens yourself before we count on is there anything of hers that you would like to highlight may be something in her own words jo baker case is a great opportunity to read one of my favorite passages from her she wrote a little play called home

wash to the unknown i've never seen this play anywhere else it shows up in the collection ever stories called back to tell it's a self contained little play and in it the main character who has a kind of a character out of the harlequin eight steps forth and addresses the audience with these words by m fantasy daydreaming and the unattainable i'd back and just round the corner where no one has been yet i reside in those violent horizons which no man has reached i am all you missed in the past and will engage you in the future i am all that is incredible if pursued all that is never credited yet longed for those who do not know me are no better than blind worms but those who do know me are always tormented by unsatisfied desires wow i have a lump of were both wars in the song the words of marjorie

bella thank you for sharing that take that and by the way do your listeners have any clue how rare it is for somebody to be on the air giving writers send other people in the arts especially a chance to talk at length about their work kate you've been doing this for years you're my ideal because in my own way here kplu and elsewhere i tried to before the same kind of time and support consideration to people in the arts it's a tough go so what you do on your interview programs is really quite amazing and ice and so glad to have benefited from the chances to talk with you how many times now many many many many times we keep coming back even though it sounds thank you so much you can see this on the radio but i am blushing pink if the icon janet is always great of its olivia thank uk vote was a pleasure for me too