02/20/07
It turns out that Neil Gaiman is a Cabell fan. From his site:
Cabell's far and away my favourite forgotten American writer — he wrote about 25 books, most of them very different from each other. The only ones to have remained more or less in print over the last forty years are the fantasies Figures of Earth, Jurgen and the Silver Stallion. I think my favourites of his books are probably the short story collections Gallantry (I decided upon reading it, aged 20, that one I day I would one day, when I was a writer, steal the structure of Gallantry; then I read it again some years on and realised that the structure I'd imagined I'd perceived might have been to some degree accidental, but I was still going to steal it one day, even if it had been only in my imagination. One day...) and The Certain Hour — if ever I were to edit a book of favourite horror tales, or favourite tales of faerie, I'd put the short story from Certain Hour about Herrick in it.
As I never tire of saying, my favorite short fiction by Cabell is The Music From Behind the Moon,
which I believe Cabell himself referred to as an epitome.
I will now turn away from the computer and haul out my volume of The Certain Hour.