Gloomy Seahorse Press (2014)
RHYSOP’S FABLES
Unhelpful and irresponsible fables for the modern age
THIS REAL-TIME REVIEW (CONTINUED FROM HERE) WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE COMMENT STREAM BELOW AS AND WHEN I READ EACH FABLE:-
Gloomy Seahorse Press (2014)
RHYSOP’S FABLES
Unhelpful and irresponsible fables for the modern age
THIS REAL-TIME REVIEW (CONTINUED FROM HERE) WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE COMMENT STREAM BELOW AS AND WHEN I READ EACH FABLE:-
Last Balcony: Essex Serpents and Pier’s Echo 
THE TWEED JACKET
I am bemused that a tweed jacket would even be eligible for a competition as a ‘best-dressed entity’. That would entail such a tweed jacket getting dressed in another tweed-jacket? Or cross-dressing with a skirt and blouse?
RECURSION
Recursion is similar to using one thing to neutralise the same thing, a phenomenon that I earlier called in this review the Ocarina Syndrome.
THE LIBRARIAN
A very clever fable because it made me realise that if two people are standing together on a sphere they are also standing the distance of the circumference of that sphere apart, however huge that distance is, even if it is as much as a googol miles.
Sometimes I fear that – like the author describing these fables as irresponsible and unhelpful – my review is also irresponsible and unhelpful!
TRUNKS
Hilariously corny, especially if you know what a trunk call actually is, as I do.
But I did learn a new word: sessile. Thanks.
SILLY GOOSE
Have a butchers, have a gander,
The asteroid is on a lander.
THE ROCK POOL
“There was a rock pool that fell in love with a wave.”
…is the first line of this witty fable and if one were wanting to satirise these Rhysop fables with just one line, one might well have invented that one!
THE WINDMILL
Sessile turns up again in a mercenary fable that is a sort of Ten Commandments version of Camberwick Green.
THE ICE HARLOT
“He had made the wrong career choice when he was younger and that’s why he was an explorer instead of something else.”
A fictioneer is an explorer of sorts. I certainly made the wrong career choice in fictioneering and, judging by this fable alone and its made up word of ‘frostytute’, so did this fabulist!
TWO CHIVES
You need to be a Frankie Goes To Hollywood fan to appreciate this fable.
THE FABLE WITH A MORAL LONGER THAN ITS TEXT
And this review is shorter than the title!
GET YOUR INSULTS RIGHT!
I can’t believe anyone would want to write this and, if they did, why!
LUMP IN THE THROAT
It’s never too late to be ill.
“I’m assuming that’s what the moral is; I might be wrong.”
I love the way your reviews of each fable have become new/alternative morals for those fables!
Every fable needs at least one reader as a role moral.
METROPOLIS
Do robots really have gender? Women robots, although better drivers generally than the male robot in this fable, should still beware glass ceilings.
THE TARNISHED RULE
A feeble fable, I’m afraid. The feeblest so far, possibly.
LOOKING UP
Dictionaries are often red – with embarrassment at the things some people look up in them.
SHORT BREAK
“I was referring to the fable. It’s the worst one so far!”
Anything with a mention of Lawrence Durrell is OK by me, even if it is a derogatory mention. Any publicity for one of my favourite authors is good publicity.
THE FOUNTAIN PEN
The danger of being taken literally is a danger that features in much of Rhys Hughes’ work. This is akin to his child-like insistence to get to the bottom of things that I mentioned earlier, like being asked for your address and when using your best pen from the pencil case to write the address out you do not stop at ‘the world’ or even ‘the universe’…which I suppose is getting to the top of things as well as the bottom.
THE STONE DOG
Cupboard love is the only love there is.
APPEARANCE OF THE REALM
The witty moral happily makes up for the body of this fable, a fable that, like some other fables in this book, wildly cavorts with its characters and ideas but also sadly gives at least the appearance that the author has no unifying thread – behind those wild cavortings – of an underpinning sense at least running in his own head (even if he does have that necessary underpinning thread of sense in his head).
TOO MANY CHARACTERS
A remarkable diverse list of characters that has the perfectly minimum number of them to be classed as too many.
A QUICK DRINK
I’ve spent most of today sending my mind into a perpetual buzz of Rhyshughesiana by reading and reviewing his mind-blowing JOURNEYS BEYOND ADVICE collection. So this particularly feeble fable suffers even more by comparison.
THE HASHISH PIPE
There’s a picture of this pipe just before the moral. ¶
And every other moral in the book.
TWO BUDDHISTS
Never follow the moral of a fable that claims it is based on a true story.
THE IMPROBABLE VELOCIPEDE
Hilarious! Could easily be my favourite fable yet.
A TOWN NAMED DÉJÀ
I think I have read a fable about apricot jam on someone’s nose earlier in this book!
Moral: A book of separate fables may be a novel in disguise.
THE SEA SERPENT AND THE ROWING BOAT
Probably the most oblique fable so far, and none the worse for that.
THE APPRENTICE
A fable about Alan Sugar.
THE ITCHY PLANET
The Bill Haley jokes at the end of this planetary affair had me laughing out loud.
COLD TEDDY
Layers of puns within a trademark RhysHughesian child-like logical bottoming-out of a paradox…
This review will soon continue in the comment stream HERE