Since there’s more than enough heavy shit going on in the world just now, this edition of Bound Up With Books is just for fun. I’m reviewing Harry Stephen Keeler’s “The Riddle of the Traveling Skull.” I first heard about Keeler from Neil Gaiman’s blog, wherein he said it was “one of the greatest bad books in human history.” I, of course, was immediately intrigued and read through the Harry Keeler Society page, and a few others (this one being a favorite) and I knew I must read this book for myself someday. This conviction grew with every mention Neil made of Keeler (and he’s made quite a few) until it became something of an obsession. Luckily for my own sanity and the well being of those around me, a copy finally fell into my trembling and eager hands.

It was everything I had hoped for. It was bizarre, and silly, and full of tangents and digressions and red herrings. It certainly did read as though Harry came up with his plots as William Poundstone describes:

How did Keeler create such a volume of densely plotted fiction? According to Nevins, Keeler was an avid collector of newspaper clippings of bizarre events. When he started a story, he would grab a handful of clippings at random and try to figure some way of linking them all together. That sounds like something the Dadaists might have talked about doing, and maybe tried once. Who knew that in Chicago Harry Keeler was turning out novel after novel that way?

- William Poundstone, ‘Harry Stephen Keeler Home Page’

“The Riddle of the Traveling Skull” begins (aptly enough) with a skull, snugged inside in a traveler’s handbag and full of shredded paper carefully conserving a bullet. From there it involves a shady Chinaman, a candy factory, a 20 year old crime, a graveyard for circus freaks, a vaudeville entertainer turned butler, some fairly awful poetry, outrageous accents, as well as obscure medical procedures. In fact, I suspect that this particular book was written just for Chapter X, wherein a craniectomy is described, along with loving reminiscences of the Kronjedt Beveler used to make neat edges for the metal plate that covers the hole left by the craniectomy.

But that’s all right – like watching Vincent Price in B movies, you aren’t really in it for the plot. You’re in it to observe somebody having far, far too much fun doing something they love. And I confess I loved the writing style, which put me in mind of Dashiel Hammet by way of P. G. Wodehouse.

If you are in the mood for a book that has no redeeming qualities other than an “undisciplined urge for creative joy” (as the New York Times said of Keeler’s writing), then you really can’t do better than “The Riddle of the Traveling Skull“.