Volume 27, Number 17 · November 6, 1980
Fannikins's Cunnikin
By Clive James
Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
by Erica Jong
NAL Books, 505 pp., $12.95
Not long ago there was a popular novelist called Jeffrey Farnol, who is now entirely forgotten—which, when you think about it, is as long ago as you can get. Farnol wrote period novels in a narrative style full of e'ens, dosts, 'tises, and 'twases. Men wearing slashed doublets said things like 'Gadzooks!' in order to indicate that the action was taking place in days of yore. Farnol was manifestly shaky on the subject of when yore actually was, but he had a certain naive energy and his books were too short to bore you. His masterpiece The Jade of Destiny, starring a lethal swordsman called Dinwiddie, can still be consumed in a single evening by anyone who has nothing better to do.
Review, 1646 words
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