Horror: The 100 Best Books by Kim Newman, Stephen Jones Page A

literature better calculated to drive a Catholic Anti-Defamation League into paroxysms of denunciation. To return such a book to print is obviously asking for trouble. And that's a pity, because despite its glorious excesses (or in addition to them) The Wandering Jew represents a considerable literary achievement, especially for the way that Sue is able to weave his many characters into a plot of monolithic unity. To wit: seven descendants of one Marius de Rennespont stand to inherit that gentleman's fortune, which has mounted at 5% interest over 150 years to a sum of 212,175,000 francs (or 8,487,000 pounds sterling). These seven, whom the Jesuits are determined to despoil of this fortune, represent a cross-section of all that is sexy, virtuous, and left-wing: Blanche and Rose Simon, twin daughters of one of Napoleon's marshals, lately escaped from Siberia; a utopian-minded industrialist; the dashing Prince Djalma; an 18-year-old heiress of exquisite refinement; a debauched but good-hearted workman called Couche-tout-Nud; and the saintly young priest Gabriel, whom the Jesuits have tricked into making over his share of the fortune as a deed of gift. For the first half of the novel the bad guys conspire to see that only Gabriel will be present at the reading of the will, thus becoming sole legatee. Just as their scheme seems to have succeeded, the female counterpart of the Wandering Jew of the title appears as dea ex machina to uncover a hidden codicil that sets the plot in motion for another 600+ pages. I am sworn not to reveal how it all ends, but take my word, the final tableau is a lulu, and anything but vivante . For some readers that synopsis may suggest that the book is no more than a classic of camp humour, and indeed there are chapters when the extravagance of the plot can be discombobulating, especially if they have been bullied by the schoolmarms of Serious Literature into believing that grand gestures and bold colours are necessarily in bad taste. However, anyone who can enjoy Griffith's Birth of a Nation or a well-sung Il Trovatore should have no trouble achieving total immersion in Sue's story, while readers on friendly terms with Dickens and Balzac will feel a kindred sympathy for Sue. More to the point, perhaps, in terms of resurrecting this book from the limbo of used book stores, readers of such current melodramatists as Stephen King or Anne Rice ought to be highly receptive to Sue's grand excesses (especially if his novel were to appear in a slightly condensed version). With just a bit of spit-and-polish the old warhorse could be a best-seller all over again. -- THOMAS M. DISCH
    15: [1857] HERMAN MELVILLE - The Confidence Man: His Masquerade

    The Mississippi steamer Fid departs from St. Louis for New Orleans, bearing a wide cross-section of mid-19th-century American society. Among the passengers is an individual who appears and reappears in a variety of disguises -- a crippled black, a charity fund-raiser, a stock speculator, an employment agent, a bogus philosopher -- and rooks the venal and gullible of much more than their money. Neither a piece of Mark Twain-style Americana nor a simple tale of a cunning criminal, The Confidence Man is a masterpiece of misanthropy, in which Melville takes swipes at a wide variety of Americans, including figures like Emerson, Thoreau and Fenimore Cooper. The Confidence Man himself is a diabolic, perhaps supernatural, being whose methods of disguise are never rationally explained: his modus operandi has been reworked in novels as different as Grant Allen's An African Millionaire (1898) and Steve Gallagher's Valley of Lights (1987). The poor reception of the book convinced the 38-year-old Melville to give up writing and devote the rest of his working life to a solid job as a customs inspector. Many of his works, most famously Moby Dick (1851), contain horrific, bizarre or semi-supernatural incidents; his relatively few overt tales of horror -- which touch upon vampirism,