[Ballantine Adult Fantasy 34] • The Cream of The Jest

The lexicon of works produced by James Branch Cabell—works devoted to the loosely linked universe of which he was the creator and which span some twenty generations—possibly. For tying down James Branch Cabell’s universe is one of the happy pastimes of his devoted admirers and since his work abounds in allusion, allegory and anagram, their’s is a rich and never-ending game.

As the writing itself was, indeed, a game, a challenge rather, which Cabell met with all the considerable wit and talent at his command, to emerge, finally, as one of die giants of American letters. There is not, in fact, anyone on either side of the Atlantic who can touch Cabell when it comes to highly sophisticated, polished and elegantly bawdy comment on the human condition.