| Synopsis: |
The Black Boxer Tales, first published in 1932, H. E. Bates's third collection displays a growing emphasis on plot and characterisation, while amply displaying his established skill at creating plotless atmospheric pieces. Several stories explore a sense of a new and changing world of carnivals, economic challenges and traveling performers.The title story, `The Black Boxer' is an intricate portrait of an aging boxer told against the backdrop of the colourful social lives of carnival workers. Having beaten a fighter twenty years his junior with a foul cut below the belt, he is left `tired and stupefied and ashamed' in Bates's sensitive exploration of the human condition. Bates condsidered this tale, along with `Charlotte Esmond', also in this collection, as accomplishing his difficult transition from a focus on mood to a focus on character, thereby projecting him `into a new world' which he is clearly relishing and mastering. The rest of the collection is a thoughtful contrast portraying the landscape and people familiar from his previous Midlands tales, with themes of children and youth in `A Flower Piece' and `Death in Spring', farmland settings in `The Mower' and `Sheep', and looking at innocent and not-so-innocent flirtations in `A Threshing Day for Esther' and `Love Story' respectively.Additionally, as a bonus story never before featured in any collection, `The Laugh' (1926) is one of Bates's early comic tales set in his trademark rural locale with charming dialect and witty, sensitive prose. The story follows a young man, the pending visit of his rich aunt, and a sweetheart who tests his love. The Spectator calls him `a sensitive observer, with a quick eye for significant gesture, a tender imagination, and a sure way with words,' while the Times Literary Supplement comments on his `mastery of both matter and manner.' |