Flight from the Grave

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No Need for a Time Machine

Having just read the last few words of Robert J. Hogan\u2019s, Flight from the Grave in the quite
appropriate June issue of G-8 and his
Battle Aces on this hot June night, this reader is transposed to a night
sixty years ago, on an identical hot June night where from above I see myself
walking along the dim streets of Home,
a stack of pulps, purchased at Dick\u2019s Used Books, clutched in my arm as I make
my may in the streetlight and light of storefronts to my attic apartment on
Second Street where supreme pleasure is to be found in the pages awaits me; a
kind of Raskolnikov enclosure with
slanted ceilings, meager furnishing and the enchanted cot where the pages will
induce the reverie. Little did I know that Betsy would tell me that on the hour
of 12:00 midnight, the living die in sleep and the dead awaken. And so my dead
self, eyes filled with the plaster swirls in the ceiling becomes alive as in a
long ago.

In such a state one is left all alone, the only contacts the
cool, moist air, the hard street and the gradually diminished stage with utter
blackness above, where the stars are lost in a dim vapor. I walk by the Variety
Stores (now long gone) and stop at the front entrance, open the door to the
long stairwell, and trudge with muffled steps to the entrance to my room.
Beside my cot on a wooden box serving as a table are the pulps of other
evenings now providing a different succor, yet still cherished forever. I am
sixteen, finishing the last years of High School, where teachers provide
glimpses of a world I have never experienced so I have no memories to make
sense of what I study. Ahead lurks an abyss, where everything is different. I
have been told that the \u201cpulps\u201d are trash,; yet I crave them for their effects
on evenings such as these; effects, which might disappear forever, save on
Friday evenings such as these. From my single window I see the darkened
buildings and street of the neighborhood, in memory always recreated as from
above; then, to my cot and escape
from the repetitive world of other people into that special world created by
the mystique of Robert J. Hogan and few others out of the one thousand clustered in New York, the epicenter of the miraculous origin of the Pulps. Soon he and that world
will be gone as well, except to be recreated by the magic of the few remaining, disintegrating pulps.

The mind state so created gradually develops as the evening
progresses and the conscious mind withdraws; and from the shadows creeps the tangible, intensively personal world of the, ME. The pulps provided by Dick from his cellar storage are unique
\u2013 the \u201cfeel of the book\u201d, the enchantment of the indicia, smell of the pulp
paper, the ads and inducements for future issues, and the like, are to be found
nowhere else; they are the souvenirs to induce this special mental state of
enchantment. Indeed, no Time Machine is needed.

How effective on this night was the June 1. 1937 issue of, G-8 and His Battle Aces, especially
Hogan\u2019s, Flight from the Grave the
featured seventy-four page novel? (I doubt my English teachers would have
called it a novel.)

How successfully does Hogan execute this novel? Would it
compare well with what teachers considered Literature
in the sense of Jane Austen? Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Charles Dickens? Or even the
most exalted Shakespeare? Here is a summary obtained from a yellowed, pocket-sized
volume provided by Dick\u2019s Cellar Repository. According to Gerald E. SeBoyar,
professor of literature at New York University in his Outline of Literature published in 1929, the characteristics and
appeal of the "narrative" can be examined beginning with the earliest
of childhood experiences. They include: Entertainment from a Romantic or real
perspective, vivid presentation of the actions of interesting people, an
extensive view of life informing of the conditions of life in former times,
views of places we may never visit, valuable friends who are more real than
those we actually live with, emotional appeal, with sufficient imaginative
identification with the principal characters and to live vicariously through them;
and finally, the readers finds incorporated the ideas of that time by which
that reconstruction can be achieved. SeBoyar's outline from 1929 might well
summarize the attitudes of education of the thirties and forties when pulp
magazines flourished.

One limitation of such a standard is that of necessity an
author presents one or limited number worldviews; and thus, the world is made
smaller. Without such a restriction the world appears limitless. Here in my
garret I am free of all restrictions.

Hogan, writing in the late 1930\u2019s describes fictional events
of the First World War, principally from the view of the Air Forces of the
countries involved.

The letter columns in issues of G-8 and his Battle Aces contain
notes, some complimentary and other less so from young readers; the
critical comments complain the action is too farfetched. Each writer is supposed to form a Squadron of five
members purchasing his own copy each month (a clever circulation increasing
device?). Is this requirement and other actions in the stories too farfetched?

According to G-8 and his fellow fliers Nippy and Bull the
War has turned dull \u2013 skilled German fliers have all been killed and the
remaining exhibit few or no challenging skills. G-8 and his pals expect an
eminent armistice called for by the Germans in their exhaustion. Have they
forgotten the resilience of German Science and National Character \u2013 or the more
mysterious German Rage?

Out of the night sky, large numbers of German bombers appear
over the Front, bombing everything in sight including large districts of Paris.
G-8 envisions the French might call for surrender. The oddest part of the
scenario is that the pilots of the bombers are all rotting cadavers on which
fire and bullets have little effect. So, G-8 launches an investigation bringing
him into contact with the German territories where the conjuring is going on.

He finds that a Voodoo Priest has been imported from Haiti
to revive corpses of German aces as Zombies so that the war effort can
continue; a curious case of a Secret Weapon? Is this too farfetched?
Considering what occurred in the following War, one might stop to think.

Before you decide read carefully pages 37-68 at least
several times where Hogan employs the quintessential terse wording of the pulps
to create G-8\u2019s exploits among the German population \u2013 captivating scenes among
memorable people and places, burned into the memory by G-8\u2019s merciless
treatment of adversaries \u2013 where, for example he presses a pistol to the skull
of a cooperating German lieutenant and with a single shot kills him. His excuse? \u201cHe would have killed me.\u201d

Where did Hogan get the inspiration for the zombie scenario?
On page 15 of the story, Bull tells of a cousin who wrote a book including the
story of a man who revived zombies from a graveyard to work by night in his
sugar cane mill. In fact, it seems more likely Hogan took inspiration from the
1932 film, WHITE ZOMBIE, where Bela
Lugosi portrays a Voodoo mystic involved n the same activity. The film today is
considered a \u201cminor classic.\u201d One must not forget the Germanic novel, Frankenstein in
which scientific attempts are made to revive dead bodies. The author, Mary
Shelly may have been inspired by Humphrey Davy and his philosophy that God had
left the world incomplete for man to finish. Given the modern advances in
biochemistry, are any similar experiments going on secretly in university labs
today? Voodoo is simply a metaphor for all revival experiments.

As I lie here on my cot, the hour now 12:30, I wonder if
these arguments would go over well in an English class? From prior experience,
the answer is almost certainly, \u201cNo!\u201d

Do not bring an admired art into the abomination of a
classroom \u2013 especially in the case of a revered novel. The cold, hard outlines
of the physical structure will accomplish nothing more than smothering refined,
personal admiration where yawning students and formulated academics take on the
role of poor actors repeating opinions garnered from other academics often wide
of the author\u2019s intentions as experienced by the novice. And here their
substitutes are intended to elevate themselves propped up by illusions any
other persons with originality would not discover based on personal experience.

According to the Bayesian Probability Construct humans
learn by the accumulation of \u201cpriors\u201d (previous experiences) stored
subconsciously within the brain to be called upon in the calculation of the
probabilities of outcomes in situation calling for resolution. What such priors
are, and the procedures by which probabilities are calculated evade the purview
in ordinary academic situations simply because teachers are unaware of them.
These logical procedures have been genetically implanted by eons of evolution
and are not amenable to alteration. Conscious experience is manufactured from
the priors and the \u201cinstinctive\u201d functions of the human brain in a series of
\u201cnow moments\u201d each lasting two to three seconds and are anything but orderly
and predictable, giving rise to new conceptions and thus, \u201ccreativity.\u201d Such
experiences result from global changes in brain areas rather than synaptic
alterations within single neurons.

So, in Flight from the
Grave, by Robert J. Hogan all comes out well in the end, \u201conly Germans are
killed.\u201d G-8 and his buddies make it
home. Perhaps the little \u201cfarfetched\u201d friends of G-8 were wrong. The story
works its magic outside the procedures of usual secondary English education.
When the pulp novels were written almost 100 years ago millions read them, and
they still do - maybe, not in the millions, but our friends at Adventure House
are still making delightful facsimile editions for new readers seeking the
benefits of personal, imaginative thought, that their English teachers would
not approve of.

As is the case of many successful pulp writers (including
E.R. Burroughs, and Lester Dent, among other examples) Hogen worked a variety of
jobs in his life yielding authenticity to his writing; including, work on
ranches, in music, design and building of houses and leather goods, sports of
football and boxing, flight training, plane design and sales, knew individuals
who had exploits in Europe during the War who inspired him with tales and the
essences of characters, trained in secondary and several university educational
institutions, before entering the business of pulp writing in a variety of
subject matters. Needless to say, Hogan was imaginative and that faculty had an
abundance of experience his fancy could call upon for creating appealing
characters and situations in his writing.

As I lay here in my garret apartment these ideas floating
above my head the issue of G-8 and his
Battle Aces resting on my chest, I realize I have been talking to myself in
preparation for the rare treat of reading some \u201cfarfetched literature\u201d
providing substitute life experiences. A good thing to say the least! What will
be the fate of my buddies in future pulps dredged from the cellar of Dick\u2019s
Used Books to be carried home furtively through the darkness of the empty
streets? Then, which swirls in the ceiling plaster will be decoded that night?

G-8 and his pals are something unique among the pulps. Unique
things have the insurmountable property of evading averages and common features
do not apply to them. Unique. No need of a Time Machine. Sorry, Bertie.

\u201cYour Old buddy,

Whizbang!!\u201d

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