The Cream of the Jest

Felix Kennaston, a mild suburban novelist, comes into possession of half a broken talisman, and when he holds it at night he slips into dreams where he becomes Horvendile, pursuing an ideal woman named Ettarre across the ages and through his own unfinished books. Cabell braids Kennaston’s dull daylight marriage together with these radiant nocturnal adventures until the reader can no longer tell which life the man truly lives. It is a book about the imagination as escape, and about the small, deflating joke waiting at the bottom of every grand romance. Often ranked among Cabell’s finest and most personal works, it appears here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.