Among more than 137,000 pages of as yet unpublished writing is a complete children's book,
And Away the Toys I Shall Put. There are many references to his attempt at children's literature in his letters.
The Collected Letters of Lancaster Chumley, Vol. XVII contains some 370 rejection letters for the then unnamed book and a series of exchanges with friends in which Chumley laments the conservative attitude of publishers at the time. (Further references in his collection of essays,
Post-philosophical Inquiries Into the Nature of My Own Genius and in the third volume of his 27 volume (and counting!) autobiography,
Among These Days, My Life: Being an Hourly Account of My Existence)). The book has not yet been published except piecemeal in critical journals, but it is already highly anticipated in literary circles.
By any standard of the time, it is progressive, even avant-garde. In simple, yet beautiful language, it tells the story of a group of young children who decide to search out Santa Claus and forego their presents to help a dying child. Each of the children tells parts of the story in turn, though one, Archibald, is obviously the leader and a greater portion of the text is his voice.
Initial reactions to this work are varied. Any Chumleyite knows of Chumley's furious hatred of Santa Claus for both anti-capitalistic and religious reasons. (Chumley was a devout Catholic before his conversion to atheism, allegedly caused by drug use and meeting Allen Ginsberg, though both have denied rumors of a sexual relationship.) Many mistake his anti-Santa Claus attitudes for anti-children attitudes. This is understandable given his later writings on education and moral conduct in the home --see the essay "Philosophy of Child-rearing" for his thoughts on this subject (the short version: children should be raised in an "emotionally sterile" environment to further their intellectual and creative achievements)-- and the fact that he never had children despite his staggeringly numerous affairs. Because of this, some have chosen to view
Toys as a needlessly cruel exercise designed to shock, horrify, and disillusion children. But even a superficial reading disproves this, as the children are portrayed sympathetically and their emotional turmoil is entirely unironic.
Others have chosen to view the characters as stand-ins for Chumley and his contemporaries. The main character, Archibald, is certainly a Chumleyesque figure, prone to give philosophical monologues at the drop of a hat, but other characters share aspects of Chumley's personality also. Because of this, The New York Review of Books viewed
Toys as a psychological self-examination, Chumley deconstructing himself metaphorically through the transition from child to adult.
Yet another interpretation has been put forth that the work is existential in nature. Santa Claus is God and the children must confront their own nature when it is revealed that he does not exist. Chumley certainly met Sartre as a part of his work with the French Resistance, but he never identified himself as an Existentialist. This novel certainly could have had an influence on Beckett's most famous work,
Waiting for Godot.
What has yet to be addressed by any critic, are the erotic sections of the novel, of which little will be known until portions are published this summer in a literary journal. This will also be the first time anyone sees the accompanying illustrations, which consist of engravings of the first 47 positions of the Kama Sutra, displayed in a Neorealist style except for the fact that both of the lover's faces are Chumley's own. At that time, Chumley's likeness had never been published anywhere, so it is unknown if these pictures support the psychological self-examination view of this work, or if it is one of Chumley's many in-jokes to himself. At the least, these sections and illustrations will shed more light onto his relationship with Anais Nin.
Ah, Mr. Chumley. You remain an eternal devil and an eternal delight. New volumes of Chumley's work have produced an uproar in the New England literary scene since he opened his archives to publishers and simultaneously disappeared from the public eye on his 100th birthday in 1999. It is still unknown whether
And Away the Toys I Shall Put will be published in whole in the near future, but Chumley will continue to challenge our perceptions of himself and his work for decades to come.
