Camel Ride to the Tomb by X Trapnel
 |
| Wu Zuoren Camels in the Desert Thanks to toperfect.com |
Author: X (Francis Xavier) Trapnel
Publisher: Quiggin and Craggs 1947
Source book: Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell (A Dance to the Music of Time #10)
According to Wikipedia, X Trapnel was based on Julian MacLaren-Ross. He was a British author I had never heard of until I started writing about X Trapnel. And what kind of name is X Trapnel I’d like to know?
Anyhow, I read that Camel Ride to the Tomb was Trapnel’s great success. It is famously said that the novel encapsulates the author’s central metaphor for life. He derived this trope from a street cry he heard as an impressionable child, that of a Bedouin camel driver advertising available transport. “Camel ride to the tomb!… Camel ride to the tomb!”
 |
| Thanks to the Grolier Club |
Also by X Trapnel, Deaths Head Swordsman,
Bin Ends, possibly about the wine trade?, no probably no.
and Dogs Have No Uncles. I dispute this. Dogs may not be aware that they have uncles, but I expect that it’s a rare litter of pups that doesn’t include both dogs and bitches.
As so often, two different sources give different fictional books, so let’s hope this information is correct.
I gather Books Do Furnish a Room also features Moss Off a Rolling Stone by an unknown author. Also A Stockbroker in Sandals and Slow on the Feather. And apparently Purged Not in Lethe.
And at the end of the book I read that Pamela Widmerpool scatters the manuscript of Trapnel’s new novel Profiles in String, into the Regents Park Canal. Perhaps somebody fishes the pages out of the canal and it is published in the end.
And here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Anthony Powell.
 |
| Wu Zuoren Camels 1960 Also thanks to toperfect.com |
Comments