Hey, I read a book! Whoa! It's a
gothic novel, or novel-like thing. Really, it consists of a series
of stories. Our frame narrative consists of young Melmoth--not the
Melmoth of the title; a descendent of the line--being told stories
that in some way involve the big Melmoth, a damned soul trying to
seduce others into Hell. The first story is about a guy named
Stanton who gets unjustly condemned to an insane asylum; then, he
hears from a Spaniard named Monçada whom he'd saved from a
shipwreck, and that takes up the rest of the book. Monçada tells a
LONG story about how he was made to be a monk and confined to a
monastery against his will; after escaping, he takes refuge with some
Jews who are pretending to have converted to avoid the inquisition,
and one of them shows him a manuscript containing another story,
about a woman named Immalee who grows up alone on an island off India
in a total state of nature, and is visited by Melmoth who tries to
corrupt her; eventually, it transpires that she's part of a Spanish
family, and had been lost there during a voyage, and is taken back to
Spain where Melmoth continues to do his best. Over the course of
this, we also hear two MORE stories, recited to her father: one where
a family whose understanding was that they'd inherit a lot of money
and have been living comfortably only to be reduced to grinding
poverty, and one about a woman from English nobility whose would-be
fiancée no longer wants to marry her, making her sad.
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I mean, granted, that's because the joke is how everyone hates Mallard Fillmore, but take what you can get. He should change the strip's concept so it's about nothing but people recoiling in horror at his lead character. Wait...does this strip even have a concept? Well, if it did, this would be a good one.
