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    The Glass Cage
    The Glass Cage
    The Glass Cage
    Ebook326 pages6 hours

    The Glass Cage

    By Colin Wilson

    3.5/5

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    A series of brutal and bizarre murders has London on edge. Near the dismembered corpse of each victim, the killer has scrawled cryptic quotations from the eighteenth-century mystic poet William Blake. Baffled, the police enlist the aid of Damon Reade, a brilliant but reclusive Blake scholar, who reluctantly agrees to help. Reade’s combination of instinctive deduction and psychic penetration leads him to Gaylord Sundheim, who may be the murderer. But when Reade befriends Sundheim and becomes convinced he is incapable of having committed the crimes, is he right and Sundheim innocent? Or is Reade falling into a clever psychopath’s deadly trap that could make him the next victim? 

    Colin Wilson (1930-2013) called The Glass Cage (1966) “perhaps my own favourite among my novels”. Both a page-turning serial killer mystery and an exploration of Wilson’s philosophy, The Glass Cage was praised by critics on its original appearance and remains just as gripping and compulsively readable today. This edition, the first since 1978, includes a new introduction by Geoff Ward.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherValancourt Books
    Release dateNov 30, 2018
    ISBN9781941147290
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      Book preview

      The Glass Cage - Colin Wilson

      THE GLASS CAGE

      by

      COLIN WILSON

      with a new introduction by

      GEOFF WARD

      VALANCOURT BOOKS

      The Glass Cage by Colin Wilson

      First published London: Arthur Barker, 1966

      First Valancourt Books edition 2014

      Reprinted from the 1st U.S. edition (New York: Random House, 1967)

      Copyright © 1966 by Colin Wilson, renewed 1994

      Introduction © 2014 by Geoff Ward

      Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

      Publisher & Editor: James D. Jenkins

      20th Century Series Editor: Simon Stern, University of Toronto

      http://www.valancourtbooks.com

      All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

      Cover by M. S. Corley/mscorley.com

      INTRODUCTION

      Colin Wilson’s early autobiography, Voyage to a Beginning, completed in 1967, includes a section that might well have served as his own introduction to a new edition of The Glass Cage. Wilson says that writing the novel, two years before, marked a considerable change in his outlook.

      Moreover, in an unpublished introduction to Order of Assassins: The Psychology of Murder (1972)—kindly drawn to my attention by Wilson’s bibliographer Colin Stanley—Wilson refers to The Glass Cage as perhaps my own favourite among my novels (up to that time, of course). He also reveals how the writing of it was influenced by the cases of the Cleveland, Ohio serial killings of 1935-38, in which twelve victims were dismembered, and the Thames nude murders of eight prostitutes between 1959-65.

      The crucial change in Wilson’s thinking which The Glass Cage reflects is explained in his Introduction to the New Existentialism, published in the same year (1966) as The Glass Cage, and the seventh and final volume of his Outsider Cycle which began with The Outsider in 1956 (the ever-prolific Wilson had two other books out in 1966 as well: Chords and Discords: Purely Personal Opinions on Music and Sex and the Intelligent Teenager).

      Introduction to the New Existentialism summarised the essence of the previous titles in the Outsider Cycle and, to Wilson, represented a turning point in western philosophy, indicating an optimistic path away from the negative attitudes of logical positivism and the pessimistic old existentialism of Sartre and others, in which Wilson saw radical errors.

      With references extending over three and a half pages in Voyage, Wilson reveals that, for The Glass Cage, he deliberately constructed a plot that paralleled his first novel, Ritual in the Dark, but replaced its protagonist Gerard Sorme with a hermetic Blakean mystic, Damon Reade.

      Later, in The Craft of the Novel (1975), Wilson stated he was led to rework the basic themes of Ritual in the Dark in an attempt to create a clearer contrast between the psychology of the criminal and the mystic (Wilson, 1990, 236). He wanted to confront the two extremes: the mystic and the criminal: the man whose sense of the goodness and worthwhileness of life is constant and fully conscious, and the man whose self-pity and lack of self-belief have driven him to expressing his vitality in the most negative way he can find (unpublished introduction to Order of Assassins). Wilson felt this made The Glass Cage a more interesting book than Ritual in the Dark.

      So here we have the context for The Glass Cage, obviously pivotal in the Wilson oeuvre.

      Ritual was about meaning and the search for meaning, about the paradox that man’s greatest driving force is the need for freedom, although he doesn’t know what to do with it once he has it (Wilson, 1969, 158-161): "Sorme is obsessed by the feeling that there is meaning in human existence, and that it is accessible to the mind—if only the mind knew the right way to go about finding it" (Wilson’s italics).

      But Wilson realised Sorme had made a fundamental error of logic in thinking his strictly rational and empirical attitude towards experience was the only one possible for an honest thinker. For it rested upon certain unstated assumptions, the most important being that of life’s continuity, this forward drive being based on "a kind of intuitive certainty (Wilson’s italics). Our sense of the continuity of our lives, going beyond the possibility that we might get run over by a bus tomorrow, or die eventually of old age, is not an illusion, says Wilson, but the result of the operation of something like a mental radar".

      And in the character of the William Blake scholar Damon Reade, Wilson says he wanted to show a man who has developed his radar by concentrating on what he considers to be the underlying reality of experience, and working on the assumption that the universe meant well by him: Reade knows intuitively that the human will is something deeper than personal self-assertion or calculated effort. It is the invisible part of our total being . . . and is inaccessible to ordinary conscious demands.

      Reade is drawn into the investigation of a series of savage killings in London after the police consult him on quotations left at the murder scenes from Blake’s prophetic books—Wilson took the American Blake scholar Samuel Foster Damon as an inspiration—returning the reader to the familiar Wilsonian device that fuses novelistic discourse with intellectual adventure. Reade travels to London not merely because the Blake aspect of the crimes intrigues him—how, existentially, could someone who knows Blake be a ruthless killer?—but because he feels he needs to find out how far he himself is separated from society.

      The New York Random House 1967 edition of The Glass Cage came with the sub-title An Unconventional Detective Story: an alternative could be A Metaphysical Murder Mystery. One could not justifiably describe the novel, Wilson’s sixth, as a thriller, although there are elements of suspense, because the tension lies not in its action but in the working out of its compelling new existentialist ideas against the expectations of the status quo. As Nicolas Tredell says, Reade’s is not a criminal quest, but a (new) existential one (Tredell, 93). Gillian Mary Hanson describes it as a journey of discovery with Dantesque aspects of a trip through hell (Hanson, 91).

      In those Voyage pages, Wilson goes on to say that one of the commonest meaning experiences comes through sex, and so sex makes a valuable starting point for the search for meaning, but no more than a starting point because of the futility of sex carried on as a kind of vocation.

      And as Howard Dossor emphasises, the key to Blake, like the key to The Glass Cage, is the human sex drive. The serial killer, Gaylord Sundheim—the surname translates as house of sin and is borrowed from a suspect in the Cleveland murders case—is a physically huge, bisexual Outsider whose desperate effort at self-fulfilment is finally frustrated by the inadequacy of his commitment to sex as a symbol of his innate power (Dossor, 267).

      To mention Sundheim at this point is not to allow a spoiler, for The Glass Cage is not a simple whodunit where the identity of the killer is the main question; here the main issue is Reade’s interaction with Sundheim. But although Reade appears to be the central character, Sundheim is the effective protagonist because it is his dilemma that conditions the text. As Reade realises, Sundheim does everything to excess—eating, drinking, sex—and violence is his escape from boredom and the fear of a meaningless existence.

      In his Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963), Wilson points out that Blake regarded sex as an important part of a man’s aesthetic and spiritual experience (Wilson, 1966, 89), and that repression and frustration are the source of all evil, man being unable to evolve while struggling with a split personality (156). This helps to explain why Wilson was attracted to a Blake theme.

      Prior to The Glass Cage, Wilson had referred to Blake at length in The Outsider—Blake’s philosophy began as Outsider-philosophy . . . (Wilson, 1963, 263)—as well as in Origins of the Sexual Impulse and Eagle and Earwig (1965). Ever since his early teens, Wilson had been deeply influenced by the spirit of Romanticism, including the works of Blake (1757-1827) and his challenge to conventional ways of thinking. The collected works of Blake was one of the volumes the 18-year-old Wilson had in his haversack when he set off hitchhiking around the north of England after being discharged from the RAF.

      Indeed, Wilson regarded Blake as an existential thinker (Wilson, 1965, 55). In the same essay, Existential Criticism (78), Wilson writes: "The mystical vision of Blake expresses the sense that no matter what obstacles might arise, man has the power to overcome them. This is the only ground for ultimate optimism" (Wilson’s italics).

      This leads us to consideration of the near-oxymoronic title, The Glass Cage. At first, it seems a curious misnomer—the phrase glass cage does not appear until the final 200 words of the book—because one thinks of a cage as made usually of metal or wood. When Sundheim first shows Reade the boa constrictor he keeps as a pet, its box is described as having three sides made of glass—thus one side, plus the top and the bottom, must be made of other material and, indeed, Sundheim unhooked a catch, and lowered one of the wooden walls to lift out the snake. So the cage is not made completely of glass in any event.

      Why should there be this apparent anomaly? Is Wilson simply being inexact? This is unlikely, given a writer of his intelligence.

      The snake is an extremely ancient symbol of wisdom, spirituality, rebirth and rejuvenation, overlaid by Christianity as a symbol of evil, and Wilson probably intends us to respond to both interpretations. At one point, Sundheim says he would like to be a snake, and Reade thinks Sundheim identifies with his pet in some way. Somewhat ironically, Sundheim’s snake is called Jerome, which means holy name.

      Metaphorically, a glass cage could be said to confine the realisation of human potential. One can see the potential clearly through the glass, as it were, but the cage is an obstacle, as in the quote from Wilson, above, about the mystical vision of Blake. Shattering the glass, which could be done if we were able to make the effort, would enable a rebirth of human consciousness to a higher level.

      The Sunday Times endorsement, on the back cover of my 1968 Pan paperback edition, got it right, saying that The Glass Cage is in part a caustic (but by no means pessimistic) comment on the abuse of human potential.

      Reade, in the discussion at Harley Fisher’s house about why a murderer would commit suicide, points out that:

      Man deliberately limits his consciousness . . . drugs and drink are one way of making us aware of the jungle outside ordinary consciousness. Murder is another. When people go insane, they are actually seeing deeper than most of us. Insanity isn’t based on delusion; it’s based on truth. And it happens when people accidentally destroy some of the wall that separates us from the jungle . . . the men who murder purely for self-gratification . . . miscalculate, like a diver who cuts his own air line because he wants more freedom.

      Mystics don’t commit suicide because "they aim at breaking down the wall . . . They’re like a well-equipped expedition setting out into the jungle. For the wall, perhaps read glass cage".

      Reade has at least cracked the glass. He knows that everything that happens is connected with everything else, so you have to try to get to the root of things to understand them, not just concentrate on minute particulars . . . With care and precision, he can detach his mind from the immediacy of the present and sink into mystical states, separated from his physical body and personality—as at the stone circle on his walk to Keswick—from which he returns revitalised.

      As to the novel’s settings, Wilson’s London is sketched minimally, almost indifferently—seedy lodgings, empty street market carts standing in the gutter, lamplight in a mews, the outline of cranes against the sky—reflecting Reade’s dislike of the capital. This, together with the (again minimalist) descriptions of bleak Thames-side locations where the dismembered bodies of the murder victims are found, creates an overall sense of kenoma, or cosmological emptiness, against which the central ideas of the novel are ranged.

      Even the otherwise romantic Lake District, in which the narrative begins, is made rainy and unwelcoming, while London stifles in summer heat. Wilson, in the unpublished introduction to his Order of Assassins, reveals that he took actual city scenes and details from Elliott O’Donnell’s Great Thames Mysteries (1929).

      Of course, Wilson is more interested in interiors, especially Reade’s thought processes, on which the narrative is focalised, though perhaps ninety-five per cent of the novel is dialogue, most of it polite and educated, even formal. Such cultured conversation presents the liberal and humanitarian idea that a murderer should be allowed to live in order to realise his or her redemptive capacity—capital punishment in Britain was abolished in 1965 just as Wilson was writing The Glass Cage.

      Hanson sees the River Thames as the controlling image of the novel (Hanson, 90). Reade, speaking of the killer before he encounters the sadistic Sundheim, says the water represents purity, washing himself free of guilt. Wilson, again in that unpublished introduction, reiterates that water is a symbol of purity: And a killer who is obsessed in some nostalgic corner of his being by purity is a self-divided man with suicidal tendencies.

      Incidentally, in an insight into his approach to writing, Wilson adds: I find myself working out such things in a novel with all the pleasure of a crossword-puzzle addict, and mixing my plots like a witch mixing a brew, working as continually as possible with facts.

      Why the dedication to the memory of John Cowper Powys? Significantly, Wilson wrote of Powys: More than any other novelist, Powys has mastered the secret of inducing wide-angle consciousness (Wilson, 1990, 164-165). Wilson might have thought that Powys, who died in 1963, would have identified with the character of Sundheim because of Powys’ own torments and admissions of sadism. Also, the literary critic George Steiner, writing in The New Yorker (May 2, 1988), sensed in Powys an immensity to which only Blake could provide any parallel in English literature and: Powys is, with Milton and with Blake, one of the foremost imaginers and narrators of the transcendent, of the ‘other’, in the language.

      In terms of Wilson’s own philosophy, perhaps an explanation for the dedication is summed up most succinctly by Morine Krissdóttir in her biography of Powys when she says the motif of self-generative, self-creative potency became one of the most illuminating themes in Powys’ great novels (Krissdóttir, 87).

      Interestingly, thinking of Sundheim’s demons, and Reade’s sexual encounters, Krissdóttir notes that Blake’s elementals nearly always had an erotic significance, connected with the awakening of male desire (284). Significantly, the reclusive Reade, in contrast to Sundheim’s excess, knows he will never feel any enthusiasm for the act of physical intercourse, but has sex with a teenaged black call-girl and not the virginal schoolgirl he plans to marry back in the Lake District (in a particularly striking allusion to Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Reade sees the girls as, respectively, furious gold and mild silver).

      Tredell describes The Glass Cage as a calm, formal demonstration, but at the same time a skilful novel of mysticism (Tredell, 92). Things go well for Reade because of his intuitive awareness of an underlying order to the universe with which humans, if they develop their insight sufficiently, can make contact. In formulating such a scenario, Wilson, as in many other facets of his work, was far ahead of his time.

      Geoff Ward

      Beara, Ireland

      June 2, 2014

      Geoff Ward is a British journalist, author and musician. He runs the Colin Wilson World website, which he founded in 2004, and is the author of Spirals: The Pattern of Existence (2006, 2nd ed. 2013), which has an introduction by Colin Wilson. Geoff lives in the south-west of Ireland.

      References

      Dossor, Howard F. Colin Wilson: The Man and His Mind. Shaftesbury: Element Books,

      1990

      .

      Hanson, Gillian Mary. City and Shore: The Function of Setting in the British Mystery. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.,

      2004

      .

      Krissdóttir, Morine. Descents of Memory: The Life of John Cowper Powys. London: Duckworth,

      2007

      .

      Tredell, Nicolas. The Novels of Colin Wilson. London: Vision Press,

      1982

      .

      Wilson, Colin. The Outsider. London: Pan Books,

      1963

      .

      ——. Eagle and Earwig: Essays on Books and Writers. London: John Baker,

      1965

      .

      ——. Origins of the Sexual Impulse. London: Granada/Panther Books,

      1966

      .

      ——. Voyage to a Beginning: An Autobiography. London: C. & A. Woolf,

      1969

      .

      ——. The Craft of the Novel: The Evolution of the Novel and the Nature of Creativity. Bath: Ashgrove Press,

      1990

      .

      THE GLASS CAGE

      For

      Jonathan and Sue Guinness

      and to the memory of

      John Cowper Powys

      PART I

      It had been bright and clear as he left Keswick; but as he crossed the Styhead Pass two hours later, the air smelled of rain. Five miles away, the cold expanse of Wastwater looked like a sheet of metal. The rain clouds had covered the top of Scafell, but the snowline still showed below them. He sat down on a granite boulder, allowing the paratroop rucksack to rest against the slope of the hill behind it. The skin of his back exhaled warm moisture. He stretched his arms above his head and yawned, feeling the pleasant ripple of energy along the shoulder muscles. If it had not been for the threat of rain, he would have removed the rucksack and slept for half an hour, lulled by the sound of the wind and the cries of sheep on the side of Green Gable. In this place, looking north toward Skiddaw and south to the lowlands and the Irish sea, he always experienced an active sense of the benevolence of nature, a desire to become a rock pushing its shoulders into the hills.

      The first drops of rain blew against his face. He stood up reluctantly and readjusted the pack. It contained groceries and a heavy volume called A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, bought in Keswick for one and sixpence.

      A mile above Wasdale Head, he struck off the footpath over the slopes of Lingmell, his head now bowed into the fine rain. He crossed a stream, removing his shoes and socks and walking with care on the sharp stones. The water was icy; although it was only six inches deep in the middle, he felt the pain biting into the calves of his legs, making him swear aloud. Sitting on the opposite bank and pulling on his shoes, he became aware of someone watching him from a few feet away. A youth with a dark gypsy’s face was grinning at him; the smile was as mirthless as the baring of a dog’s fangs.

      Morning, Jeff.

      The youth said, Cold?

      Frozen. I must put the stones back sometime.

      There had been stepping stones across the stream, but it became a torrent every winter and carried them away.

      He stood up, asking, How’s the wife?

      She’s dead. Last night.

      Oh? I’m sorry.

      The youth shrugged. He evidently felt that no further explanation was necessary. Pointing to the stream, he said, Give me a call. I’ll help you.

      Thank you.

      As he walked on across the hill, the youth called, Someone after you.

      He turned. Where?

      In the post office an hour ago.

      Who was that?

      The youth shrugged and turned away, but when he was a hundred yards off, he called something else. Most of the words were carried away by the wind and the noise of the stream, but the last word sounded like policeman.

      Half a mile below his own cottage, a man’s voice called, Mr. Reade. It was Jeff’s father. He came out from behind the stone wall. There was nothing in the field beyond, so he must have been waiting. He said without preliminaries, Your goat ate our beans.

      I’m sorry. I tied her in the shed.

      The dark face was as loutish as his son’s, but more cunning. The left eye had a cast that gave his smile a disquieting air of malice. He stood there, grinning.

      Reade said finally, Where is she?

      Tied in my shed.

      Did she do much damage?

      Can’t tell yet. They’re all shoots. Few bobs’ worth I reckon.

      He felt in his pocket, took out a leather purse, and removed half a crown. He asked, Will that cover it?

      Reckon so. The hard hand closed over the money and pocketed it unceremoniously.

      Reade did not miss the glint of humor in the eyes. He said, I’m sorry to hear your daughter-in-law died.

      The man shrugged. Her own fault. She took ’em of her own free will. He turned away, then added over his shoulder, I’ll bring the goat over. Reckon she need milkin’.

      Thank you.

      The cottage felt cold. He poked out the ashes from under the logs and turned the charred sides upward. Then he poured paraffin on the logs and ignited it. The blaze was welcome. Afterward he went to look at the rope in the open shed outside. He half expected to find that it had been cut through, but the frayed ends showed that it had been gnawed. As he stood looking at it, he heard the goat’s bleat. Bowden came in through the gate, leading her by a length of electrical wire tied to her collar. Without speaking, he released her, waved his hand, and went out the gate again.

      Reade took her into the cottage to milk her; she stood quietly near the fire, the steam rising from her flanks, as he squeezed the milk into a basin. As he milked, she relieved her bowels onto the sheet of brown paper that he had spread behind her for that purpose. When he had finished, he set down the bowl on the table and carefully folded the paper, then took it out to the sanitary pit at the end of the garden. When he came back, the goat was sleeping on the coconut matting in front of the fire.

      For the next half hour he busied himself preparing vegetables for a beef stew that would last for a week. The meat had been cooked days before. Outside, the noise of the wind was audible above the sound of the stream that ran down the rock face twenty feet from the cottage. This meant that it would probably rain for the rest of the day. (In winter it would have meant a storm, probably hail or snow; but then it had to contend with the thunder of a waterfall from November until March.) He was so intent on slicing the carrots and onions that he failed to hear the knocks on the door. The wind that sucked smoke across the room made him turn. The dark-coated man who stood in the doorway called, Anyone home? May I come in?

      Please do. He hastened across to close the door.

      Mr. Damon Reade?

      Yes. Do sit down. Take your coat off. Are you wet?

      Observing the man’s look of surprise as the goat heaved herself to her feet, he said, Come on, Judy, outside. We’ve got a visitor.

      The man said, I don’t mind.

      The goat went reluctantly outside, and then cantered through the rain to the open shed.

      No, but I’m afraid she stinks when she’s wet. I don’t notice it, but other people do. Do you mind if I go on making this stew? It’s nearly ready.

      Not at all. Please do, sir.

      I shan’t be long. I just want to get some water.

      He picked up a bucket and took the oilskin hat from beside the door as he went out. The rain was now heavy. He held the bucket under the waterfall, allowed it to fill to the brim, then carried it carefully back to the house without losing any water. The man watched this performance with interest.

      I suppose the water’s quite all right for drinking?

      Oh, perfectly. It sometimes gets a little muddy in winter, but it’s all right if you let it settle for half an hour. There’s nothing up there but rock.

      He gestured vaguely in the direction of Scafell Pike. The man watched him as he poured the chopped vegetables and meat into the iron cooking pot, then hung it on the iron spike that projected from the back of the fire.

      Reade said conversationally, "I could easily bring the water into the house if I wanted to. But it doesn’t seem worth the trouble—except sometimes in winter when it rains for a week on end. There is a pipe that carries water to the boiler in the bathroom . . . He threw another log on the fire, then sat down in the rocking chair. Would you like a cup of tea?"

      That’s a nice idea, sir.

      He leaned forward and moved the heavy black kettle across the stones

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