Harry Stephen Keeler


Harry Stephen Keeler was a prolific but little-known American fiction writer, who developed a cult following for his eccentric mysteries. He also wrote science fiction.

Biography

Early life

Keeler was born in Chicago on November 3, 1890. Sources published during Keeler's lifetime sometimes incorrectly stated that he was born 1894. In 1892, his father died, bequeathing to his family an estate that included their home. Keeler's mother remarried to a gambling addict. He killed himself after he lost the family's savings and mortgaged their home. In order to earn income, Keeler's mother turned the family home into a boarding house which later attracted theatre workers. Keeler's mother subsequently married a third time around 1900; in 1903, her third husband died from a fever. According to Francis M. Nevins, these traumatic events likely "drove Keeler out of touch with the 'real world' and led him to retreat into an alternate universe of his own making".
During high school, Keeler worked delivering newspapers, starting his shifts before dawn. On occasion he would miss class. He later said that he preferred being truant on days he was scheduled to attend classes in grammar and rhetoric. Eventually, he received a degree in electrical engineering from the Armour Institute. In early 1912, he went to live in the Ozarks, before returning to Chicago to work at a steel mill, where he worked until 1914.
Keeler's interest in literature dated back to 1910. A daily journal that he began that year and maintained until shortly before his death stated that he had written a 2,700-word short story titled "The Telescopic Romance" which he had been unable to publish. He wrote nothing further until 1913, when he produced seven short stories, one of which was published. In 1914, he wrote nineteen short stories and three novellas, including "Victim No. 5", his first piece of published crime fiction. The story, he recounted years later, had occurred to him while crossing the State Street Bridge. With the earnings of from the story, Keeler was able to pay off four weeks' worth of back rent, as well as take his romantic partner to a dinner and show.
Subsequently, Keeler turned his attention away from short stories and, instead, to novellas. In the period up to 1919, Keeler wrote an average of 170,000 words per year, and he sold his works to Argosy and Top-Notch Magazine, among other periodicals.

With E. P. Dutton

Eight of Keeler's earliest works first appeared in pulp fiction magazines like Complete Novel and Top Notch.
His first four novels were originally released in England by Hutchinson, beginning in 1924 with The Voice of the Seven Sparrows. Beginning in 1927, E.P. Dutton took over publication of Keeler's novels in the US. Between 1927 and 1942, Dutton released 37 novels by Keeler. In the United Kingdom, publication of Keeler's novels, sometimes with altered titles and reworked prose, fell to Ward, Lock & Co., who went on to publish 48 novels by Keeler from 1929 to 1953. The Voice of the Seven Sparrows introduced audiences the world over to Keeler's complicated "webwork plot" story lines with wildly improbable in-story coincidences and sometimes sheerly baffling conclusions. Keeler's complex, labyrinthine stories generally alienated his intended reading audience.
Owing to his popularity with Dutton, however, Keeler gained notoriety in the mid-1930s as a purveyor of new and original stories. His popularity peaked when his book Sing Sing Nights was used to "suggest" two different low-budget mystery-adventure films, namely Sing Sing Nights and The Mysterious Mr. Wong, the latter of which starred screen legend Bela Lugosi. During this period Keeler was employed as an editor for Ten Story Book, a popular pulp short-story magazine that also included photos of nude and scantily clad young women. Keeler proceeded to fill the spaces between the features with his own peculiar brand of humor and included illustrations drawn by his wife. Here, he also often publicized his own books.
Keeler's relations with the Duttons grew erratic and strained. Keeler's 1941 novel The Peacock Fan appears to take a dig at the Duttons through a pair of faintly disguised characters. In his later career, Keeler's fiction and writing style grew more bizarre and his books longer. He often substituted plot with lengthy dialogue and diatribes between characters. His readership flagged. In 1942, after releasing The Book with the Orange Leaves, Keeler was dropped by Dutton. Ward, Lock & Co. continued to issue his books in the United Kingdom until 1953.

Later years

The years from 1942 to 1953 were difficult for Keeler. His writing drifted even further beyond the norm and short stories written by his wife were found more and more within his novels. Keeler typically padded the length of his novels with the following device: his protagonist would find a magazine or book, open it at random and discover a story. At this point, Keeler's novel would insert the complete verbatim text of one of his wife's short stories, this being the story his novel's protagonist was reading. At the end of the story, the novel would continue where it left off, several pages nearer to its contractual minimum word count. These stories-within-the-novel typically contained only a few scraps of information that were relevant to the novel in which they appeared.
Keeler's novels were picked up by rental library publisher Phoenix Press, known in the business as the "last stop on the publishing bus". By 1953, British publishers Ward, Lock & Co. printed their final Keeler novel, thus forcing the writer to pen his stories exclusively for an overseas market with stories often translated for publication in Spain and Portugal.
Hazel died in 1960. Keeler remarried in 1963 to his onetime secretary Thelma Rinaldo, which rejuvenated his spirit for writing. Unfortunately, many of the new stories written by Keeler during this time went unpublished, including the relatively infamous The Scarlet Mummy. Keeler died in Chicago four years later, in 1967. He and his wife Hazel are buried in Rosehill Cemetery.

After death

In 2005, The Collins Library republished Keeler's 1934 classic, The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, a project much pursued by writer and publisher Paul Collins. Ramble House has published other works by him.

Writing techniques and preoccupations

Most of Keeler's novels feature what Keeler called a "webwork plot". This can be defined as a plot that includes many strands or threads, which intersect in complex causal interactions. A webwork novel typically ends with a surprise revelation which clarifies these interactions. According to Keeler's 1927 series of articles on plot theory, "The Mechanics of Web-Work Plot Construction", a webwork plot is typically built around a sequence in which the main character intersects at least four other strands, one after the other, and each of these encounters causes the next one. Keeler never claimed to have invented the webwork plot, but only to be its theorist and practitioner.
Keeler followed a writing procedure of his own; he'd often write a huge manuscript, perhaps twice the length required. He'd then cut it down to size, removing unnecessary subplots and incidents. The removed material would sit around until Keeler wrote another manuscript to use it, which might result in yet cutting procedure, and another "Chunk". In his book Thieves' Nights, the hero reads a book which is about two other men telling stories: a framing device within a framing device. In another book, Keeler and his wife turn up as characters in a story.
Keeler kept a large file of newspaper clippings featuring unusual stories and incidents. He is reputed to have pasted these into the rough outlines of his novels, adding notes like "Have this happen to... "
Keeler is known for the MacGuffin-esque insertion of skulls into nearly all his stories. While many plots revolved around a skull or the use of one in a crime or ritual, others featured skulls as a diversion. As an example, a human skull was used as a paperweight on the desk of a police detective.
Several of Keeler's novels make reference to a fictional book entitled The Way Out, which is apparently a tome of ancient Oriental wisdom. The significance of the nonexistent Way Out in Keeler's world is equivalent to the role played by the Necronomicon within H. P. Lovecraft's work.

Influence

In the late 1930s, British writer John Russell Fearn gave credit to Keeler for inspiring his experiments with webwork plots in his pulp SF stories.
Keeler has influenced later writers, including Icelandic novelist Sjón has acknowledged Keeler as an inspiration.

Works

Series

Tuddleton Trotter SeriesThe Matilda Hunter Murder The Case of the Barking Clock The Trap
Marceau SeriesThe Marceau Case X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne Y. Cheung, Business Detective
The Mysterious Mr. IThe Mysterious Mr. I The Chameleon
Vagabond NightsThe Skull of the Waltzing Clown The Defrauded Yeggman Ten Hours When Thief Meets Thief
Hallowe'en NightsFinger! Finger! Behind That Mask
Adventures of a SkullThe Man with the Magic Eardrums The Man with the Crimson Box The Man with the Wooden Spectacles The Case of the Lavender Gripsack
The Big River TrilogyThe Portrait of Jirjohn Cobb Cleopatra's Tears The Bottle with the Green Wax Seal
Circus SeriesThe Vanishing Gold Truck The Case of the Jeweled Ragpicker Stand By—London Calling! The Case of the Crazy CorpseThe Circus StealersA Copy of BeowulfReport on Vanessa HewstoneThe Six from NowhereThe Case of the Two-Headed Idiot
The Way Out SeriesThe Peacock FanThe Sharkskin BookThe Book with the Orange LeavesThe Case of the Two Strange LadiesThe Case of the 16 Beans
Steeltown SeriesThe Case of the Canny KillerThe Steeltown StranglerThe Crimson Cube
Quiribus Brown SeriesThe Murdered MathematicianThe Case of the Flying Hands
Hong Lei Chung SeriesThe Strange WillThe Street of a Thousand EyesThe Six from Nowhere
  • ''The Riddle of the Wooden Parakeet''

Non-series novels and short fiction

Adventure in MilwaukeeThe Affair of the Bottled DeuceThe Amazing Web The BlackmailerThe Box from Japan The Case of the Ivory ArrowThe Case of the Mysterious Moll The Case of the Transparent NudeThe Case of the Transposed LegsThe Face of the Man from Saturn Find the Clock The Five Silver Buddhas The Flyer Hold-UpThe Fourth King The Gallows Waits, My LordThe Green Jade Hand Hangman's NightsI Killed Lincoln at 10:13!The Iron Ring
  • "John Jones's Dollar" The Man Who Changed His SkinThe Monocled MonsterThe Murder of London LewThe Mysterious CardThe Mysterious Ivory Ball of Wong Shing LiThe Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman The Photo of Lady XThe Riddle of the Traveling Skull The Scarlet Mummy The Search for X-Y-ZSing Sing Nights The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Strange JourneyThe Straw Hat MurdersThe Stolen GravestoneThieves' Nights The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri The Voice of the Seven Sparrows The Washington Square Enigma
  • ''The White Circle''