The Brass Bottle

The Brass Bottle is the story of an architect who bought an antique brass bottle to give to a professor dealing in Mideast antiquities. After the purchase, the architect’s curiosity was aroused, and he removed the stopper in the bottle. And when he did, a big cloud of smoke was released, producing a major surprise when a genie emerged. His name was Fakrash el-Aamash, and he turned out to be a fairy-tale-type character who wound up trying to repay the architect, Horace Ventimore, for giving him release from what amounted to a brass prison. A series of hijinks of one kind or another were the result. Nearly two decades before, the author had written a somewhat jumbled and disorganized novel titled Vice Versa, about a father somehow making a switch with his schoolboy son. There was considerable popular success, but that created a problem for author Thomas Anstey Guthrie: He actually wanted to write a serious novel and penned The Giant’s Robe. It was not a success - one critic called it “ve