Gentle Readers will have noticed that the Mary Russell books by Laurie R. King are amongst my favorite rereads. I probably reread at least one a month, which is rather a lot, really. I have also enjoyed her Kate Martinelli police procedurals set in modern San Francisco. I have been a trifle dissatisfied with the last of each of the series, and the news that she was combining them did not lead me to squeal with glee.
I did, however, grab The Art of Detection from the library as soon as it appeared, and read it first of that group of library books. I was frustrated and annoyed, perhaps disappointed, and I enjoyed it a fair amount anyway.
The main thing that was annoying—unbelievably annoying, I mean, curse at the book whilst reading annoying—was that the interpolated Sherlock Holmes novella was taken as authentic Arthur Conan Doyle. The whole thing about Ms. King’s Sherlock Holmes books is that they are not about Mr. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, but about Ms. King’s Sherlock Holmes. I’ve kvetched at length about this, and I won’t go on further here, and let’s be clear: I like her Sherlock Holmes better than the original. But it’s different.
The plot (such as it is) of Art involves a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, a professional in antiques, ephemera and nostalgia, coming across a typescript and realizing, just about instantly, that it is echt Holmes, despite the obvious differences in style, content, characterization, and tone. He then tracks down the provenance, shaky but plausible, and prepares for the storm of publicity and money. The problem is that the story (which is a lot of fun, actually, and involves Sherlock Holmes (unfortunately without Mary Russell) investigating a murder in San Francisco in 1924, with cross-dressing, prostitution, homosexuality and all that good stuff) is a lot like Ms. King’s work, and not anything even remotely like Mr. Conan Doyle’s—like the novels, like I’ve been saying. And for the novels, that’s fine, that’s even great, the conceit that Mr. Conan Doyle had egregiously misrepresented Mr. Holmes, and that the real Sherlock Holmes was the one we are just now getting to know. But when you bring that back to the world of people who have the original stories and novels pretty near memorized, and posit that they will claim this new character, tone, and content as just like the original, well, what that does is it just ruins it for everybody.
And, by the way, this is connected with the problem of writers who introduce into their stories a fictional poem, or story, or book, or essay, that is simply the Most Wonderful Thing Ever, that completely changes the life of everybody who even glances at it, and then has to actually include some substantial part of the thing, where the reader has already been warned that the thing is wonderful. We don’t think it’s all that wonderful, our lives aren’t changed by it, and then the whole plot falls apart. If you can manage it without showing us the thing in question—Inkheart does this, as does the Deadly Joke skit, and I’m sure I’ve seen it well-handled in another place or two I can’t recall at the moment, perhaps because the manuscript is burned at the end?—it can work very well indeed. Or you can make the art in question visual or auditory (or gustatory, it occurs to me), and describe it using vague superlatives but concentrate entirely on the reaction. But if our lives would be changed by reading a letter, and we get to read the letter, and our lives aren’t changed, then we will want our money back.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I’m reminded a bit of William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, in which he, as an exercise, works with a bunch of different Hollywood folks to discuss the issues inherent in turning a story into a movie. The story he uses is a short story of his own about a barber who gives the most incredible haircuts. Naturally, in a movie, you would really have to show the life-changing haircut, and there’s just no real way to make it work.
On the other hand, when it does work to include the actual piece of writing, it’s awesome — I’m thinking, for example, of the letter from Darcy to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, which I would claim produces precisely the same reactions and transformations in the first-time reader as happen for Elizabeth herself. For me, anyway.
… or if it doesn’t, then the first-time reader is less likely to become a second-time reader. But it’s a good point; that bit does work for lots of people.
Thanks,
-V.
“Stranger Than Fiction” has problems of this species, as well. (My mini-review: there are a great many scenes from some other, very good movie contained within this one.) In general, I view it as a subset of the problem of art about art: occasionally done in satisfying manner by people like Borges and Fforde and others with the common thread of a healthy appreciation for absurdity, be it comic or tragic. But what would it take to eradicate TV/movie/book characters who struggle to become actors/writers/musicians? I say this out of love.
Oh, and, yes, I have, perhaps, noticed a fair amount of Laurie R. King. And since you mention it, I’ve been meaning to ask:
Okay, well, first, a preamble. I read the first book on recommendation and Liked It Okay, up until the epilogue in which Holmes takes young Mary to visit the British colony of Palestine where she discovers over a sentence or two that there are, in fact, Secretly Good Arabs, and they are Ambiguously Gay. So, question being, do subsequent books demonstrate this kind of (perfectly Holmesian, to be sure) ethnic condescension? Or does the author manage to steer clear after that?
Wow, hum. It’s hard for me to remember, exactly, what I remember from the brief Palestine section of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice and what is from O Jerusalem. I would say that there is a good deal of, um, echt Holmesian exoticism in her books. On the other hand, Ms. King clearly does a lot of research (on Palestine and, in a later book, on India) to attempt to avoid the ethnic condescension to spotted. As far as the Ambiguously Gay and Secretly Good Arabs, they are retconned (if I understand that word correctly) not once but twice in the books so far.
And I had moderately high hopes for Stranger than Fiction. Dang.
Thanks,
-V.
I understood a retcon to be an attempt after the fact to explain away an apparent factual contradiction, so I’m not sure how you’re using it here.
You can still have moderately high hopes for Stranger than Fiction — just brace yourself to give a pass to a certain amount of “amazing fictional work of fiction” nonsense. From what we get of it, I’m afraid the fictional work is not all that fantastic — but you’ll get a sense of that from the first couple of scenes, so there’s no jarring disconnect later.
It’s kind of funny: one thing that drags down the fictional book is that it seems like the author doesn’t particularly love the main character. As described in narration, he’s a parody of an unlikeable character wholly at odds with Romantic ideals of the good life, and it’s clear that the fictional story is going to be about him Getting a Life in some way. However, the movie — director, script, visual effects, actor Will Farrell — clearly loves the character to death as he is from the get-go. He grows over the course of the movie, but I wouldn’t say there’s any fundamental change of character, just an uncovering of what was always there.
Have I managed to avoid spoiling you on the movie (in either the internetty or original sense of the word)?
The term “retcon” has several overlapping meanings: that Wikipedia article classifies retcons as Addition, Alternation, Subtraction, and Reconciliation. But what the different types of retcon more or less have in common is that they change the reader’s understanding of established continuity. Some retcons change the reader’s understanding by revealing new facts that don’t alter the already-known history but shed a new light on it; others change the reader’s understanding by explicitly discarding some or all of an already-known history and replacing it with a new history.
As far as retcon goes, and this is spoileriffic as one would think retcon discussion must be, the Secretly Good Arabs turn out, in O Jerusalem not to be Arabs at all, and although they work for the Crown, they have their own agenda. They are certainly Good, and ambiguously gay, the stereotype is that of the man who Goes Native. Problematic in itself, but more interestingly problematic (to me) that the Secretly Good Arabs.
Justice Hall then takes the two characters and reveals their backgrounds; the elder is among the richest and highest-born English nobles, and the younger is his cousin, not quite as rich or high, but still to the manor born (if you’ll pardon the misquotation which has become a quotation in itself). Anyway, both the relationship between them, and their relationships to England and Palestine are completely reshaped to suit that book.
As a result, there are things in Apprentice that are contradicted by things in Jerusalem, and things in Jerusalem that are contradicted by things in Hall, which could in theory all be explained by (a) Ms. Russell lying in the earlier books to protect them or for reasons of her own, or (2) really very good acting on their part, to convince her that they did not, for instance, know what “strawberry blonde” meant.
As for Fiction, I think it’ll wind up on my watch-at-home-someday list, unless my family’s exercise of democracy forces us all to see that one on the 24th. Until then, I am proscribed from seeing it, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be around the big screens much after that (even assuming a babysitter, which would be a big assumption).
Thanks,
-V.
Wait, so in King’s world, Good Arabs turn out to be ambiguously gay Englishmen? How T. E. Lawrence of her. *rolls eyes*
I, on the other hand, would make a horrible Englishman (or perhaps an excellent Englishman Gone Native), because I’ve never been quite sure what “strawberry blonde” is supposed to evoke.
I am pretty sure that my hair color is what hair color afficionados the world ’round describe as “strawberry blonde.”
My whole life I assumed I was a blonde, but recently people have increasingly been referring to me as “the red-haired guy.”
So I think that’s what it means.
peace
Matt