Sherlock, son of Sigerson?

      

Firstly I suppose I should say that the following is mere conjecture, though pretty thoroughly researched as far as it goes. But I don't actually believe a large part of it myself, having even more outlandish theories up my sleeve. I just can't resist starting a few hares.

I suppose the first question we should ask is this: why does Sherlock Holmes never mentions his parents, not even if they are alive or dead? It seems strange, doesn’t it? Here are a few more questions which follow:

1.       Why is Sherlock so distant from his brother Mycroft?
2.       Why are the brothers separated in age by seven years?
3.       Why did neither of the brothers inherit their  father's estate?
4.       Why did he choose the name Sigerson as his alias?

Well, then, what do we know about Holmes’s parents? Very little. We know from The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter that: “My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class." 

Let’s assume for the moment that his father was one such squire (although it’s interesting the way he phrases it, skirting actual mention of his father). Let’s call him Squire Holmes. Perhaps he is a Sussex landowner, since Holmes elects to retire in Sussex. We’ll come back to him.

We know a little more of Sherlock’s mother, however, since he goes on to mention “my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.” Vernet, the French artist was a very real person, or rather very real people, a family of artists who mainly married into other artistic families, all quite successful. Let’s take a look at the generations:

• Jean Vernet, d. 1753
• Claude Vernet, d. 1789
• Carle Vernet, d. 1836
•  Horace Vernet, d. 1863

While two of his forebears had sisters (Jean had five, but they lived early enough that Holmes would have referred to them as great or even great-great grandmothers.  Carle's sister Emilie, was guillotined during the Terror. Her daughter Louise-Josephe, was married twice, but neither of her husbands were named Holmes, according to the genealogies. Claude had only brothers.

So it’s almost certainly Horace Vernet that Holmes was referring to. And while the fame of Vernet has been swept away by Manet, Monet, and the rest of the Impressionists, it’s worth noting that he was in his time the most famous of French painters, fabulously successful.

Only Horace’s sister, Camille (b. 1788 d. 1858) therefore, could be his grandmother. Camille wed Hippolyte LeComte, another successful painter, and had three children: Emil (another painter), Fanny (another painter), and Louise. Genealogical records are silent on whether Louise was also a painter (and silent on everything about her other than her name and birthdate), but there can be little doubt she knew her way around an easel. 

Fanny was born in 1809, Louise in 1815. Since Sherlock was born (according to most chronologists) in 1854, that would mean Louise would have had him at the age of 39—a dangerous age to give birth, especially in the Victorian era. Indeed, her first child, Mycroft, would have been born when she was 32. We can eliminate Fanny from our calculations. At 45, she almost certainly would have been too old for childbirth. Even at Louse’s age, childbirth would have been a dangerous proposition.

Perhaps the reason no other siblings are mentioned is that Mrs. Holmes had a number of miscarriages? This would certainly explain the age gap between the two brothers.

But how would this tame English squire and the bohemian French lady ever have met? And why marry? I’m afraid it was not for love, although Louise Vernet-LeComte was probably a fascinating woman, even though, in the parlance, an “old maid.”

Interview with an Angel

Although there is debate whether the credit (or blame) should be given to Oprah Winfrey or Michael Sheen, there is no question that Americans are more concerned than ever with their spiritual sides. And a large part of the phenomenon has been the increasing popularity of angels, spiritual guides who many believe either praise God and play harps, or provide venture capital for Silicon Valley start-ups. We sat down last week with the angel Gabriel, in town for a stone-rolling competition.

Angels seem to be everywhere in the media these days, on the best-seller list, in the movies, on greeting cards. How are you dealing with your new popularity?

Not well. The truth is, we're bitter. A lot of people have made a lot of money on this deal. Do you want to know how big a taste the angels are getting? Not so much as a thin dime. Zilch. But try telling that to the IRS, or the headwaiter at Le Bernardin.

Why haven't you cashed in?

Can't. The company won't allow it. They're very strict. Look, I won't lie, the wages are great, much better than the wages of sin. Health and dental are magnificent. But the non-disclosure agreement makes Diddy's look chatty by comparison. Our union, the International Brotherhood of Winged Messengers, has been fighting this, but the funds are all tied up in escrow, and I'll probably never live to see a cent of it.

So you can't tell us what it's like to be an angel?

No, no, I can't. But I can tell you what it's not like. It's not like a bunch of clouds and harps and choir practice. It's more like Vegas, but without Wayne Newton.

What's a typical day like for you?

We do a lot of praising, a lot of singing. It's not really that different from touring with "Up With People", which I did for a year, by the way. We used to depend very heavily on Bach's Mass in B Minor, but we've really gotten into Amy Grant's back catalogue now, and "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is one of the big guy's favorites. Bobby McFerrin is one of us, in case you didn't know.

But aren't you in constant battle with the forces of evil?

During working hours, yes. But after five, the forces of evil definitely know the best places to party. We don't let our rivalry get down to a personal level.

What's the number one misunderstanding about angels you'd like to clear up?

I'll tell you what bugs me. This whole question about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You hear ten million, fifty thousand, ninety bajillion. That's not right at all.

So what's the correct figure?

Next: Echoborgs

CYRANO:

Since, by yourself, you fear to chill her heart,
Will you—to kindle all her heart to flame—
Wed into one my phrases and your lips?

CHRISTIAN:
Your eyes flash!

CYRANO:
Will you?

CHRISTIAN:
Will it please you so?
—Give you such pleasure?

CYRANO (madly):
It!. . .
(Then calmly, business-like):
It would amuse me!
It is an enterprise to tempt a poet.
Will you complete me, and let me complete you?
You march victorious,—I go in your shadow;
Let me be wit for you, be you my beauty!

--Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmund Rostand

The deal is sealed. Cyrano will be Christian's voice, Christian will be Cyrano's face. Roxane will, unknowingly, fall in love with both. And tragically, wind up with neither. A tale as old as time.

Let's admit: it would certainly be convenient to have a Cyrano along for those moments when we're tongue-tied or feeling dull, but you can't really drag another human being along, especially one who can provide you with sparkling conversation at a moment's notice.

I may be late to the party. but it appears technology has caught up with Cyrano and Christian. Have humans caught up with technology? We've put our toe in the water. Will we drown? Or drain the pool?

You may have seen the Bruce Willis sci-fi movie Surrogates. In that film, humanoid remote-controlled robots have pretty much taken over the public arena while their human controllers lounge at home in their pajamas vegetating. An alarming prospect, but the reversal is even more spine-chilling: Robots taking over human bodies--with the humans willingly giving up their autonomy, their voice. Writers and artists are rightly indignant about AI muscling in on our territory. That may be just the start.

The first technology used in service of this goal was good old-fasioned radio, used in a number of psychology experiments in the late 1970s. Cyranoids, as they were dubbed (the name an obvious tip of the hat to Cyrano) were the brainchild of Dr. Stanley Milgram, he of the infamous Stanford Experiment and the more benign six degrees of separation. A cyranoid (or "shadower") was a person who did not speak his own words, but rather those transmitted to him via radio from another person, the "source." The underlying idea was simple and elegant: to divorce the originator of the message from its content, setting it adrift, thereby eliminating the biases of the "interactant"--the person receiving the message. 

Any black person having a phone conversayion who has heard the amazingly tone-deaf remark uttered by a white person "But you don't sound black" is familiar with this phenomenon. Racial, gender, and age stereotyping in social interactions would be effectively blunted by this cyranic device. It promised lto peel away the medium from the message, substituting any medium desired. And after all, the medium is the message.

Of course, we encounter cyranoids every day, to a greater or lesser extent. I'm talking about sportscasters, newscasters, all those people with tiny monitors  stuffed in their ears, feeding them their scripts. We can't really measure what part of what we're hearing is coming from the voices in their heads--but that's the point.

"I say it here, it comes out there."

Let's look at a modern Cyrano update. Not Roxanne

--Broadcast News. 

Fie on fie!

Fie on goodness, fie

Fie on goodness, fie

Eight years of kindness to your neighbor
Making sure that the meek are treated well
Eight years of philanthropic labor
Derry down dell
Damn, but it's hell
Oh, fie on goodness, fie

Fie, fie, fie

It's no secret that I've always loved a good fie:

"Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed." –Hamlet

"Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman: fie on him!"--Twelfth Night

"Fie, fie, on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and all foul ways!" --The Taming of the Shrew

But the truth is, and I wouldn't want this to get around, I had no idea what a fie was. It's got to be pretty awful, right? Nobody ever fies on the dog when he has an accident in the bedroom. You don't fie on the waitress because she forgot to bring ketchup. Fie is reserved for the absolute bastards of the cosmos.

So finally I looked up fie. And effing eff, it doesn't mean ANYTHING. It's not a blast of lightning, or a bright blade that cleaves a knave from the nave to the chops. It's not even the old fewmets hitting the windmill. It's just an interjection of disgust, like Tchaa! or Tsk! or even Pshaw!

Pshaw!

 This is how curiosity killed the cat. This is the curse of Faust. This is the overweening hubris of Oedipus. This is me wishing I'd never looked up fie. Let fie lie.

But where did the word come from? From French, and Latin (fi!) before that, according to etymologists. Thousands of years ago this monosyllable of disgust hovering just on rebellion bubbled up to the lips of a thoroughly tacked off plebeian and those around him in the forum nodded in agreement. Fie on the patricians, the praetorians, the Vandals and the Goths. When Hamlet uttered it something smelled rotten in the state of Denmark--fie has always been associated with olfactory offensiveness.

Getting emotional with sci-fi

"My heart is full of X."

  

So we can easily imagine an alien, or a mutant with different abilities, different physiologies: four heads or tentacles for arms or the ability to walk through walls, or even an intelligent shade of blue (I think Douglas Adams came up with that one). But what if an alien or mutant or even just a different earthly species were equipped with an entirely different set of emotions, beyond hate, love, fear, doubt and chagrin. Emotions x, y, and z, a whole alien array, so different from our experience that they in no way correspond to anything in our ken?

We could still witness the physical manifestations of their emotions, like tears or blushing or the spraying of ink, but have no idea of their predicates. Would we be able to divide their emotions into positive and negative reflexes, or would that only mean positive or negative outcomes for ourselves if we responded correctly? What would be the key to unlock their "hearts?" We have a name for every shade of human emotion, yet we can barely even read the hearts of our own species. Probing might turn out to be be a highly decorous form of salutation.

Oh, Lord, please don't
let me be misunderstood

If we throw rocks at an alien, and an alien responds by hugging us, could we therefore assume that having rocks thrown at it is a positive experience for E.T.? And we can interpret their pelting us with rocks in turn as a positive sign? Or is its hug meant as a retaliatory response? Or is the alien simply modeling correct behavior in the hope that we will imitate it and leave off with the rock-throwing? (And how would it feel about being be referred to as an "it?" Does it have unimagined pronouns?) Or is it displaying x emotion? 

Sondheim in a Tree

"It strikes me that's what technique must be: the control of the information that
flows from a play to its audience; and in particular the ordering of the information."

--Tom Stoppard

 I want to talk about point of view in narration. It might help first if we think of a novel as a large packet of information, just like the data packets governed by the hypertext transfer protocol (http) on the internet, which delivers data, order, and destination-- which we can translate for our purposes as story, plot, and audience. 

Plot--the ordering, revealing or withholding of information in a story--is especially important in a time-based medium like drama, but also in novels, unless the reader elects to subvert the author's intent by reading the ending first, say, or the author subverts it as in The Dictionary of the Khazars (by Milorad Pavic), wherein he invites the reader to assemble the story in any order they like.  

Point of view directs the information spigot in sometimes subtle ways. First it can be can be additive, as in Toni Morrison's Jazz, with multiple narrators slowly bringing the truth into focus, or or subtractive with an unreliable narrator, sometimes severely restrictive, as in the Benjy Compson section of The Sound and the Fury. Even multiple narrators can be subtractive when the different narrators accounts clash so much that we  are left at sea.

Which brings us to Someone in a Tree, a tour de force musical number from Stephen Sondheim's Broadway show Pacific Overtures. The show is about Japan's (unwilling) opening to western trade in the late 19th century. Under threat of force, the emperor's representatives set up a meeting with the Americans to devise a treaty. We begin with the Reciter (the uber-narrator of the play) bemoaning the fact that there is no authentic Japanese account of what was said that day in the treaty house. An old man appears.

Richard Powers

A book is still atemporal. It is you, in silence, hearing voices in your head, unfolding at a time that has nothing to do with the timescale of reading. And for the hours that we retreat into this moratorium, with the last form of private and silent human activity that isn't considered pathological, we are outside of time.

                        --Richard Powers

Dylan Thomas

 

"I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy."

-- Dylan Thomas

Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell

 With a couple of his recent Sherlock Holmes pastiches, Nicolas Meyer has stepped up his game. Not in terms of plotting or character, at which he has always been the gold standard, or in his channeling of the voice and more importantly the heart of John Watson (for Watson's heart is Sherlock's heart, much as Watson's voice is Sherlock's voice). But the world of Sherlock Holmes is essentially domestic, with criminals who will be dealt with by the courts (once Holmes has revealed then to Scotland Yard). But in The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols and now his latest, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegraph from Hell, the author moves Holmes onto the world stage, raising the stakes of his investigations enormously.

The plot is simple: what if the outcome of World War I depended upon the contents of a telegram, and Britain were desperate to know the contents of that telegram? Well, it did. The story of the Zimmerman Telegram is historical fact. Meyer's inspired move is to couple that fact to Doyle's (or Watson's) story "His Last Bow," which hints at Holmes's role in the war about to engulf Europe. And thereby hangs a tale that takes Holmes and Watson in their twilight years from London to Washington to Mexico City, dogged by assassins every step of the way.

The truth is, this isn't really a detective story, though it's strewn with Holmes's customary legerdemain. And it's not really a spy story, though Watson can hardly turn around without bumping into a spy. It's a coming of age story for a man in his sixties who has come to realize that his fog-bound streets, hansom cabs, and skills at single-stick are not enough to see him through the dangerous new world of the 20th century. He must confront his own parochialism, the smallness of his lifelong efforts against evil.  

Don't misunderstand me. There's plenty of adventure and derring-do in this novel, but there's an elegiac mood to it, too. And that raises it above Meyer's previous efforts. Which makes it all the more worth the read.

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell

[I wouldn't add this in a review for Amazon or Goodreads since I don't think a review should be about the reviewer, but if you're reading it on my blog, you know that I've written some Sherlock Holmes novels myself, and have some idea of the pitfalls involved in this kind of novel. And you've probably heard me mention that Meyer's The Seven Per-cent Solution was the inspiration for my own efforts. So imagine my consternation when, in the middle of editing The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, I learned that Meyer was about to come out with his own Sherlock Holmes meets the mummy tale, The Return of the Pharaoh, and how relieved I was to learn that the pharaoh in his tale was not Tutankhamun and his story was nothing like mine. Which is preface to say that I came upon the story of the Zimmerman Telegram about a year ago and contemplated writing a Holmes short story based on it. I thank procrastination I didn't go ahead with that one.]

Night Owl Writer

Nighthawks at the Diner

  Why are so many writers night owls? Is it the peace and quiet, the hush when all the world's asleep? Or the insomnia that arises from trying to resolve insoluble plot problems? Well, I can only speak for myself, and my memories are a little bit hazy, but I blame my oldest brother and sister. Let me take you back. It was probably 1966, and I would have been eight or nine.

Jim, a career Army sergeant, was just back from his first tour of Vietnam and cooling his heels waiting for orders on his next posting. So he got a job as a short-order cook at the Toddle House (chain restaurant), and for good measure got my sister Nancy and his new bride, also named Nancy (both fresh out of the convent in the mass exodus of nuns after Vatican II) jobs as waitresses there. Yes, there were two Nancys with the same last name living at one address, which confused Toddle House corporate no end. They kept trying to pay them with one paycheck.

Bedtime for me and my older brother Asa was still 9:00, and the Toddle House crew didn't get home till about 11 (although in my memory it was more like 3 in the a.m.)

Now here's where it gets interesting. Y'see, Toddle House made pies fresh every day. Which meant they could take home any left-over pie at the end of their shift. Which meant if we could just stay up till they got home (when they would have coffee and pie and gab about their shift into the wee hours) we could cadge some PIE.

"All Home-Made Pies 12¢"

But of course to wander downstairs two or more hours past our bedtime we needed a pretty solid lie, which meant a story, and, like Scheherezade, a different story every night. And a story which would past muster with Jim and Nancy, two seasoned storytellers. Which meant I was developing my story-telling powers while learning to stay up late, all for pie, glorious pie, chocolate, lemon meringue, or the king of them all: black-bottom pie.

Black-bottom pie

Nighthawks at the diner
Of Emma's 49er, there's a rendezvous
Of strangers around the coffee urn tonight

All the gypsy hacks, the insomniacs
Now the paper's been read
Now the waitress said
Eggs and sausage and a side of toast
Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy
Chile in a bowl with burgers and fries
What kind of pie?  

                            --Tom Waits

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking by it.

Review: A Noir Story

 

Noir is all about bad ideas executed badly under the influence of uncontrolled passion. Andrew Sherman understands that and has crafted a cautionary tale that veers from lighthearted to deadly serious in a heartbeat. The story starts with a cuckolded husband crafting an explosive missive to his rival with every possible opportunity for things to go wrong. Then it interrupts its regularly scheduled narrative to show us how we got to this point.

There’s a healthy dose of Quentin Tarantino in this story, or I should say these stories, tales of domestic quarrels that spark out of hand and brush up against each other in unexpected ways with violent results. Yes, there are murders, but no perfect murders, and it’s the imperfections that provide the sudden turns that in less expert hands would send this story crashing through the guardrails. But Sherman keeps a steady hand on the wheel, even if none of his characters do. A Noir Story is a fine debut, and I look forward to reading Sherman’s next effort. (A Noir Story available at Amazon.)

Plato's dog

      The Turing Test, first proposed concretely in 1950

 by Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, supposedly tests whether a computer can think like a human being. But it doesn't measure that at all, but rather whether a computer can fool a human into believing it's another human. And the test in one form or another has been fooling unsophisticated observers ever since 1961 's ELIZA. 

     ELIZA was basically a rudimentary chatbot, and it wasn't intelligent at all. It was basically a parlor trick, a shuffling of conversational cards, using symbol manipulation sans understanding, sans consciousness, never directly answering, rephrasing and obfuscating any questions which might reveal that it was not, in fact, human. AI still has no consciousness, 60 years later.

     Through the years both the test and the testers have become more sophisticated; the goal remains elusive. But it struck me recently that AI's problems with the Turing test can be analogized to the test a historical novelist must face: they must, like magicians, force a card on their unsuspecting subjects, presenting what they know while hiding what they don't know, convincing the audience they are human; or in the novelists' case,  convincing them that they are humans of another time period. To manage this sleight of hand we are partially dependent upon the audience's complicity of ignorance--what the audience doesn't know, and therefore has to take on faith. And god forgive you if you've chosen an 18th century Gascon woodworker as your murder victim and your book has just been read by a Ph.D. in French literature who wrote her thesis on carpentry techniques in the south of France 1820--1870. You're busted. There's always someone who knows some detail (however picayune) about the era which has eluded you. 

    Because nobody writing today lived then--obviously (unless your novel takes place within living memory). Nobody, not even aforesaid Ph. D., can know what it was like like to live and breathe those wood shavings from three hundred years ago. The only trick we have available is not to duplicate the time period exactly, but to capture enough significant detail that the reader will be lulled, will fill in the lacunae with their imagination. And for that task we turn to a number of available resources. 

      For instance, in my first book, I needed to delay a train from London to Birmingham in the year 1912. I found the answer online--an RAF plane crash that year near Oxfordshire that could be slotted in nicely. For my second book I wanted to know as much about 19th century art forgery as possible. I came across a fascinating book called The Deceivers by Aviva Breifel which painted a picture of female student copyists in the Louvre in 1890s, setting the scene perfectly. For my third book, I wanted Dr. Watson to develop claustrophobia from attempting to explore the Great Pyramid at Giza. This was a rather easy cheat--I had personally developed claustrophobia exploring the Great Pyramid at Giza. We can call these examples significant detail or local color--in AI they're known as training sets. And it is incredible drudge work for humans to train AI. To train it to recognize a dog, for instance, it must be fed thousands of pictures of dogs--labeled as dogs, by humans. AI can't envision a dog, not yet. We can.

Because there's no such thing as a "dog." There are malamutes and mutts, chihuahuas and chows, Great Danes and English bulldogs.  The "dog" exists only in our minds, abstracted and analogized from individual experience. It may be a specific breed of dog, or an amalgam of different dogs, whether a concrete creation or an ever-shifting eidolon. The same is true of a tree. There are oaks and pines and sequoias and aspens and birches. No "tree." But when you say the word, an image comes immediately to mind. I suspect this is the phenomenon which gave rise to Plato's forms.

Plato's forms are the eternal essences, not only things, but qualities: Truth, Beauty, Good.The Platonic ideal may not exist in space, but it does exist within our minds. I would extend this idea to say that there are Platonic ideals of historical eras. Each unit of description, action, or dialogue in a historical novel must be checked against that ideal, that reader's understanding, just as we check both chihuahuas and rottweillers against the platonic dog in our minds--and for each person that dog is a little bit different.

This may seem a handicap for the writer, but it's actually a gift. The writer doesn't have to spend many dreary pages setting each scene. There is a tacit agreement between writer and reader that unless historical differences are specifically detailed , things do not change between time periods. A door is a door, a street is a street, unless we add a brass knocker to the door, or cobblestones to the street. Fashion may change, technology may change but:

You must remember this 

A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.

The fundamental things apply 

As time goes by.

Some things don't seem to change, like human emotions,  hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate, death and taxes. Or if they do, we turn a blind eye to them like footprints in the snow, soon to be wiped out by a new snowfall.

 This extends especially to habits of human thought. I remember reading Michener's The Source in college and thinking it was utter bosh because it portrayed prehistoric characters as using exactly the same processes as modern man. My doubts sprang from the fact that I had just read Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (a fascinating book), which posited that early man had a completely different consciousness. (I won't go into detail, which would require  a much longer piece to do it justice) It was a very convincing argument, though I don't know that it's true. Perhaps our minds have evolved over the centuries, even over the decades. How could Michener have presented the difference, even if he could grasp it? It would be a job of simultaneous translation from an unknown language, fumbling in the dark for a new Rosetta Stone. 

We cannot know the language of the past. We can only fish for a few clues, relying on the good will and cooperation of the reader, to admire our catch. Luckily, we're not subject to a Turing test.  No fooling.

 

AI to the rescue

 I have what I think is a natural revulsion for AI shared by many who would label
themselves progressives or forward-thinkers. It's not that I fear change, but I do fear someone else breaking into the cockpit of my mind and taking over the controls, plundering six thousand years of accumulated human wisdom before I've even had a chance to finger its prettiest baubles. Wait your turn, AI!

But maybe I've been looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe, just maybe, AI will give us the extraordinary opportunity to explore and finally define what makes us human: what can't be copied, can't be programmed, can't be imitated. What makes us, and will forever make us, unique.

Inconceivable!

The computer long ago surpassed us in computational speed, but once it has examined a subject from every angle can it create new angles, new vantage points from which to view a problem, new combinations to the Rubik's cube which are outside the cube? Can it conceive the inconceivable, or even entertain the possibility of such mental gymnastics? (Note to self: do some reading on quantum computing. It could be the linear nature of algorithms which has disadvantaged computers.)

I'm not talking here about the soul or the mind or whatever name you give to the ghost in the machine. I don't believe in ghosts. I'm talking about the human brain and all its concordant systems which I believe encompass every cell in the body. The ghost is the machine. What puts the sapiens in homo sapiens?

I don't begin to know the answer, but it would be a really big adventure to seek it.

On a hunch (will computers ever duplicate hunches?) I would say it have something to do with our capacity, our rapacity, for novelty and surprise. It may be that the last surprise is that there is no last surprise. That sounds like a reason to get out of bed every morning. And standing in the wings might be our propensity for play. Perhaps we are not homo sapiens but homo ludens. (Which is, by the way, the title of a great book.)

(Of course, differentiation could lead to segregation--not of the races this time, but of the minds, artificial and human. Computers might take on the aspect of second class citizens. The ethics involved have already been wrestled with by science fiction writers and may soon have to be addressed by professional ethicists. Anybody but me.)

Ray Bradbury

“You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at
night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”--Ray Bradbury

Learning to Read

 I love reading.

There's nothing amazing about that. Most writers first started writing because they loved reading. What I do find strange is this: I have no memory of learning to read. You would think that such a monumental experience in my life would be a vivid memory. At least the aha! moment when arbitrary symbols suddenly acquired meaning would be etched in my mind.

I do remember first grade reading class with Dick and Jane--or rather, since I went to Catholic school, John and Jean. The Catholic version of these primary readers substituted saint's names for our main characters. I don't actually remember John and Jean, but I'm sure we had the New Cathedral Basic Readers, as they were called, because I do remember vividly that one story began with the ringing of the Angelus bells, which is the noonday bell in Catholic tradition. I had never heard of the Angelus before (and have only rarely heard of them since) and I loved the name. But while I remember reading it, I don't remember learning to read it. I don't recall ever stumbling over words or going down a sentence and finding it a dark alley. I'm sure there must have been unfamiliar words at times, but I was able to guess their meaning in the context of the sentence. (Or simply discount it, as I did with the word "weir" when reading The Wind in the Willows

for the first time.)

Could I have learned to read before the first grade? Kindergarten and pre-kindergarten were not universal in those days, and I never attended either. I do remember going to my school for the first time, months before first grade began, to take an IQ test administered by the principal, Sr. John Roberta, an amazingly sweet-natured lady. You would think I''d have to be able to read to take such a test, but not so. The test is given orally, and with pictures, and is given to kids as young as four. I'm not sure why I was required to take the test, but it may have been because I was starting school at five, not six. They wanted to be sure I could hack it.

What I remember next, which could not have actually happened, was that my mother, pleased with me, bought me some books on the way home. It couldn't have happened that way because we walked home, and nowhere on that mile-long route was there a bookstore. So they must have come shortly thereafter, by mail. I think I recall the books: Ten Apples on Top; Go, Dog, Go; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; and Are You My Mother? You've probably come across them. I can't swear these are the first four, because other books followed shortly thereafter.

But--did I read them or did my mother read them to me? I don't really recall. Oh, I do remember her reading aloud Are You My Mother several times, and roaring with laughter every time. But that proves nothing. Mama read to us often, her favorites, for years after we could all read perfectly well. Some of her favorites were the poem The Highwayman, the dark cautionary tale Babes in the Woods and the hilarious A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig. Oh, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

So--I've raked my brain and found nothing. Could I always read? Of course not. But I have no memory of learning to read, just as I have no memory of stepping into a warm bath for the first time. Maybe I'm looking for something which doesn't exist. Maybe there is no aha moment, and we (or most of us) take to reading as naturally as a fish to water, or at least to the aquarium. 

How about you? Do you remember learning to read? Was there a moment, or a process, that stands out for you? Or am I just a freak, or a forgetful old man? Clue me in.

Review: The Sorrowful Girl

 There’s a tug of war I’m familiar with in writing historical fiction. The writer
wants to establish historical setting without overwhelming the reader with historical facts—the furniture without the bric-a-brac. And here’s where Keenan Powell excels with The Sorrowful Girl. From the very first page she makes us feel comfortable in small-town Massachusetts at the turn of the last century.

     It's a town mainly populated by poor, hard-working Irish immigrants, at a time when immigrants were hated or looked down on by many Americans. A time of labor unrest and repressive capitalism. Alright, a time perhaps little different from our own. Perhaps the secret to good historical fiction is finding the common denominators between the past and the present.

     Or perhaps it’s in fully realized, breathing characters. A girl has been murdered in the woods outside of town. A girl close to Liam Barret, the local policeman who’s put in charge of bringing her killer to justice. We get to know Liam’s history, his hopes and aspirations, and that of his town as the case places him squarely between the Molly Maguires and the political machinery and machinations controlled by the moneyed mill owner who also seems to own half the state. 

     He’ll have to rely on his wits and his integrity to see him through to the resolution. And even then he may find a compromise is the best he can hope for. 

     This is the first Keenan Powell I’ve read. It won’t be the last.

Arcs and archetypes

     "Characters must have an arc. They must change; they must grow.” 

Writers hear this all the time, and it’s good advice (unless you're writing Seinfeld). But there is one type of character, often wildly popular, which breaks the rules all the time: the archetype.

Characters go on a journey commonly referred to as a character arc. The arc takes our character, usually on a dual journey, often on a journey of discovery, always on a journey of self-discovery. From Oedipus Rex to Emma to Dune, the mystery that every novel has to solve is this: Who is the protagonist?

But archetypes are fixed points. The archetype is a kind of shorthand. They're delivered to your door as a bundle of traits, often outsized, which do not vary within the story, and are often carried over from story to story. As such they lend themselves to the serial, since these traits immediately evoke the character's past stories to the serial reader. Hercule Poirot wanders about straightening things like the obsessive/compulsive he is. Ah, yes, I remember. The archetype is dependable in a way the character can never be. 

Because character is a fixed point, the emphasis can be laid on plot. (Of course the opposite is also true. If one uses an archetypal plot, emphasis can be laid on character. I don't plan to deal with plots or motifs--such as Perseus's winged sandals or Holmes's Persian slipper. I'll confine myself to characters.)

From Odysseus to the Seinfeld gang, from Sherlock Holmes to James Bond, from Madame Defarge to Mata Hari, these bundles of traits make the archetype useful for the writer, imminently recognizable to the reader, and immortal to posterity. The archetype is both flatter and fuller than the three-dimensional character writers are told to strive for.

Of course the archetypes begin with the Greeks (everything does), as heroes, demi-gods working their way toward full humanity. Hercules, Pandora, Oedipus, Achilles, Cassandra, each evokes specific qualities.

As society develops, new archetypes are needed: King Arthur, Robin Hood, Don Quixote, Harlequin.

Part of Shakespeare's genius is in his ability to create so many archetypal figures. One thinks of archetypes like Hamlet, Faust, Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and protests that these surely must have an arc. And yet at the core of hamartia is the characters' inability to change to respond to changing circumstances, to the world pressing on them.

Dickens had the gift, too, with his instantly recognizable caricatures that have become bywords: Madame Defarge, Sairy Gamp, Mr. Micawber, Scrooge and Fagin.

And yet these characters can also be quite flexible, so that we writers can repurpose them for our purposes, add to them, make them richer. Think of the major arcana of the tarot: the Fool, the Hermit, the Hanged Man. Tarot readers adapt them to their individual readings, but they can also be adapted by writers. Check out Italo Calvino's tour de force The Castle of Crossed Destinies to see how many changes can be rung upon these ancient figures.

As we come into a new age, new archetypes arise to capture the zeitgeist. There can be no Sherlock Holmes with the development of the police force in the 19th century, no Jeeves without Edwardian society, nor a James Bond without the Cold War and the rise of espionage. 

But does anyone set out to create an archetype? Can anyone create an archetype? You can certainly give it a try, if you have your finger on the pulse of society, if you can surf the trends, both universal and specific, that define us. But it's not really the writer that creates the archetype.

It's the readers.