'The Final Solution," by Michael Chabon

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

It's no secret that I love Sherlock Holmes. I wrote a little bit about this in my post "My forty books. Part 4: fiction." I chose 2 collections of Sherlock Holmes stories as part of my forty books that I could spend the rest of my life with. However, while I love some of the stories, I don't pretend to be an expert on the Holmes canon. I tend to re-read my favourites, while some others I haven't investigated.

Michael Chabon also quite obviously loves the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, and is way more knowledgeable than I am. I recently read an essay from Chabon's collection, "Maps and Legends," called "Fan Fictions on Sherlock Holmes," as well as his novella "The Final Solution." Chabon has great affection and respect for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation and for his skill as a storyteller, and he has gone on record as saying that a Sherlock Holmes story was one of the first things that he wrote as a child. Anyone who is familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories will recognise the old man in "The Final Solution," although he is never named: he is a once famous detective, renowned and well-connected, who has retired to keep bees. Just in case you didn't get the references, the copy I had of this novella, published by Harper Perennial, contains an interesting extract from an interview with Chabon which makes it explicit that the old man is intended to be Sherlock Holmes.

In Chabon's story the elderly Sherlock Holmes is spurred into now unaccustomed action to stop a small boy from nearly electrocuting himself on the railway lines near his cottage. He is intrigued by the young boy, who seems to be mute but has a constant companion in an African Grey parrot that recites strings of numbers in German. When Holmes is visited by a policeman who asks him for help to solve a murder he initially declines - until he finds that the victim appears to have been trying to steal the boy's parrot, which is now missing. He comes out of isolated retirement - this is Holmes without Watson, which is a shrewd decision on Chabon's part because it frees him from any expectation that he will slavishly mimic the style of Conan Doyle writing as Watson - to try to reunite the boy with his parrot, Bruno.

The choice of title is indicative of Chabon's skill and subtlety as an author. To the Sherlock Holmes fan, the title inevitably evokes Conan Doyle's story, "The Final Problem," in which Holmes is supposedly killed at the Reichenbach Falls. However, the novella is set in 1944, and the title also serves to invoke the atrocities of World War II and specifically Hitler's genocide of the Jews. The historical context is essential to Chabon's novella: the young boy, Linus Steinman, is an orphaned Jewish refugee, and Holmes himself fears going to London because of the devastation that he expects to see.

Chabon's Sherlock is more vulnerable than Conan Doyle's. He is an old man whose still active intellect is trapped inside a body that is breaking down and complaining, and he dreads succumbing to death in a way that would be undignified and ridiculous. Yet, even more than that, he fears the loss of the critical faculties that he prizes the most, and that set him apart from other men. He has moments of paralysing, sickening terror when the world ceases to make sense to him, like "a page of alien text" that resists interpretation. Chabon's Holmes is a weak, frail old man to an extent that gives the novella's title an added poignancy: it does seem very likely that this will be the great detective's final solution.

I think it's fitting that Chabon's novella is so slight - in terms of length, but not content - as I have always felt that Conan Doyle showcases Sherlock Holmes more effectively in the short stories than the novels. This novella made me realise that the Conan Doyle stories that I like best are those that reveal the flickers of humanity and sympathy behind Holmes' coldness: those that momentarily reveal his affection for Watson, or his empathy for a - usually female - victim. I enjoyed Chabon's addendum to the Holmes canon and, although I don't want to give anything away, there is a particularly audacious chapter that took me by surprise. But, all things considered, I would rather think of Sherlock as a vital, seemingly invulnerable, driven - although addicted and flawed - great detective rather than Chabon's enfeebled, scared old man.

"Shutter Island," by Dennis Lehane

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

A couple of months ago I watched the film "Shutter Island," and enjoyed it so much that I decided to read the original novel. I was intrigued by the twists of the plot, and wanted to read how it worked on the page. This, in itself, was an interesting experiment, as it is more normal for me to go from book to film (and, almost invariably, prefer the book). Am I more naturally inclined to prefer the book, or do I tend to prefer whichever I discovered first? I watched "Wonder Boys" before I read Michael Chabon's book, and this is a rare instance where I preferred the film.

I think that I am coming to the conclusion that I am not necessarily predisposed to prefer the book - it just seems that way because in most cases I have read the book first. I enjoyed the film of "Shutter Island" more because I came to it first: the plot was new to me; I didn't already have my own idea of the characters, my own image of how they look or how they sound. I could accept Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, as he wasn't competing with the Teddy Daniels in my head. Maybe if I had read the book first, I would have accepted Leonardo DiCaprio less.

I don't want to comment on plot, as I don't want to give away the twists and turns of the story to anyone who hasn't already seen the film or read the book. But is it worth reading Shutter Island if you have already seen the film and know the twists of the plot? I think so. The time period of the story is a fascinating one, and novel itself is shot through with cold war hysteria and paranoia. The protagonist, Edward (Teddy) Daniels, is a marshal who takes on a case which sends him to a secure psychiatric institution for violent and disturbed patients. Ashecliffe Hospital is run more like a prison than an asylum. The action takes place not only against an oppressive time in society, but also against an uneasy, fraught paradigm change in the way mental illness is treated, as the invasive practice of lobotomy begins to give way to other pharmaceutical methods of treatment.

When I read the book, already knowing the plot, it gave me more opportunity to focus on other aspects of Dennis Lehane's writing, and there was an occasional lyricism of metaphor which grabbed my attention. In particular, an idea on only the first page of the novel appealed to me as a book lover: the book opens with an extract from the journal of a character, Dr Lester Sheehan, in which he writes "time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life." This idea takes on greater poignancy as the now ageing Sheehan, who is looking back on the events of the main narrative, "feels as if someone has shaken the book and those yellowed slips of paper, torn matchbook covers and flattened coffee stirrers have fallen to the floor, and the dog-eared flaps have been pressed smooth." Putting aside the lamentable issue of his poor treatment of books (never, never, fold over the corner of a book), I particularly liked this piece of description.

I should also say that I tried reading a bit of "Shutter Island" to our new, nervous cat as I had heard that reading to them can help them get used to you. I deliberately didn't shock her by reading her the (non)sex scene, but the bit I did read turned out to be a bit sweary. I think she prefers Kate Atkinson.

My forty books. Part 4: fiction

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Firstly, a little bit of housekeeping. If anyone should discover this blog with this post about 40 books, you might be a bit confused. If you read the post on "Howards End is on the Landing," or "Starting to think about my forty books," then the idea behind this might make a bit more sense.

So far I have:
- 6 plays (I have decided that I enjoy "The Tempest" too much to ditch it, and for sentimental reasons I can't let go of "Twelfth Night")
- 1 poetry volume
- 5 non-fiction

That is 12 books so far. That leaves me with about 28 fiction choices to reach my 40.

I am going to start by discounting series of books from a purely practical standpoint. I'd rather have some variety than have, say, 7 of my choices taken up by the Harry Potter series. If it can't stand alone in its own right, then I am not going to chose it. That does leave me with a bit of dilemma over Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker books, Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series or Terry Pratchett.

I also have a dilemma over whether to chose fun books that I love, or worthy books so that someone reading this might think I am smarter than I am (if you don't know me; if you do know me then you will recognise if I am being fraudulent). I'm going to try to make an honest choice of the 40 books that I would be happy - well, not exactly happy - to subsist on for the rest of my life. You need a bit of fun to leaven out the intelligent stuff.

There is no particular significance to the numbering; they are just in the order that I thought of them / saw them on my shelves.

I'm going to break it down into a couple of categories - and I am going to start numbering them from here on. I'm far better with words than numbers, and I am starting to lose count.

Old favourites:
13 Daphne Du Maurier "Rebecca"
A really good story and Cornish too.

14 Donna Tartt "The Secret History"
I love this book. A friend gave it to me as a present - thanks Claire - and I have read it at least 4 times. I can't imagine reaching a point where I wouldn't want to reread it.

15 Elizabeth Kostova "The Historian"
Mark bought this for me and, as a fan of gothic horror with a penchant for vampires, I love this book.

16 Michael Ondaatje "The English Patient"
I haven't read this for a while, but I loved it when I first read it. Ondaatje's descriptive prose is extraordinarily vivid and imaginative, and I loved the characters of Caravaggio and Hana (more so than the titular patient). If I could wish a fictional character into existence, I would be hard pushed to chose between Caravaggio and Sherlock Holmes.

17 James Joyce "Ulysses,"
I can almost hear people thinking "What, really?" And "I thought you were going to choose honestly, and not out of intellectual pretentions?" However, I read and enjoyed "Ulysses" when doing teaching practice for my PhD. I'm not too keen on the sections with the pompous and prissy Stephen Daedalus, but I like the polymorphous Bloom and his wandering wife.

18 Charlotte Bronte "Jane Eyre,"
I've never taken to the other Brontes, but I like Charlotte a lot. I have read and enjoyed "Villette," "The Professor" and "Shirley," but "Jane Eyre" is always the one that I would want to return to the most. I'm not a Heathcliff kind of girl - never came to terms with Emily and "Wuthering Heights' - but I am quite partial to a bit of Rochester.

19 and 20 At least one Howard Jacobson - there is no better chronicler of male, middle-aged angst (not even Philip Roth). I think that I would have to pick "Peeping Tom," as this was my introduction to his writing and has a Cornish setting. Of his more recent books though, I am going to be controversial and pick "Who's Sorry Now?" and not his recent Booker winner (I think "Who's Sorry Now?" was longlisted). "Who's Sorry Now?" is a good example of what I love most about Howard Jacobson. He is very funny, but he can also take you by surprise with a moment of insight or tenderness. Sometimes to say that an author has done something that surprises you is a bad thing - it can mean that they have made their character do something inconsistent with what they have already told you about him or her - but with Howard Jacobson I always felt these moments are organic to the character.

21 I think I should have a Dickens. I read and enjoyed "Bleak House" when at university, so I think I will stick with that one.

22 Douglas Adams "The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul"
I refer you back to my comment about not choosing a series of books. I love Douglas Adams, but I don't think that you can isolate one of the Hitchhikers series and read it in the same way as you could a Dirk Gently. This might be heresy, but I think I even prefer Dirk Gently to Hitchhikers (although I might change my mind on this tomorrow) - and I would argue that it isn't so much a series as it is a couple of books with a recurring character.

23 I need a Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, but which one? I prefer the short stories to the novels, so I might pick the collection that has the majority of stories that I love. I've just trawled through my collection. It's a really hard choice. "The Adventures...' for "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "The Man with the Twisted Lip"? "The Memoirs..." for "The Musgrave Ritual" and "The Greek Interpreter"? I think that it might be "The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes" for "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" and "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" (set in Cornwall). Although even now I am starting to doubt my choice because it doesn't have "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" or "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" (both interesting insights into the friendship between Holmes and Watson) from "His Last Bow." I might have to rethink this one. But, even so, I can't do without a Sherlock Holmes, and I wish he did exist even more than I wish Caravaggio from "The English Patient" existed: the world needs a violin-playing, drug-taking, slightly sexually ambiguous genius detective in it.

24 Stephen Fry "The Liar"
His first book, and still the one I like best.

25 Tim O'Brien "The Things they Carried"
I try to recommend this book to people, but I don't think anyone has ever taken me up on it. A brilliant selection of postmodern short stories set in the Vietnam War, and worth it just for one of the stories, "How to Tell a True War Story." Tim O' Brien has written quite a few books that I enjoyed - he was in the Vietnam War, and most of his books touch on the war to varying degrees - but this is still, I think, his most effective and moving.

26 Paul Auster "New York Trilogy"
I remember enjoying this a few years ago. I have Casanova's memoirs to remind me of a holiday in Venice, and this can serve to evoke a holiday in New York last year.


Books I mean to read:
27 Nicola Barker "Darkmans"
I bought this a couple of years ago, but haven't had the chance to read it yet. It sounds interesting and odd. It was Booker shortlisted, but didn't win.

28 Cervantes "Don Quixote"
One that I feel I should read, but also which I think I will enjoy when I get around to it.

29 Herman Melville "Moby Dick"
Ditto.

30 A.S. Byatt "Possession"
This was bought for me by friends to read in hospital when I broke my ankle when I was 17. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't read it yet. I'm now 35. I have re-watched the film recently during my current Jeremy Northam obsession, so reading this has the added bonus that I can imagine him as Randolph Ash.

31 Steve Toltz "The Fraction of the Whole"
Another Booker shortlisted tome which I think I will enjoy, but haven't read yet.

32 Thomas Pynchon "Gravity's Rainbow"
I like "The Crying of Lot 49," and want to tackle this one.

33 Don DeLillo "Underworld"
I have read and enjoyed a few DeLillos - "White Noise" in particular I remember enjoying - and want to get around to this one. This has the added advantage of being another New York book.

34 Michael Chabon "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"
Again, like De Lillo, I have read others by Michael Chabon but not yet read this one (which I believe won the Pulitzer and is one of his highest acclaimed). I also have "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" to read, which is hovering around the fringes of this list.

Now I have a problem, which isn't the one I expected to have when I started this list. I thought that I would hit 40 and be able to keep going, and have to condense the list. But actually now I have compiled all the books I feel strongly about, and have the difficult task - maybe even more difficult - of choosing a final 6 from the myriad books that I like a lot, but don't necessarily feel are indispensable. I think I need to think about this for a further day or 2 before I unveil my final 6, and I think I might also compile the entire list into one blog post. I may even change my mind about some...

I have more bad habits than I realised....

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

I'm starting to feel a little bit demoralised by writing this blog. I never thought that I had so many bad habits. I have just thought of a couple more - and that's without trying very hard. I dread to think how many I could come up with if I tried.

I am compulsive. I am a big fan of Eddie Izzard, and yet I have never managed to fully watch his DVD, "Definite Article," without getting distracted. This is because his set for this show is a huge, open book on which a page of various texts is projected. I always end up trying to recognise which book is being projected. I can get a few of them - I remember some Spike Milligan - but, every time I watch the DVD, I get increasingly frustrated by the ones I can't recognise. In fact I am now thinking that I have to watch it again. Not because Eddie Izzard is brilliant - he is, and this is one of my favourite shows of his - but because I want to try again to recognise those damn books.

A few years ago I read "Wonder Boys" by Michael Chabon. This is one of the rare instances in which I prefer the film version to the book, maybe because I saw the film before reading the book. I actually don't think I can recall another instance where I prefer the film to a book. Anyway, there was one section in the book with which I felt a strong connection. He writes of a character (I can't remember her name, but the Frances McDormand part in the film) who is a voracious reader. If there is no book available, she will read anything to hand. I do that. In the absence of a book I have been known to read the backs of shampoo bottles.

I'm nosy. And again I am only talking about books. If I go to someone's house and books are on display, then I will gravitate to the bookshelves to see what's there. I might try to be circumspect, but you will probably see me edging nonchalantly towards them.

Likewise I'm not really a gossip, and I don't listen in to conversations on public transport - but if you are sitting near me on a bus or train, reading a book, I will feel compelled to try and see what you are reading.

So, please, take pity if you are reading on public transport and, out of the corner of your eye, you notice a woman looking furtively over. It could be me. Please be kind and move your book slightly. It need only be for a few seconds, but just long enough for me to see the spine or front of what you are reading. If you don't I will be in torment for the whole journey.