Girl Detective

Prior to seeing the Guthrie’s current production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I read the text of the play. It’s easy to see it’s one of Shakespeare’s earliest. The prose and poetry aren’t as polished, and it prefigured many of his later, better plays in some of the phrasing, and the cross-dressing of a female character in love. Its ending is neatly tied up, though surprising in some of the particulars, like a threat of rape and an overquick, overgenerous forgiveness.

Joe Dowling’s Guthrie production did an engaging job of staging they play. It’s set in 1955, and the conceit is that the play is a live performance to be shown on television. Since the play is a comedy, and a light one, the liberty with setting did not trouble me. I found, though, that the young actors playing the lead parts of Valentine, Proteus, Silvia and Julia, were less strong than those actors in supporting parts, including Kris Nelson as the producer, a woefully underutilized Isabell Monk O’Connor, and Lee Mark Nelson as the Duke. It was Jim Lichtscheidl as Lance, though, who stole the show. His sometime stage companion didn’t always hit his mark, but Lance’s scenes were hilarious, and felt authentically true to the play as well as slightly improvised. This was a good example of why plays are meant to see performed, and not only read as text. When I read the play, I didn’t care for the scenes with Lance. Having seen the Guthrie production, I now have a much increased appreciation for them.

Overall entertaining, but not a must see. I much preferred Henry V.

In his essay “Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes,” from Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon discusses how the details of Doyle’s life contributed to his writing of the Holmes oeuvre. Chabon is adamant that the Holmes stories are entertaining and well done, yet shouldn’t be taken too seriously. I was reminded me the scene in The Thirteenth Tale when the doctor tells the overwrought heroine to stop reading gothic fiction, and gives her a prescription for Sherlock Holmes.

A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four, two short novels, are the beginning of the Holmes canon. They are racist, sexist, anti-Mormon, and inconsistent, yet enduringly funny, engaging, and entertaining.

In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson meets Holmes, and they quickly are involved in a nasty murder case involving Mormons.

There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

As for The Sign of the Four, one of the characters described it very well:

‘It is a romance!’ cried Mrs Forrester. ‘An injured lady, half a million in treasure, a black cannibal and a wooden-legged ruffian. They take the place of the conventional dragon or wicked earl.’

‘And two knights errant to the rescue,’ added Miss Morstan, with a bright glance at me

.

In addition to the stories, the characters held my attention as well. Dr Watson, on Sherlock Holmes’ mood swings:

Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant experssion in his eyes that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic had not the temperance and cleanliness of his hwole life forbidden such a notion.

In The Sign of the Four, Holmes still vacillates between depression and mania, but his drug use is acknowledged, one of the inconsistencies in the series; Chabon says these show Doyle was likely writing quickly for money, with little attention to continuity.

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time, his eyes rested thoughtfully on the sinewy forearm and wries, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it….

‘Which is it today,’ I asked, ‘morphine or cocaine?’

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-leather volume which he had opened.

‘It is cocaine,’ he said, ‘a seven-percent solution. Would you like to try it?’

Inconsistencies and dated views included, these two novels, which I bought in one volume, were a lovely change after I finished Shakespeare’s Richard II. I may try to work in more Holmes throughout the rest of the year.

I recently attended a Guthrie Theater production of Henry V. While I’ve read and seen that play several times, I’ve not read either part i or ii of Henry IV. I began them, but backed up further re-read King Richard II, since they all feel of a piece.

It is both a history and a tragedy, so I don’t think it will spoil much to write that things end badly for Richard. Poor Richard. He seems to be doing a decent job as king, recently declared by his now-dead grandfather, Edward III. As usual, Shakespeare plays fast and loose with historical detail, relying on several sources for his play. Superficially, the play is about the struggle between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke. Ultimately, though, I found this a complex and involving character study of a young, inexperienced king, that foreshadows elements of Henry V and many other of his plays.

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings:
How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,
All murthered–for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! (III, ii, 155-170)

I read the Arden edition, 2nd series, edited by Peter Ure. I didn’t care for this version. The footnotes were concerned mostly with arguing for and against the source material, rather than in explicating the text. There is now an Arden 3rd series version available, so I’d be interested to see how it differs.

I really liked the cover depiction of Richard, and felt it nicely represented elements of his character. He has a high forehead, denoting scholarly wisdom, which is shown in his preference for words and speeches. He has a full upper lip, denoting sensuality. His collar is much too large, hinting that Richard isn’t up to the grand task of being king. And I fancy the look on his young, tired looking face is at least wary, if not actually scared.

I look forward to finally reading about Henry IV, and seeing how well (according to Shakespeare, at least) he fills the role of king.

I admit it. I’m prejudiced.

Against nonfiction. Take a look at my reading list and it’s pretty clear. So when a member of my book group chose John McPhee’s Crofter and the Laird, I was hesitant. I dragged my feet, and was late to reserve it from the library, and relieved when I saw it was short. But I humbly recant my bad feelings, because I thoroughly enjoyed the book, learned from it, and plan to do follow-up research as well.

McPhee has written a variety of books and essays on a variety of topics. In The Crofter and the Laird, he traces his family history to a small island in Scotland, then goes to live there.

The Scottish clan that I belong to–or would belong to if it were now anything more than a sentimental myth–was broken a great many generations ago by a party of MacDonalds, who hunted down the last chief of my clan, captured him, refused him mercy, saying that a man who had never shown mercy should not ask for it, tied him to a standing stone and shot him down. The standing stone was in a place called Balaromin Mor, on Colonsay, a small island in the open Atlantic, twenty-five miles west of the Scottish mainland.

McPhee has an engaging, conversational tone that is at once easy to read as well as instructive. Additionally, my library’s copy of the book contained beautiful pen and ink drawings by James Graves. The book is less a travel essay than an ethnography, as he delves into the history, myths, and community of Colonsay. Along the way he investigates, celebrates and debunks a great deal.

Were I to judge Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends by its fabulous cover (one of the best of last year), I would guess it to be geeky, beautiful, layered and complex. In other words, generally pretty awesome. This book, like its cover, is pretty on the inside.

Given, I’m a geek who reads comic books, and a fan of Chabon’s writing; I’m predisposed to like this book. His Mysteries of Pittsburgh was a pivotal novel for me; it made me want to be a better reader, and seek out better books. I had an embarrassing moment with him at a signing a few years ago* that seemed only to cement my crush on him.

But enough about me. To the book.

Maps and Legends is Chabon’s first collection of essays. In it, he writes about subjects as varied as Sherlock Holmes, comic books, planned communities, children’s literature, and golems. He ties these disparate topics with a shared theme of blurred boundaries, most often between truth and lies, reality and imagination.

Because Trickster is looking to stir things up, to scramble the conventions, to undo history and received notions of what is art and what is not, to sing for his supper, to find and lose himself in the act of entertaining. Trickster haunts the boundary lines, the margins, the secret shelves between the sections in the bookstore. (p. 26)

Fond of subjunctive clauses, Chabon’s writing is challenging in an energizing way, spurring this reader on to further thought, related reading, and flights of fancy. I was reminded of the essays of dear, departed David Foster Wallace–erudite AND entertaining, though Chabon’s book has far fewer footnotes. I’m not sure the book would be as entertaining to non-geeks, but I found a great deal to appreciate.

*Another amusing (to me, at least) story from the signing. My friend and former bookshop co-worker Kate DiCamillo was there, too. Her book, Because of Winn Dixie had recently been released, and had not yet won the Newbery Honor award. Before Chabon’s reading, she saw a woman walk by holding Winn Dixie, and offered to sign it for her. The woman looked at Kate oddly, unsure if she was who she said she was, but handed over the book. Kate whipped out a pen, signed the book and handed it back. I wonder if the woman remembers the incident, and wonders at the encounter with the soon-to-be-well-known author.

2009 is off to a promising start in books with Emmanuel Guibert’sAlan’s War, a comic-book memoir of a U.S. G.I. during and after WWII. Originally published in French, the new English translation is in a typically spiffy edition from First Second books.

Guibert met Cope in Europe. As their friendship grew, Cope told his war stories to Guibert, who felt compelled to transform them into a comics narrative. Guibert’s black and white art is deceptively simple looking, but it contains a great deal of atmosphere and emotion. Cope is a likable everyman, and his memories unfold in spare vignettes, though many of them loop back and reappear later. As Guibert hoped to make clear from the title, the book is not a history of the war, but one man’s experience of it.

At the age of 18, like all young Americans, I was drafted.

I took some exams. I got a perfect score on the radio operator aptitude test.

And then they put us on a train.

Cope’s optimism, resilience, adaptability, and ability to make friends all make for a touching and engaging personal history.