The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower

It's good to be back in the saddle.

Sorry for the tiny image. it's the biggest version I could find of the cover for the edition I read. Above the title it says: "Holmes meets Houdini in the most phantasmic adventure of his career!"

Fan fiction: the butt of endless jokes. Often, when a fan of a particular movie or tv show is debating continuity with another who cites a novel or comic, the term "fan fiction" will be used to belittle the licensed media. But is it fair? I'm not gonna draw it out: the answer is no.

Fan fiction is much older than most people give it credit for. What are we to make of the ways that cultures (*cough*Romans*cough*) appropriated the stories of their neighbors and those they conquered? "Oh, I like this Zeus guy. Let's tweak him a little bit and call him Jupiter." It's the same impulse, really: I like this story. I like these characters. I want to try something with them. Some may find it unoriginal, or a waste of time, but personally I think it's a testament to the collaborative nature of, well, everything.

And so that brings us to The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower. It claims to be from a lost Watson manuscript (because of course Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were real people, ya dummy!) about the time that Holmes got Harry Houdini off from being framed for a robbery and a murder. I'm not going to go into great detail about the plot itself, but it's not bad. Parts of the solution to the case are fairly obvious early on, but some parts are surprising despite being properly set up, which is all you can ask of any mystery novel.

I'm more interested in the ways that the novel works as fan fiction, and how it resonates with myself as a Sherlock Holmes fan. I've had a love for the character since childhood. Just ask my mom about "Sherlock Joel," a story I had her transcribe for me while I was still figuring out how writing letters worked (Spoiler Alert: Darth Vader did it). And of course, I am just as enamored of the BBC Sherlock series as everyone else on the planet. But it has been some time since I've actually read a Sherlock Holmes story. I think the last one might have been around my freshman or sophomore years of high school. So it's been a while.

I was worried my mental image of the characters might be tainted by repeated viewings of the BBC series. Fortunately, that did not wind up being the case. My old mental images of Holmes and Watson quickly reasserted themselves (although Lestrade was stuck as Rupert Graves until near the end, when for some reason he started to look more like a constable in an Edward Gorey piece. My mind is a strange place). I must give credit for this to the writing. It was pretty close to how I remember the characters in the original stories. Stashower isn't interested in reinventing here: he just wants to add to what has come before. And he does so fairly well. The characterizations are solid, the plot is decent, but if it fails as "an addition to what has come before" it does so in how much it winks at the reader.

All sorts of in-jokes and dramatic irony pepper the story just for those familiar with Holmes and Houdini. After the third or forth time someone punches Houdini in the stomach, I kind of wanted to say "yeah, I get it, Stashower. Move on." There are all kinds of references to earlier Holmes stories, complete with footnotes specifically pointing out that they are references. This, I can only imagine, is as an aide to any readers who might be less familiar with the Holmes cannon. Perhaps Stashower's target audience is less hardcore Holmes fans and more those who are just casually acquainted with the character, and he hopes to get them to read more of the original stories. If this in fact was his goal, he succeeds. I was left thirsting for more Sherlock Holmes, although I won't be getting back to him until I get to the D's in my own library.

One last criticism: I do wish that Houdini had done more. Holmes does all the heavy lifting in the story, with Houdini merely being a client. It would have been nice for Houdini's skills as an escape artist to affect the plot a little more than they did. But it's a minor thing. I didn't even notice it until reflecting on the book afterwards.

Overall, The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man is an enjoyable read, and a solid piece of unabashed, unashamed fan fiction. If you're the type to likes to do this sort of thing, pick up a copy for some beach reading this summer. I might pick up my own copy of it at some point, but for now this copy is going back to Wade.

Next: The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell.

(Not) Finishing the Book

Okay, it is time for me to face some harsh truths about this little New Years Resolution project of mine.

Truth one: I'm not going to actually finish my entire library by the end of this year. I was probably never going to finish the whole library in one year, but I guess I thought I could put a sizable dent in it. Maybe get to the M's.

Truth two: Sometimes, you just don't want to finish the book.

The book this blog entry would have been about is On Being a Christian by Swiss Theologian Hans Küng. It is a very dense and dry book, although not without its points of interest. It was loaned to me (along with Theology for the Third Millennium by the same author) by my father after I expressed an interest in Theology many years ago. It has mostly just sat on shelves and in boxes at different points since, a 700 page leviathan that I was afraid to approach. Then came this crazy New Years Resolution. I was going to have to read it, as per the rules I established for myself. After finishing A Prayer for Owen Meaney back in February, I cracked the spine on Küng.

Progress was slow. It is so dry it was rarely able to keep my attention for more than a few pages at a time. Weeks went by without any progress at all. Wade would call me and goad me on, but even with that encouragement I found it a chore to return to Küng. I took to keeping a text document with my responses to Küng's points along with quotes that I liked. But that only helped a little. I was still massively bored by it.

Why? Why was I bored by this? I have always found religion to be an interesting topic, and I didn't have nearly this much trouble with Robert M. Price's The Christ-Myth Theory and its Problems back in the fall (although I was reading it for a paper I was writing, so that helped). I came to realize that I was more interested in historical and social trends related to religion and how individuals connect with religious belief than I was with Theology. That isn't to say that I didn't find some interest in the book. But the interesting parts were few and far between in the 248 pages that I wound up getting through.

There came a point where Wade stopped encouraging me to finish the book and started encouraging me to not finish the book. He thought that at least I should skip the second Hans Küng book. He reasoned with me that since I had a rule to allow myself to read other books in a series if I decided I liked the one I had, that I should also be able to decide not to continue reading if I didn't like the first book. While these two Küng books are not technically in a series together, I still take his point, which leads to:

Truth three: I need to revise the rules.

So as of now, if I decided that I don't like an author, I don't have to read any more of that author's books. However, if I decide that I do like them, I can pick up more books by that author and read them before continuing on with my project. Also, and this is the biggest change: I don't have to finish the book.

I know! This is antithesis to the very name of the blog! But I came across this infographic a couple of days ago, and it finally got me thinking about just... not finishing. I quite liked one of the quotes in the infographic. "I once heard that the rule for when to abandon a book is 100 minus your age." That's probably a pretty good rule. That isn't to say that a book might not start out slow and pick up by the end, but do I really have another five months to slog through a book just to find out? If I'm lucky, I have another 50 years of book reading ahead of me. If I keep at my current pace with Küng, I'll have wasted one of those years on a book I'm not even enjoying that much. This is unacceptable. So although the title of this blog is "Finishing the Book(s)", I have decided that when it becomes apparent that finishing a particular book is going to come at the expense of future books, then it does not have to be finished. I'll give it 100 pages minus my age.

So fare thee well, Hans Küng. You'll be finding your way back to my father's bookshelf soon. I've already started the next book in this blog series, I'm already half way through, and I already know that I made the right decision.

Next time: The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Sorry that it has taken so long to update. This semester had a rocky start to it, and I've only recently started finding time in my schedule for extra-circular reading. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this from here on out.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is pretty much just as good as I had been lead to believe. It's one of those books that gets assigned in High School English a lot (although not my English class) and also one of the few that most students walk away from having enjoyed. I can see why. Its themes are very present and obvious, but it still manages to be a little edgy without crossing the line into offensive territory. It is also very comforting to those who desire to believe that God has a purpose for them. While I am not one of those people (and will actually be tearing down that aspect of the novel in a few paragraphs), I still recognize the appeal. Despite any theological reservations I have about the book, I still enjoyed it. Spoiler-free until I note otherwise.

The story is told by one John Wheelwright, the son of a single mother in a small New England town in the 1940's. He befriends a boy named Owen Meany. Owen Meany is small (although I don't believe he's supposed to have dwarfism, as he seems to in the very loose, barely-counts-as-an-adaptation Simon Birch) and has a strange voice and a borderline fanatical devotion to God. This devout religious belief is the center of the narrative. All action occurs to support this theme. As life happens to our protagonists and tragedies and mysteries occur, they all tie into what Owen claims is God's plan for him. All of these events are what give our narrator his faith in God, as he tells us recounting the story in 1987.

One of the things that Irving does very deftly with this narrative is jump around in time. He goes back and forth from the time period of the late 40's through the late 60's (not to mention the novels “present day” of 1987) without ever getting confusing. Every backtrack, every jump forward makes sense when it happens and you never really lose track of where you are. However, there is something a little strange about the “present day” parts of the story. The novel was published in 1989, so I can only assume the current events John refers to (and he refers to them a lot – Reagan, Iran-Contra, Oliver North) were current when the novel was written. I think this has dated the novel in a way Irving probably didn't factor in when he wrote it. It doesn't have much to do with the central theme about faith, but rather ties into the secondary theme – the tired idea that America was somehow “innocent” before Vietnam and then lost its innocence during that war. It's an idea that seems to have been created by Baby Boomers for Baby Boomers. I doubt many “Greatest Generation” members would buy the narrative, having lost their own innocence early due to the Depression. In any case, I don't really feel like addressing that theme beyond saying that it's obviously a dumb one to anyone with any sense of historical perspective.

Irving is also quite good at painting characters. Every aspect of his characters, from their appearance right down to their personalities and tastes is vivid and realistic. However, it is also troubling at times. The story is told from a very privileged POV, which isn't troubling in and of itself necessarily. In fact, the rich characters in the story run the gamut from good and virtuous to ill tempered and selfish. However, this spectrum of behavior falls away when the novel deals with lower-class characters. Owen and Lydia (the Wheelwrights maid) being the only exceptions, the rest of the poor characters are portrayed as dumb, crazy, evil, or some combination of all three. The worst hand, however, is dealt to Owen's parents.

(Spoilers begin here).

Owen's parents are regarded by the other characters (including Owen himself) as dumb. John and his step-father Dan are quite candid about their suspicion that Owen's mother is mentally retarded (a claim not really supported by her behavior). And when they reveal to John that Owen was the result of a virgin birth, John gets quite irrationally angry at them for being either stupid or liars. I say irrationally because this comes on the heals of Owen's chief miracle: at the climax of the novel he gives his life to save some children from a grenade, just as he had premonitions about for years before, and the details were exact, right down to the date. This event gave John faith in God and that Owen's life was guided by divine fate, but even after all of that he couldn't accept that Owen's parents might be telling the truth about his virgin birth? It doesn't make any sense. Nor does Owen's cruelty towards his parents. At a Christmas pageant where Owen plays baby Jesus, he yells at his parents to leave the church because their presence there was blasphemy. And at Owen's funeral John thinks back to this event, concluding that Owen would feel the same way about his parents presence at his funeral. Why? No explanation for this treatment is given or implied. Owen's parents are dumb and poor, that's all we really know.

What's really sad about the treatment of Owen's parents is that I find their reaction to Owen's virgin birth much more believable than the reactions of Joseph and Mary in the nativity myth. If such a thing were to really happen, I imagine the parents would be terrified of their child and would become withdrawn and would have a hard time dealing with the rest of the world.

The biggest holes in the novel are around its central theme. There are two main arguments for faith that it presents. I'll get the easy one out of the way first. It quotes Thomas Aquinas' “First Mover” argument. The idea is that because an object in motion requires an agent to put it into motion, the universe itself needs such an agent, and that agent is God. The problem inherent in the argument is that then God needs a “first mover” himself, and the question just gets kicked further back, on and on. If you accept that God doesn't require a first mover, then why does the universe need a first mover? These are cosmological questions that still have not been answered, but to simply said “God did it” and leave it at that isn't a sufficient answer. If anything it raises more questions than it answers.

The other argument for faith that the novel presents is the existence of miracles. Owen's whole life is said to be a miracle, and the proof is in how he dies. He works for the army, helping with the funeral arrangement of dead soldiers coming back from Vietnam. The family of one soldier in particular is full of evil nutcases (who are poor, of course) and after Owen confronts the brother of the soldier about being more respectful, the guy follows Owen to an airport to kill him. Owen is asked by a nun to take some Vietnamese children who she has helped into the country to go to the bathroom. Once there the crazy brother throws a grenade at John, who passes it to Owen who then jumps into John's arms as he pushes Owen up towards a high window, where Owen “dunks” the grenade in a move they had practiced time and again as children with a basketball. The grenade goes off in time to kill Owen, although the children are saved. Owen had been having premonitions about this event his whole life, right down to the date it would occur on. It is what led him to join the army (because he believed he had to be in Vietnam from the presence of the children in the premonition). The event is presented as evidence that Owen's life was divinely guided. However, this notion falls apart at one simple fact: if Owen hadn't been born, none of this would have happened. The crazy guy wouldn't have been at the airport to throw the grenade. John's mother would be alive. In fact, in many ways, everyone would be better off. The entire “miracle” is completely contrived.

(End Spoilers).

It sounds like I didn't like the book, but I actually did. The prose is good, and it is quite funny and moving at different points. I would recommend it to others, and will most likely read some more John Irving at some point.

Up next: On Being a Christian by Hans Küng.

White Noise by Don DeLillo

I'm not sure where to begin with this one. This novel is very disjointed and at times rambles on with no real focus. There are several themes that are visited: death, family life, consumerism, media culture, but nothing particularly profound is said about any of them. None of them pay off. The protagonist is unlikable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but he isn't very interesting either, which is unforgivable. However, I don't want to completely trash the book. There are funny moments and at least a few interesting passages. I'll keep it spoiler free until I note otherwise.

The story revolves around a "Professor of Hitler Studies" named Jack Gladney, who narrates the novel. He lives with his fourth wife with their children from numerous marriages, who are all various levels of wunderkinds. His colleague Murray is a professor of American Environments (apparently what they called "Popular Culture" in the 80's) at the same college and is the source of most of the novel's half-assed observations about society. The novel is split into three parts, the first simply introducing the characters and themes, the second depicting an "Airborne Toxic Event" which causes their town to evacuate, and the third part making stumbling attempts at paying off the themes without really paying them off.

For a college professor, the protagonist of this novel is pretty stupid. I lost count of how many times I rolled my eyes at him pretty early on. Numerous times he identifies some aspect of human behavior or society that he imagines himself to be above, all the while drowning in his own variant of that behavior. Perhaps that was a part of the point, but it gets grating fast. At no point did I feel invested in his character. Murray acted almost as a foil to this, reveling in the dredges of society instead of imagining himself above them. Frankly, he might have made a more interesting protagonist.

The themes about consumerism and media culture do the least to pay off. If anything they form a backdrop: a setting for the story, not the purpose of it. This does strike me as odd, given that the title of the book is White Noise, a culmination of all the gadgets and shows and machines that form our backdrop every day. Why is it just a backdrop? Why doesn't it affect the story in any meaningful way?

The theme of family life probably does the second least to pay off. Murray puts forth the hypothesis that family units serve a function of warding off reality, that "small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate." He claims that societies with strong family units tend to be societies of superstition and mysticism, while rational societies tend to have weaker family units. I'm not sure about the veracity of this claim. Personally, I tend to be more pedantic around my family, not less. I probably let my friends get away with half-truths and incorrect statements more than I do my family. But there does seem to be some kind of truth to it, if only in an archetypal way. In any case, Murray's theory is never really confirmed or refuted in the text.

I don't know. Maybe I'm too accustomed to Science Fiction and Fantasy, where the themes that form the subtext tend to literally become the text in some meaningful way before the story is over. Maybe I shouldn't be looking for that here. But at least one of the themes does kind-of sort-of pay off in this way: death.

Spoilers. Skip down to the final paragraph if you want to avoid them.

The theme of death is so prevalent in the story I'm surprised it wasn't the title. It's central to the books second and third parts. The second part of the story sees an entire town running for its life from a toxic spill. Jack (once more being an idiot) exposes himself to it without thinking. Once at the refugee site a medical screener tells him that because of his exposure he will certainly die - some time in the next thirty years. The toxin can take that long to take effect. Jack does the math and realizes thirty years would put him on the other side of eighty. This, at least, is an interesting predicament. After all, aren't we all (statistically) due sometime before eighty? But now he has a certain confirmation instead of a nebulous idea.

Not long after, Jack learns that his wife Babette had been taking an experimental medication in secret: a medication meant to alleviate fear of death. She learned of it through an advertisement in a tabloid, but the company shut the trials down before she had the chance to try it. However, her fear of death is so soul-engulfing that she agrees to have an affair with one of the scientists to get her hands on the pills. They work for a while, but eventually they stop. After she confesses all this to Jack she stops taking the pills.

Meanwhile Jack has a conversation with Murray where Murray hypothesizes that there are two kinds of people in the world: diers and killers. Diers accept their death. They may try to distract themselves from it with things like religion or hobbies, but ultimately they accept that it will happen. Killers, on the other hand, attempt to prolong their life by ending others. They commit murders simply because it means they live longer than their victim. Jack takes to this idea a little too eagerly, and decides to track down his wife's lover and kill him.

The murder attempt does not go quite how Jack envisioned it. He attempts to make it look like a suicide, but he places the gun into the victims hand before he's even dead. This ends in a predictable way and Jack gets shot back. This seems to snap Jack out of whatever crazed mindset he was in and he drags the man to a nearby hospital, where a Nun gives him a monologue about how none of the nuns in the hospital actually believe in God. They just pretend they do to make everyone else feel better. This seems to upset Jack, but he accepts it and leaves.

The final chapter seems to indicate that life goes on regardless. Apparently there were no consequences to Jack's actions. He never says how he explained his injury to his wife, or why he didn't get brought up on attempted murder charges. His suburban life just goes on. And this is what bothered me. Actions have consequences, but apparently no one told Don DeLillo. I understand that the book is more focused on theme than plot, but damn it, if the theme doesn't affect the plot in a realistic way then any point you're trying to make gets undermined. I just can't quite suss out what DeLillo is trying to say about death. The best thing to do is ignore it? That's kind of a weak ending after so much fuss. If any of you have read the book and have a different perspective, feel free to comment. Just mark spoilers as such.

End Spoilers.

Despite my problems with it, White Noise does have redeeming qualities. The character of Murray is a lot of fun, as is Jack's son Heinrich. It has funny moments, and at least a few of the observations are interesting, even if they aren't fully explored. It's not an overly long book, so if it sounds like your kind of thing, I'd say go for it. I don't think I'll be buying my own copy, though. This one is going back to Ashley.

Next time: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

A New Years Resolution

I admit it - I'm one of those people. Those people, who buy books faster than they read them. They have entire bookshelves full of books that are only half read, or (gasp!) not read at all. It's been a point of shame for me (when I bother to think about it), but I'm done with this condition. Starting on January 1, 2013, I will read every book I have before purchasing or borrowing any other books, barring exceptions which I will detail below. This will probably take more than a year, but hopefully I'll be able to put a sizable dent in my library before the year is out. This blog will be about chronicling this journey. I will write a review/reflection on each book as I finish them.

I will start with the books I have borrowed in the order I have borrowed them. I borrowed White Noise by Don DeLillo from my friend Ashley around five or six years ago, and damn it, I'm gonna read it and them promptly give it back to her. After that is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, which I borrowed from my brother (I suspect without his knowledge) around four years ago. Then On Being A Christian and Theology for the Third Millennium, both by Hans Küng, which I borrowed from my Dad shortly after I borrowed Owen Meany. After that is The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower, borrowed from my friend Wade about two years ago. Then The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell, borrowed from my friend Ryan also about two years ago. Finally, On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, borrowed from my friend Beth shortly after The Last Kingdom.

After I have finally worked my way through these books, I will begin working on all the books I own in alphabetical order by author. Not just those I haven't read, but also rereading those I have.

And now the exceptions I mentioned to the "no buying or borrowing anything new" rule:

1. If I decide that I desire a better edition of a book I already own. For example, I want to replace my current Sci-fi Book Club edition of Lord of the Rings with that really nice 50th anniversary edition that came out a few years ago. I will do so once I work my way through the alphabet to Tolkien.

2. If I own a part of a series and decide I want to continue that series, I will allow myself to purchase the rest of the series. For example, I own a box set of the first four Song of Ice and Fire books. If I get super into it, I'll let myself pick up and read A Dance with Dragons before moving on.

Some things are being left out for sure. Reference books and text books and the like. Some things will be left for the end, such as the Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare. Those will be challenges unto themselves and may wind up meriting their own blogs. Once I have worked my way through all of my books, this blog will be finished. However, if I find I enjoy it, I may start a new blog. But that is at least a year down the road.

And so I will now go empty my bookshelves, putting my books away into boxes (in reverse alphabetical order) only to find their way back onto my shelves after I have "earned" them. This should be an interesting year (or two).