strange and random happenstance

Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: April 8th, 2008
Format: Hardcover, 104 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lee Scoresby has set his balloon north in the hopes of finding some work. He's recently become an aeronaut, having won the balloon on a hand of poker. Though teaching himself has been a little hairy, something his hare daemon Hester would agree with, what with the balloon coming with only half a copy of The Elements of Aerial Navigation. One day he will find an intact copy of that valuable guide, until then as he lands in Novy Odense his number one goal is to line his pockets, which are perilously empty. And in a town built on every kind of oil imaginable not to have enough for a drop to fix his pistol feels downright shameful to Lee, so he sets out in search of some job leads. Stowing his balloon he walks to the nearest bar to look for employment and to wet his whistle and realizes he's walked into a town in the midst of an upheaval. There's to be an election that week for mayor and the incumbent looks to lose to the ex-senator Poliakov who's taken a strong anti-bear stance. Poliakov is a cunning man who is working with the powerful Larsen Manganese mining company which has supposedly just struck it rich in Novy Odense. All this Lee learns from a rather chatty poet, Sigurdsson, who happens to make his money as a journalist. While all these political machinations should be of some concern to Lee he's more interested in a distressed sea captain in the bar. Lee's interest in this man will put him in the center of all Novy Odense's problems and unit him with a powerful ally, the armoured bear, Iorek Byrnison.

While I picked up Once Upon a Time in the North when it first came out almost a decade ago I couldn't bring myself to read it because at the time this slim volume was THE END. This would be it from Philip Pullman with regard to his magnum opus, His Dark Materials. There were rumors and whispers that there would eventually be more but until the announcement this spring I just couldn't bring myself to read this story about when Lee and Iorek first met. I couldn't take the heartbreak that their story was over even if this was just the beginning chronologically. But what's odd is I'm really glad I waited. The book isn't just a great read, it's so relevant now that it is shocking. I mean it couldn't be more timely and it made me wonder, does Philip Pullman actually have an alethiometer? To so accurately depict the political climate almost a decade in advance is spooky. There's an election with Russians causing havoc, there's a charismatic leader whose entire platform is the removal of illegal immigrants taking jobs from the community in order to secure his win while really he's there to aid big business and the military industrial complex and line his pockets all the while having thugs working for him behind the scenes with his own personal army and the press in his pocket. I mean, seriously!?! Russians! Poliakov/Trump! Bears/Mexicans! Novy Odense Courier and Telegraph/Breitbart! It's spookily accurate. But what this does is rise the book from not just a story with bears and balloons into a fable for our time. Fairy Tales are there to teach people lessons, and I think the lessons shown here are ones that need to be taken to heart so we never end up in this situation again.

Yet the book wasn't all relevant to today, after all Lee Scoresby is a cowboy and a Texan through and through so Once Upon a Time in the North also deals lovingly with all the wonderful western tropes we've come to love to this very day. There's a reason Westworld would work in the real world as well as on the screen. Lee has a soft spot for the ladies yet he's honorable, giving advice to lonely women while not tarnishing their virtue. He's a crack shot, when his gun actually works. He has a weakness for gambling, but luckily with Hester by his side she'll keep him on the straight and narrow. He does what is right even if it gets him into a whole heap of trouble. Plus, there's something about a cowboy in a situation that is so beyond his ken that calls to me. Like Ethan Chandler on Penny Dreadful, he's without a home and in a foreign land and falling into a dangerous adventure but his moral compass will steer him right. There is also a villain from Lee's past! Poliakov has one Mr. Morton in his pay, an assassin from America whom Lee had a previous run-in with, though he knew him by the name of McConville. They had a set-to in Dakota Country that had elements of Deadwood and more than a dash of Pinkerton justice gone wrong. Like Dashiell Hammet's Red Harvest, there's a trail of bodies in this man's wake, friends of Lee, and Lee isn't about to let him get away this time. With the politics and the vengeance I feel that this book actually can stand on it's own. In fact, I think that not only can anyone read it, but that this would be a good starting point for anyone considering reading Philip Pullman's work. Yes, there are some spoilers, but the microcosm of characters is so rich that I would recommend Once Upon a Time in the North to anyone. Even those skeptical of fantasy.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Different Kind of P and P, Armoured Bears, Cowboy, Dashiell Hammett, Elections, His Dark Materials, Iorek Byrnison, Lee Scoresby, Once Upon a Time in the North, Philip Pullman, Pinkertons, Politics, Red Harvest

Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: April 8th, 2008
Format: Hardcover, 104 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lee Scoresby has set his balloon north in the hopes of finding some work. He's recently become an aeronaut, having won the balloon on a hand of poker. Though teaching himself has been a little hairy, something his hare daemon Hester would agree with, what with the balloon coming with only half a copy of The Elements of Aerial Navigation. One day he will find an intact copy of that valuable guide, until then as he lands in Novy Odense his number one goal is to line his pockets, which are perilously empty. And in a town built on every kind of oil imaginable not to have enough for a drop to fix his pistol feels downright shameful to Lee, so he sets out in search of some job leads. Stowing his balloon he walks to the nearest bar to look for employment and to wet his whistle and realizes he's walked into a town in the midst of an upheaval. There's to be an election that week for mayor and the incumbent looks to lose to the ex-senator Poliakov who's taken a strong anti-bear stance. Poliakov is a cunning man who is working with the powerful Larsen Manganese mining company which has supposedly just struck it rich in Novy Odense. All this Lee learns from a rather chatty poet, Sigurdsson, who happens to make his money as a journalist. While all these political machinations should be of some concern to Lee he's more interested in a distressed sea captain in the bar. Lee's interest in this man will put him in the center of all Novy Odense's problems and unit him with a powerful ally, the armoured bear, Iorek Byrnison.

While I picked up Once Upon a Time in the North when it first came out almost a decade ago I couldn't bring myself to read it because at the time this slim volume was THE END. This would be it from Philip Pullman with regard to his magnum opus, His Dark Materials. There were rumors and whispers that there would eventually be more but until the announcement this spring I just couldn't bring myself to read this story about when Lee and Iorek first met. I couldn't take the heartbreak that their story was over even if this was just the beginning chronologically. But what's odd is I'm really glad I waited. The book isn't just a great read, it's so relevant now that it is shocking. I mean it couldn't be more timely and it made me wonder, does Philip Pullman actually have an alethiometer? To so accurately depict the political climate almost a decade in advance is spooky. There's an election with Russians causing havoc, there's a charismatic leader whose entire platform is the removal of illegal immigrants taking jobs from the community in order to secure his win while really he's there to aid big business and the military industrial complex and line his pockets all the while having thugs working for him behind the scenes with his own personal army and the press in his pocket. I mean, seriously!?! Russians! Poliakov/Trump! Bears/Mexicans! Novy Odense Courier and Telegraph/Breitbart! It's spookily accurate. But what this does is rise the book from not just a story with bears and balloons into a fable for our time. Fairy Tales are there to teach people lessons, and I think the lessons shown here are ones that need to be taken to heart so we never end up in this situation again.

Yet the book wasn't all relevant to today, after all Lee Scoresby is a cowboy and a Texan through and through so Once Upon a Time in the North also deals lovingly with all the wonderful western tropes we've come to love to this very day. There's a reason Westworld would work in the real world as well as on the screen. Lee has a soft spot for the ladies yet he's honorable, giving advice to lonely women while not tarnishing their virtue. He's a crack shot, when his gun actually works. He has a weakness for gambling, but luckily with Hester by his side she'll keep him on the straight and narrow. He does what is right even if it gets him into a whole heap of trouble. Plus, there's something about a cowboy in a situation that is so beyond his ken that calls to me. Like Ethan Chandler on Penny Dreadful, he's without a home and in a foreign land and falling into a dangerous adventure but his moral compass will steer him right. There is also a villain from Lee's past! Poliakov has one Mr. Morton in his pay, an assassin from America whom Lee had a previous run-in with, though he knew him by the name of McConville. They had a set-to in Dakota Country that had elements of Deadwood and more than a dash of Pinkerton justice gone wrong. Like Dashiell Hammet's Red Harvest, there's a trail of bodies in this man's wake, friends of Lee, and Lee isn't about to let him get away this time. With the politics and the vengeance I feel that this book actually can stand on it's own. In fact, I think that not only can anyone read it, but that this would be a good starting point for anyone considering reading Philip Pullman's work. Yes, there are some spoilers, but the microcosm of characters is so rich that I would recommend Once Upon a Time in the North to anyone. Even those skeptical of fantasy.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Different Kind of P and P, Armoured Bears, Cowboy, Dashiell Hammett, Elections, His Dark Materials, Iorek Byrnison, Lee Scoresby, Once Upon a Time in the North, Philip Pullman, Pinkertons, Politics, Red Harvest

The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle
Published by: Book-of-the-Month Club
Publication Date: 1915
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Holmes has a snitch in Moriarty's organization. This snitch warns him of the impending murder of one John Douglas. Just as Holmes finishes perusing the note the police arrive to ask for his help in the murder of one John Douglas of Birlstone Manor in Sussex. Holmes's snitch lost his nerve and sent the note too late. Of course this only whets Holmes's appetite for the crime, because it obviously has some connection to Moriarty. The case is a perplexing one. Birlstone Manor is a moated property, with the drawbridge raised every night. John Douglas was shot at point blank range with a double barrelled shotgun blast to the face, yet only his house guest, Cecil Barker, heard the shot and was at the scene of the crime in minutes. Yet he didn't see the shooter. The only way the killer could have escaped is out the window and across the moat, which could be waded. Yet there are too many inconsistencies with the story and two things bother Holmes. One is that the victim's wedding ring was removed, though it was always beneath a second ring, which was still present. But more importantly, there is an exercise weight in the room. Only a single one. Where is it's mate? As Holmes pieces together what happened at Birlstone Manor he realizes that it is only the dead man or his killer who can tell the whole story, going back years ago to America, long before Cecil Barker met John Douglas, to the time before John's first marriage, to the deadly Scowrers.

The Valley of Fear is an odd edition to the canon of Sherlock Holmes. Once again Arthur Conan Doyle bowed to the pressure of his reading public and brought back his famous consulting detective, but in the most halfhearted way possible. The entire book feels as if it's balanced on a knife's edge between the extremes of not caring and finding some way to make it about anything other than Holmes. The most obvious aspect of Conan Doyle's laziness is that the structure of the book harks directly back to A Study in Scarlet. First half Holmes, second half America, back to Watson for the epilogue. This structure didn't really work the first time yet here we are in the same situation again. Yet this recurrence could have been forgiven had the initial mystery held, oh, I don't know, some mystery. What is in essence a locked room mystery, the cornerstone of compelling whodunits, is anything but captivating. In fact I was far more interested in the architectural design of the house where the murder occurred which was reminiscent of Madresfield Court, which is the ancestral seat of the Lygon family, than the crime which I solved ludicrously fast. You might say, oh, she's over-exaggerating her own crime solving prowess and the murder really was worthy of Holmes. No, I'm not, and no, it was not, hence my being able to solve it with such rapidity. The second the corpse was revealed with his face blown off and a missing wedding ring, I knew that the corpse laying on the floor wasn't the intended victim. It was all stage dressing, and clumsily done at that.

Which brings me back to the fact that this wasn't a crime worthy of Holmes. And the truth is, I think Conan Doyle did this on purpose. He no longer wanted to write about Holmes, so he couldn't be bothered. In fact with the second half of the book being set in America and not concerning Holmes he is quite obviously taking a step back from his famous detective. Holmes isn't really necessary for this story to work, he's more a deus ex machina, coming in and explaining what happened to wrap everything up. The Valley of Fear is written in such a way that it's a Sherlock Holmes book without really being a Sherlock Holmes book. All the writing prowess of Conan Doyle was exerted in the second part of the book with the Scowrers. Here he cared about writing a compelling narrative about evil men and secret societies. This is where Conan Doyle wanted to focus his energies, and so he did. He created a rather compelling second act, and I'm sure, if it was up to him, that would have been all he wrote. But he halfheartedly put together this framing device with Holmes so that the book is "technically" a Sherlock Holmes book. It makes me wonder what his reading public thought of it when it was published in 1915. Did they feel cheated? Was it a bait and switch? Or were they OK with the book because it had been ten long years since they'd had any new stories and therefore they took what they could get?

Or was the public appeased because of the Moriarty factor? Because incongruously, there is a strong Moriarty factor. I say incongruously because when this Napoleon of crime was introduced in "The Final Problem" he had never been heard of before. In fact Watson makes a big to-do about not knowing anything about Holmes's so-called arch-nemesis. Yet here Conan Doyle is going against his own set canon having Moriarty wandering about prior to "The Final Problem" with Watson and the police all in the "know." It feels like there's too much back-peddling and re-writing in The Valley of Fear for my taste. Conan Doyle didn't know that Moriarty would seize the imagination of his readers so strongly, therefore he was underused at the time, just a device to rid himself of Holmes. Yet seize their imaginations he did and Conan Doyle brought him back in the only way he could. So whereas his love of writing Holmes might have waned, he still was intrigued by this master criminal and was therefore willing to bring him back as a way to enliven Holmes's narrative. It was also probably a way to remind his readers that at any time Holmes might stop exhibiting his deity-like powers and be resurrected no more. So, perhaps it was more a threat than anything else? But the problem of Moriarty, coupled with the book's structure, is the whole story feels like it's in some way-back machine where it was picking and choosing what had previously worked and creating some semblance of a Holmes story while really wanting to be anything but.

What surprised me about The Valley of Fear was that unlike A Study in Scarlet, the American half of the book actually felt fresh and compelling. Unlike the bizarre fever dream of Mormonism in A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle creates a gritty world reminiscent of Deadwood and Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. This actually feels like a probable America, most likely because it was loosely based on real events. Reading it I was surprised by how relevant and modern it felt. When you think about Sherlock Holmes it is always as that outre detective working within a staid Victorian society. There is that nostalgia factor. Yet as Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss so rightly did when they revitalized the stories for Sherlock they focused on the fact that the stories weren't meant to be caught in these Victorian trappings. The stories were contemporary, of their time, and fresh. Why else were they so popular? Reading them a hundred years later it is almost impossible not to be caught up in the Victoriana, in the minutiae. But then you read The Valley of Fear and it smacks you in the face. It's so alive, so dark, so gritty, so full of corruption and bleakness that you get it. All of a sudden you get that Conan Doyle, while somehow caught in the amber of the past, really isn't of the past, he's creating studies of human nature that are just as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago!

Yet for all that is right, he still has some American issues. Much like we, as readers, have stereotyped him as the writer of the preeminent Victorian consulting detective, he has stereotyped us Americans. And once again the misconceptions and errors run rampant. Firstly, seeing as every American woman is trapped in a doomed love triangle where one of the suitors kills the other, usually after years, where is my doomed love triangle? I have spent my entire life to date without a doomed love triangle and according to Conan Doyle that means I'm not a real American woman. Also, where the hell does this story take place? For a quarter of the book I was sure it was somewhere out west, but slowly I had inklings that it might be Pennsylvania, and since when is Detroit considered the far north? Because Madison is more north than Detroit... so what does that make where I live? Probably Canada according of Conan Doyle... And while I really liked the inclusion of the Pinkertons, and oh, the irony of them being founded by a Masonic Order only to bring one down, I do laugh, I have Pinkerton issues. Mainly my Pinkerton issues are that by this time Pinkertons weren't all good guys. In fact, not to put to fine a point on it, they were kind of evil with their tactics and strikebreaking. So while they do employ underhanded techniques, their ambiguous moral code isn't even touched upon, making them kind of look like heroes, when they are anything but. But then again, Conan Doyle isn't really one for the whole "accuracy" angle, especially as regards anything American.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Study in Scarlet, America, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Deadwood, Madresfield, Masonic, Moriarty, Pinkertons, Red Harvest, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, The Final Problem, The Valley of Fear, Victorian

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1929
Format: Hardcover, 967 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

The Continental Op has arrived in Personville, being sent by the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office for their new client Donald Willsson. After setting up their meeting, but before the arranged time, Donald Willsson is killed. The Continental Op approaches Elihu Willsson, Donald's father, to try to get to the bottom of his client's premature demise by lead being pumped into him. Elihu admits that Personville's nickname of Poisonville is pretty accurate. While still the town founder and czar, to all intents and purposes, the town is run by several competing gangs. The town is as corrupt and villainous as you can imagine. Donald was trying to use the newspaper to expose this corruption, and it seems that this is why he died. The Continental Op gets Elihu to hire the agency to clean up Personville. He cunningly has him sign a document so that even if Elihu tries to go back on the deal the Continental Op has the reigns and no one to answer to, except the boss back in San Francisco, but hopefully he won't notice the lack of a daily report for a little while.

Soon the Continental Op is deep within the rivaling gangs. Rumors and hearsay, as well as rigging a boxing match, are all it takes to set them off. Lead whizzing through the streets and gunfire soon become an even more common occurrence in this little corrupt town. The bodies start to pile up all while Elihu tries to get his erstwhile employee back to the city by the bay. But Poisonville has gotten under the Op's skin and he feels he has a score to settle. When it looks like they won't get the Op in a body bag, the corrupt police try to frame him for murder. Poisonville is going to burn, if it's the last thing the Continental Op does.

Up until now I have been concentrating my reading on the other side of the pond. The cozy mysteries of the British Isles set in a manor house with, in all likelihood, a locked room and a corpse. Yet the Golden Age of Mystery wasn't just relegated to our forefathers across the waters. America had a very strong literary tradition during the Golden Age, with authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Yet there was a distinct shift in the type of writing. Here in America it was grittier, more gang related, more hardboiled, with a distinct authorial voice that would later come under the Noir heading. While this style is more associated with the 30s, 40s, and 50s, which modern writers like James Ellroy have emulated in their neo-noir books like L.A. Confidential, Dashiell Hammett coined this style with his Continental Op, which would be the forerunner to that most archetypal of Noir characters, Sam Spade.

Reading Red Harvest, I was easily swept up into the Noir style, I could almost hear the first person narration as a gritty voice over as the Continental Op walked through Poisonville planning his next move. I could almost see Hammett, obviously in black and white, sitting in a dingy office, smoke rising above his head, as he typed out the story. While yes, to say all this is now a bit cliched as to my imagery, I was still amazed with the distinct style, which for all it's tropes running around in my head, felt just as fresh and vibrant as if it had just been written. Though the book did have it's rough spots. Red Harvest was Dashiell Hammett's first book. Prior to this he wrote short stories, many of which featured the "hero" of this book, the Continental Op. This fact did not help him, nor did the fact that this book was serialized in four parts in the pulp magazine, Black Mask. Instead of a cohesive whole, the book is basically four interconnected short stories, which makes the narrative choppy, and almost makes you not want to continue reading because everything was brought to a close and then a new aspect of the story was brought into play in the next section. While Poisonville gives an overall framework, everything else would fall under the heading, "and meanwhile in another part of town...."

Then there's the, how should I put this, cavalier attitude the Continental Op has towards death. I mean, I'm used to death in things I read and watch, heck Midsomer Murders is one of my most favorite television shows and the bodies pile up in that County like nowhere else in fiction... till now. I mean, holy geez people, I don't even know what the end death toll was. I lost count somewhere around twenty. Yes, twenty people are dead and the Op doesn't bat an eyelash. Gangs gunned down left and right and at the center is the Op stirring the pot, getting one group to go after another. If his plan to clean up the town was to eliminate every person in the town, then, well... he's succeeded marvelously by the end. He went all blood simple as Hammett coined and the Coen's later used for their first movie. Yet, I have to ask, was this moral ambivalence meant to be a reflection on the Pinkertons? I mean Hammett worked for them and the Continental Detective Agency was unambiguously them... so was he trying to make a statement? The Pinkertons don't have the most sterling of reputations and where to be feared in that at one time their combined forces outnumbered the US army. So was Hammett writing to the new style he was creating, exposing corruption, or perhaps biting the hand that fed him?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Black Mask, Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett, Golden Summer, James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential, Midsomer Murders, Noir, Pinkertons, Poisonville, Pulp, Raymond Chandler, Red Harvest, Sam Spade, San Francisco

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Despite being later known for his literary fetes, he left school at the young age of thirteen. During his early years his chief form of income was working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, a job he would always fall back into from time to time. He served in WWI till illness had him invalided out. While recovering he met his future wife who was a nurse. Though his chronic illness of TB often kept the couple apart, though some would say it wasn't just the TB, he would always support his wife and daughters financially no matter where or with whom his affairs would take him.

After working for the Pinkertons, he took up a job in advertising, though he was far more likely to pick up a bottle. When Hammett started writing he used his experiences working for the Pinkertons as inspiration. The Pinkertons role in union strike-breaking disillusioned Hammett and he would soon become outspoken in politics. Although he wasn't as fervent in his Communist beliefs after WWII, he was still blacklisted by McCarthy and even served some time in jail. Life had worn him down, as did his alcoholism, TB, and time behind bars. During his decline he was too ill even to write. But he would leave behind a legacy as "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." His characters of Nick and Nora Charles, and Sam Spade would be some of the most memorable characters in fiction ever to be written. While most would call him the king of noir amongst his other titles, there is no ambiguity that he was one of the Golden Age of Mystery's greatest writers. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Communist, Dashiell Hammett, Golden Age of Detection, Golden Summer, Hardboiled, McCarthy, Nick and Nora Charles, Pinkertons, Sam Spade, TB, WWI, WWII