Who Put Back the Clock?

If anyone ever tells you that finishing a novel is easy, tell ‘em from me they’re liars. Point at them and say, “Liar! Liar!”, just like that.

Starting a novel: almost too easy. Middle part of a novel: just another day’s work. Finishing a novel: impossible. In fact I don’t think I did finish it, I think it was an hallucination; I think that when the publisher opens the manuscript I mailed off yesterday, they’ll find the last fifty pages consist entirely of phrases like “jkrbv ftwedb trrr! t5rrr!”

Mmm, they’ll say: avant-garde. Maybe they’ll get a grant for it.

On a happier note, everyone knows that life is a grim protracted anal intrusion and longing for the solace of the grave, but every once in a while a little ray of sunshine comes along. Like thinking all this time you’ve read every Coffin Ed & Gravedigger Jones book, and then stumbling upon one you’d never seen before. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Himes likes starting his Harlem novels with a violent and outrageous bang, just to get them off on the right note, but the opening of All Shot Up is surprisingly subdued: a little old lady gets run over twice: first she gets knocked down by a golden cadillac and then, as she struggles to her feet, is struck by a Buick sedan so hard that she flies through the air and literally becomes embedded in the brick wall of a building. I seem to recall that Jane Austen used a very similar opening for one of her books — although in that case (was it Persuasion, or Northanger Abbey?) the little old lady didn’t turn out to be a young transvestite in disguise.

You could make a respectable little collection of stories by successful mystery novelists who put their series characters to espionage work during the war years — thinking WWII here particularly. Rex Stout gets some kind of special nod because his Nero Wolfe vs the Nazis stories are so hysterically (inadvertantly) funny; Michael Innes gets props; but for my money, the most successful of the type I’ve ever read is the Smiler With the Knife by Nicholas Blake (Daniel Day Lewis’s father, doncha know — a bit of trivia I point out only because I’m seriously stoked about seeing There Will Be Blood).

That said, I just picked up a couple of “Albert Campion saves Britain from the Nazi Menace” novels by Margery Allingham, I’ll try to pop in and report if I get a chance, but in the main, no, I’m not back. Still busy.

Happy New One.

1) I want to read more Skelton Kuppord. He apparently did at least two more books. Please send these to me free of charge, immediately. Someone, anyone.

2) I lost count of how many times the story changed direction midstream. He took an obvious delight in setting up one kind of expectation in the reader, and then going a completely different direction. Also, props to him for writing an entire boys’ adventure book without a single villain. I deliberately set out to do the same in my own novel; it’s nice to see that someone else is there with me.

3) That said, the ending was a little lame; my only serious criticism, and not a very serious one. A lame ending is one of the least significant flaws any book can have; some of the greatest books ever written have the lamest endings ever. (Looking at you, almost-every-single-Dickens-book; you too, Don Quixote and every-damn-Conrad-novel…)

4) I’m sad I finished it. I don’t think there’s a nicer thing you can ever say about a book.

from the clutches of the Winnipeg Public Library, and thankfully finished. Phew. Now I can get back to the Uncharted Island, but first, a handful of thoughts:

1) Inspector Juve is unquestionably the most incompetent attempt at a “great detective” I’ve ever encountered — and that’s saying something. His big scene, when he details the solution of the crimes and the identity of Fantomas, is well worth reading if only to marvel at the inspired stupidity of it all.

2) Speaking of which, Juve and the authors invest an hilarious amount of faith in the inventions of Alphonse Bertillon, not just his identification system (which, after all, was flawed but better than anything that had preceded it) but also the more outre Bertillonisms, like his dynamometer. This is proclaimed to “prove” that the same person committed disparate crimes, with the same smug and utter certainty with which DNA evidence is used to prove things today, and not a breath or smidgen of doubt allowed.

3) Mssrs Allain et Souvestre met while writing for two car magazines (in the first decade of the twentieth century, remember) called L’Auto and Poids Lourdes. They first tried their hands at writing a serial story when one of L’Auto’s advertisers pulled out, and there was a last-minute panic to fill the space. The serial (called Le Rour, and described mysteriously as a “Hindu” serial[?!]) was a big hit, and landed them the Fantomas contract.

Charmingly, in the middle of Fantomas, they work in a completely gratuitous plug for L’Auto (”that famous sporting journal”), going well out of their way to do so. This made me like them a good deal more than I had.

4) For the first two-thirds of the book, Fantomas is presented as your standard arch-supervillain, a la Professor Moriarty or Fu Manchu (but without the vast network of doggishly obedient henchmen) — sinister and mysterious, inscrutable and seemingly omniscient and omnipotent. Then we meet him, under his real name (the Fantomas nomiker is never explained at all) and follow events from his point of view for a while. Instead of being sinister and mysterious and inscrutable and phantom-like, he turns out to be sullen and stubborn; instead of indefatigably self-confident, he goes from doubtful and nervous, to ridiculously pleased with himself for very moderately clever dodges, and back again. A slightly more clever than average, and occasionally lucky, thug — that about sums him up.

When Juve presents his big case at the end, every time someone raises an objection at the far-fetchedness or lack of evidence, Juve waves it off by saying, “For Fantomas, nothing is impossible.” Given the Fantomas we’ve had the pleasure of meeting, this is even more egregious than it would have been anyway.

5) The main plot is so convoluted, and there are so many winding subplots and minor characters, that most of these lines break off inconsequentially, and the book winds up with dozens of loose ends a-dangling in the breeze. I enjoyed that about it; I wish more books had that quality. In the middle part of the novel, when the authors are frantically trying to keep up with a dozen different storylines at once, it takes on a kind of kaleidoscopic quality that I took a lot of pleasure in.

Okay, so yesterday morning I’m poking around the basement of Nerman’s Books & Antiques — which let me just say, if you’re ever in Winnipeg, you really should take an afternoon to check out — anyway, I’m poking around the basement section where they keep the vintage kid’s books, and my eye is caught by a fat handsome hardcover called the Uncharted Island — great title — no author’s name on the spine.

I pull the book off the shelf; no author’s name on the front cover.

Open it up, the pages fall open first to the table of contents (with tantalizing chapter headings like “A Map and a Mystery” — why, two of my favourite things in one chapter!); then to the first, blank page, which has been inscribed very lightly in pencil “To Michael, Xmas 1905″, and finally to the title page, and the author’s name:

Skelton Kuppord.

Oh my God, I thought. That is the awesomest pen-name ever. That pen-name is so awesome I think my head will explode. How much is it? Fifteen bucks? Let me just read the first page to make sure it isn’t complete crap — no, no, not crap at all, that’s actually pretty promising. Zing! It must be mine; mine it must be.

I’m about a third of the way through the book already, and I have to say, it is absolutely superb. The plot is all romantic nonsense, as a boys’ book plot ought to be, but what makes it really great is Kuppord’s complete unsentimentality and matter-of-factness (the accidental death of the horse in the opening chapter, his explanation of the hero’s family’s financial state), the deft obliquity with which he advances the plot, and his attention to illuminative little details, like the boys choosing the middle of an open field for a private conversation, the stowaway almost starving to death because he forgot to bring a can-opener… Why I’ve never heard of Skelton Kuppord, while a hoary old fraud like Capt Marryat is still in print, is nothing less than a crime.

So back, quickly, to that awesomest of awesome pen-names. I regret to say that a quick google revealed his real name and scant biography to me in short order. In the old days (like, ten years ago) I would have been occupied for weeks, in idle moments, speculating over the author, who he might be. I’d mean to try looking it up next time I went to the library, and forget several times until I finally got around to it… all that fun is lost to me now, these internets giving me the mere barren information before I barely had time to start wondering. Sigh. Google is a badly over-rated phenomenon.

Wilkie Collins, I should apologize for being too busy nic-fitting to keep this puppy properly updated, and clean up le poupe. So: Maurice Leblanc and Arsene Lupin: enjoyed the early stories, when he’s a straightforward master-thief, a great deal; the later stories, when he’s more of an amateur detective, were hit and miss but mostly disappointing. I am however jazzed about two early Lupin novels — I hadn’t realized there were such things — that I now have on order from Amazon. So when and if they arrive, I’ll let you know.

Second, Fantomas — this is a sore spot. My wife, bless her heart, thought she’d be helpful and returned it to the library, along with a bunch of other books, when I was only halfway through it. So that even though I was only sort of enjoying it (the detective, Juve, makes some of the most straightfacedly idiotic “deductions” in the history of mysteries — I used to think Perry Mason was the king of this, but the bit where Juve explains why the old lady must have been murdered by a hardened criminal and not an amateur leaves Mason in the dust) I’ve spent the past week or so flipping and flopping at night, wondering what the denouement was and how the different crimes linked up. A fascinating spiritual complement to my flipping and flopping from nicotine withdrawal. There’s a great metaphor there somewhere. (And by “great” I mean “tediously obvious”.)

Now, Wilkie Collins. Just ripped through A Rogue’s Life, another Hesperus Press find. Picaresque novella that Collins wrote in his early days, when he had just struck up a friendship with Dickens, and it works as a kind of fascinating Coles Notes version of what happened to the picaresque when it hit Victorian times.

The first part: breezy, fun, episodic, just like a picaresque oughtta be. Our “rogue” isn’t very roguish, but he’s got the right attitude, and the Debtor’s Prison scene is excellent. Then what happens? He falls ludicrously in love, starts getting ridiculously high-minded, and in his pursuit of his Beloved, becomes enmeshed in a plot. The whole thing ends with him and his wife emigrating to Australia (transport paid by the state), where they are magically transformed into successful, respectable, middle-class asses (shades of the Micawbers, decades later).

Here’s the thing about the Victorians. We tend to think of them as hysterically prudish, but that’s a side-note. The real key to understanding them is that they were hysterically sentimental — worse than a goddamn Oprah love-in.

So, fun, disposable little book, but it’s inspired me to re-read my all-time favourite Collins, the incomparable No Name — and more on that anon.

I really hope it’s something like “le poupe.” That would be awesome.

Anyway, the two books I just picked up — both recent PengClass editions — fall firmly in that category: Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, and something called Fantomas by Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre.

I’ve read a few of the Lupin stories before, in anthologies here and there, and have always enjoyed them, but with slight puzzlement. Lupin’s a genial criminal in some, a detective in others. Sometimes he has a different name; once I had no idea I was reading a Lupin story until the very end, when Leblanc throws in a seemingly pointless “oh by the way that was Lupin all the time under a fake name.” Hoping I get some clarity here.

I’ve never heard of Fantomas before, but it looks pretty kick-ass in a tawdry, cheap sensationalism way.