The Sheer Joy of Genre Reading: On Conan Doyle, or, The Whole Art of Storytelling (2011), by Michael Dirda

The great majority of fictional detectives come, strut for a time upon the bloody stage of crime, and then depart, as popular fancy alights on the doings of others.  How many people today have read a tale of an exploit of Lieutenant Valcour or Ludovic Travers?

the imperishable detective duo

Yet Sherlock Holmes remains imperishable.  Just in the last month or so we have had the appearance of a big-grossing Sherlock Holmes film sequel starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law as the Great Man and his perpetually perplexed sidekick, Dr. John Watson; the second season of a highly praised British television series about a present day Holmes and Watson starring a pair of rapidly ascending British actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman; a much publicized authorized Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk; and the subject of this review, the ingratiating small volume produced by the distinguished author and book critic Michael Dirda (for more on Dirda, see http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/12/michael-dirda-dashing-international-man.html

Michael Dirda

Dirda's attractive little book (published by Princeton University Press) manages to range far beyond Sherlock Holmes or even Conan Doyle.  Essentially the book is a paean to imaginative literature and the profound impact it has over the span of readers' lives, from childhood into older age.  Dirda himself concisely explains what he's doing in his preface:

"On Conan Doyle, or, The Whole Art of Storytelling is a book about the pleasures of reading, a celebration of plot and atmosphere, adventure and romance, and an invitation to go beyond the Sherlock Holmes stories to explore a remarkable body of writing."

My favorite part of On Conan Doyle is Dirda's recollection of his discovery of mystery fiction as a child.  Though I'm a generation younger than Dirda, this section of the book carried me back to my own adolescent encounters with genre literature in the 1970s.  The appeal of such graceful and evocative nostalgic prose as Dirda's surely is, like much of Conan Doyle's own writing, timeless.

I sometimes surprise people when I tell them my first experience with reading mystery tales took place at the age of eight during  a summer in the seventies spent in Mexico City with my parents and teenage sister.  At a Mexico City Sanborns department store my mother bought three Agatha Christie paperbacks (at eight pesos apiece I believe): And Then There Were None, Easy to Kill (Murder Is Easy) and Funerals Are Fatal (After the Funeral).

One of the three Christie paperbacks
from Sanborns, Mexico City

Curled up on the sofa in our apartment, by a big window overlooking a busy city street from high above, I read them all, along with some Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines (I particularly remember a story in one of those magazines called "The Machete Murderer" that was illustrated with cartoonish severed limbs--it rather amazes me that only a couple years earlier I was reading the adventures of Sally, Dick and Jane.  "Run, Sally, Run!" takes on a whole new meaning after one has read "The Machete Murderer").

I was immediately hooked by Agatha Christie, and I read her to this day.  Back then, I watched the 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express on the big screen, was saddened when Agatha Christie died in 1976 and read Curtain and Sleeping Murder, the "final cases" of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, when they came out in paperback in 1976 and 1977 respectively.

It was only in that latter year, 1977, that I discovered Sherlock Holmes, when at Christmas I received a slipcase set of all the Sherlock Homes novels and stories (I think it was published by Bantam).  They were rapidly and joyfully devoured!  Besides The Hound of the Baskervilles I especially remember reading for the first time, over that Christmas vacation, "The Five Orange Pips," "Silver Blaze," "The Six Napoleons," "The Red-Headed League," and, of course, "The Speckled Band."

Given these strong and to me very pleasant memories of youthful reading, I was fascinated by Dirda's account of his own experiences with fiction, which date back to the 1950s, the great era of pulp paperbacks and E.C. Comics.  Dirda's seminal childhood reading material was somewhat loftier than, say, Vault of Horror, but he still got from it that same delicious frisson of fright:

no one forgets the first encounter with the hound

"The Hound of the Baskervilles...was the first 'grown-up' book I ever read--and it changed my life...Romantic poets regularly sigh over their childhood memories of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.  But what are daisies and rainbows compared to...sleek and shiny paperbacks?...With a dollar clutched in my fist, I pedaled my red Roadmaster bike to Whalen's drugstor, where I quickly picked out two or three candy bars, a box of Cracker Jack, and a cold bottle of Orange Crush.  After my family had driven off in our new 1958 Ford, I dragged a blanket from my bed, spread it on the reclining chair next to the living room's brass floor lamp, carefully arranged my provisions near to hand, and crawled expectantly under the covers with my paperback of The Hound--just as the heavens began to boom with thunder and the rain to thump against the curtained windows....The Hound of the Baskervilles left its teeth marks in me and seriously aroused my then still slumbering passion for reading.  I was no longer the same ten-year-old when I reached its final pages."

Did it change your life?

Dirda goes on to discuss other amazing genre discoveries he made, after Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle showed him the way:

G. K Chesterton's clerical Father Brown ("each story chronicled a crime utterly beyond human ken")

Sax Rohmer's diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu (Dirda writes that he dare not go back and reread the Fu Manchu tales, "lest I be seriously appalled by my youthful taste")

Howard Haycraft's Boys' Book of Great Detective Stories (where Dirda "first read the stunning Thinking Machine classic, 'The Problem of Cell 13' ")

Ernest Bramah's blind detective, Max Carrados (see http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-hail-max-12-cases-for-max-carrados.html 

"The highly scientific Dr. Thorndyke of R. Austin Freeman"

If you're a longtime fan of this amazingly rich period of mystery genre fiction, from the 1890s to World War One and beyond, to the "Golden Age" of the 1920s and 1930s, Dirda's book makes entrancing reading.

But there is more.  Throughout his book Dirda has scattered fascinating observations on the Holmes saga and on Conan Doyle as a man and a writer.  The splendid variety of the author's output, from his detective stories to his supernatural tales to his historical fiction and more, is done justice.  There's also a long section on the Baker Street Irregulars and Dirda's involvement with them that perhaps I'm just not a big enough Holmes fan (fanatic?) to sufficiently appreciate.  But I recommend the book wholeheartedly to all lovers of the great genre literature of yore.

Ronald Knox, his Detective Fiction Decalogue and "The Four Tragedies of Memworth" (1928), by Lord Ernest Hamilton

Father Ronald Knox: Best known in mystery genre history
for the ten rules (the "decalogue") that he laid down
for the writing of detective fiction

In Father Ronald Knox's celebrated Golden Age detective fiction "decalogue" the Catholic priest and author of mystery tales propounded ten rules for writing in the genre.  One of the more famous (or infamous) of his rules is number five:

"No Chinaman must figure in the story.  Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a reason for it in our western habit of assuming  that the Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals.  I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention of 'the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo', you had best put it down at once; it is bad.  The only exception which occurs to my mind--there are probably others--is Lord Ernest Hamilton's 'Four Tragedies of Memworth.' "

Ronald Knox's droll humor is not always appreciated by his critics

Father Knox has been rapped over the knuckles, figuratively speaking, for formulating this rule, by critics who have failed to understand that Knox in his droll fashion was attempting to make a serious point: that the mystery thriller or shocker tale and the detective novel were two very different things. Knox himself distinguished between the two mystery forms earlier in his decalogue:

"A detective story must have as its main interest the unraveling of a mystery; a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end.

And here, for my own part, I would draw a very clear line of demarcation between detective stories and 'shockers.'  Shockers are not in the true sense mystery stories at all; they do not arouse a human instinct of curiosity....

We know at once that the woman is an adventuress, probably a quite innocent adventuress who is being compelled by a threat of blackmail to subserve the purposes of villains; that there is a gang of international crooks at work, determined to put an end to the peace of Europe by giving away English state secrets to an unknown foreign power.  We are certain beforehand that the motives of the villains will be entirely inhuman, the actions of the hero and heroine rash to the verge of idiocy; that the complications to which we are introduced at the beginning will not be explained at the end, because by that time the reader will have forgotten all about them, and probably the author as well.  All this is not a detective story."

In advocating banishing the "Chinaman" from the true detective novel, Ronald Knox had in mind the silly and offensive racist caricatures most prominently associated with the novels of Sax Rohmer (creator of the "fiendish Oriental mastermind," Dr. Fu Manchu), but also figuring in numerous other English and American mystery thrillers throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including some by thriller king Edgar Wallace, the bestselling novelist in England in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Fright film star Boris Karloff as Dr. Fu Manchu,
in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932),
one of the most notorious thriller genre films of the 1930s

Though most associated with the Fu Manchu novels
of Sax Rohmer, the sinister "Chinaman" figured in
numerous other Golden Age thrillers as well

Father Knox's Chinaman rule has been much discussed over the decades, but, interestingly, little or perhaps even no mention has been made of Knox's clearly stated exception to the Chinaman rule: Lord Ernest Hamilton's 1928 mystery novel, The Four Tragedies of Memworth.  What is this novel and why is its prominent Asian character an acceptable violation of Knox's rule?  All will be revealed by the Passing Tramp in Parts Two and Three of this review essay! (for more on Ronald Knox, see ronaldknoxsociety.com/index.html )

Special note from the Passing Tramp: It's been a month now with this blog and it has had nearly 4000 visits, from around the world.  Thanks very much for those visits.  I hope my posts have been of interest and I will try to keep it that way.

Another Pass by Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955)

J. Jefferson Farjeon (the "J" stands for Joseph--Farjeon was named for his maternal grandfather, the famous American stage actor Joseph Jefferson, and was known as "Joe" to friends and family, even though readers knew him as Jefferson Farjeon) is one of those prolific Golden Age mystery writers who has fallen into almost total obscurity today--quite unjustly, I think.

(pictured below: Farjeon's grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, in his signature stage role, "Rip Van Winkle," and  Jefferson's country home in southern Louisiana, today a stunning house museum, where Farjeon's mother grew up)

 And a link to an informative page on Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905):

http://www.monroehistorical.org/articles/files/090101_jefferson.html

Between 1924 (The Master Criminal) and 1954 (Castle of Fear), Farjeon published by my count fifty-five adult mystery novels (including a few under the name Anthony Swift; he also published several children's mysteries).  He achieved considerable popularity in both the United States and Great Britain, in the latter country becoming one of the staple authors of the Collins Crime Club from 1929 until his death; and he had the distinction, along with such authors as Josephine Tey, Ethel Lina White, Selwyn Jepson and Francis Beeding, of having one of his works, in his case the play (later novel) No. 17, made into an Alfred Hitchcock film.

(pictured below: still from the Alfred Hitchcock film Number 17.  See http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/candlelight-and-shadowplay/

Farjeon is barely remembered today, except for the Hitchcock connection and for his being the brother of beloved children's writer Eleanor Farjeon (he was also the son of the accomplished Victorian novelist Benjamin Farjeon, but the father himself is pretty neglected these days as well).

Eleanor Farjeon

Why Farjeon should be so forgotten escapes me.  He was a popular writer in his day and received many good notices on both sides of the Atlantic.  Granted, a number of his novels fall into a pattern, as one would expect from a prolific genre writer.  And to be sure, Farjeon primarily wrote thrillers, but he was no slavish imitator of such bigger name thriller writers as Edgar Wallace, Sax Rohmer, Sapper and Sydney Horler (for one thing, Farjeon, whose father was a Jew, eschewed the antisemitism commonly found in English "shockers" at this time).  Joe Farjeon on the whole was a gentle and whimsical writer, giving his works their own distinct tone and style, closer, arguably, to the thrillers of Agatha Christie than those of the men.

At heart, Farjeon's thrillers are tales of the empowerment of the weak and the meek, who confront fantastic adventures and dark menaces, but triumph in the end.  Not counting his series character, the downtrodden but resilient "passing tramp" Ben, Farjeon's protagonists often are male clerks or female secretaries, "little people" leading drab, harassed lives, and longing for adventure--something they definitely find in the course of the narratives!  Farjeon is one Golden Age author disinclined to admire people simply because they have titles.

One can dip into any of the Farjeon books from the 1930s and 1940s almost at random and get a sense of his style.  The Windmill Mystery (1934), for instance, is a typical enough example (Farjeon sweetly dedicated this book "To My Dear Mother, who can no longer enjoy my books, but who still seems close to me when I write").  Let's let the Collins Crime Club tell us about the plot of this tale:

The windmill stood out dark and sinister against a background of angry cloud-castles that foretold the coming storm.  Lionel Savage, pack on back, and all set for a week-end hike, glimpsed it from the little wayside railway station and decided it might prove a suitable objective.  Crossing the heath, he met a charming girl, and when the storm broke they raced to the mill for shelter.  It was the start of an amazing adventure which rapidly developed in a crescendo of excitement, until as one hair-rising incident succeeded another the two hikers found themselves involved in a sort of non-stop Grand Guignol of thrills.

Now who can resist little wayside train stations and dark and sinister windmills?  Admittedly, this is a pretty typical sort of plot for Farjeon (with a windmill rather than a house, inn or even castle).  But Farjeon also wrote some unique books that emerged rather ahead of the rest of the pack.

Farjeon novels that in my view particularly stand out include (besides such "Ben the Tramp" books as Ben on the Job, 1952)

 the following titles:

1. Holiday Express (1935)

In this train mystery thriller the protagonist is a wonderfully-characterized child, an ingenuous young boy, and the book is written as if he himself had written it.

2. 13 Guests (1936)


Farjeon's take on a full dress, traditional country house detective novel, impeccably done.  The dust jacket of the American edition, pictured below, below carries Dorothy L. Sayers assertion that "Jefferson Farjeon is quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures."

 3. Mystery in White (1937)

A classic situation: Christmas travelers exiting a snowbound train come upon an empty country house where something quite unpleasant may have happened....

4. End of an Author (1938)

A remarkable and original work: the perilous adventures of a burned-out, extremely prolific thriller writer (Farjeon himself had published thirty thrillers in fifteen years at this time) and his lady secretary in a remote part of East Anglia; wonderfully self-referential about the genre and the setting is superb.  Reprinted as Death in the Inkwell (1942) in the United States, with a last page that can be read only with the use of a mirror!  This tantalizing feature does not appear in the earlier British edition, evidently.  Willliam Lyon Phelps, former Lampson Professor of English Literature at Yale and a prominent public intellectual in the United States who was a great admirer of Farjeon, called this tale "a brilliant, original and very exciting murder story."

5. Aunt Sunday Sees It Through/Aunt Sunday Takes Command (1940)

In this one the protagonist is an elderly woman who, thrown into a nest of crooks, proves to have amazing resources of character to draw on and a positive genius for extemporizing.

6. The Judge Sums Up (1942)

Farjeon's most successful attempt at a true detective novel and a forgotten courtroom classic.

7. The Double Crime (1953)

A final country house detective novel in the traditional style, except here one of the key narrative focal points is a down-at-his-heels, ex-lag, Cockney traveling salesman, sympathetically presented.  An interesting look is provided at mansion life on both sides of the baize door.

Also worth noting is Farjeon's apocalyptic sci-fi novel, Death of a World (1948).  Appalled by the carnage of World War Two and the Cold War atomic arms race that followed, a dismayed Farjeon produced what was by far his bleakest book.  Some of Farjeon's post-war crime novels are darker as well, but none of them are remotely as grim as Death of a World, a genuine social protest novel by a Golden Age crime writer.

 In the May 1939 Penguin paperback edition of No. 17 (which was reprinted four times by August 1941), Jefferson Farjeon's author's bio (pictured above) gives some idea of his unique personality as a crime thriller writer:

He walks up and down when talking and thinking, always types his work himself, is ultra-tidy, vegetarian, but doesn't like vegetables (hence difficulties), takes a cold tub every morning, is pacifist, likes photography, tomato soup and drawing funny animals (Animals are funny because I can't draw them, he says).

Crime thriller writers tend to cultivate tough guy (and these days tough gal) images.  Not Mr. J. Jefferson Farjeon, who dared to be different.  Read him yourself for something different (if you can find him!).