1000 WORDS*: HIS LAST BOWS

*(OK, before indignant bean counters write in, yes, we blew the length again, prolix windbags that we are, but since there are two books under review, we're actually more or less in the ballpark.  Read on.)

The Final Solution: A Story of Detection
Michael Chabon
Fourth Estate
$23.95
131 pp.

A Slight Trick of the Mind
Mitch Cullin
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
$23.95
272 pp.
Release Date: April 2005

"But you had retired, Holmes.  We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs."

"Exactly, Watson.  Here is the fruit of my leisured years!"  He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen.  Alone I did it.  Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days, when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London."

His Last Bow (1914)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1.

Zeitgeist can be one unruly mother.  David Lodge must have despaired of the fate of his Henry James inspired novel Author, Author when Colm Toibin's The Master beat it into print by seven months.  And although the competition isn't as direct, if one finds one's interest in Alfred Kinsey limited, a trip to the multiplex to catch Bill Condon's film Kinsey is likely to seem a considerably more appealing prospect than wading through the overheated prose stylings of T.C. Boyle.

Still, these face-offs seem to have something essentially fair about them, fighters in the same class of reputation.  But one can't help feel a particular stab of sympathy for Mitch Cullin, whose forthcoming novel A Slight Trick of the Mind (April 2005) – which takes as its subject the declining years of Sherlock Holmes – should have the grave misfortune of following into print The Final Solution, the latest offering from Pulitzer Prize winner and attention magnet Michael Chabon.  Whose subject is the declining years of Sherlock Holmes.  But as it turns out, Cullin doesn't need our sympathy one bit – he's written the better book.  He just needs our attention.

Of course, it's probably unfair to include a fascination with Baker Street's legendary detective in the list of unfortunate convergences above.  Since his creator's death in 1930, Holmes has never really left the collective consciousness, with dozens of authors adding their efforts to the growing Holmes corpus.  Perhaps the best known among these are Nicholas Meyer's latter-day Holmes tales, The Seven Per-Cent Solution (Holmes meets Freud), The West End Horror (Holmes meets Wilde) and The Canary Trainer (Holmes meets the Phantom of the Opera).

The Meyer books all return Holmes to the height of his gifts, on the prowl amid the gaslit streets of Victorian London.  But Holmes' dotage has also attracted writers, most notably Laurie King's Mary Russell novels which began with The Beekeeper's Apprentice and lead Russell and a post-retirement Holmes on series of adventures ranging from Palestine to India.

Chabon and Cullin have taken a more literary approach to their subject.  Although the works are quite different, they share certain similarities – in both books, Holmes struggles to cope with outsized events (the Holocaust in the Chabon, Hiroshima in the Cullin) that defy his legendary analytical prowess.  Despite Chabon's professed desire to achieve a more seamless blend between the "genre" and the "literary", neither work offers much in the way of the familiar pleasures of a whodunit.  In both books, Holmes develops an unexpectedly affecting attachment to a youngster.  And both books are keen to exploit the symbolic power of Holmes' beloved bees.  (And although superficially at least, Holmes fascination with the communal world of the hive might seem to be at odds with his deeply solitary nature, isn't Holmes, after all, the ultimate worker bee, working on behalf of the hive (England) and protecting his queen (Victoria)?)  What was more than likely a tossed-off aside by Arthur Conan Doyle has given Michael Chabon and Mitch Cullin a key with which to unlock this great character. 

In his famous essay "The Guilty Vicarage", W.H. Auden wrote of the particularities of the mystery story, and suggested that character of the detective seeks to "restore the state of grace in which the aesthetic and the ethical are one."  He goes on to say that "Holmes is the exceptional individual who is in a state of grace because he is a genius in whom scientific curiosity is raised to the status of heroic passion."  So the dramatic possibilities that present themselves when an elderly Holmes is no longer able to summon up his famous gifts as readily are clearly irresistible.  But whereas Chabon seems at times to be more interested in the large-scale changes being wrought upon Europe, and limits himself to depicting Holmes' worries at his failing abilities, Cullin digs more deeply and offers up the desolate solitude that is the inevitable by-product of this rigorous life of mind.

2.

Unfortunately for Cullin, The Final Solution – Chabon's first adult book since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – was guaranteed to draw a white-hot spotlight.  Chabon has been tireless about his mission to eradicate the distinctions between literary fiction and genre fiction, editing the recent anthology McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories.  The Final Solution represents another front on this battle (the wisdom and/or necessity of which is not the subject of this review).

Given Chabon's attention to and understanding of the pleasures of the genre, it's surprising that The Final Solution is perhaps most unsatisfying on that front.  The mystery is neither terribly mysterious nor, it seems, terribly important.  The story opens in 1944.  The Second World War has entered its climactic stage when a nine-year-old mute Jewish boy named Linus Steinman enters Holmes' life.  He's an orphan and his only attachment is to a parrot which repeats arrangements of German numbers.  Chabon's opening description is arresting:

A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks. His gait was dreamy and he swung a daisy as he went. With each step the boy dragged his toes in the rail bed, as if measuring out his journey with careful ruled marks of his shoetops in the gravel. It was midsummer, and there was something about the black hair and pale face of the boy against the green unfurling flag of the downs beyond, the rolling white eye of the daisy, the knobby knees in their short pants, the self-important air of the handsome gray parrot with its savage red tail feather, that charmed the old man as he watched them go by. Charmed him, or aroused his sense -- a faculty at one time renowned throughout Europe -- of promising anomaly.

Indeed, the prose throughout The Final Solution is uniformly lovely, finely wrought and decidedly literary, perhaps an indicator of where Chabon's greatest gifts – whatever his good intentions – may lie.   Nevertheless, when the boy's parrot disappears, Holmes undertakes an arduous journey to London to uncover the bird's fate.  Chabon's description of Holmes' first view of the bombed out city – his first visit since 1914 – is particularly effective:

They were across the river now, and found themselves caught between and towered over by two high red trams.  Rows of staring faces gazing down at them with inquisitorial indifference.  Then the trams split off east and west respectively and, as if a pair of water gates had been lifted, the flood of inner London rushed over them.  They had bombed it; they had burned it; but they had not killed it, and now it was sending forth growths and tendrils of some strange new life.

And then, passing the massive rebuilding efforts:

After his long absence from the city over which had once exercised his quiet brand of domination, he had seemed to expect that it would, like the world when we depart it, would stop changing, would somehow cease to exist.  After us, the Blitz!  And now here he was confronted by not simply the continued existence of the city but, amid the smoking piles of brick and jagged windowpanes, by the irrepressible, inhuman force of its expansion.

Holmes completes his London errand with an outcome that the sharp eyed reader will expect by the fourth chapter.  But it's in these moments that we most clearly sense what Chabon is up to, and it's an idea that comes home fully in the last pages of the book.  Speaking of Bruno the parrot's penchant for quoting numbers, Holmes says, "I doubt very much … if we shall ever learn what significance, if any, those numbers may hold."

But of course, from the vantage point of sixty years later, we know exactly what their significance is, we know it the first time we hear them.  The war raging through Europe, the presence of the death camps, all of this hangs over the tale, informing it from the distance.  (There's always Chabon's helpful title in case anyone misses the point.)  But in that final moment Holmes seems to lay the Victorian era and all its rational certainties permanently to rest.  The great detective has been stumped and deductive reasoning has failed – the only force great enough to comprehend the enormous evils of the day will be historical hindsight.  Consider this moment against an earlier, poignant scene where Holmes stands up in court on behalf of an unjustly accused man.  The man's mother watches the scene:

Oh, she thought, what a fine old man this is!  Over his bearing, his speech, the tweed suit and tatterdemalion Inverness there hung, like the odor of Turkish shag, all the vanished vigor and rectitude of an Empire.

Vanished, indeed.  And in the world of Wannsee, how quaint and sad he seems.  It's on this side of the equation Chabon really shines, and it's why one suspects that his heart isn't fully in the genre side of things.  Still, even the "literary" end of things is not without its difficulties, primary of which is Chabon's oddly distancing choice to refer to Holmes throughout the book as "the old man", as though there was something vaguely repellent or cheesy about actually seeing the name in print.  This on its own might easily be dismissed as literary affectation, but Chabon offers very little to tie Holmes to his roots.  The ever-loyal Watson is dispensed with in a description of Holmes' magnifying glass:

It was brass and tortoise shell, and bore around its bezel an affectionate inscription from the sole great friend of his life.

Throughout the novella, we're generally cheated of glimpses of Holmes' memories, of the age he left behind, and thus he's left as an almost spectral presence within his own tale.  Ultimately, there's little more to identify this a Sherlock Holmes story than the author's assertion that it is one.  But the story might have worked just as well – indeed, perhaps better – had its protagonist merely been an irascible but brilliant unnamed old man, thus freeing him from all the expectations that Chabon perversely insists on leaving unfulfilled.  It is certainly entirely possible for someone with absolutely no knowledge of Sherlock Holmes (can such a benighted creature exist?) to read the beautifully written but oddly unsatisfying The Final Solution with little diminishment of pleasure. 

3.

Unlike Chabon, Mitch Cullin takes the question of his protagonist's identity head-on in the opening pages of A Slight Trick of the Mind.

"Is that true?  Are you really him?"
"I am afraid I still hold that distinction."
"You are Sherlock Holmes?  No, I don't believe it."
"That is quite all right.  I scarcely believe it myself."

Although A Slight Trick of the Mind is set three years later than The Final Solution, Cullin's Holmes is a physically more solid specimen than Chabon's – due, in large measure we're told, to his daily doses of royal jelly, a bee by-product that has long been suggested (without substantiation) to cure a wide range of ailments.  But Holmes' mind – or, more specifically, his memories, are another story.

Cullin follows Holmes through three intertwined narratives – a post-Hiroshima visit to Japan to spend time with a fellow bee enthusiast who is actually seeking information about his long-missing father; an unlikely friendship at home with the teenaged son of his housekeeper; and a final flashback to Baker Street and its environs – and in the process brings him fully to life, creating a beautiful and humane – if tragic – character, where Conan Doyle gave us little more than an admirable machine.

To be fair to Chabon, reading the first twenty pages or so of A Slight Trick of the Mind seems, at first, to vindicate his choice to depersonalize Holmes as "the old man."  There's something slightly jarring about this elderly Holmes with his unexpected and uncharacteristic tendency toward sentimentality:

The boy gave him a smile, and, gazing into Roger's perfect blue eyes, lighting patting the boy's mess of blond hair, Holmes smiled in turn.  Afterward, they faced the hives together, saying nothing for a while.  Silence like this, in the beeyard, never failed to please him wholly; from the way Roger stood easily beside him, he believed the boy shared an equal satisfaction.  And while he rarely enjoyed the company of children, it was difficult avoiding the paternal stirrings he harbored for Mrs. Munro's son …

It's extremely difficult, on page 12, to reconcile this man to the icily efficient consulting detective of Baker Street.  But gradually Cullin brings Holmes to life, freeing him from his Victorian constraints and giving him something his creator never saw fit to endow him with – an interior life.

"You know, I never did call him Watson – he was John, simply John."

There's something surprisingly touching about the idea of Holmes and Watson referring to one another as Sherlock and John, an effect that's reminiscent of Frederic Tuten's moving description of the death of Tintin's beloved Captain Haddock in Tintin in the New World.  One by one, Holmes' intimates die off as well – first his housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson; next steadfast Watson himself; and finally his brother Mycroft.   Gradually, Holmes is left with little more than his memories, and even these are beginning to fade.

Cullin takes a daring leap with a detective never known for his interest in the opposite sex to propose that his fascination with bees stems not from a scientific obsession but from a more prosaic – and more painful – one.  In the flashback chapters, told in the first person by Holmes himself, he is summoned by a Mr. Keller to get to the heart of an odd marital dispute and – completely uncharacteristically – develops a strong emotional bond to Mrs. Keller, this despite having almost no interaction with her whatsoever, save a final brief garden interlude with Holmes in disguise.  In a move that echoes A Scandal in Bohemia ("To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman."), Holmes asks Mr. Keller if he may keep a photograph of his wife that he does not, in fact, need.  But at the end of the story, which takes a tragic turn, he returns the photo (unlike in A Scandal in Bohemia).  The memory of this woman, and the depth of the void that her absence will leave in Holmes, are strong enough to make photos unnecessary.

Much of A Slight Trick of the Mind is given over to the question of memory, of its reliability, of its utility.  It's more than disquieting for Holmes – whose essence, as Auden noted, has always been located in that great brain of his – to find chunks of time forever lost to him – the mind's cruelest of tricks.  Whereas Chabon's Holmes greatest fear seems to be that of being caught in an undignified death – crawling about on his knees, for example – Cullin's Holmes experiences deeper terrors:

No, he would not answer the question, nor would he say that his fears and desires were, at some point, one and the same: the forgetfulness increasingly plaguing him, startling him awake, gasping, a sense of the familiar and safe turning against him, leaving him helpless and exposed and struggling for air; the forgetfulness also subduing the despairing thoughts, muting the absence of those he could never see again, grounding him in the present, where all he might want or need was at hand.

And however valiantly he may try to keep them at bay, his fears, the emptiness of his life at its end (an emptiness perhaps necessary but no less unforgiving for that), these all manage to converge and take their toll.  As Holmes solves what is probably the last mystery of his career – which also bring him yet another painful loss – he finds himself eliminating the evildoers, in this case, a nest of wasps.  As he sets fire to their hive:

Good riddance, mused Holmes while weaving through the high grass.  "Good riddance," he said aloud, his head arched to the cloudless sky, his vision disoriented by the expanse of blue ether.  And upon speaking those words, he became overcome by an immense melancholy for all enduring life, everything that had and did and would someday rove beneath such perfect, ever-present stillness.  "Good riddance," he repeated, and began weeping noiselessly behind the veil.

In both books, Holmes comes up against the limits of the known, of the rational and explainable.  But it's in the unexpectedly moving A Slight Trick of the Mind that Holmes is - at long last - made human to us, where we see the effects of this lonely but righteous life.  In The Final Solution, change is in the air; in A Slight Trick of the Mind, the change is in Holmes.

"So what is the truth?" Mr. Umezaki had once asked him.  "How do you arrive at it?  How do you unravel the meaning of something that doesn't wish to be known?"

"I don't know," Holmes uttered aloud, there in Roger's bedroom.  "I don't know," he said again, lowering himself to the boy's pillow and shutting his eyes, the scrapbook held against his chest: "I haven't a clue … "

Comments

[Sarah]

All right, sir, you have done the trick--I've had Cullin's book in the TBR for ages and it's getting moved up pronto.

[Jimmy Beck]

I am a major Chabon fan and was disappointed by TFS--I'm not sure why. Maybe it felt too mannered; it gave neither the visceral thrills and chills of Kavalier & Clay nor the Cheever-esque-hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck of his best short stories (A Model World or some of the ones in Werewolves in their Youth). It's funny you mention Kinsey--Boyle's book (The Inner Circle) was anything but overheated, IMO. It was written in this cold, clinical style--very Martin Amis, I thought, and that's not a compliment in my book.

[Dan Wickett]

First of all Mark, excellent compare and contrast review. I don't have either book but if I go the Holmes route, you've persuaded me as to which to look for.

As for Jimmy's TCB comment = he nailed it in my opinion. It's like Boyle decided he would write it in the style that Kinsey supposedly performed all of these tests and surveys - clinically. As if he was proving that sex could in fact be cold and uninspiring. Unfortunately it made for a less than exciting read. It's too bad because I liked the narrator's relationship with both his wife, and with Kinsey. It was one of the more substantial love storis Boyle's included in a novel - rivaling that in Riven Rock.

Thanks for the 1000 (plus) words.

enjoy,

[Michael]

Very balanced and insightful review, Mark. While I have not read either book, I appreciate the comparisons you've made, and the contexts in which you've placed them. Now if I can only make you promise that you'll write many, many more in-depth reviews in the future!

[Jim Ruland]

Exellent work, monsignor. Did you hear that Caleb Carr is going to publish a Sherlock Holmes book, too? You would think that after sharing a subject with E.L. Doctorow (Alienist and Waterworks, respectively) and getting bitchslapped in the process, he'd stay avoid unfavorable comparisons and just stick to being unfavorable.

[Brendan Wolfe]

Great review. Your idea of Holmes as the worker bee reminded me of Ciaran Carson's "Shamrock Tea." Carson connects bees and Holmes thematically through the famous Holmes quote that from a single drop of water one could infer the possibility of an Atlantic Ocean. Holmes solves mysteries through logical inferences and this, according to Carson, is also how bees make their way in the world.

"The seething comb of black and amber bodies seemed without purpose, but he knew that this was far from the case: by dancing, by touch, by scent, by the vibrations of their wings, bees communicated a map of the immediate nectar-bearing countryside." And they do all this, Carson alliteratively explains, with eyes that operate on "a high flicker-fusion frequency." In other words, their vision consists of "isolated frames connected by darkness." It's up to the bee, then, to connect the dots.

[Jenny D]

Yes, thanks! V. good piece. I love Chabon but your review confirms my feeling that I will read TFS soon but am not willing to pay full price for it in a bookstore. The sordid truth.

There is a WONDERFUL essay in this week's New Yorker about all this Holmes stuff, and the mysterious death of the world's foremost Holmes expert. It's by the same guy who wrote the excellent giant squid piece not too long ago. I am due for a rereading of all the Holmes stories, I think... he's a sort of presiding saint for the novel I've just finished, in any case.

[Tito]

It's been noted nearly everywhere that TFS was originally a short story for The Paris Review. I am curious as to what, if any, changes there are between the original story and this newly printed edition.

Also, should I read "Zeitgeist can be one unruly mother" in the Freudian sense or in the Isaac Hayesian sense?

Thank you Mark for the continued excellent work.

[TEV]

Hayes. Most definitely Hayes. Was actually spelled "muthah" in draft one.

Thanks everyone for such kind words. Hope to provide more of the same down the line.

[jerry]

Great review Mark! As a Holmes fan, I am excited about the recent hoopla.

Jerry

[M.J. Rose]

Terrific work, Mark. It was meaty and worth the wait.

[Sanja]

Great essay/review, Mark. While I'm a Chabon fan, I'm really glad to see you champion Cullin's book, especially since I've always thought he's one of the best & most underrated American writers around. I hear Terry Gilliam is turning his novel TIDELAND into a movie, so maybe that will also give his Sherlock book the attention it deserves.