The Writing of One Novel
The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life;
Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire
Copyright © 2012 by Thos. Kent Miller
All rights reserved
[Note: These posts are sequential, each building on the previous.]
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From
"The Resident Patient"
—Sidney Paget |
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From She and Allan
—Maurice Greiffenhagen |
The First Chapter
The first chapter of The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire begins on page 15 and is entitled "Editor's Note to the Third Edition."
If that seems like an odd title for the first chapter, let
me explain that several things are going on here:
(1) Sherlock Holmes pastiches usually begin with some sort
of preface that explains how that particular manuscript by Dr. Watson had come
to light. Nicholas Meyer to a greater or lesser degree began this
convention back in 1974 in The Seven-Percent-Solution. Frankly I entirely enjoy
these pseudo-front-matter remarks and I am disappointed when a pastiche
dispenses entirely with them or reduces the preface to a mere few sentences.
Thus I decided to begin CRUCIBLE with pseudo-front-matter that would make my
own heart sing. Remember in my first post that I mentioned that I had decided
to pile homage on top of homage to the degree that it was possible that I
risked being perceived as spoofing the whole Sherlockian pastiche genre.
To this end, rather than a typical "Preface," I
decided to pretend that the book in its current state had gone through multiple
editions with separate introductions prefacing each one. In this light,
"Editor's Note to the Third Edition" is self explanatory, especially
since it is clearly noted on the copyright page that this book is a FIRST
EDITION.
(2) In addition, I felt that the conceit of multiple
editions would enhance the novel's verisimilitude in the same manner that Meyer
had intended for his "Preface". . . but taken to the next
level! In other words, the book would pretend to be a serious—almost
scholarly—compilation of "found" texts with appropriate detailed
explanations of their provenances. Of course, from the start all this material
would focus on fictional characters for the most part, so it was unlikely that
anybody would take any of it seriously. It should by now be obvious that I was
immersing myself in the "Grand Game."
(3) When I was in school, I was greatly influenced by
the works of William Faulkner and James Joyce who sometimes wrote their fiction
as a circle with the ending at the beginning, and it came natural for me to
follow suit (not implying that I think of myself in the same league!). Thus the
whole point of CRUCIBLE is right there on page 15. All the action and the
plot and the many quests are resolved on the first page of the first chapter.
Virtually everything that I explained in Post No. 1 is made manifest right
there. Of course, this is often missed, especially since the
chapter seems dry to many readers. Well, that can't be helped; dryness was the whole point; but presumably the readers who paid attention to the first 14 pages would have figured out that the dryness was simply a conceit.
(4) Now, at this point in this memoir of the writing of CRUCIBLE, I have to admit something. All along as I was writing the novel (for 14 years, remember!) and
• manipulating ideas and tossing around in-jokes, and
• carefully balancing parody with inspirational messages (I hoped), and
• attempting to evoke both nostalgia and a sense of wonder, all at the same time . . .
. . . it never once dawned on me that some readers might find my style daunting. I suppose I was naive, but I imagined readers would quickly realize that CRUCIBLE needed to be approached with other-than-ordinary expectations, almost as though they would automatically realize that they needed to get into a "Where's Waldo?" mode. Let's face it, after all, isn't that exactly what happens when you pick up a Nero Wolfe as opposed to, say, a Leon Uris? You don't read EXODUS in the same way that you read Nero Wolfe. Your brain knows how to change its settings. It never occurred to me that readers wouldn't get that when they picked up CRUCIBLE.
Once it was published, however, I learned quickly that many readers could not relate to the book. It was much too far outside their comfort zone. One lady in my church said to me, "It's rather like a study book isn't it?" I still cringe when I remember that! I assume she thought it was a text book. To my overwhelming astonishment, the reviewer for Publishers Weekly seemed to know nothing about the "Grand Game," nothing about the long tradition of the Holy Grail in literature, nothing about accepted alternative ways to present the character of Sherlock Holmes, and mainly dismissed the book in one small paragraph.
All that notwithstanding, I nonetheless honestly believe I wrote in a manner that careful readers will understand simply by ignoring preconceptions, by recognizing the multitudinous clues I've dropped before page 15, and by applying a little common sense. By doing so, readers should be alerted to the idea that they ought not expect the same ol' thing, and that perhaps it would be profitable to look below the surface text only a little. I am grateful that enough readers appreciate much of what I'm doing (see some of the readers' reviews on the product page for this book on both Amazon.com and Amazon.uk).
(4) Now, at this point in this memoir of the writing of CRUCIBLE, I have to admit something. All along as I was writing the novel (for 14 years, remember!) and
• manipulating ideas and tossing around in-jokes, and
• carefully balancing parody with inspirational messages (I hoped), and
• attempting to evoke both nostalgia and a sense of wonder, all at the same time . . .
. . . it never once dawned on me that some readers might find my style daunting. I suppose I was naive, but I imagined readers would quickly realize that CRUCIBLE needed to be approached with other-than-ordinary expectations, almost as though they would automatically realize that they needed to get into a "Where's Waldo?" mode. Let's face it, after all, isn't that exactly what happens when you pick up a Nero Wolfe as opposed to, say, a Leon Uris? You don't read EXODUS in the same way that you read Nero Wolfe. Your brain knows how to change its settings. It never occurred to me that readers wouldn't get that when they picked up CRUCIBLE.
Once it was published, however, I learned quickly that many readers could not relate to the book. It was much too far outside their comfort zone. One lady in my church said to me, "It's rather like a study book isn't it?" I still cringe when I remember that! I assume she thought it was a text book. To my overwhelming astonishment, the reviewer for Publishers Weekly seemed to know nothing about the "Grand Game," nothing about the long tradition of the Holy Grail in literature, nothing about accepted alternative ways to present the character of Sherlock Holmes, and mainly dismissed the book in one small paragraph.
All that notwithstanding, I nonetheless honestly believe I wrote in a manner that careful readers will understand simply by ignoring preconceptions, by recognizing the multitudinous clues I've dropped before page 15, and by applying a little common sense. By doing so, readers should be alerted to the idea that they ought not expect the same ol' thing, and that perhaps it would be profitable to look below the surface text only a little. I am grateful that enough readers appreciate much of what I'm doing (see some of the readers' reviews on the product page for this book on both Amazon.com and Amazon.uk).
In this vein, one of my all-time favorite authors, as
already noted, is Arthur Machen. Horror-writer Peter Atkins' has said of him,
". . . [Machen] has little patience with the undereducated." I don't
put myself in Machen's league any more than I do Faulkner's and Joyce's, but I
can appreciate Atkins' thought. For instance, many readers simply ignore the
first 55 pages of CRUCIBLE out of hand and skip over it, and then they complain
about various aspects of the book. Where's the sense in that?
In Post No. 8, I'll discuss the second chapter, which is entitled "Editor's Note to the Movie Tie-In (Second) Edition."
Extra Credit
The next 550 words merely repeats some of what I've already said in a slightly expanded form. Here I voice more passionately the frustrations I have with modern readers—in the spirit of getting this out of the way before I discuss the remainder of the novel's other pseudo-front-matter.
When I went to high school, reading books, any books, was looked upon by my classmates as a kind of torture. Whether it was David Copperfield or Algebra or World History, many would do their best to pass their classes without paying attention to the required books. The habit of reading somehow never took root in, say, 90 out or a hundred kids. And when it was positively necessary to crack a book or books, inevitably these reluctant readers encountered Prefaces by scholars, Introductions by the author, and perhaps even, worst of all, Footnotes. And if reading any book, generally speaking, was anathema to these students, then dealing with all this extra BORING junk was the last straw! Unfortunately, lemming-like, this attitude was even often taken up by those kids who basically enjoyed reading and they too inevitably skipped right over the "front matter," as its called, and started reading on the first page of Chapter One.
In Post No. 8, I'll discuss the second chapter, which is entitled "Editor's Note to the Movie Tie-In (Second) Edition."
Extra Credit
The next 550 words merely repeats some of what I've already said in a slightly expanded form. Here I voice more passionately the frustrations I have with modern readers—in the spirit of getting this out of the way before I discuss the remainder of the novel's other pseudo-front-matter.
When I went to high school, reading books, any books, was looked upon by my classmates as a kind of torture. Whether it was David Copperfield or Algebra or World History, many would do their best to pass their classes without paying attention to the required books. The habit of reading somehow never took root in, say, 90 out or a hundred kids. And when it was positively necessary to crack a book or books, inevitably these reluctant readers encountered Prefaces by scholars, Introductions by the author, and perhaps even, worst of all, Footnotes. And if reading any book, generally speaking, was anathema to these students, then dealing with all this extra BORING junk was the last straw! Unfortunately, lemming-like, this attitude was even often taken up by those kids who basically enjoyed reading and they too inevitably skipped right over the "front matter," as its called, and started reading on the first page of Chapter One.
In fact, I have several books that include introductions by
the authors themselves who claimed at the very start that they were being
required by their publishers to provide the intro, and then when it seemed that
they had satisfied those publishers, they would disparage what they had just
written by saying things like "...Well that's done. Now go to Chapter One,
which is what this book is REALLY about..." Clearly, these authors didn't
like introductions and front matter any more than their classmates did!
I've always bucked the tide, though, and I've never
conformed to anything more than was required by law and that was necessary to
maintain the semblance of civilized behavior. I have been perfectly clear since
childhood that my views are in the minority. I bring that up now because I
adore Front Matter and all that other scholarly paraphernalia. It is by no
means uncommon for me to be so satisfied by the introduction(s) that I put a
book down and then not pick it up again for days or weeks!
And when I discovered the FICTIONAL INTRODUCTIONS that
graced many of the adventures of H. Rider Haggard, most pastiches of Sherlock
Holmes, and often the novels of cutting-edge science by the dearly departed Michael
Crichton, I thought I had died and gone to Heaven!
Many critics make a hasty distinction between the 60 percent
of my novel they view as the "real action" and everything else, which
they feel is inconsequential. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact,
the "story' is told obliquely through layers of framing devices—a lengthy
dedication, multiple introductions, footnotes, notes, digressions, and
appendixes. In other words, the book
masquerades as a 75,000-word scholarly report describing the finding of several
lost manuscripts involving Sherlock Holmes—and the "story" of the
book is embedded in ALL of it.
To simply disregard the Front Matter and Digressions in this
book is like ripping out the first hundred pages out of, say, THE DA VINCI CODE
or THE LORD OF THE RINGS or THE GODFATHER or THE EXORCIST or any other
novel. Now where is the logic in that?
But, of course, this attitude harks back to the beginning of this "extra
credit" note: Many readers simply see introductions and so forth, and
their knee-jerk reaction is to ignore it all. Indeed, this is so ingrained in
some people that no amount of logic can dissuade them from ignoring this book's
literary apparatus: They just don't comprehend that they are SUPPOSED to read (and enjoy)
it all.
Comments are appreciated! Thank you.
Comments are appreciated! Thank you.
Find used copies of CRUCIBLE at https://www.amazon.com/Great-Detective-Crucible-Life/dp/0809500507 .
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