My first great literary crush was on Sherlock Holmes.
I know, I know. I was supposed to fall in love with Edmund Rochester, dark and brooding, or perhaps Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., or maybe Johnny Tremain or even Gilbert Blythe. Someone handsome, intelligent, dashing, and romantic was supposed to set my heart aflutter, not a sarcastic drug addict with a big nose, a receding hairline, and a suspiciously close relationship with his doctor. That I was simultaneously in love with Mr. Spock, who had a similarly logical mind, big nose, sarcastic streak, and suspiciously close relationship with his captain should have hinted that my tastes in men were, shall we say, unusual.
My mother, God love her, figured that it was better for me to read The Collected Sherlock Holmes until the cover fell off than sample some of the other delights available to teenagers in the 1970s, like disco dancing, black light posters, and Frampton Comes Alive! She even encouraged me with gifts of detective fiction (most notably Rex Stout and Agatha Christie), as well all the Victorian crime literature she could find, like the two Rivals of Sherlock Holmes collections and the works of Wilkie Collins. She even bought me a deerstalker hat, which I'm wearing in a college yearbook picture.
She also found paperbacks featuring the adventures of one Solar_Pons.
Solar Pons was the brainchild of August Derleth, a prolific and underrated writer from Sauk City, Wisconsin. Derleth is best known today as the founder of horror/fantasy small press Arkham House, champion of then-obscure writers like H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, and Ramsey Campbell. However, his own work encompassed everything from regional novels about Wisconsin to historical fiction to horror to mysteries. His work varies widely in quality, but at his best he's quite good, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a revival of interest in his work.
Derleth, a voracious reader, was a great fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announced in the late 1920s that he would write no more about the great detective, Derleth immediately wrote to him asking for permission to continue the series. Conan Doyle gently declined, so the 19 year old Derleth promptly started writing Holmes pastiches about Solar Pons and his amanuensis Dr. Lyndon Parker. The stories were set in the 1920s, with motor cars, telephones, and all modern conveniences, although Pons himself still wore a caped tweed coat and, yes, a deerstalker hat. Pons also crossed swords with modern villains like Dr. Fu Manchu, had some acquaintance with the Cthulhu Mythos, and was a great admirer of - you guessed it - Sherlock Holmes, who was living in retirement on Sussex Downs while Pons and Parker battled crime from their flat at 7B Praed Street.
Despite all these resemblances, and several titles taken straight from Dr. Watson's unwritten adventures, Pons was very much his own character, lacking Holmes' harsh edge and Bohemian characteristics. The stories were greatly admired by mid-century mystery writers and critics such as Ellery Queen and Anthony Boucher, and after Derleth's death of a heart attack in 1971, the series was continued by British author Basil Copper. If there's such a thing as a truly worthy successor to a great writer and a great character, August Derleth and Solar Pons definitely qualify.
The same cannot be said, alas, for most who try to imitate the great. Despite a history going back to the Homeric Cycle and the Matter of Britain, the pastiche is very much a literary crapshoot. For every Wolfram von Eschenbach who expands and deepens an existing body of work, there are dozens of earnest, cynical, or just plain greedy authors who try to finish an existing work or write a sequel to a popular or classic book. The vast majority of these works are, at best, forgettable, which is why they don't appear in boxed Christmas sets alongside their inspiration.
And then there are the professionals who try to pick up where another leaves off and produce Pastiche So Bad It's Good.
Tonight I come bearing three examples of lesser writers attempting to continue or supplement stories begun by others. All are appalling, none are appealing, and one is, well, not precisely comedy tonight, but certainly...unique, even among Books So Bad They're Good.
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, Michael Dibdin – The 1970s saw the beginning of a revival of interest in Sherlock Holmes. Possibly inspired by Billy Wilder’s film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, more likely stemming from the fact that most of the Holmes stories went out of copyright in 1980, novels and short stories and critical works about the world’s most famous detective began to pour from the presses.
Many of these stories purported to be “from the files of John H. Watson, MD” and picked up on a case Watson referred to in a canonical adventure, such as the Tragedy of the Grice-Patersons of Uffa or the Adventure of the Politician, the Lighthouse Keeper and the Trained Cormorant. Others, such as a curious production by Holmes scholar Michael Harrison, had Holmes and Watson interacting with other famous fin de siecle figures such as Aleister Crowley. There were even stories about Irene Adler (“THE woman”), Professor Moriarty, and Holmes’ older brother Mycroft.
Most of these stories were no more than light entertainment. Others have tried to do more. Neil Gaiman’s brilliant “A Study in Emerald” recasts Holmes and Watson as freedom fighters against an evil regime; Laurie R. King pairs Holmes with 1920s feminist and theologian Mary Russell; the BBC’s recent television series “Sherlock” updated the Holmes as a sarcastic consultant and Watson as a wounded war veteran. Even no less an icon than Mr. Spock from Star Trek claimed descent from the world’s most famous consulting detective.
Some of these stories are very, very good. Others are mediocre. But this one –
August Derleth was neither the first nor the last modern writer to attempt a Holmes pastiche. Michael Dibdin, who went on to write the well regarded Aurelio Zen mysteries, was but following in the steps of Derleth, Ellery Queen, and Conan Doyle’s own brother-in-law. And by and large, Dibdin did a good job. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story gets many of the details of Victorian culture and language right, and is an entertaining and enjoyable read right up until Dr. Watson discovers that Holmes is Jack the Ripper.
That’s right. Sherlock Holmes is not just hunting Jack the Ripper. He is Jack the Ripper.
And before the horrified reader can tell herself that no, she didn’t just read a scene where Watson observes Holmes calmly singing music hall songs as he stuffs Ripper victim Mary Kelly’s private parts into a jar of formaldehyde, she’s asked to accept Dr. Watson, that model of Victorian propriety, whisking this homicidal lunatic off to Switzerland and convincing him to throw himself into the Reichenbach Falls instead of immediately telegraphing Inspector Lestrade and having Holmes arrested.
Even better, we’re asked to believe that Watson, fully aware that Holmes was a serial killer, continued to write and publish stories about “the best and wisest man [he] has ever known” as a paragon of virtue, justice, and correct, logical behavior for the next forty years.
To quote that great sage and student of human behavior Homey D. Clown, “I don’t think so.”
Fortunately Dibdin never wrote another Holmes pastiche, nor did he attempt to revive
any other famous British detectives. What he’d likely do with Raffles, Lord Peter Wimsey, or Bulldog Drummond and the Black Gang does not bear thinking about.
Pemberley, by Emma Tennant. Sherlock Holmes is far from the only great fictional character to appear long after his creator’s death, and Arthur Conan Doyle is by no means the only writer to have others attempt to recreate his magic. Herman Melville (Ahab’s Wife), Mark Twain (Finn), Louisa May Alcott (March), Margaret Mitchell (The Wind Done Gone), Dorothy Sayers (Thrones, Dominations)...these are but a few of the modern takes on classic books and characters. And although there are some genuinely excellent books among them, most notably Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea,, the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife, most fall so short of the mark that one wonders why the writer bothered, or the publisher actually thought they were worth the ink and paper.
No recent author has written more such books, or been the object of such critical brickbats, as Emma Tennant.
Tennant, daughter of Baron Glenconner, began writing in the early 1960s. Over last fifty years she’s written travel stories, worked as an editor for Vogue, and churned out an astonishing number of continuations, pastiches, or sequels to famous books. Although she’s written versions of Jane Eyre (The French Dancer’s Bastard, about Mr. Rochester’s daughter Adele) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the title characters are both women), she seems to have a particular fondness of butchering continuing the works of Jane Austen.
Pemberley purports to be a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, set one year later as Lizzie and Mr. Darcy host all their assorted relatives at Pemberley for the Christmas holidays, from Mrs. Bennett to Lydia and Mr. Wickham to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. I say “purports” because Pemberley seems to be set in an alternate universe, one perhaps where tesseracts and/or uterine replicators are real. There is no other explanation for Lydia and Mr. Wickham to have produced four non-identical children all old enough to walk and talk in so little time, or for Lizzie’s sister Jane, who was married on the same day as Lizzie, to have a toddler and be approximately nine months pregnant with her second child.
Not only that, this book advances several other curious notions, none of which square with what actually happened in Austen’s masterpiece:
-- Mr. Darcy has a French lover and an illegitimate child, which makes Lizzie jealous. She also believes that her husband has fallen in love with one of her sisters.
-- Since Lizzie is not pregnant by now, she is convinced that Mr. Darcy hates her and will never forgive her since Pemberley will now be inherited by another relative. Despite this, his eyes “twinkle” at odd moments, seemingly in a sexual way.
-- Mrs. Bennett, mother of five daughters, knows a recipe for vinegar douche that will guarantee the conception of a son, which begs the question of why she didn’t use it.
-- Chamber pots are concealed in the dining room furniture so the men may have a piddle party after the ladies have retired.
That’s right. Chamber pots in the dining room and vinegar douches in the bedroom. In a sequel to one of the greatest, most refined novels in the English language.
It’s no wonder that Carolyn See, reviewing Pemberley for the Washington Post described herself as being “enveloped in a hideous rage, best described as ‘I’m not getting enough to read this thing!’” or that it rates a solid one star from readers on Powell’s AND Amazon.com AND Barnes & Noble. Choice comments include “I am honestly shocked that any publishing company actually published this,” and “I got to the scene where Elizabeth throws a hissy fit and runs off into the rain, disappearing on the grounds of Pemberley. Darcy’s a mess….”
Despite this and other shrieks of rage from fans and critics alike, Tennant pumped out a second Pride and Prejudice sequel, An Unequal Marriage, which depicted the Darcys’ marriage on the rocks twenty years later. As one commenter put it, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fan in search of a good sequel can safely skip anything by Emma Tennant.”
That about sums it up.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood as continued by Thomas James, by Charles Dickens and Thomas James. Charles Dickens wrote many books, as anyone who’s taken a course in 19th century literature is well aware. His output varied from episodic short stories (The Pickwick Papers) to historical fiction (A Tale of Two Cities) to quasi-biography (David Copperfield) to thrillers (The Old Curiosity Shop). The only genres he didn’t try were science fiction/fantasy, although A Christmas Carol comes very close, and mysteries, and the latter was not for lack of trying.
Dickens’ last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was his attempt at a straight mystery novel. It had all the elements it needed, or so the first six chapters would indicate: a love triangle, an inheritance, a missing character who is almost certainly murdered, a vengeful opium dealer, and several promising clues and candidates who may or may not have killed Edwin Drood, who may or may not be dead. The only thing it lacks is the most crucial part of any mystery: an ending.
That is because Dickens, to the fury of mystery fans ever since, died suddenly after writing only about half the book. Worse, there was no way for his estate to keep the public from knowing about the book, because Dickens, who serialized most of his works, had already published the first six installments in one shilling booklets between April and September of 1871. He did relate what purported to be the rest of the plot in a letter to his friend John Forster, but given that the letter was written in 1869 and what we have of the book wasn’t written until 1871, there is no way to be sure that Dickens would have stuck to his original plans as to the murderer, the plot or the clues. As every writer knows, characters have minds of their own, and it’s entirely possible that the final product might have been quite different from Dickens’ original notes.
Naturally this has left the door open to numerous sequels, proposed solutions, and continuations. The best known is probably Rupert Holmes’ Tony-winning musical Drood, where the audiences votes on who actually murdered Edwin Drood, while the most inventive is probably a Doctor Who episode where Dickens intends to write a horror novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Blue Elementals, inspired by his adventures with the Tenth Doctor.
Neither of these is a patch on Thomas James’ 1873 continuation. You see, James, a young printer from Vermont who dabbled in spiritualism, did not actually write the last half of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He but channeled the story via automatic writing, serving as a physical conduit for the spirit of Charles Dickens, who wanted nothing more than to finish his last book.
That’s right: despite his name going on the title page alongside Dickens’, Thomas James was nothing more than a ghost writer in the most literal sense.
Critical opinion was mixed. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, himself a noted spiritualist, praised the book as similar to Dickens’ own work. Others dismissed it for “futility, illiteracy, and hideous American mannerisms” that took Dickens’ ideas and turned them into an obscure nightmare. The public, eager for a solution, any solution to the question of what really happened to Edwin Drood, snapped up so many copies that the Dickens/James version was a fixture in late Victorian America.
The book itself fell out of print decades ago, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it’s now available in e-format for Dickens fans to judge for themselves whether Thomas James was a psychic, a fraud, or simply an early fanfiction writer who let his table-tipping go a bit farther than he’d intended.
So, gentle readers – what are your favorite sequels that never should have been written? Do you have a portrait of Emma Tennant glued to your dartboard? Do you scream with rage at the mention of Michael Dibdin’s name? Turned your copy of Ahab’s Wife into gun cotton? Have a complete set of notes for the Giant Rat of Sumatra saved in a locked file on your flash drive? We’re all friends here, so gather ‘round the red lamp and share….