Analysis: “The Man Who Never Told a Lie” was originally published in 1972 under the name “Truth to Tell” (it appeared in the collection of short stories about the Black Widowers called “Tales of the Black Widowers”).

Isaac Asimov, the prolific science fiction writer, created the Black Widowers for a series of mysteries that originally appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1971. The series became extremely popular and influential, especially among other mystery writers.

The group of six Black Widowers were based on an actual dinner club that Asimov belonged to called Trap Door Spiders. Each of the Black Widowers has a real life counterpart:

• Geoffrey Avalon is based on L. Sprague de Camp (a science fiction and fantasy writer who is perhaps best known as reviving the Conan writings of Robert E. Howard).

• Emmanuel Rubin is based on Lester del Rey (the science fiction editor and founder of Del Rey Books).

• James Drake based on Dr. John D. Clark (a scientist and writer who also helped revive the Conan series).

• Thomas Trumbull is based Gilbert Cant (a journalist who wrote for the New York Post and Time).

• Mario Gonzalo is based on Lin Carter (a science fiction writer and editor).

• Roger Halsted is based on Don Bensen.

“The Man Who Never Told a Lie” follows the predictable pattern of most of the stories in the series. The six members have a guest join them for dinner and they try to puzzle out the mystery the guest lays out before them. There’s much squabbling and digressions during the dinner. And then, per usual, Henry, the mysterious waiter, ends up cutting through the clutter to provide a simple and logical solution. While Henry isn’t based on any real-life character, Asimov was an enormous fan of P.G. Wodehouse and said Henry was inspired by Wodehouse’s character Jeeves.

The Black Widower stories are great fun – and while the tales hold up well alone, they are much better read in large chunks. That’s because Asimov has developed a supper club with complex and intriguing characters. The personality traits and histories of each of the Black Widowers get revealed slowly and carefully over the course of the series (until they begin to feel like old friends). The collection is like fine wine and gets more intricate and flavorful the longer it ages.

“The Man Who Never Told a Lie” is similar to the other stories in that it is fast-pace – and yet it seems leisurely at the same time. Asimov was a fantastic writer – a master of genre fiction for the thinking reader. His confidence and skill as a writer are in top form in this series. Readers can delight in the sidetracks and minor sojourns into the lives of the Black Widowers – without the stories ever losing focus on the mysteries.

Asimov died in 1992 and left behind more than books and about 9,000 letters. His science fiction (especially his Foundation and Robot series) was so influential and popular that it’s easy to forget that he was an excellent mystery writer as well. The Black Widower series is a great way to remember that and “The Man Who Never Told Lie” is a great starting point.

5 Writers Every Man Should Read

Lurid Confessions of a Man-Book Whore

Labels: Isaac Asimov, literary criticism, literature

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Labels: literary criticism, literature, Ring Lardner

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Analysis: Stephen King is much maligned by the alleged guardians of literature. When the horror writer won the National Book Foundation’s annual award for “distinguished contribution” in 2003, the guardians got downright frothy.

“I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind,” wrote Harold Bloom, the distinguished literary critic from Yale.

Ouch. Hard to dismiss Bloom, a brilliant literary scholar, but his comment is unfair. Obviously, no one is going to mistake King for D.H. Lawrence, but King has contributed a lot to the world of letters – especially in horror and supernatural fiction.

King’s talent lies in uncovering the dark underbelly of the ordinary. For example, on the surface his novels “Cujo” and “Christine” are stories about a rabid dog and a car geek obsessed with his wheels. But running below both tales – and rippling like a snake – are dark, supernatural currents.

King’s short story “Quitters, Inc.” falls into this family. In this gem of a story, King takes self-help into a nightmarish realm. The beauty of “Quitters, Inc.” is its scope – its damnation of our results driven culture. Who cares about the methodology! Look at the outcome!

Basically, he “mobs up” Weight Watchers. And what hand-wringing fun it is to watch Dick Morrison crack down under the authoritarian rule. How after his mild protests, Dick succumbs to the terrorism and torture. Why not? Once his wife gives her approval (even after being subjected to shock treatment), what’s not to like about quitting cigarettes and losing weight?

Here’s the scene right after Dick’s wife is tortured and he has to tell her why it happened:

“When he had finished he was silent a moment and then said, ‘I suppose you hate me. I wouldn’t blame you.’

He was looking at the floor, and she took his face in both hands and turned it to hers. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t hate you.’

He looked at her in mute surprise.

‘It was worth it,’ she said. ‘God bless these people. They’ve let you out of a prison.’

What an indictment on the American way of life. King is skewering our first under any circumstances mentality – and with such wit.

There’s never a dull moment in King’s stories and “Quitters, Inc.” rips along at a fast pace. The best part of the story is that King lays it all out for the reader – gives us a long, hard look at the consequences and then we get to ride along with Dick and wonder where he’s going to end up.

The reader, in fact, becomes Dick Morrison. We feel his pain – his anguish and his fear. We’re even right there with him when he hands over the business card to another patsy who wants to quit smoking.

And that’s the fascination with “Quitters Inc.” We’re all in the rat race together and we’re all keeping score. So who amongst us didn’t feel smugly superior (despite the sudden jolt in the belly) to Jimmy McCanns when we learned his wife only had four fingers?

Isn’t that the real horror here?

Read our literary criticism of Guy de Maupassant

Read our picks for the five scariest Stephen King novels

Labels: Horror, literary criticism, literature, Stephen King

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Several years ago we muddled through Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” (1992). We found it long and dull; peppered with McCarthy’s annoying omission of simple punctuation (what’s wrong with using quotation marks and apostrophes?) and filled with run-on sentences of questionable clarity.

Try this sentence on for size:

“Although the night was cool the double doors of the grange stood open and the man selling the tickets was seated in a chair on a raised wooden platform just within the doors so that he must lean down to each in a gesture akin to benevolence and take their coins and hand them down their tickets or pass upon the ticketstubs of those who were only returning from outside.”

Yeah, it makes you dizzy that McCarthy can write a 70-word sentence about a man handing another man a ticket stub (which is two words, Cormac). Our jaw dropped when this novel won the National Book award.

We applauded critic and author B.R. Myers scathing literary criticism “A Reader’s Manifesto” when he called out McCarthy as one of the guilty among the long list of pretentious literary writers (other authors called out by Myers included E. Annie Proulx, David Guterson, Paul Auster, Charles Frazier, and Don DeLillo).

Myers took offense at this sentence from McCarthy’s “The Crossing” (1995): “He ate the last of the eggs and wiped the plate with the tortilla and ate the tortilla and drank the last of the coffee and wiped his mouth and looked up and thanked her.”

Then Myers tore into it:

“This is a good example of what I call the andelope: a breathless string of simple declarative statements linked by the conjunction and. Like the "evocative" slide-show and the Consumerland shopping-list, the andelope encourages skim-reading while keeping up the appearance of “literary” length and complexity. But like the slide-show (and unlike the shopping-list), the andelope often clashes with the subject matter – the unpunctuated flow of words bears no relation to the methodical meal that is being described.”

We were greatly revealed to learn that another critic found McCarthy’s prose pompous, confusing, and as heavy as a lead weight.

We still find McCarthy’s Border Trilogy to be overrated, but his last two novels have us reconsidering McCarthy: “No Country for Old Men” (2005) and “The Road” (2007).

While we still find McCarthy’s reluctance to use proper grammar maddening it appears that he may have been listening to his critics (such as it is). Both novels are shorter and he strays away from his past sin of using long complicated sentences to describe simple mundane moments.

Instead, he focuses both “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road” on developing rich complex characters and then mines their interactions with each other for great emotional depth. The novels evoke great truths about human nature that at times left us breathless (and eager for more).

While reading “All the Pretty Horses” felt like a miserable chore, we couldn’t put down “No Country for Old Men” or “The Road.” There was energy to the prose and while the plots weren’t intricate – at least they had plots. The action feels more external and less internal. And that’s a good thing.

While we’ll stop short of lavishing McCarthy with the praise the likes of Literary Critic Harold Bloom – who called him one of the most important authors of his time – we have changed our minds about McCarthy.

The greatest praise we can give to McCarthy is that both “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road” have stayed with us. Both novels are haunting and powerful and stick to the ribs of your mind for a long, long time (like good, old-fashioned oatmeal).

So we kind-of apologize, Mr. McCarthy. We’re not going back to the Border Trilogy, but we can’t wait for your next book – ‘cause we’re going to be first in line to buy it.

A Menu of Tasty Books

Knock Your Socks Off Great Books

Labels: book review, books, Cormac McCarthy, literary criticism

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Analysis: Author Paul Theroux is a writer with a ham-fisted attitude. It’s difficult to dislike a writer with the gumption to blast celebrities like Bono and Angelina Jolie in an op-ed for the New York Times as “mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth.”

Theroux is a writer with strong opinions, but his bombast isn’t evident in “World’s End” – an amazingly subtle short story about the quiet and ferocious destruction of a family. Robarge, an American, is an executive at a drilling equipment supplier based in London. He’s a self-obsessed, deluded man incapable of empathizing with those around him – especially his wife, Kathy, and young son, Richard.

The beauty of the story is that Theroux lets Robarge’s character slowly unfold before readers – who at the beginning of the story have no reason not to trust the perceptions of Robarge (the story is told from his point of view). But it becomes clear that Robarge has created an illusion of familiar tranquility.

“World’s End” is so powerful because readers start out in the same place as Robarge – completely clueless. But as the narrative continues, readers begin to realize that Robarge not an innocent. In fact, if this were a murder story, he’d be the killer.

The best part of the story is how Theroux – with the precision of a dentist – turns the readers against his protagonist. At first, we’re ready to jump to Robarge’s defense. We’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but by the end of the story that isn’t possible anymore. We realize that Robarge is a manipulative coward and a selfish, ill-tempered bully.

It’s a wild ride for a story that on the surface is about a father bringing his son to a hill to fly a kite.

At the beginning, Robarge revels in the isolation of his family at the aptly named “World’s End” neighborhood in London. This passage is very telling: “He considered marriage the quietest enactment of sharing, connubial exclusiveness the most private way to live – a sheltered life in the best sense.”

Robarge wants to place his family on a shelf – away from the real world; a knick-knack to be admired on those occasions when he has the time. Our first hint that all may not be well is when Robarge notes that his wife has slimmed down and gotten a new haircut. Meanwhile, he has gained weight – so much that he lumbers like a fat man.

Theroux sprinkles hints throughout the story to paint a troubled portrait of Robarge. For example, he returns from a business trip after midnight and wakes up his six-year-old son because he wants the pleasure of giving him a kite. Then he crawls into bed with his wife who says “You’re back” and then turns away from him.

Hmmm.

It gets worse in the morning. Kathy is visibly unhappy – flat and unfocused during breakfast. The couple has a tiff – although it becomes clear that Robarge is unaware they are fighting. His wife leaves the room in tears and Robarge pretends not to notice.

Flying the kite with his son at Box Hill, Robarge and the boy are continually awkward with each other. They are uncomfortable and the boy is a spoiled brat. Yet like everything else, Robarge seems oblivious to this flaw in his son.

Quite accidentally, Robarge discovers that his son has been to the hill before with his wife and her new “friend.” The man has been around enough that the boy actually talks like him.

Robarge comes up with a plan. Afraid – is it fear or cowardice? – to confront his wife with her affair, he enlists his son as a spy. To set the stage, he concocts another business trip and flees to Holland for nearly a week.

While away, the boy has confessed to his mother. The boy now vehemently denies that his mother has a friend. His son is so fearful of his father that he has hidden a knife under his pillow.

That night, while struggling to sleep, his wife and son leave him. The ending packs a wallop:

“His fear left him and he was penetrated by the fake vitality of insomnia. After an hour he decided that what he had heard, if anything, was a thief leaving the house, not breaking in. Too late, too far, too dark, he thought; and knew now they were all lost."

Read our literary criticism of Anton Chekov's "The Dead Body" here

Labels: literary criticism, literature, Paul Theroux

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Analysis: Robert Matheson doesn’t put pen to paper much anymore. He can be forgiven. After all, Matheson is 81 years old. He’s become a living legend – a masterful author of science fiction and horror (Stephen King lists Matheson as one of his inspirations). He’s also a screenwriter that has been lucky enough to turn his own novels and short stories into films and TV programs (Matheson wrote for the “Twilight Zone” and “The Night Stalker”).

“I Am Legend” will soon be a Hollywood blockbuster starring Will Smith (it will be the third time the story has become a movie). As a result, “I Am Legend” is one of Matheson’s most famous stories, but it isn’t one of his best. “Duel,” “Hell House,” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man” continue to vie for that title.

“I Am Legend” has several problems – one of them being that today’s readers are experiencing a vampire hangover. Vampire fiction has become its own genre of horror fiction (Amazon.com has more than 1,400 titles under vampire fiction – from the graphic novel “30 Days of Night” to Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian”).

None of this is Matheson’s fault, of course. He wrote “I Am Legend” in 1954 (when Anne Rice was 13 years old). At one time “I Am Legend” might have put a fresh face on vampire fiction – but no longer.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only problem with the novella. There are two other problems: scariness and the main character.

Matheson approaches “I Am Legend” like it is a scientific equation that needs solving. His main character, Robert Neville, spends an inordinate amount of time contemplating the true nature of the disease. He experiments on the vampires trying to discover how to cure it.

Some of this is interesting, but as a result we get less action. Neville, after all, is the sole survivor of a plague. Readers only get brief glimpses of the outside world, but most of the action takes place inside Neville’s head or inside his compound like house.

It’s a missed opportunity to explore a new world. As I read the novella, I wanted more information about Neville’s day-to-day existence. Where does he get his food? How does he keep his water running? What does he do during his spare time? Does he read? Does he play games? What amuses him?

None of these questions are answered. I also wanted more physical confrontations between Neville and the vampires (especially those who gather outside his house every evening). Where are the epic fights? We get to hear about some of them, but most take place in the past. We experience them as Neville thinks about them.

This lack of action means few chills. The scariest part of the book (again in the past) is when Neville buries his wife, Virginia, and then she comes home for a visit:

“Then his breath was snuffed. Someone was mumbling on the porch, muttering words he couldn’t hear. He braced himself; then, with a lunge, he jerked open the door and let the moonlight in.

He couldn’t even scream. He just stood rooted to the spot, staring dumbly at Virginia.

“Rob… ert,” she said.”

Robert Neville is a problem. Matheson’s main character spends too much time feeling sorry for himself – and drowning his sorrows in liquor. He’s a driven man, but one that isn’t very curious about his new world. He’s in denial – to the point of not observing the new reality developing around him.

This disengagement fails to keep the reader engage in the story. We want action! Horror! Chills and thrills! “I Am Legend” is too self-contained, too cerebral for its own good.

Matheson deserves to be read. He’s an excellent writer of genre fiction, but “I Am Legend” isn’t up to his own standards. Hopefully, the new movie will be better.

Read our literary criticism of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Read our literary criticism of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

Labels: literary criticism, literature, Richard Matheson

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Analysis: James Joyce once said: “Hemingway has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”? It is masterly. Indeed, it is one of the best short stories ever written.”

It would be difficult to argue with Joyce.

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is an intake of breath. It fills your lungs with icy air, expanding, the sharpness prickling your chest, and then it emerges as a sigh -- a lonely, forlorn sound of utter despair.

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is about the fear of death – our collective terror at the shadows that surround the edges of life. It is about loneliness and emptiness and feeling like no one understands you or even cares to understand you. It is about the inability of human beings to connect with each other.

Hemingway’s critics – and there are many – fail to separate the man from the artist. Hemingway the man became a buffoon; a performer on the world stage who at the end of his life became a parody of himself. But Hemingway the artist was genius, but you need to remove the myth of the man from the beauty of his prose.

Hemingway wrote about a dozen novels, but his short stories are where his concise, economical style shone through. He was a master of the unspoken – evoking powerful emotions from what was being said between the lines. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is just such a work. On the surface, the story is about two waiters and an old man; a simple, even mundane, portrait of a few hours at a café along a dirt road.

But there is so much more lingering at the edges, crackling in the dialogue, and in the way Hemingway captures the humanity of his characters. The stage is set in the opening lines of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”

“It was late and every one had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man like to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference.”

The young waiter is impatient – a cocky young man with a job, a wife, and a lot of confidence. He is frustrated that the old man sits at the café drinking all night long; keeping him at his post when he’d rather be sleeping next to his wife. He fails to understand that the old man comes to café for solace – it is a safe haven against the cruelties of life and his pending death.

The older waiter understands it perfectly. He is the old man’s kindred spirit. “You do not understand,” he tells the younger waiter. “This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

Yes, the older waiter is saying, here is life and safety, but even here we will be reminded of death.

Hemingway takes “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” a step further as the older waiter goes to a bar for a night cap. He recites the “Lord’s Prayer” to himself and replaces all the nouns with the Spanish word “nada” – nothing. It is a kick in the teeth to religion – an acknowledgement by Hemingway that there is no great beyond – no clean, well-lighted place after life ends.

There is only nothingness.

The story ends like a heart-wrenching melody: “Now, without thinking further, he would go home o his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said, to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

Read our literary sketch of Hemingway’s “Indian Camp”

Labels: Hemingway, literary criticism, literature

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Analysis: Frank R. Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?” always conjures up the Grateful Dead song “Terrapin Station.” In the song, a lady tosses her fan into a lion’s den. She bids a sailor and a soldier to fetch it; promising her eternal love to the one who succeeds. The soldier declines, but the sailor boldly retrieves the fan and the lady leaps into his arms. The song narrator asks the listeners to decide if the sailor made the wise choice.

“The story teller makes no choice. Soon you will not hear his voice.
His job is to shed light, and not to master.
Since the end is never told, we pay the teller off in gold,
In hopes he will return, but he cannot be bought or sold.”

Obviously, the song reflects the short story, which was written in 1882. But the song asks the reader to make the final moral judgment and that’s exactly what Stockton does in his classic tale of a conundrum.

There is one word of dialog in the story: “Which?”

This is the question asked by the suitor to the princess as he stands before the two doors in the arena. It is this question that forms the foundation of Stockton’s fable and ultimately the answer is what he demands of his readers.

On the surface, the story hinges on the princess and her horrible situation (a “Catch-22” before Joseph Heller was even born). She can tell her suitor to pick the door with the tiger and watch him get torn to shreds and devoured or she can picked the door with the lady and watch her true love be wed to one of the women of her court. In either case, she never gets to see him again.

Stockton makes sure to play the story straight down the middle (and he never hinted at the conclusion before he died in 1904). But the reader is told that the daughter is much like her father, the king. “This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own.”

The princess is acquainted with the lady behind the door – a beauty from her court. We know that the princess is a jealous woman and in the past has “seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived and even returned.” She also “hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door.”

Yet, she also loves her suitor and the thought of him being mauled by a starving tiger makes her mad with despair. “How often, in her waking hours and in her dreams, had she started in wild horror, and covered her face with her hands, as she thought of her lover opening the door on the other side of which waited the cruel fangs of the tiger!”

Her suitor knows instantly that the princess has discovered the secret of this particular test and that’s when he mutters:

“Which?”

“Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on the man in the arena. He turned, and, with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it.”

But the reader never learns the answer. Instead, Stockton turns outward and addresses the reader. He wants us to make the decision. The decision then is about us; about whom we are behind the façade of our public selves – because every reader of “The lady, or the Tiger?” instantly gets a visual of their own personalized ending. You either see the tiger leap forth or the shy lady standing there (perhaps hiding her blush behind a fan).

Are we cynic or optimist? Are we glass half full or glass half empty? Are we romantics or melancholy pessimists? Do we believe human beings are inherently good or evil?

This is why the short story has become a staple in high school literature classes. The answer is at once intimate and a telling gauge of our own public perspective. It can open up lively classroom discussions and reveal the power of the written word. But the real magic of Stockton’s story is its ability to tell us something about ourselves.

And that’s why I see the trusting lad opening the door and…

Well, let me turn to the Grateful Dead for my answer: “A door within the fire creaks; suddenly flies open, and a girl is standing there.”

Labels: Frank Stockton, literary criticism, literature

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Analysis: Gabriel Garcia Marquez is best known for the novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in a Time of Cholera,” where he introduced the world to magical realism. Magical realism is a literary genre in which magic or fantastical creatures appear in an otherwise realistic setting.

I’ve never been a fan of magical realism, but there is no arguing that Marquez is a masterful writer. His ability to paint pictures and create rich characters with an economy of words makes him worthy of his 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

His short story “One of These Days” isn’t magical realism. In fact, its brutal realism – the short – very short, in fact – story of the consequences of political corruption that lead to a massacre.

The story opens on a warm and rainless Monday morning. Aurelio Escovar, a dentist with no formal education, arrives at work and begins his mediocre tasks for the day. His tranquility is interrupted by the arrival of the village mayor. A light exchange with his son follows with a threat of violence if Escovar doesn’t see the mayor, who wants a decayed tooth pulled. The readers experience this exchange:

“Papa.”

“What?”

He still hadn’t changed his expression.

“He says if you don’t take out his tooth, he’ll shoot you.”

Without hurry, with an extremely tranquil movement, he stopped pedaling the drill, pushed it away from the chair, and pulled the lower drawer of the table all the way out. There was a revolver. “O.K.,” he said. “Tell him to come and shoot me.”

Suddenly, the mood has shifted. What could have been a funny exchange between two old friends – village dentist and the old mayor – turns into something with teeth; something unpleasant.

The tension when the disheveled mayor makes his appearance is thick. Clearly, these are two men who despise each other. The mayor is here only because his face is swollen and he’s in agony.

The dentist inspects the tooth and declares that he must remove it without anesthesia because it is an abscess. The mayor senses that this is a lie, but he stoically gives his consent. Then out comes the tooth:

It was a lower wisdom tooth. The dentist spread his feet and grasped the tooth with the hot forceps. The mayor seized the arms of the chair, braced his feet with all his strength, and felt an icy void in his kidneys, but didn’t make a sound. The dentist moved only his wrist. Without rancor, rather with a bitter tenderness, he said:

“Now you’ll pay for our twenty dead men.”

The Mayor felt the crunch of bones in his jaw, and his eyes filled with tears. But he didn’t breathe until he felt the tooth come out.

The story ends with the dentist asking where to send the bill – to the town or the mayor. The mayor answers: “It’s the same damn thing.”

“One of These Days” is beautifully written and some of the images are as stark and real as photographs. Marquez’s command of language and his confidence in giving the reader just enough information to form the pictures, ideas, and characters – are top-notch.

The story, however, simply lacks an emotional and philosophical impact. Marquez is telling the readers that power corrupts. Is this news? Was it necessary to beat the reader over the head with that unsophisticated premise by having the mayor tell us that he and the town are the “same damn thing?”

Less would be more here.

Yet even despite this enormous flaw – the story does seem to work. And it’s because of the writing. One only wishes that Marquez’s premise was as sophisticated and as light as his words.

Labels: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, literary criticism, literature

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Summary: While talking a stroll about London, Mr. Utterson and his cousin happen upon a dreary section of the city mired in penury. The location was the site of a recent controversy that Mr. Utterson’s cousin relates. An ugly, dwarfish man named Mr. Hyde trampled over and severely injured a young girl. Confronted by a mob lead by the girl’s family, Mr. Hyde makes restitution in the form of a check from Dr. Jekyll – a friend of Mr. Utterson’s. Mr. Utterson, concerned for his friend’s well-being, visits Jekyll, who assures him all is well. Deciding to investigate, Mr. Utterson later meets Mr. Hyde and is struck by the evil he senses in the man. One dark night, Mr. Hyde is witnessed murdering a respected gentleman with his cane. Mr. Utterson protects Jekyll’s association with Hyde, but urges him to cut all ties. Jekyll promises to do so. But Jekyll’s experiments with chemicals have unlocked his evil nature by transforming him into Mr. Hyde. He can no longer control the transformations and Mr. Hyde takes over. In the end, confronted by his friends, Jekyll in the form of Mr. Hyde ends up committing suicide.

Analysis: Poor Robert Louis Stevenson.

He’s often dismissed as a second-rate scribbler of horror stories and adventure tales for children. He suffered greatly under the withering gaze of literary icon Virginia Woolf – who publicly disparaged his works during the height of her fame.

But there’s been a reconsideration of Stevenson as a master of the neo-romanticism movement that sprung up in London during the 1880s. This revisionist take on Stevenson is primarily driven by “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which is a classic of the style and established Stevenson as a best-selling author in Britain and in the United States after its publication in 1886 (and many believe it was responsible for the wide-spread panic that ensued during the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888).

It’s difficult to read “Jekyll and Hyde” with a clean slate – the characters are so infused into modern society that a reader would have had to have grown up in a vacuum cleaner not to have formed some kind of impression of the characters (see: Legends of Literature Part 2).

But despite the movies, comic books, plays, parodies and TV melodramas (even the children’s show “Arthur” had an episode based on the story), the novella amazingly retains its freshness. Reading “Jekyll and Hyde” is like stepping through a looking glass and onto the gas-lit, cobblestoned byways of Victorian London. You can actually feel the chill of the fog and hear the click of walking sticks on the stones.

Stevenson is a beautiful writer – much to Woolf’s chagrin. He isn’t flowery, however, preferring a concise, direct style and relying on good old fashioned verbs and nouns to tell the story. The results, while too straight-forward for the esoteric Woolf, are vivid portraits and strong characterizations. Take this narrative from Mr. Enfield:

“Street after street, and all the folks asleep – street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church – till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sire the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner: and then cam the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left here screaming on the ground.”

This “little man,” of course, is Mr. Hyde. That may be the biggest surprise in the story: the crafty, evil doppelganger known as Mr. Hyde is a dwarf. A twisted and deformed dwarf, but nothing like the lurching giant that he is often portrayed as in film.

While disguised as a supernatural horror story, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is actually an indictment on Victorian morals. We told from the point of view of his close-friend, Mr. Utterson, that Dr. Jekyll is an intelligent, kind-hearted man who is well-respected as he moves into middle age. But in actuality, Dr. Jekyll is bored, frustrated, and exhausted by his propriety.

And that leads the good doctor to his basement laboratory to experiment with mind-altering chemicals, powders, and potions. There he discovers not only a way to unleash his primal urges, but in way that protects his reputation and identity. He has the perfect alibi because he has become another person – Mr. Hyde.

Stevenson, of course, was prevented from telling his readers in detail what Mr. Hyde did on his midnight excursions to the seedy parts of London – but one imagines lots of alcohol, opium, gambling, and sex with prostitutes. Dr. Jekyll is seduced by this lifestyle, until it overcomes him and his urges become so debased that he turns to brutality and murder.

Labels: literary criticism, literature, Robert Louis Stevenson

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Summary: Mary Mahoney, six months pregnant, knits in her parlor waiting for her husband, Patrick, to get home from work. Patrick, a dour, unfriendly police detective, returns in a foul mood. After drinking glasses of whiskey, Patrick tells Mary he is leaving her. Shocked, Mary prepares dinner – fetching a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer. When her husband tells her not to bother, she crushes the back of his skull with the lamb. Mary proceeds to get her alibi prepared by putting the lamb in the oven and then heading to the butcher’s. Returning, she puts the lamb in the oven and pretends to have discovered her murdered husband. She calls the police and her husband’s colleague come in investigate. In the end, she offers them the leg of lamb and they eat the murder weapon.

Analysis: Roald Dahl may have one of the most unusual writing careers in history. He’s famous for authoring some of the most beloved children’s novels of all time – “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” and “Matilda.”

Labels: literary criticism, literature, Roald Dahl

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