Incoherent Memoirs

Pouring myself a stiff glass, I ventured to read  'The Empty House'. Thankfully, although it can still cause a faint throbbing in the temples, it is much less mind-numbingly confusing than FINA (see previous post). Its main puzzle-points are the obvious ones: Holmes' explanation of his 'resurrection'; the reason for his playing dead in the first place; Watson's bizarrely understated reaction to same; and a few more. On the whole however I could take this in easy stride and the reason for that is Dr Watson himself. It's a story full of Watson's human qualities: his failing, his fainting and even his  "fairy tales" (Holmes' description of the stories!). Its tempo, in contrast with the rollercoaster pace of its predecessor, is set by the resurrected Holmes lighting a cigar and, suitably relaxed, chatting away with Watson - before the return to the 'good old days', a pocketed army revolver, and a midnight stakeout for the second most d...

From 'The Hound ': "pelf" Our graverobbing narrator explains, "Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical  pelf  from the centuried grave". Which makes sense as it means "money (archaic) especially if gained in a dishonest way". 'The Lurking Fear' gives us the description of "Charonian shadows". A very literal description just means 'of/pertaining to Charon' so I had to look up Charon: he is the ferryman of Greek legend who carries souls across the River Styx in the Underworld. The 'Charonian staircase' is a stage prop apparently used to have actors rise up as if from that very Underworld. So... dark, lurking (appropriately), suggestively indistinct and rising up from the depths of hell... ooh it gives you chills!

Two words from 'The Nameless City' which I sort of get from the context but have never looked up the precise definition of: "curvilinear" This describes certain carvings on the weird buildings the narrator explores. I was hoping for something neat and simple when I looked online: there is a simple version - " contained by or consisting of a curved line or lines" - but there is a much more precise, and very Lovecraftian, definition which describes 'curvilinear coordinates' thusly:  " In geometry, curvilinear coordinates are a coordinate system for Euclidean space in which the coordinate lines may be curved. These coordinates may be derived from a set of Cartesian coordinates by using a transformation that is locally invertible at each point."   "Euclidian"  itself is a favoured HPL adjective: I was only brave enough to look at the first description of this I came upon: "corresponding to the geometry of ordinary experience...

'The Unnamable ' starts off very akin to one of HPL's rare (but treasured) comedy stories - a nice bit of self-referential whimsy which has the horror story-writing 'Carter' berated by a friend for writing horror tales filled with dreadful cliché. In particular "my constant talk about "unnamable" and "unmentionable" things was a very peurile device quite in keeping with my lowly standing as an author". HPL's canon is certainly full of this device, though it's hardly peurile. Used extravagantly to the point of near-self-parody it may be, but the consistency of its use - the power of its suggestion of things to horrible to even describe articulately - is absolutely essential to the efficacy of his stories. A random example: "Yet when I looked [...] I saw [...] only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on earth" ('The Music of Erich Zann...

I was reading  'The Temple' and when the narrator, the rabidly Germanic U-boat captain, first comes across the titular place of worship (rather unexpectedly, given as it's on the sea-bed somewhere in the Atlantic) he sees a definite "fane". I didn't know what this word meant so checked, and it just means "shrine or temple". I guess HPL just didn't want to re-use 'temple' too much given it's the title. Now I've decided to read un-annotated editions of my favourites I must get used to looking up any words I don't know. I have a feeling HPL will keep me quite busy with this.

Whenever I read 'The Final Problem' I feel a gentle throbbing in my brain. There is so much of it that just makes absolutely no sense - and this is on its own, let alone adding the further revelations of 'The Empty House' into the mix. I have to make a conscious adjustment and simply let myself be carried along by the story, leaving any nagging or niggling thoughts for afterwards. Such as: Why does Holmes give the game away to Moriarty by saying he was to move against him on the Monday? Why does Holmes endanger Watson's life by leaving the back way? Why is it a surprise to Holmes that the London police failed to arrest Moriarty when he knows that he (Moriarty) has been following him for the past two days across the continent by rail and boat? Is Holmes just making all this up? Watson only has Holmes' word that Moriarty even exists... Even after finishing the story, putting the book down and making a relaxing cup of tea these, and other, questions niggle away a...

On Her Majesty's Secret Service; You Only Live Twice; The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming Penguin Modern Classics, 2006 I have neglected the blog slightly over Xmas and New Year, largely because that period saw me transform into a globular entity composed of 90% chocolate and mince pies. My reading programme of the Bond novels continued apace however, and indeed saw me gulping down the books as greedily as I did the festive grub. After the compellingly atypical ' The Spy Who Loved Me ' it was back to business as usual with 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service '. Or was it? For this of course sees Bond settling down and getting married. This is still a Bond story, so 'settling down' in this instance means bartering with a Mafia Don for the wellbeing of his beautiful but suicidal daughter, and the 'getting married' part is delayed slightly thanks to the groom conducting a one-man war against Blofeld and his new base in the Swiss Alps. Still, t...

I named this blog after a comment Watson  makes in 'The Musgrave Ritual' about "these incoherent memoirs" (meaning his own stories). 'Incoherent' is a bit strong, one thinks at first - or is even Watson aware of his slips of the pen, his contradictory dates, and such lapses of continuity/memory such as being unable to remember which limb he was wounded in at Maiwand? I'd forgotten that he uses the same word in ' The Resident Patient ' and in the same context: "In glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of memoirs..." I don't think the word necessarily means how it reads (the stories are perfectly comprehensible). After all, he follows this by referring to Holmes' "mental peculiarities" , which again sounds slightly odd to us. Chalk it up to Victorian usage. But blow me down - starting to read ' The Final Problem' , he's at it again! :- "In an incoherent and [...] entirely inadequate fashion, I hav...