"What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" Comics books and reading

I used to think that I didn’t read comic books as a kid. But lately I remember that I did. I was never an avid collector but certainly I did read Caspar, Richie Rich and other Harvey titles, Archie, Mighty Mouse, a Tarzan comic which caused me to ask my mother what an upside-down ‘i’ meant – turned out to be an exclamation mark – and lots of Commando comics. Indeed, if you ever need to tell a German ‘hands up’, ‘hurry up’ ‘pay attention’ or to hurl mild profanities at him, I’m your man. As I got into my teens though, I tended to think of comics as kids’ stuff.

But in my thirties I started reading the giants of comic books, the Marvel and DC superheroes. I blame Lucas Stibbard, comic book collector, fellow actor and good friend of mine. In 2004, he pressed into my hand a copy of Michael Chabon’s The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a superb novel of two cousins, one American one Czech who, to cut a long story very short, create a comic book in what is now known as the Golden Age of comic books. This is the era of the creation of Superman, Batman and many other classic characters, around WWII. The picture of this time, and the comic book industry made me go and actually read some comic books.  I was quickly hooked. Luckily, local libraries now carry comic books because they are ruinously expensive to buy. That said, I now own Return of the Dark Knight and four volumes of The Essential Thor, so the collecting bug did not leave me unscathed.

The novel also led me to other Michael Chabon works, and the comic books led me to Neil Gaiman. Reading does that. Good writing leads you to look for more good writing. A reference in one book leads you to read another. Years ago I talked about comic books with Paul Galloway, now a playwright. He had also read the Harvey comics as a child. He said quite rightly that reading comic books is a good habit for your children because it gets them in the habit of reading.  I remembered this conversation while reading Kavalier and Clay, as it followed the historic campaigns that wanted to ban comics as ruining children’s minds.

DC comics have an historic edge over Marvel because they created the archetypes of superheroes: the man given super powers by some strange circumstance, in Superman; the man who trains his body and mind to superhuman levels, in Batman; and the female superhero, Wonder Woman. All superheroes, I suspect, are variations on these three. Not that Marvel would be too worried by my assessment. With Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Wolverine, the X-Men, Thor, Captain America and others either filling or soon to fill the cinemas, they’re doing all right.

The superheroes themselves derive from older myths of gods and super-humans (not only does Marvel have Thor and the Norse pantheon on their side, they also have Hercules and the Greeks) and even precursors in popular culture. Lee Falk’s Phantom is a sunnier Batman with a healthy psyche and happy family life. But it was DC who turned these characters into a publishing phenomenon.

Nowadays, these heroes have such complicated back stories, relationships, and psychological issues, with different worlds, different universes, times, reboots and retrocons, that it may be difficult for the neophyte to get into them. In the main, I stick to the classics myself, the big names that I at least have some handle on. Looking up Wikipedia to find summaries is only more confusing. And never ask a comic nerd ‘Who’s this guy?” unless you have a good half-hour to spare.

The latest comic book I read is It’s a bird by Steven T Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen. Comic books, as well as becoming more expensive, have become much more sophisticated. No longer aimed at children, they have tended to grow older with their audience. This work is what may be termed a meta comic, or deconstructuralist, post-modern, or depost-something; it’s a comic book about writing a comic book. The protagonist, Steve, is a successful comic book writer who has been offered the big one – a Superman story. But he is reluctant for many reasons, not the least of which is that his first Superman comic was given to him while he sat in the hospital as his grandmother was dying.  His attempt to find meaning in the invulnerable man in red, blue and yellow tights in a 21^st century modern world leads him down many creative and personal paths, some with dead ends.  This could have been awful, but the result is quite the opposite. It’s revealing, the artwork is excellent, and the story is gripping. Will Steven take what should be his dream job? And if he doesn’t, why not?

So while I still don’t read comic books on public transport, I’m happy to out myself as a comic book reader in conversation or online (it turns out). I don’t need to refer to them as graphic novels, no more than I need to get the adult dust covers for my Harry Potter books. Stories are one of the things that make us human, and if someone is telling me a good story, I don’t much mind the form in which they tell it.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." The meaning of history

Sadly, ever since I graduated as a History teacher in 1990 from the University Queensland, all I have been allowed to teach is SOSE – Studies of Society and the Environment, an amalgam of History, Geography (which I have never studied), Law (same) Citizenship Education and anything else they can shoehorn in. I no longer teach, so maybe things have changed, or are changing. All I know is for students up to age fifteen, the Queensland Government, and they are not alone, don’t think History is worth its own subject.

The trouble with History is that it’s all over by the time we get there. And even if we’re there at the time, our stories could be contradictory if not downright irreconcilable. We cannot study history, we can only study what has been left behind – documents, photographs, physical evidence, personal accounts and other evidence. But history can encompass all other subjects. If you ignore history, you ignore everything that has happened up till now. That can’t be a good idea.

The nature of history study has given rise to many different theories of how and why we should study history. “So, can historians tell the truth about the past? Should history be written for the present, or for its own sake? Is it possible to see the past in its own terms? Should we make moral judgments about people and actions in the past? Are histories shaped by narrative conventions, so that their meaning derives from their form, rather than the past itself?” (p3) Ann Curthoys and John Docker, two Australian historians pose and examine these questions in their book, Is history fiction? , by showing what answers great historians through the ages have given. What follows is an examination of the study of history from the ancient Greeks through to present day, from the war between Persia and Greece, through to the history wars of the USA, Japan and Australia.

History, they suggest, tends to fall into two broad streams  (with numerous tributaries, billabongs, creeks, puddles and how far can I extend this metaphor?) that derive from the two fathers of Western history (the masculine word is significant) Herodotus and Thucydides.  Herodotus wrote The Histories, on the Greco-Persian Wars, and Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War, when Athens celebrated its victory over Persia by attacking Sparta and trying to create an empire of its own.

Both authors did extensive research, finding documents and other evidence and talking to eye-witnesses, and ordering their findings into narrative forms. But while Herodotus took a wide view, finding sources and material from many countries and classes in society, including non-Greeks, women and commoners, Thucydides focused on great and powerful leaders and took a much more linear approach, focusing on politics and military. Where Herodotus was prepared to say when he could not decide on the truth of a situation, Thucydides would give us his verdict.

The authors of this work follow these two approaches through to today, including the work of such names as Ranke, Macaulay, Beard and through to Simon Schama. When a book is a survey of a topic, it’s always a good sign if it makes you want to read further in the area. I have a copy of Herodotus gathering dust on my shelf but I am now taking it down. I have seen Schama on TV, but now I am determined to actually read his words.  This is a fascinating book worth reading by anyone with an interest in history, expert or layperson like myself.

The answer to the question in the title is ‘yes and no’, which they give in the introduction. Why they think so makes up the book. Like most philosophical questions, there is no easy answer. Historians from Herodotus on have used literary methods to create their works, such as narrative and characterisation. The biggest difference between the historian, and the historical novelist, who sometimes claim to be doing the same work, is that the historian is bound to write with respect for and affected by the facts as they have found them. This novelist is not. It is a crucial difference. We should be able to trust the facts in a history, even if we disagree with the interpretation placed upon them. A novelist can make up anything he or she wants, if it makes the story or the characters more interesting, and they are right to do so.

Not that all historians are above ignoring or changing facts as they find them when they are inconvenient. But these are not good or trusted historians. This process is sometimes referred to as Pilgerisation, after John Pilger, the Australian journalist. Perhaps we should call it Moorism, after Michael Moore’s ‘documentary’ work. But Pilger and Moore, you may say, have their heart in the right place. I say a lie is a lie is a lie. But that’s a whole ‘nother argument, perhaps for another time. But if this approach is taken to extremes, we end up in David Irving territory. A terrific read on his trial is Telling lies about Hitler, The Holocaust, History and the David Irving trial, by Richard J Evans, one of the Defense’s expert witnesses. (It is always worth reminding people that it was Irving who brought the action.) Not only does it make clear Irving’s reprehensible actions, but is also a clear explanation of good historical practice. It was not Irving’s lack of formal qualifications that invalidated his work as an historian – anyone prepared to do the work can be an historian – but the way he deliberately falsified evidence, and that every time he did so it was to bolster his own beliefs that the Holocaust has been exaggerated and that Hitler was not responsible for it. You cannot make up the facts to suit yourself. Sadly, you can still read Irving’s figure for the number of dead killed at Dresden, which he exaggerated by a factor of ten, in other text books.

This book gave me clarity on some topics that have confused or daunted me. I’m still no expert on post-structuralism or post-modernism, but it turns out I’m not alone. Even critics and fans of Foucault, for example, seems to have a fuzzy idea on what Foucault was about.  I still think getting hung up on theories is like examining the frame of the Mona Lisa – some interest sure, but hardly the point.

The chapter I found particularly illuminating was on Feminist historians. Herodotus wrote a lot on the role of women in his time, and their effect on the great events he was chronicling. As Thucydides’ style of history became more prevalent, the role of women became almost forgotten. Women found it difficult to get into the classes, let alone the profession, at universities. Male historians wrote for other male historians, and their subject was feminised as Clio, the Muse of history, or Historia. Ranke even compared a new archive he had discovered as ‘ absolutely a virgin’ and longed to ‘have access to her … whether she is pretty or not.” (p 99)

But being excluded from books and university departments does not mean excluded from history. What I found interesting about this chapter was the arguments within Feminist history eg does focusing on the assumed powerlessness of women also remove any responsibility they may have for the good and harm done in their time? Is this approach merely a different way of defining women through a masculine perspective? Is an indigenous female historian supposed to identify herself more by her sex than her race? The arguments still go on but, the authors end their chapter with a quote from Jill Matthews: “By good I mean …recognizing that sometimes gender does not matter …the fact of someone being a man or a woman may not be the most important thing about them or their behavior… using gender as a tool to analyse other more important historical categories rather than making it the central issue.” (p178) I think in the end, the bringing to light of the histories of forgotten people may or may not substantially change our picture of the past, but it does give it much more detail, clarity and meaning.

What is history? This is a question that involves all of us, every time we see an historical film, read an historical novel, read an article to purports to give us this history of a problem, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, or go to vote in an election. The question of changing our Constitution to recognize the Aborigines brings questions of Australian history and legal history together. Whether we support gay marriage may and should be affected by our understanding of the role of marriage in society in times past as well as today. Our decisions and our beliefs, and those of political leaders can and should be affected by our understanding of history. The forgetting of history is a forgetting of ourselves.

[All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from Is History fiction? by Ann Curthoys and John Docker, University of  New South Wales Press, 2006.] 

"I saw no-one." Sherlock Holmes

“That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.”

  Sherlock Holmes is back in the popular culture, with the Guy Ritchie film and its upcoming sequel, as well as the 2010 updating TV series “Sherlock”, written by Stephen Moffat (which was oddly much more faithful to the books than the Ritchie film.) For me and thousands, even millions, of others, Sherlock Holmes never entirely goes away. The stories are one of my comfort reads, and recently I reread the second collection of short stories, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

The above quotation is from “The adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” which is not in this collection. But “Silver Blaze” is, which contains perhaps one of the most famous interchanges in all the stories:

     "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

     
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

     
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."

     
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes as ever is cryptic, confident, stylish and memorable.

I first came across Sherlock Holmes as a child in an old book at home, an edition aimed at children. The stories were edited to be shorter and decorated with coloured illustrations throughout. Reading one of the stories that was in both that book and The Memoirs, ‘The Naval Treaty’, I was surprised how strongly I 

could recall those pictures. Indeed, I remembered the solution from remembering the illustrations. I can also still see the picture of Holmes and Moriarty falling together into the Reichenbach Falls in ‘The Final Solution’, and feel the sadness I felt on reading that story for the first time. This was a good lesson for me. As an adult, children’s editions often strike me as condescending. But as a child, this was a powerful gateway into one of the great characters of all time.

For Sherlock Holmes, and his faithful friend and chronicler Dr Watson, are two of the great characters of all time.  Holmes has entered into the popular culture to such a great extent that his name has become part of a catch-phrase: “No shit, Sherlock.” People who have not read the books or even seen the movies and TV series know who he is. The deer-stalker hat, pipe and cape are instantly recognizable. (The look was created by illustrator Sydney Paget, and soon adopted by Conan Doyle.) Recent reports of the discovery of dog-sized rats in East Timor brought back memories all over the world of Watson’s reference to the “giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared”. Almost from the moment of his creation, Holmes was destined to step out of fiction and be part of our world.

Arthur Conan Doyle found Holmes such a burden on his time he tried to kill him off in ‘The Final Solution’, so that he could devote his time to his real writing. Popular opinion forced Doyle to bring Holmes back ten years later in The Hound of the Baskervilles and then more short stories, much to Doyle’s chagrin. As far as Doyle was concerned, the Sherlock Homes stories were potboilers written purely for money, while his great work would be his novels of medieval adventure. Those other books are of interest only to the specialist now, while these stories that he would toss off in a day are republished and adapted year after year; another reminder of the power of popular culture.

Doyle’s carelessness in his writing manifested in his lack of attention to details; Watson’s war wound wanders all around his body (Moffat cleverly made this wound a psychological one in ‘Sherlock’), the state of Watson’s marriage and practice are things of mystery, and topics that Holmes knows nothing or everything about is a fluid list. Keen fans, very keen fans, like to play the ‘Great Game’, and try to fit all the facts from the stories into some sort of coherent life for the Great Detective.

The stories themselves are of variable quality, particularly as the series went on. From such heights as ‘The Speckled Band’, we reach the tedium of ‘The Lion’s Mane’. But what keeps us reading these is the character of Holmes himself, and his supporting cast, John Watson, the infinitely patient Mrs Hudson, the even more brilliant and odd Mycroft Holmes. Characters who appear in one story can also resonate: Irene Adler, “who for Holmes would always be the woman’, and of course Professor Moriarty himself, ‘The Napoleon of Crime’. Conan Doyle’s ear for memorable dialogue and phrases is excellent.

And the Holmes method of reading a man from the state of his clothes never gets tired. This is from ‘The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk’:

 "I perceive that you have been unwell lately. Summer colds are always a little trying."

"I was confined to the house by a severe chill for three days last week. I thought, however, that I had cast off every trace of it."

"So you have. You look remarkably robust."

"How, then, did you know of it?"

"My dear fellow, you know my methods."

"You deduced it, then?"

"Certainly."

"And from what?"

"From your slippers."

I glanced down at the new patent-leathers which I was wearing. "How on earth --" I began, but Holmes answered my question before it was asked.

"Your slippers are new," he said. "You could not have had them more than a few weeks. The soles which you are at this moment presenting to me are slightly scorched. For a moment I thought they might have got wet and been burned in the drying. But near the instep there is a small circular wafer of paper with the shopman's hieroglyphics upon it. Damp would of course have removed this. You had, then, been sitting with your feet outstretched to the fire, which a man would hardly do even in so wet a June as this if he were in his full health."

Like all Holmes's reasoning the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. He read the thought upon my features, and his smile had a tinge of bitterness.

"I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain." said he. "Results without causes are much more impressive."

Holmes hates explaining himself, because the hearer almost invariably says, “It’s all so simple.” Perhaps that is the lure of Sherlock Holmes, a man with a brilliant mind whose methods seem simple but the effective use of which always remains tantalizingly out of reach for the rest of us.

Hello and welcome

This is a brand new blog and a new project for me. Lately I have been reading voraciously and rushing from book to book. While I have always been a keen and fast reader, lately I wonder if I'm not going too fast and not getting the value from my reading that I would like. To this end, I've decided to keep a log of the books I read and a short piece on my impression of them. Perhaps others would like to read this log; if so, welcome.

I am currently reading 'Oh play that thing' by Roddy Doyle, the second book in his Henry Smart trilogy. This will be subject, I suspect, of my first post proper. On the other hand, I have, as is my practice, several books on the go, so watch this space!

As I go on, this may go on to include movies, theatre or anything else that takes my fancy.