The Riddle of the Sands

When fiction decides to prognosticate about reality, the future of mankind and so forth, it usually does so in the guise of either some apocalyptic vision or natural progression of technology.  There are names for these types of books, the latter normally being dubbed science fiction (an odd couple, to say the least, but less bumptious than “technological fiction”), and the former treading near the subcategories of religious literature or prophecy.  Prophecy: knowing the future before it happens and having the good sense to enlighten the less clairvoyant.  When fiction prophesies and its artifices become newspaper headlines, then one speaks of a visionary.  This is rare, however, among artistic writers because the future is hardly their medium: they are interested either in the past (Romantics come to mind) or the present (like Modernists, those happiest of citizens).  The future is left to the wizards of machines and moons, starships and inexplicable forces of cosmic calamity.  Just writing that last sentence tells me why the future should probably remain undisturbed and given a generous head start.

 

Occasionally, a talented writer with primarily artistic ends in mind will gaze into a crystal ball, or perhaps an empty bottle or ashtray, and see something he knows will occur.  It may be good or bad, but it cannot be that he will leave his job, his wife, or his homeland, because these actions will only become his future if and when he so wishes.  No, he sees something greater than he is, something that will affect not only his small microcosm of existence but also the lives and fates of many others.  This is how a blind Argentine dreamed up a global library and a wealthy overeducated Dane wallowed presciently in the selfish neurosis of postwar Europe.  Dreams and desires certainly have a lot to do with what you see, and they can be delusive; but they can also allow you to catch a glimpse of something others might not even recognize.   

 

You may have not heard of Erskine Childers, but you have appreciated his labors for more than a century.  He is often credited with establishing this genre of popular fiction, and his 1903 work (his only novel amidst a dozen military histories) still gets published and read and praised.  The novel has also been featured on lists of this kind of literature, which may sound like Armageddon and Extraterrestrial Wars rolled into one large adamantine asteroid, but was actually the product of an era in which British global power began to endure sizable losses.  An earlier, even more seminal work by another Irishman is also included, because it allegedly showcases the frightening prospects of foreign supremacy and, to be twenty–first century about it, retrocolonization (a term of which your search engine is unaware but which may indeed become a headline in the next decade or so).  It was at this time that Childers, an avid sailor during school and university holidays, conceived of a most fantastic fear: the Germans attacking Britain from the North Sea.            

Our hero is not Childers, but Carruthers, a bored young diplomat who is invited by an old chum called Davies on a yachting and duck hunting trip around the Baltic.  Of course Davies does not actually have a yacht; he does have, however, another purpose to the ambitious tour in his small boat (named after a song by this composer) and the two Britons are soon embroiled in a plot to foil, it seems, all of Prussia.  In a slow narrative typical of a prolific nineteenth–century man of letters where clues and red herrings are revealed in equal quantity and very gradually, Carruthers comes to see why making maps of the East Frisian Islands for the British Navy may avert some kind of invasion.  There is also a shady German named Dollmann, his lovely daughter, and the distinct possibility of a double agent abetting the Germans in their insidious scheme.  

For reasons I am in no position to investigate, the book has been universally lauded by those in the sailing industry as being spot–on about all things nautical.  The warnings of the novel were also apparently just as accurate, since in response the British government is reputed to have established new naval outposts all along its shoreline and no invasion of any kind was ever documented.  Thus The Riddle of the Sands has that rare quality among prophecies of having been considered and acted upon before hazardous consequences could arise (and we may ponder that eternal conundrum as to whether a prophecy can only be given validity if it is fulfilled).  We might call Childers a prophet in his own country if he were not actually from another country, one that elected him to its Parliament and executed him by its firing squads, then elected his son fifty years later as its fourth President.  A remarkable end to a man who peered into the future of Europe but could not possibly have imagined his own.

Blue

The hyphenated bond of Franco–Poles, from this composer to this extremely accomplished scientist to the late director of this film, is corroborated very surreptitiously by the two nations' most fundamental symbols: turn the Polish flag on its head, make it somewhat more squarish, and it will comprise two–thirds of the French tricolor.  That is not to say, of course, that Poland is two–thirds the country France is, although their populations and areas would suggest those figures are not far off; rather, there seems to be a strange nexus of creative energy hovering between the two states that has persisted throughout the course of modern European history.  France admires Poles for their resilience and intellectual activity in the face of ever–vacillating borders and governments, and Poland gazes with unenvying pride at the French and their ideals and freedoms.  And although the comely trilogy Trois couleurs, of which Blue is the first and most serious part, is a Polish product, this opening color is most definitely French.

French, despite the fact that the film's primary conceit is the creation of a symphony for all of Europe.  This was the task assigned to famed composer Patrice de Courcy, a noble name, who does all of Europe the disservice of getting himself into a fatal car accident at the beginning of the film (he dies, says an eyewitness who approaches the wreck, repeating the punchline of the joke that distracted him in the first place).  He also takes his seven–year–old daughter with him to the grave, leaving his wife and her mother Julie (a peaking Juliette Binoche) completely and utterly alone.  They have fabulous wealth and reputations, so she will not endure the banality of indigence; but her solitude could very well be the death of her.  So although she initially wishes the music destroyed, when a copy turns up she decides to make the most of her melancholy and finish the symphony.  A woman finishing the symphony of Europe!  Indeed, and no one seems to raise one woolly, traditionalist brow at this circumstance.  Things have definitely changed (and for the better).  

There are, as always crop up in these studies of the habits of lonely artists, complications.  Julie is according to most tastes radiantly attractive in mind and appearance, so she must have a doting admirer (Benoît Régent).  She must also find out something about her husband that she may have expected or wished to ignore during his lifetime (we will skip this section).  And finally she, like all interesting fictional characters, must not be quite what she appears to be.  These are the prerequisites for this type of allegory, the finest kind: that of the nature of art itself.  That Julie takes more than an acute interest in concealing the fact that she has anything to do with her husband’s work, and that such completion comes so naturally to her that she might have considered a career in the field herself had it not been for her child let us concatenate all the links that Kieślowski provides because they all fit quite nicely together.   

 

You will find, if you use the intergalactic weapon known as Google, that Kieślowski thought blue, apart from the obvious mood associations, was for Julie the color of emotional freedom in the spirit of the revolutionary liberté that spawned the flag.  She has lost her family and is now left with her (husband’s) unfinished business.  We will take the director at his word and add that since, to paraphrase this Franco–Irishman, the artistic spirit is inherently reductive, Julie is weirdly stripped (one of the supporting characters is, among other things, a stripper) of all shackles that might prevent her from achieving the unity of Europe in her music.  Sorry, I mean her husband’s music.  That music, by the way, is the work of Kieślowski’s fellow countryman Zbigniew Preisner, noted for his haunting accompaniment to this work of genius, as well as to just about every one of Kieślowski’s films up to the director’s death in 1996.  The soundtrack, which left me with a splendid impression when I first watched Blue in the mid–1990s, now sounds frantic and thunderous, a tad too unwieldy for its own good.  But who said writing for all of Europe was supposed to be easy?

My Former Profession

A man of awesome learning averred that all knowledge begins with languages, a formula easily taken to heart by a certain type of person (we know who we are).  While it was once Latin, then for a while French, the language of European commerce these days is the mother tongue of Milton, Melville, Whitman, and Hopkins.  Demand for language instruction has also gone up in recent years, and many graduate students living in Germany have found it to be a pleasurable and rewarding method of paying rent and buying liverwurst.  When the sad time came to hand my courses over, each of my successors was furnished with a detailed account of what to expect and avoid.  Names have been altered more out of propriety than privacy, but as you can see, all the participants were so delightful that there could be nothing to hide (Note: Course levels: Grundstufe I - IV, Mittelstufe I - IV, and Oberstufe. Grundstufe = basic level, Mittelstufe = intermediate, Oberstufe = advanced).

 

1) Günther, International Savings Bank
About the student:  About 30, well–dressed, well–off, and with a solid Oberstufe, Günther is a doctoral candidate in economics and a part–time employee of the International Savings Bank, a very pleasant, chatty fellow on the way up in the world who loves talking in equal ration about his job, his travels and his past and future plans.  His English is good and rapid, his vocabulary more advanced than one initially might think owing to his very intelligible but downright bizarre pronunciation (e.g. he lisps in English, but not in German).  In fact, this accent is what leads one to underestimate his level; a good twenty minutes of conversation, however, quickly dispels this notion.  He is invariably late and usually leaves early.  Make sure to provide him immediately with ample coffee (one cream) so that he wakes up.

 
What we did and What to do: All the banking and investment stuff has been dealt with.  We also did some presentation English which he found particularly helpful.  In essence, apart from the aforementioned accent, Günther simply needs vocabulary and the ironing out of a few grammar kinks (note, for example, the frequent abuse of the present perfect,  "yesterday I, etc. have been").  Since there remain but four or five sessions, you should feed him some articles to read and presentation and vocabulary worksheets, all of which he'll absorb and retain very fast.  Grammar points he simply races through as if he were embarrassed about having to do them in the first place.  He is a good conversationalist and has a bevy of interesting opinions to share.
 
2) Technology Unlimited Group I
About the students: Six students, Christian, Dieter, Antje, Claudia, Markus and Uwe, varying in age from about 28 (Christian) to about twice as old (Claudia).  As a consequence of her feeling insecure about her seniority, Claudia will feign ignorance and whine and moan that she doesn't understand what you just said or whatever else excuse.  Ignore any such machinations.  The eye–rolling and unabashed frowns on the part of her colleagues will tell you this routine is old hat.  In  truth, she knows a lot more than she lets on, and simply wants to be left peacefully alone instead of fully taking part in the activities.  Markus is a bit ahead of the others, and reveals flashes of Oberstufe; all other participants have a Mittelstufe I–II with various problems: Dieter is too nervous and giggly; Antje is too shy; Christian is extremely sensitive (woe to you should you mention anything about the Works Council, of which he has been a member since joining Technology Unlimited; our little Language Exercises Section (LES) III discussion he took to be a questioning of his personal integrity); Claudia, as stated, is too unmotivated; and Uwe's accent and grammar are too idiosyncratic to sustain systematic correction, owing in no small part to his very deep voice (he is, in his defense, almost seven feet tall).  That said, they are all darling people and, while not always overflowing with vigor, remain respectful and absorb as much as they can.  This is especially true of Markus, whose superior base of knowledge permits him to dominate the class only at the discretion of the instructor, because, for fear of upstaging his co–workers, Markus will rarely speak unless called upon.  There is much to be done here about ego balancing, with everyone save Antje involved in the melee of teasing, name–calling and general mockery, but, all in all, these guys like each other and exude a certain low–key chemistry that can be put to good use.
 
What we did and What to do: We have already done practically all the conventional grammar, texts and Language Exercises Section (LES) III stuff.  Normally they need a little bit of warm human conversation at the beginning of class to remind them that, if only provisionally, they are no longer IT drones buzzing through the facility's anodyne halls.  You might try some role playing and more independent projects.  I had a very successful class allowing each one of them to present his or her favorite article from the newsletter.  Their bane is still getting out from under the all–too–easy Mittelstufe yoke and making some strides towards the Oberstufe.  Review the tenses and prepositions, because I have been pummeling them with that for some time now and they should be acquiring a better grasp of the subject.  Ask them for their own suggestions and you will get a volley of heterogeneous statements that will ultimately prove to be unproductive.  You will have to make them talk, even on the really half–awake days, and at least through grammar they can have the impression that they might learn something.

3) Technology Unlimited, Group II
About the students: A young and sleepy group.  The primary participants are Azubis Philip and Sandra (about 23) and Creative Planning employees and officemates Daniela and Sven (early 30s).  The others, Janna (late 20s, Creative Planning) and Gabriella (early 30s, Creative Planning manager) come somewhat sporadically, and seem constantly swamped with work.  The last two, Carsten and Wolfgang, relics of the same disbanded group which begot Gabriella, have not come since January.  Why their names are still on the attendance list is not ours to ponder.  Philip, Sandra, Daniela and Sven all have about the same level, i.e. about Mittelstufe II+; Janna and especially Gabriella are somewhat better.  Although late Friday morning is normally not a period that generates awe–inspiring energy, this bunch has always been very endearing and friendly but not exactly talkative or entrepreneurial.  Bear in mind that while Philip and Sandra know each other extremely well and are very good friends, they only see the others — who all work quite closely together —  in this class.  One senses not a fissure (although they will invariably seat themselves on opposite sides of the table) but rather a lack of common history between the two groups that, while never spilling over into petty debate, more often than not results in both sides not wishing to say the wrong thing for fear of creating the wrong image.  This used to produce some awkward silences and monotonous exchanges until I stopped trying to make them function as a unit and acceded to their unsaid wishes of remaining apart.  Since then, things have gone much better.
 
What we did and What to do: The best method is to drown them in grammar, a technique that obliges them to reconsider their reticence and prod them into active usage, even if that simply means complaining about something.  Without fear of perjury I can claim, for all intents and purposes, to have exhausted the conventional grammar resources at hand.  As such, new grammar from anyone of the upper level books (even pre–advanced or upper intermediate books will do as long as they are dense) in the office should be employed.  These should be supplemented by various texts on issues affecting twenty– and thirtysomethings within and without Germany.  Role playing, attempted on a few, courageous occasions, was amusing but hardly beneficial; recourse to the newsletter will only result in deep sighs and histrionic groaning.  The best solution, in the last few weeks, was to vary the material, activity and even level of difficulty, throw in a healthy dose of clowning and stand–up routine and put them in a good mood.  Trying to inject some continuity might be problematic since Philip, Sandra and often others as well cannot remember their binders, much less what was in them from last week.  In our best sessions, we had a lot of grammar, jokes, sardonic remarks and pantomime.  On the whole, some very, very sweet if easily distracted people.

4) Big House Construction, Group I
About the students: Jens, Robert, and Ulrich are all young members of the development branch, each with his own advantages and disadvantages.  Jens's English is easily the best, in terms of vocabulary, grammar and fluency an Oberstufe I–II, yet difficult to understand at times because of his overimitating an English speaker's natural swallowing of syllables.  Robert's English is the weakest, Mittelstufe II or at little better when he has less on his mind, but his fluent French (his partner is French) allows him to draw upon a sophisticated vocabulary common to both French and English that belies his primitive grammar.  Ulrich, Oberstufe I, speaks very clearly and thoughtfully, opting to pass when he cannot find the best word.  Expect Jens to dominate, Robert to lag behind and Ulrich to balance them out nicely.  The fourth participant, Suzanne, has never come and never will, owing to an aversion to early–morning activity.
 
What we did and What to do:  They need to do more English presentations, but this a somewhat recent policy.  Grammar is universally approved and handy for the warm–up part of the class, but do allow them to talk about themselves.  Jens in particular is ready to discuss any topic for any length of time if given the go–ahead.  I used some grammar and mistake exercises, plus a long series of exercises from Jens's prepositions book, all of which was greeted with some degree of enthusiasm.  The construction stuff important to their job needs to come out in the presentations they are to be making in the coming weeks.  By Friday they are, however, normally beat and require a bit of entertainment, so a dose of light chatting will help pave the way to more serious matters.  Newsletter articles and current events get them to speak about their office projects and the missing vocabulary then comes out in the heat of discussion.  A very nice group with, alas, poor attendance by virtue of unpredictable work assignments.  Ulrich seems to be the only one with a confident mastery of the verb tenses, make sure you drill that into them at some point early on.  We spent a lot of time on the passive, which should also be reviewed.  

 

5) Big House Construction, Group II
About the students: Tobias and Bernd both have Oberstufe, but are of strikingly different approaches to language learning.  While Bernd is more wary of making mistakes, and thus the less fluent speaker, he is also the only one who enjoys grammar exercises; whenever you only have him, make sure to consecrate a good 30–45 minutes to some topic.  He is attentive and quite sharp.  Tobias, even sharper, uses his massive vocabulary with little inhibition, and will have nothing to do with any kind of grammar or structured learning.  You can try to correct his fantastic distortions of English syntax (e.g. "This is deepened to/from/by"  is his long–standing idea of  "it depends on"), but he will only correct himself once he has spotted a mistake in a text or in some work of his own.  Both are categorical yet surprisingly deferential at times, and on the whole very nice, with Tobias, the branch’s head honcho, being a hilarious walking encyclopedia of local history.  Bernd is a little colder and slightly pompous, but remember it is Tobias's show, and both he and Bernd expect him to dominate any discussion.
 
What we did and What to do:  At the beginning of the course, I tried feeding them the construction stuff we had prepared with mixed results.  After exhausting our collective patience with the floorplan descriptions, the two of them decided by secret ballot to transform our sessions into a conversation class with an automated corrector (yours truly) who would occasionally relate his own anecdotes and opinions.  With Bernd, grammar and mistake exercises, then some text.  With Tobias or the two of them, the procedure was quite standard: read a text (newsletter, article, etc.) and then pontificate at length on the implications for Germany and the rest of humanity.  Bernd usually asks for vocabulary when he hits a wall; Tobias just keeps talking.  Getting them into discussions about any current event is easy, rewarding and what they want anyway, since their English small talk is what troubles them the most.  As long as they enjoy themselves and learn new expressions, they will be very happy.  A sense of humor is more than vital, it is the main appeal of this brief intermission in their otherwise stress–plagued office existence.  With them it is no longer a matter of building, but sculpting and shaping their expansive block of knowledge.

6) Lenses R Us
About the students: A bright, wonderful and enthusiastic sextet working for one of the world's leading contact lens manufacturers, the group is composed of Monika, Ursula (both in their 20s), Manuela and Max (30s), and Martina and Petra (40s).  Alas, although my perfect group in temperament and desire to learn, their levels are staggered: Ursula, Martina and Max are already Oberstufe; Monika is well on her way; Petra and Manuela are both Mittelstufe II, but whereas Petra is fully conscious of her small disadvantage and giggles her way through it in a most charming and lovely way (she is just an angel in all respects), Manuela has tended to be somewhat disruptive.  A few weeks ago, she informed me that, through ensuing internal discussions, she might very well drop out of the group.  She has not appeared since.  Do not make any inquiries into the matter, it will be (or has been) resolved shortly.  

 

What we did and What to do: A little bit of everything, since the class's success is based on the moods and blood caffeine levels of the students.  They all like to laugh, have a wonderful sense for the infantilization process of teaching and learning (Martina, Max and Petra have three, two and two children, respectively), and go along with just about anything.  They are diligent and most days even perfectionist.  Make use of all this with a balanced diet of grammar, Language Exercises Section (LES) III, texts and vocabulary exercises.  They ask copious questions and want to be entertained.  By the way, we have never done any texts or exercises specifically relating to the contact lens industry, although accounting (Manuela's domain) and telephoning and email writing (Petra's primary responsibilities) have been featured in the past.  With this group, you might do well to ask them whether they have any suggestions of their own.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish

"You're badly sunburned?  Didn't  you use that jar of Bronze I put in your bag? I put it right —"
"I used it.  I'm burned anyway."
"That's terrible.  Where are you burned?"
"All over, dear, all over."
"That's terrible."
"I'll live."

Considering that the name of this story's protagonist is a homophone of  “see more glass,” and the young girl Sybil on the beach has quite a history behind her name, it would make sense to analyze the name of Seymour's wife, Muriel.  In Hebrew, my research tells me, Muriel means the myrrh of God (as in one of the gifts from the Magi), which is appropriate.   But in Gaelic it is even better: it means the open sea itself.

The story has two perfect halves, then a small postscript.  The first half has Muriel speaking on the phone to her mother.  Her mother, like all mothers who give a damn, is worried about her.  More specifically, she's worried about whether Muriel should have waited out the war for her fiancé, now husband to return.   This husband, a fluttering and empty creature we only meet in the story's second half, has been doing strange things since his discharge.  Apparently he's rammed a car into a tree, tried something fishy with the chair of Muriel's grandmother and said disconcerting things about her plans for death, insisted that Muriel read a book of German poetry, although she cannot read German, and otherwise behaved with no regard for society, its mores, and how normal, unshellshocked people go about their day.  Muriel's mother understands all this, and sees it as rightly tragic.  But maybe Seymour should not have been released from the military hospital (her mother calls this "a perfect crime") in the first place.  He is, after all, as fragile as glass.

We find this fragile Mr. Glass on the beach, where you can also find this strange phenomenon.  He is approached by a little girl whom he has befriended, and when she first addresses him, he lets "a sausaged towel fall away from his eyes."  He himself is no longer much older than Sybil, although he has seen more horror than she could ever think possible.  He takes Sybil to the ocean with a floating toy and proceeds to talk to her about bananafish, fantastic creatures who lead "a very tragic life":

They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in.  But once then get in, they behave like pigs.  Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a bananahole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas.

Some might see a sexual connotation here, especially since Sybil's mother refers to her by a playful children's name that also happens to be a naughty adult word and Seymour kisses her foot at the end of their playtime (perhaps the same foot used when Sybil "stopp[ed] only to sink a foot in a soggy, collapsed castle," a line that this author calls one of the best he has ever read).   But Seymour kisses her because she is innocent, and he is not.  He kisses innocence because he can make up stories like a child, he can shun responsibility and tact like a child, but his childhood is lost forever under a heap of bombs and bones, and he will never recover.  Those bananafish are young men, and they become pigs when they are told to go kill other young men.  Upon their return from battle a general might ask them whether they are in good health, whether they used the protection that the army gave them.  They did, but they became pigs nonetheless, roasted pigs burnt all over.

An allegory of war chock full of signs and symbols is easy enough, yet Salinger actually goes a step further: it is an allegory of an allegory.  Soldiers, some barely out of their teens, return to their civilian lives and become little boys again without the one trait that always distinguishes a child from an adult, innocence.  What would a fallen child be like?  What would he say and do? How can a child not be innocent?  Perhaps he "won't take his bathrobe off"; perhaps he will pretend to remember the number of tigers in a children's tale (as children love to pretend to know something they don't), the same number of bananafish that Sybil supposedly espies (as children love to imitate and one–up).  So when Seymour finally does remove his robe he is as pale as Muriel is burnt, and then we realize he is not pale but empty.  An unfilled vessel that can never regain its color.  And the color would be yellow, the color of Sybil's swimsuit and the color of the fish Seymour makes up to compete with her yellow swimsuit, just like any child would.     

The postscript reflects both perfect halves: Muriel, the sea, the scent of God, eternity, peace, and love that survived a war; and Seymour, glass crunched into sand particles and scattered onto a beach with millions more who have died for nothing or who have gone on living while already dead.  And when Seymour tells the woman in the elevator that he notices she's been looking at his feet (the part of Sybil he kisses in celebration of her innocence), we know that his own feet have walked through fields of abject destruction.  And we also know that bananafish, like all fish, have no feet.

The Italian Secretary

Although widely and justly considered second–rate works, the library of this legendary sleuth's  further adventures has been growing by leaps and even greater leaps the last forty–odd years.  A staggering number of these books, of course, wallow in that corner of chilly obscurity especially reserved for epigones.  Even an authoritative collection penned by Arthur Conan Doyle's youngest son and Agatha Christie's most heralded contemporary and based on unsolved Holmes cases never fleshed out in print suffers from the ingenious self–limitation of recycling actual Doylean plot lines.  Thus, if you are more than superficially acquainted with the original stories, you will see the guilty party marching towards you from the other end of Baker street.

Not so with the American author Caleb Carr, who comes up with an entirely new adventure and one not remiss in its Holmesian eccentricities.  Carr is the author of this other bestselling novel, which I cannot recommend, as well as a noted military historian.  His training in that field must definitely have imbued the villain's weapon of mass devastation (I shall not describe it further) with a certain  authenticity, although that is again not my business to judge.  What I may say, however, is that the historian finds Victorian dialogue to be a rather delightful affair and, while generally refraining from archaic constructions, dispatches a convincing Watson (no story is complete without him) to lead the reader from room to darkened room in search of, well, a ghost.  The ghost has been biding its time for a while now:  the Italian secretary in question is none other than this murdered gentleman, once a member of the court of  Mary, Queen of Scots, and now still very much bounding about this old palace.

Mycroft, Holmes's older brother always described by Sherlock as having the better brain of the two, if beset by irreparable indolence, summons the dynamic pair to Scotland to investigate the evisceration of an architect and a mason.  Along the way, a few belligerent Scottish terrorists decide to ventilate the train that the two visitors happen to be riding.  We are to gather that this small piece of action will be a foretaste of the revolt awaiting the detectives in the North, although the extreme violence of the novel (a very modern addition) is tempered by the cozy whispers of ghosts and goblin–like baddies from every crevice and crack of  Holyrood.  Once there, the usual chain of events ensues: Holmes becomes moody and finds the whole operation either tedious or hilarious, while Watson drifts from one shady character to another, inspecting each of them with severe medical thoroughness.  Holmes of course knows exactly what's going on and just has to test out a few of his theories to substantiate his peerless intuition; Watson, on the other hand, is tasked to play the role of the silly goat.  This thankless assignment involves irrational fears of the supernatural, excessive politeness (especially to the fairest and most distressed of Europe's damsels), and an unerring tendency for absurd deductions based on a hint or a sniff of a clue (or the hint of a sniff of a clue).  This is both the trademark of the Holmes stories and its cardinal shortcoming, and Carr smartly chooses not to tamper with a proven product.

I cannot say I like the end of The Italian Secretary, neither what happens nor how and why it happens.  The history of Rizzio's murder is a nice backdrop, but how many Holmesian solutions do we have that truly involve the otherworldly?  Despite this obvious straw–man, on most pages Carr offers a flattering and sincere imitation of Watson's unique cadence.  More impressively, the reader's attention is held even though the vast majority of the novel are lengthy dialogues: Holmes and his foil, or the Brothers Holmes, or Watson and the young woman he finds wandering the castle.  Yes, it's always Watson who finds the woman.  Holmes found a woman once, in this, his first short story.  Conan Doyle immediately recognized the schmaltzy path that his beloved creation would be taking if he continued in this vein and wisely concluded that some artists should remain monks, or at least keep bees instead of grandchildren.  Had he not, it would have been one of the most disastrous decisions in literary history.  But perhaps still not as bad as this one.