Stoker's Shadows

 "Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches crashed together... It grew colder and colder still."

(Dracula, Bram Stoker)

It was a cold, blustery day; the cold was of the wet, bitter kind; the kind that seems to grasp your very bones. Not even the heat indoors could fight it away. You could feel it seeping through the glass of every window. 

 

 

The outside world looked dreary, blurred by the wetness and the damp, and the rain's slim slippery fingers tapped on my window eerily, sometimes almost desperately.

 

By the time the afternoon rolled in the day had changed its mind tenfold, turning itself from rain to snow, and back to rain again. By then the clouds above were as thin as a dying person's skin, and the light it let loose was pale and meagre. 

 

The day was almost spent.

As I read by the window, the shadows crept out from between the pages of my book, out of the core of its very spine. Even as I held it open, transfixed by its horror, still, the shadows lingered. I expanded its leaves, extending its spine and wrenching it wide. Still, the shadows deepened.

 

 

 

 

 Dracula was made to be read on days like this: when all through the afternoon the light weens to grey; when the imminent dark of November is only hours away, and even the crook of a spine is a dark and shadowy place. 

 

A Stormy Night with Charles Dickens

It was a dark and stormy night in which I read Charles Dickens.

I read till late, till Book the Second made way to Book the Third, fittingly entitled "The Track of a Storm".

I stopped then and listened to the thunder shake my little house, and wondered at how awful and awe-inspiring it must be to see the sea rise in a storm like this one.

"But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this (little) space and time. And it was now... that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising." ~A Tale of Two Cities

Love for Well-Worn Paperbacks

I detest the mistreating of books, as I hate the mistreating of trees. I find it despicable when people misuse something that may very well outlive them. For indeed, the average lifespan of a book, much like a tree, is very likely to outlast the lifespan of a person. And although these things appear on the surface to be inanimate, there is so much beauty and possibility for wonder and growth in these things that their unnecessary destruction angers me.

There is, however, a difference between a mistreated book and well worn book.

The most worn out book I own is a paperback addition of Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

The spine is cracked, pierced by white like so many paper-veins showing through its otherwise black spine. The cover is bent in a few places, like an old photograph, or a letter that has been unfolded too many times. What's more, my handwriting is woven in with Dickens' own words, my messy script playing around with the printed paragraphs; drawing lines and arrows, underlining the words I want to read again, the sections I spent the most time in marked by pencil. Sometimes there are scribbles too, words jotted down; thoughts and references tugged out of my mind by the on-goings of the page.

I love this worn out book, not just because Bleak House is one of my favorites, but because I love how lived in this particular addition feels.

My copy of Bleak House is worn because I read it well. The cover is bent in places from all the time I spent carrying it around with me on the inside of my bag.

I have a love for worn out books, paperbacks specifically.

There are some readers who morn the wearing out of a book. I, on the other hand, have come to be greatly fond of this process. I believe it to be my right as a reader.

There is something comforting about a well worn paperback. You can tell when it has been opened, and even to what extent it has been read. If a reader quit part way through, the cracks will stop and the further pages will not open as naturally.

But a book that has been well-read and well-opened will open easily. It will want to be opened, for it has gotten used to be handled by readers, being visited by fingers and skimmed by eyes.

Breaking in the spine of a paperback book is like wearing in a pair of walking shoes; it is the wearing through, the cracking, that shows that there has even been a journey. These shoes have been walked in. They have gone places, a well worn pair of shoes seems to say. Or, in the case of the well worn paperback: this book has been read.

“Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.” ~The Hiding Place

Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?

 An Analysis of the Prime Example of Fictional Immortality 

Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most recognizable fictional character of all time, something which is somewhat remarkable considering how many faces he’s worn. It seems strangely suitable that Sherlock Holmes, among his many skills, should also be a master of disguise. For each time he returns, be it to the stage, the screen, or on the page, he is never quite the same. In all the different faces which have represented Sherlock Holmes we have come to recognize him mainly by his distinguished silhouette: the large beak-like nose, the tall lean figure, the deer-stalker hat, and calabash pipe, all of which are signature to his demeanor. Yet ironically, most of these are credited, not to Conan Doyle himself, but to British illustrator Sidney Paget. Even Holmes' well-known catchphrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” comes, not from the original work, but from author P.G. Wodehouse. These are not the only well-known Holmesian characteristics which are credited to other creators. Ever since Conan Doyle let loose detective Sherlock Holmes into Victorian London in A Study in Scarlet, artists have been creating their own interpretations of the world-famous detective, and thus he has become immortalized, not just by one, but thousands of reworkings and adaptations. It may therefore seem somewhat misleading to fully credit Arthur Conan Doyle with the creation of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps it is more suitable to say rather that Conan Doyle did not in-fact create Holmes. He discovered him.

Though it may seem an odd statement, it seems that Sherlock Holmes is, in fact, more influential than the man who created him. This in itself is entirely bizarre, for Holmes, of course, is fictional. Yet even in his time, multitudes of readers were convinced of his existence. To Doyle's own dismay, he received countless letters all address not to him, but to Sherlock, imploring the detective to help solve their tragedies and mysteries. In the present day, Sherlock Holmes seems more alive and real than Conan Doyle himself. So, Holmes has become the reality and the author the shadow, a silhouette perched in an armchair behind the figure of his creation. Though the simple solution would be to dismiss this as a case of excellent story-telling, someone like Sherlock Holmes would not be convinced of such a mundane conclusion.

It deems worth noting that Sherlock Holmes is not the only fictional character granted this endowment of immortality, nor is he the only one who has skipped the line between reality and fiction so effortlessly. Figures like King Arthur or Robin Hood of Loxley, to name a few, have also crossed this line, slipping out of the fictional world and leaving behind relics and remnants of misplaced evidence, as if they might actually have existed. Indeed, to this day experts are still uncertain whether or not these figures actually existed, and to what extent the stories we have about them are true. While their origins may be obscure, their influence, however, is undeniable. Sherlock Holmes himself does not have much in common with these figures, it is their mutual prestige on the public which makes them so extraordinary. Of course, there is one other key point in which these figures share: they are all heroes.

King Arthur, the righteous and just king, leader of the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, the noble outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, we’ve all heard of them. But what exactly does Sherlock Holmes have to do with them?

When we think of Detective Sherlock Holmes, words like righteous, just, and noble are certainly not the first that come to mind, if, in fact, they come to mind at all. Sherlock Holmes is flawed, often times selfish, and at times completely unsympathetic. Indeed, he has been compared to machine. What's more, it is his lack of human weakness and emotion that most fascinates those fictional characters who come know him, and those who in their turn come to know him on the page. Even so, when it comes to fictional immortality Holmes somehow manages to exceed them all. While King Arthur and Robin Hood were the heroic figures of their own time, Sherlock Holmes has become a heroic icon, not only of his own time but most every time since.

When a character becomes immortalized in this way they will inevitably become, not just a character, but an idea. Robin Hood, for example, exemplifies justice. He is a hope for the poor, a reclamation of a better world in a time of oppression. In the same way, Sherlock Holmes has also become the incarnation. He is the image of the ultimate expert. A man who, with his powers of deduction and wit can unravel any mystery. Sherlock Holmes springs out of an era of order, an industrious empire, a society overtaken with invention and vision, and yet a society overcome by the ever-growing fear that their world, a world of which the pace was ever quickening, was spinning out of control. This is a fear which is no less relevant in today’s society than it was to the Victorians who witnessed the First Industrial Evolution when the world began to move too quickly. One could argue that the world has not stopped its Industrial ascent since.

It is perhaps for this very reason that, more than a decade after his initial appearance, Sherlock Holmes has still not retired, despite what Doyle tried to make us believe in The Adventure of the Lion's Mane. And if he has indeed retired at one point or another, he has been raptly replaced by a successor, a new Sherlock Holmes for a new time.

Since Conan Doyle’s death in 1930, the public has seen Sherlock Holmes return again and again. Indeed, ever since Arthur Conan Doyle brought back Sherlock Holmes ten years after his supposed death, it seems it is quite impossible to kill him. His immortality is so adamant, and the public’s adoration so persistent, that not even his creator could kill him off. We see in Sherlock Holmes that something truly fascinating occurs when a character outlives his creator with such perpetuation. Not only has Sherlock Holmes outlasted his time, he has pervaded through every time since, slinking straight out of the fog of Victorian London into the present day, solving mysterious and delivering justice, whether that be to protect innocent murderers, or the wrongfully accused; to restore honor to the disgraced or repair trust for those that have been torn apart by a crippled system. He is a shadow of a man instantly recognized by his fans, fans who as a mass manage to maintain the illusion that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the detective who has, and most certainly will, outlive them all, is still out there today, solving mysteries, dispelling superstitions, disproving irrationality and illusion; debunking legends even as he himself becomes one.