On the Scientific Cusp: Uncovering the Protagonist

Like Theseus I have been following a thread through the maze of the past, endeavoring to engage a profession for my somewhat recalcitrant protagonist who refuses many a fixed engagement. He was tempted by the Pinkertons: perhaps the excitement of detective work and the application of intellect suited his fancy...but alas the attachment did not last. He eschewed many a reasonable proposition, with intermittent dabbling in this and that, and like any literary parent I grew increasingly anxious to secure his economic, intellectual and residential independence.To our mutual relief we were both enthralled by medicine and determined to enroll him in Medical College in Montpellier.

My protagonist upcoming is a mid-nineteenth century physician - absorbed as I am by the late-medieval preoccupation with noxious miasmas and the attendant quacks and apothecaries that extolled a multitude of dubious remedies. Since reading Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, I have long felt that health and well-being, for a historical novelist, is imbued with dramatic possibility - the periodic devastation of disease (cause and prevention equally uncertain) found its victims among all strata of society with equal ferocity.

Despite the mid-nineteenth century being of such relatively recent occurrence (at least from an archaeological perspective) the perception of disease could not have been more removed from current beliefs; while diversions and politics, fashion and food, and all manner of quotidian preoccupations are readily comprehended by the modern reader, the practice of medicine seems a vestigial barbarity of a more ancient age. Sickness often resulted in the ubiquitous and prolific application of bloodletting and mercury treatments, a therapy more honored in the breach than the observance, and one which had the unmitigated effect of hastening death rather than avoiding it.

In the course of my research I have discovered that physicians tended to be of the obsequious sort; absent the economic and cultural superiority enjoyed today, they encountered competition amongst independent village healers and a profusion of graduates from newly-born medical colleges that mushroomed nationwide like fungus post-wet in the rich mulch of federal funding; doctors were forced to cultivate the most impressive of bedside manners to obtain and maintain their client list. A multitude of manuals from the period provide suggestions for society-insinuations, a crisply professional bearing, and the manner in which a medical diagnosis should be couched to simultaneously inhibit common-learning while maximizing perceived elevation of the profession. Other physicians, however, were naturalists and statisticians, seeking commonalities in mortality from one region to another, delving into geology, geography, and physiological science in an attempt to further their understanding of disease processes. They were Renaissance men on the cusp of molecular microbiology as inaugurated by Louis Pasteur several decades later.

And of course there are the disinterred corpses: the black market in cadavers that served the insatiable appetite of anatomical science, the investigation of which facilitated a rise in practical understanding of physiology; a practice, which was, however, conducted with all the surreptitious secrecy of nighttime body-theft and darkly rumored anatomy-murder.  Gloomy narrative elements that are seductively alluring in a lurid Sherlockian kind of way. At least I have always found it so. Perhaps it is the chronological proximity of dark superstition, of  fantastical explanations for the cause and transfer of disease (it was widely believed that noxious fumes exhaled from geological formations were instrumental in causing sickness)  that seem incomprehensible to our accustomed molecular mindset.  Our readers are reminded in a most visceral way that while the mid-nineteenth century displayed many of the trappings of civilized modernity, medical science (which affected each and every individual in a most intimate way) was still enshrouded in remnants of medieval theory and practice.

From an authorial viewpoint, there is great dramatic potential in the application of mid-nineteenth century medicine, particularly in juxtaposition with the modern understanding of physiological processes. Add in the environs: the dense cluster of hovel and tenement, the crowded obscurity of dockside populations, of sailors and prostitutes, the almshouses with their incarcerated insane, the early hospitals fetid with the unwashed and festering, heavily bled and relegated to a dank corner to shuffle off their mortal coil as quickly as might be convenient - for another awaited the use of that particular bed.  To this canvas add a dash of cholera that flares, engulfing a community with equally horrifying rapidity and mortality.

But this scenic backdrop might be just that - representative of my protagonist's character and experience - all critical for formulating his forward momentum through plot and dialogue. Perhaps the overall narrative is not disease-centric insomuch as it is concerned with political intrigue and murder, with infirmity and infection hovering on the peripheries like a darkly shrouded figure wielding the scythe. For the novelist seeking the bones of the book, a scaffold on which to hang the beating heart and the delicate fabric of lungs, the mystery of context, of ambiance, can be served by scientific, cultural or social predispositions....they can weave through the narrative, providing the rich hue of flesh-tone with all its dimpled imperfections. The medical investigation was a single investigative thread which I pursued, like Theseus through the Cretan maze, to the discovery of a mythic beast of a theme; a narrative element that weaves together disparate threadlines in a shadowy construct of tapestry, a dramatic backdrop which gives breath and vitality (of the however sickly sort!) to the stark and polished bones of plot.

Obsessed with Quilp: Degrees of Villainy and the Dangers of Caricature

I remain pondering characterizations and the difficulty inherent in transcribing life and breath to the mathematical precision of binary code (keeping dark and dusty company with outdated software and superfluous files). Fingers poised over keys, I reflect on what essentially constitutes vigor and vitality within the physiological whole...having long been fascinated by evolutionary theories that detail the emergence of life in the primeval soup; the gradual aggregation of single-celled organisms to become something infinitely more complex than their individual parts might suggest. To my mind the writing endeavor draws upon similar rationale - we are, after all, concerned with essential attributes that constitute life. For, as writers, do we not need to strive for some intuitive understanding if we are to depict it in words? A few words will do. There are many eminent writers who, with minimal ink, paint a personality with the deftest of hand. Where is the magic that imbues a fictional character with that particular quality, the essence of which enables them to transcend the restraints of page and time? How does one seize that elusive quality for ones own?

I have ruminated on villainy before, and have concluded that shades of gray were a requisite insofar as rendering believable antagonists were concerned; that each (hero and villain) were made up of complicated parts that defied simplistic classification. Dwelling upon the thought, however, I am reminded of Quilp - in point of fact I am, quite unashamedly, obsessed with him; he seems the physical manifestation of the gloomy alleyways of mid-century that hold me enthralled.

Quilp, from The Old Curiosity Shop is the epitome of Dickensian nastiness in it's most repugnant form. He is a villain without virtue of any kind. The best introduction is that offered by the paternal pen: "..an elderly man of remarkably hard features and forbidding aspect, and so low in stature as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and face were large enough for the body of a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly, and cunning; his mouth and chin, bristly with the stubble of a coarse hard beard; and his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face, was a ghastly smile, which, appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connexion with any mirthful or complacent feeling, constantly revealed the few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog." One can scarcely imagine a more repulsive creature - however, the quintessential horror of this character, of course, is not his physical appearance but his unmitigated commitment to the infliction of fear and torture on those infinitely more vulnerable than himself.

The half-grown beard, the grime, the 'ghastly smile' that belies inner malice, the disproportionate hat and shoes, the gigantic head and dwarfish body; his diminutive stature, reminiscent of the l'enfant terrible, startles us, and at every opportunity Dickens emphasizes the almost aggressive lack of decency and proportion that encapsulates our idea of the grotesque. Oft compared to one of the canine breed, he has a similar propensity to sprawl inappropriately on furniture, exhibiting the easy satisfaction of a 'doglike' smile prior, perhaps, to the bite; reminiscent of Hamlet: "That one may smile, and smile and be a villain." And Quilp's 'ghastly grin' is in perpetual evidence throughout the course of the narrative.

But Quilp is not simply an ugly gargoyle within the novel's architecture: his demonic energy not only embodies the novel's primum mobile,  but serves to extricate him from the literary clutches of caricature. Coleridge's description of Iago 'motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity' coincides with uncanny precision to Dickens' villain. The incentives that propel Quilp's actions throughout the narrative are of a varied multitude: lechery and avarice ostensibly prompt his pursuit of Nell and her grandfather; a resentful envy of Fred Trent's suspected relationship with Mrs Quilp accounts for his deception in regard to Fred and Dick; an increasingly intense and complicated jealousy of Kit drives the labyrinthine plot with the Brasses. But the sum total of these catalysts cannot fully account for the admixture of pure unmitigated glee with which Quilp savors his nefarious role. It is in this appetite for destruction that echoes of Shakespeare's master villains, Iago and the deformed Richard III, resound most strongly. The renowned actor Edmund Kean (two decades before The Curiosity Shop was written) enthralled audiences with his powerful portrayal of these characters: establishing the convention of playing these villains as monstrous intruders from the infernal regions, cackling with delight and rubbing their hands at the torments they inflict; an interpretation that remained the prevalent interpretation in theater for more than a century; no less apparent in Laurence Olivier's characterization in Richard III.

How much of Dickens' own dark side was incorporated into Quilp is an intriguing, if ultimately fruitless, source of speculation; that he was similarly beguiled by this particular creation is evident throughout the novel: as he nears the character's death, he writes "Quilp's last appearance on any stage...is casting its shadow upon my mind." Quilp takes his place, along with Iago and Richard III, as literature's most reprehensible of reprobates, without any appearance, however slight, of mitigating circumstances or features to soften his propensity to vice. The reader of The Curiosity Shop (and indeed it's author) remains transfixed by the dwarfish miscreant and the resultant tableau (largely provoked by his own manipulations) at the end of the novel. The tremendous success of this character forces me to re-examine degrees of villainy and acknowledge the presence and validity of the darkest kind.

The danger of shallow lampoonery is one strenuously to be avoided, and I ruminate on the manner in which Dickens and Shakespeare created these most malignant of malefactors without risk or recourse of caricature-reduction. These antiheroes avoid this literary fate precisely because of the expressive intensity with which they are described; there is a terrible motion about them, a demonic energy that stirs adjacent words on the page, a violent almost jerky charisma that is predominately absent in other characters within the narrative. Perhaps their resonance lies also in the malignant power with which they manipulate others in a tidal force of scheming unconstrained by moral or judicial law. As characters, as the vilest of villains, they are broadly open to all dramatic possibilities whereby the protagonist tends to be ethically compelled. Perhaps it is this frisson of uncertainty that excites us; perhaps it is when the hero is daubed with that darkness that they are also most engaging, as we, the reader, perceive that lines are being crossed (the extent to which remains ambiguous), distinctions are blurred, and tidy classifications eschewed. There is a dramatic power in the unpredictable, an anticipatory tension which enthralls and engages breathlessly onwards to the final resolution; a literary niche for the most grim of literary blackguards.

Symbiotic Relationships: Panza, Watson and the Anatomy of a Sidekick

My primary protagonist has been loosely defined, a shadowy silhouette in the fog-enshrouded city of my mind: mid-nineteenth century San Fransisco that is rapidly acquiring a visceral imagined reality. I can close my eyes to present intrusions and almost feel the salty brine of dockside damp, the rhythmic clatter of wagonwheels, the spluttering hiss of gaslamps...but now that my Sherlock-shade is emerging from obscurity (in general tendencies rather than particulars) my thoughts turn to his counterpart: to his Watson, to his Sancho Panza.

I am pondering the exigencies of these literary dualities - hero and sidekick - and looking for ways in which to distinguish one from the other, to more closely define each within the sphere of plot and narrative requirements. What designates the cohort to a subservient role? Examining most particularly Don Quixote and Sherlock Holmes, I am increasingly under the impression that the literary value of this character couple is not necessarily their distinct, individual contributions as much as the connective thread that unites them: the mutual symbiosis which defines their literary dance.

While Holmes and Don Quixote are the primary instigators of action within their novels, Watson and Sancho embody the 'everyman' inclusion who provide pragmatic counterbalance to the eccentricities of their hero-counterparts. Their perspective enables the reader a closer connection with the lofty heroes who otherwise might become farcical; forming the critical function of humanizing the protagonist and drawing the reader into a more familiar narrative of quotidian normality. One without the other, hero without sidekick, is one half of a literary whole; it is not the mere presence of the principal player that is mandated for the success of the fictional work, but the inclusion and elaboration of his or her cohort, and an exploration of the relationship that exists between the two.

If the reader of my humble musing will forgive a few rather improbable metaphors...The chemical properties of water spring to mind, with an analogy of atomic parts: Hero and Sidekick represented by two hydrogen atoms bonded through the course of the narrative, through events and dialogues that establish that critical relationship. Atomic bond strength is dependent upon temperature, pressure, bond angle and environment; perhaps the connective ties between literary partners are also intensified with plot heat, pressure of action, and environmental considerations. The biological equivalent of this (which is referred to as persistent mutualism) can be found in the goby fish which often co-habitates with a housekeeping shrimp who digs and cleans up the burrow the two share. The shrimp, being of a visually-challenged variety, is vulnerable to predators topside but benefits from the goby's tail-touch to warn of impending danger which sends both scurrying back to burrow. The point of these somewhat dubious analogies is that both are equal partners in the literary endeavor, and while one may take center stage more often than not it is only because the other has engaged the audience sufficiently to remain in their seats.

So to examine the character of sidekick in closer detail; I submit for your perusal one John H. Watson: medical doctor, journalist, connoisseur of women, valiant and loyal friend. Present in 56 of the 60 published adventures he serves as buffer between the reader and the cold searing light of Holmes' intellect. The blinding brilliancy of Holmes' deductive logic elevates him beyond all others in the narrative, his analytical mind working on a plane inconceivable (as Watson himself admits) to his doctor compatriot. However Watson is the tether that ties Holmes to terra firma, grounds him, humanizes him. Interestingly, while Holmes is indubitably the star of the literary work, Watson is accorded a particular status insofar as his intimacy with the reader is concerned; we are informed most particularly about Watson's background before we even meet the famed detective, who himself remains maddeningly elusive. Watson's character develops and grows throughout the course of subsequent mysteries: by the end of Conan Doyle's stories the doctor is depicted as a 'father confessor,' tolerant of human frailty and well aware of his own limitations, while Holmes' consistent refusal to acknowledge his own reduces him to an oddity, albeit a fascinating and brilliant one. From the onset a man who walked with kings (Bohemian monarch in Scandal in Bohemia) yet never lost the common touch (yellow-backed novels and sea stories of William Clark Russell remained his favorite reads) Watson was the ballast upon whose reassuring weight Holmes came to increasingly rely. The few stories depicted sans Watson, or in which he plays a minor role, are arid and disappointing, lack humanity, and embarrass one with Holmes' shameless narcissism. While these personal attributes tend to alienate Holmes from the reader, they also isolate the character within the narrative with opiates providing a refuge from the loneliness of his condition; just as Watson aids in weaning Holmes from his addiction, lessening his isolation and facilitating interpersonal interactions, he also is instrumental in bringing Holmes and the reader into more comfortable proximity.

Watson has the endearing ability to appear less astute than the reader, rendering himself more approachable than the aloof and awesome Holmes, without sacrificing respect for his own native intelligence. The thinness of this particular literary highwire is best appreciated when one falls off, a frequent occurrence among those who have attempted to duplicate the endeavor. Said the detective, sorely missing his friend's assistance in The Blanched Soldier: "A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each new development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate."  This symbiotic relationship, of enduring and loyal friendship, is a poignant one within the literary compendium - where the two together fit like adjacent pieces of a puzzle, both equally instrumental in the final depiction of picture.

Don Quioxte's staunch companion is the illiterate peasant Sancho Panza, a character who offers an  interpolated narrative voice throughout the tale, a fictional device invented by Cervantes. Sancho is a literary precursor to the conventional sidekick and personifies practicality over idealism, pragmatism over fancy. His is the only character to exist within and outside of Don Quixote's madness, and while his master battles windmills and mistakes inns for castles, Sancho's preoccupations are indubitably of the earthy kind: money in his pocket, food in his belly, and the restorative power of sleep (Panza in Spanish meaning 'belly' or the English equivalent of 'paunch.') Where Don Quixote is intent and serious, Sancho has a quick sense of humor, displaying the faults and foibles of his contemporaries but possessing an underlying honorable and compassionate streak others predominately lack. His character provides the most varied perspective within the narrative, imbued with a simple wisdom and propelled forward by his insatiable curiosity about the world. The humble squire serves not only as foil for his master, but for the ill-conceived equation of class and worth; irregardless of Sancho being ignorant, illiterate, and cowardly, he nevertheless proves himself a wise and just ruler (despite Don Quixote's fantastical and foolish advice), a better governor than the educated, affluent and aristocratic Duke. At the conclusion of the narrative Sancho comes to relinquish concerns of material wealth and political power and demonstrates a simple happiness with homelife and humble station.

Though not sharing his master's delusional 'enchantment' until late in the novel, Salvador de Madariaga has suggested that through the course of the book there is a gradual  "Quixotization" of Sancho and a "Sanchification" of Don Quixote, so much that, when the knight recovers sanity on his deathbed, it is Sancho who tries to convince him to become pastoral shepherds. Regardless of what one finally believes, there is a poignancy in this assessment - for after all one does not exist in isolation and as the influence extends from protagonist to companion so it comes back in full measure with the ultimate value being the connective thread in-between, the relationship rather than one or other individual engaged within it; there is again that sense that both together comprise a whole, that each is equally and inextricably part of the other. As he lays dying Don Quixote expresses his affection for his loyal companion:  "And if when I was mad I was party to giving him the governorship of an isle, now that I am sane I would give him a kingdom, where I able, for the simplicity of his nature and the fidelity of his conduct deserve it." Sancho tearfully urges him:"get out of bed...perhaps we shall find the lady Dulcinea behind some hedge, disenchanted and pretty as a picture.."

Like Watson, Sancho humanizes the narrative, bringing dignity and poise, but also humor and compassion.  They are not only complex individuals in their own right who display personal growth during the progression of adventures (more so it might be argued than their illustrious counterparts) but it is the nature of their engagement with their eccentric companions that gives depth and a poignant humanity to these great literary works. The shrimp and the goby, a bond of two-like minded atoms, two halves of a critical literary whole. I would hesitate to ascribe hierarchical concepts to characters (despite both works named for the primary protagonist) within these novels when both individuals are utterly instrumental to the success of the fictional entirety.

So for the work-in-process, for the novel-to-be-formulated, for the construction of companion, the 'sidekick recipe' is perhaps simpler than one might have thought: once protagonist has been arrived at, in theory, the cohort is already in imaginative existence: it is just a matter of fleshing out the necessary correlations, the quotidian to the eccentric, the tether that secures a high-flyer to the earth, the humanity-providing counterpart that draws the reader in. Not that anything so sublime can be so simplistically reduced - the literary dance of hero and sidekick is a complicated endeavor, a literary highwire act defined by the narrowest of  paradoxes: for both protagonist and companion are simultaneously steady and teetering, stalwart and feeble, incisive and undiscerning. It is in their collaboration, fluidly defined through the narrative, where the true magic lies. Often an affinity best conveyed when it is unexpressed: evident in the undercurrent of exchange, the eddies beneath the surface, the matter that lies between and beneath: the raised eyebrow or skeptical glance that indicates, more effectively than words, conmingled emotional ties, the headlong heedless rush to protect, the quiet of evening harmony, the mutual acceptance of shortcomings and a cognizance of the ties that bind: in short the reciprocity of two.

Authorial Intent: Hardy, Steinbeck and the Gauntlet of Social Critique

I am thinking about authorial intent - an overarching goal to which a writer aspires in the fabrication of a literary narrative. For it is no small undertaking, this profusive writing of things. Years of painstaking word-threading. To what end? What does one wish to accomplish at the conclusion of such labor? Are these not questions that bedevil the writer prior to the commencement of such operations? Such it is that I now dwell upon these issues.

The novel waiting in the dusky wings of my mind is one of a young nation; a flawed, dynamic, hopelessly optimistic nation, already of proud achievements and horrendous racial transgressions; a nation embroiled in the Great Democratic Experiment with the eyes of the world upon them. Although my novel is set a generation or two after the Revolution, San Francisco in the mid-nineteenth century represents a new beginning, a precocious metropolis newly-born from the salty fogbanks and citrus herbs of the Californian coast; a multicultural conglomeration of immigrants seeking opportunity, drawn by the gleam and luster of golden veins that threaded through the Sierras and dusted rocky escarpments in a glittering promise of wealth and influence. In my later period, however,  the gold deposits have diminished and those multitude that sought to depart weighed down by nuggets are still skulking in the dark end of Kearny Street, and loitering in Portsmouth Square. Despite devastating fires and recurring cholera epidemics, the burgeoning port city expanded across the hillside in growth ungoverned by any overarching administrative plan. There is a lack of constraint that intrigues me: manifest in mob law, racial persecution, unbridled prostitution and gambling, and the rough justice of vigilantism. I want to write a novel that examines the roots of things; to examine how 'Americanism' is engendered in such a community at such a time.

So what of other authors? Of other intents in the fictional-weave? There comes a point in the life of every novel when it first embarks, when it is newly-disseminated and the plot and characters are freshly evaluated by a discerning readership. Novels provide a reflection of ourselves as perceived through the authorial lens. The weaving of a fictional account pulls threads from the fabric of reality, creating in the process a narrative that is viscerally familiar but author-manipulated to convey a subjective truth. We discern the depths of ourselves within the projected characters, recognizing the undercurrents that propel them through the pages and ourselves through the course of our lives. This cognizance of the literary-self is not always a comfortable sensation; like the medieval hairshirt it prickles and irritates, particularly when the portrayed perspective is one unpalatable to preconceived notions (not that pointed literary truth is comparable to religious self-flagellation!) Victorian sensibilities were thusly offended when Thomas Hardy released Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 1891, widely condemned for its sympathetic portrayal of  a 'fallen woman.'

And so I remain still embroiled in the Victorian period, my musings wandering from the Dickensian squalor of old London to the rural decline depicted in Thomas Hardy's great works. Jude the Obscure published four years after Tess met with an ongoing hue and cry from the Victorian public for its frank treatment of sex, oft being referred to as 'Jude the Obscene.' Lambasted for its apparent attack on the institution of marriage through the presentation of concepts such as erotolepsy (read: sexual recklessness - term coined by Hardy himself) booksellers sold the novel surreptitiously concealed within brown paper bags; the Bishop of Wakefield is reputed to have burnt his copy. In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident in the course of the book's career: "After these hostile verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop - probably in his despair at not being able to burn me."

Slightly more than two decades later, the San Francisco News hired John Steinbeck to cover the desperate conditions wrought by the Great Depression in California's Central Valley. Discovering entire communities devastated by disease and hunger Steinbeck was enraged, and compelled, as a result, to pen his magnificent novel The Grapes of Wrath; within this work he confronted an inconvenient truth that undermined the national mythology inherent in the American Dream: hard work and virtue do not guarantee success. Upon publication in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath was accused of being false, offensive and communist; despite such detractors it sold out immediately and ultimately won him the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The Winter of Our Discontent continued the theme, fostering a new awareness of the Faustian bargain that underlay the moral degeneration of  1950's culture. During a presentation speech awarding Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, Secretary Anders Österling described the writer as an "independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American, be it good or bad."

Hardy and Steinbeck's novels ran the gauntlet of societal disapproval, they challenged complacent assumptions and lay bare prejudices and abuses within the political and cultural enterprise; both were roundly censured as a result: the former for daring to sympathetically portray a woman of 'blemished' virtue and his candid depiction of sex, and the latter for daring to expound upon the truth of things, to call comfortable national mythology into question. They are, to my  mind, heroes of the literary pantheon who did not veer from their compositional calling, nor shy from the challenge of depicting the miseries that they perceived...regardless of the hairshirt-discomfort they may have caused to themselves and others along the way. Works of this kind challenge the status quo, present a glaring picture of consequences post-cataclysm, traveling forward upon current paths to bewail repercussions of deliberate political or social ignorance...to write a book which somehow changes the perceptions and understandings of things, which presents an alternative thought-experiment - what a thing that would be indeed! In determining my own authorial intent I only hope that I can muster a voice so clear and true as those two magnificent writers who came before.

Dickens, Conan-Doyle and the Personality of Architecture

Architecture provides a potential visual and atmospheric feast for the literary artist; the buildings themselves are often representative of the broader environment in which they reside as well as the individuals who occupy them. The historical utilization of space had a direct and most particular correlation with wealth and social status:  spacious residences, with intricate masonry embellishments, surrounding terraces, and associated garden space were the provenance of the rich, whereas the impoverished had comparatively scarce and uneasy access to a much smaller terrestrial allotment.

There is a poignancy, however, in the crumbling decrepitude of a wealthy estate; Satis House in Dickens' Great Expectations serves as a superlative metaphor of the corruption, decay and fate of it's owner Miss Havisham. Upon learning of her lover's betrayal she lays waste to the estate, and upon Pip's arrival the dismal structure is comprised of "old bricks" with  "some of the windows...walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred." The once splendid mansion is now shuttered and dull, declining, along with it's inhabitants, into the dust and ashes of silent neglect. Residential abodes reflect the dispositions of their owners in Bleak House where the rural estate of Lady Dedlock is muffled, dreary and beset by rain; like it's mistress Chesney Wold is "very brilliant in season and very dismal out of it."

It was in black dilapidated streets, however, where Dickensian prose flourished;  where "crazy houses  were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings." As on the "ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters  have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in..." Within the Dickensian landscape the buildings become living components in the narrative: as blackened by years of neglect and plagued by pestilential irritants as the unfortunate humans who dwell beneath their shingles. Just as individuals who aspire to economic or social prestige, Krook's rag and bottle shop  (Bleak House) had "the air of being  in a legal neighborhood, and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law."

Charles Dickens harnessed architecture to his vehicle of social reform, eschewing the early eighteenth-century Metropolitan Improvements of John Nash, for the dark and narrow labyrinths of old London town. True to the Victorian expectation that literature should instruct as well as amuse, Dickens details the slums, narrow alleys and back courts, secluded nooks and crannies where "there is little stir or movement after dark" where the ominous action of resident thieves and cutthroats is prefigured in the "dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together." The "cluster of wretched hovels...with pig sties close to the broken windows...and miserable gardens before the doors growing nothing but stagnant pools." Dickens depicts the ubiquitous filth and disease of the urban poor in unsparing detail, effectively utilizing fiction to criticize economic, social and moral abuses of the Victorian era.

In nineteenth-century Paris the price of residential lots was defined by footprint, and houses as a result were narrow and high. With the quest for paying lodgers owners had every incentive to divide the available space as much as was possible. As a result these establishments were extended in every possible way, with additional floors erected in upper storeys, and carved out beneath the floor in subterranean basements. Rented rooms were created in recesses and annexes, linked by narrow staircases or ladders. Generally the social condition of the lodger deteriorated the higher they climbed, with poverty being the general rule on the top floors in attics and garrets. From The Goodwin Agenda: "By all accounts the dark-timbered lodging house that leaned precariously out over the cobblestones of Rue des Mauvais Garcons was a dismal place. The ground floor served as the store for the resident wigmaker and owner of this establishment, the sagging timbers of the second supported the single room occupied by an impoverished family of four, and the tiny streetside room on the third floor had very recently been vacated."

The Goodwin Agenda, set in post-Revolutionary Paris, utilized the decrepit mansions of guillotined aristocrats to convey the newly-found disaffection for social hierarchy, the years of embattled politics, and the perpetual warfare that drained financial ability to repair and rebuild. Napoleon's reconstruction of the Louvre, his chiseling of bees in the historic facade, was symbolic of his own determination to legitimize his reign; not a 'Corsican upstart' but another in a long line of venerable Frankish kings commensurate with the ancient lineages of the European monarchies who opposed him.

Within the fictional context architecture can provide a tantalizing precursor to dramatic action, a promise of what is to come, or function as a dramatic contrast to unanticipated action. In A Study in Scarlet Sherlock Holmes arrives at 3 Lauiston Gardens, a derelict building that wore "an ill-omened and minatory look" and "looked out with three tiers of vacant melancholy windows, which were blank and dreary, save that here and there a "To Let" card had developed like a cataract upon the bleared panes." A small garden fronted the property "sprinkled over with the scattered eruption of sickly plants." While Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle has not Dickens' focused literary intensity on urban slums as an instigator for social reform, he utilizes architecture to similar dramatic effect: evoking an associated foreboding with the dark, the dreary and the dilapidated. The corpse discovered within this dismal locale was "of malignant and terrible contortion...on his rigid face there stood an expression of horror such as I have never seen upon human features...I have seen death in many forms, but never has it appeared to me in a more fearsome aspect than in that dark, grimy apartment." As a preventative against over-simplistic literary associations however, Conan-Doyle points out, that "the lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." Rural beauty can form an equally dramatic frame for violent literary action; the juxtaposition being one of heightened incongruity.

There is a palpable tension in the depiction of dark and gloomy narrow streets where dread and desperation seeps up from the cobblestones, wraps around dank stone, and suffuses narrow alleys; these were, after all, premises historically occupied by a motley variety of thieves, prostitutes, debtors, beggars, outlaws and revolutionaries. Crumbling edifices have a narrative all of their own which can be used to compelling suggestive effect within literature. Whether it be urban tenements or sprawling country estates, the utilization of space, the mode and method of construction and maintenance are indicative of  cultural and political values and ascribe a certain identity to the buildings themselves; a distinctiveness that portends and extends to those which dwell within.

Hippocrates, Humorism and the Literary Search for Balance

American novelist Herman Wouk regarded "the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge." There came a point in the penning of The Goodwin Agenda when I was in complete concurrence: being particularly attentive to the humor element within the narrative - or the lack thereof. Not that I wanted a stock Falstaff caricature, a comedic fool of ridiculous wit, but it implied a matter of balance.

Upon reflection the novel seemed a dark one: juxtaposed against the political instability of the French Revolution and the brutality of the Terror that followed, the plot moves through a harsh winter landscape where the frozen corpses of the Parisian poor are surreptitiously removed at night, where war-weariness is expressed in the self-severance of limbs to avoid conscription; in short a suspicious and mutually estranged populace suffering a dearth of fundamental necessities. The London landscape is similarly enshrouded by winter, political disaffection, and the fear of imminent French invasion. Within this grim milieu the protagonists themselves are scarred in numerous ways: one dying, another consumed by combat-guilt, a third enduring the perpetual tension of covert operations beneath the gendarme radar. In the formation of these characters I was particularly interested in examining their angst, their agony, their afflictions. However, I entertained some misgivings that the resultant narrative somehow lacked a certain balance: an alleviating humor if you will.

The term 'humor' (from Latin humor meaning 'bodily fluid') derives from the medical discourse of Hippocrates and the ancient Greeks, comprising essentially the notion that the appropriate balance of fluids in the human body (blood, phlegm or bile) were essential for the maintenance of human health and emotional balance. Typical eighteenth-century medical practices such as bloodletting, emetics, and purges were intended to expel a deleterious surplus of one particular humor and thus restore balance to the physical anatomical scale. While dominating medical thought for thousands of years, this theory of humoral types also infiltrated dramatic production and literature, creating choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic character archetypes. The quintessential point here, for modern authors as well as the ancient Greeks, is one of balance. In my various encounters with human nature it was that ability to rise above circumstance that was particularly engaging - to retain a sense of perspective, a certain levity or facetiousness when confronted by the most dire of adversities. For the hero to be able to stagger to his feet despite broken ribs and skin split to the bone; to blink back the blood and grin as he crooked one finger in wicked invitation: "Is that all ye got?"  Because it is this interjection of humor, in often what seems the most inappropriate of contexts, that defines a certain resilience, an undeniable fortitude. A character demonstrating this ability will doubtless resonate, paricularly with an American readership and others who find their heroes in underdogs and dark horses.

The interjection of a lighter vein highlights and juxtaposes the moments of tension and fear, provides necessary respite for the reader, and augments and three-dimensionalizes the personalities of the characters. Like all literary elements it requires deft and meticulous application; the particular brand of jocularity must be context and character-appropriate and threaded into the narrative with a subtlety that eludes precise instruction or indeed definition: the American writer E.B. White once said "humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." A delicate matter - for one man's amusement is another man's boredom.

A primary protagonist in my novel, Wolfe Trant, is brooding and bitter, and to alleviate his darkness and still be true to the nature of the man I used a dog.  Like his new master, this particular mutt had suffered the horrors of Newgate Prison and emerged wounded physically (lost a leg) and pyschically. However, the natural playfulness of the canine breed (liberated and heartily fed) restores and evokes some of the same in his human counterpart. For who can resist a drooled-stick gift, the tail an ecstatic blur of motion, haunches high in the air, the backward scamper and lolling tongue of a grinning pup who wants to play? In this respect, the dog was a useful literary tool to illuminate lighter aspects of Wolfe's personality that might have predominated in easier times.

Once I had determined to interject an element of lightheartedness and laughter, it was specifically a question of where and with whom it belonged. Some characters lend themselves to moments of mirth more easily than others, and only then under the most particular of circumstances. Like Herman Wouk, I found the task a precise and demanding one, and like E.B White, I concluded that humor was an elusively ethereal thing, a subtle interplay of personality and circumstance that would not be coerced or contrived.

A Pragmatic Critic: Across the Literary Divide

The latest transient traveler knocking on the door of my mind is the Pragmatic Critic. Being one who prides himself on being impeccably dressed (indeed is the epitome of dapper fastidiousness) he is slightly disheveled from the road and already irritated. Finding himself in company with a begrimed Golem who glares balefully at the newly-arrived does not improve the situation. Sliding reluctantly through the doorjamb Pragmatic Critic surveys the immediate environment, mouth pinched with distaste, taking note of all resident deficiencies: odds and ends of things, clutter and accumulation, a medley of littered details, tarnished with neglect and gathered beneath a coat of dust. He re-situates the glasses on the bridge of his nose and gives a supercilious sniff of disapproval. "So this is it, is it?"

He finds a chair on which to perch and retrieves a notepad from his satchel. "I took the liberty of making notes, and thought we might review them together." Pragmatic Critic looks down at me across the expanse of a protuberant nose, one eyebrow raised in a slightly skeptical manner as if personally ambivalent of the merits of this entire endeavor.

"Now, let us begin." He clears his throat, peering down at the meticulous jottings on his pad. "Humble Musings of a Literary Kind? That is what you call it? Literary would you say?" Pragmatic Critic snorts, the sound a curious combination of sardonic amusement and scoffing disbelief. I squirm on my chair. "I perused your...what did you call them?..ah yes...your musings..." A tight smile that more closely resembles a grimace crosses his lips. "And I must say I found them wanting. So much fluff. Romantic dither-dather. What is this nonsense about sepia-toned images coming alive?" He scrutinizes me with a narrowed gaze over the rim of glinting glasses; his tone, when he spoke again, was heavy with haughty disdain: "I daresay you might have some potential..." Pragmatic Critic waves one long-fingered pale hand in languid dismissal. "But you do insist upon these long-winded fanciful notions...who do you presume is interested in reading such drivel?" He shakes his head dubiously as he unwinds his lanky frame from the chair. He has retrieved his satchel, redeposited his notes, and stands, obviously eager to be gone. "What you need to do...." Pragmatic Critic pauses for maximum effect, "is pursue serious writing."

With his hand on the door, he turns to look over his shoulder. "One last word of advice, my dear. Dispense with these utterly irrelevant musings...and for goodness sake reevaluate your choice of roommate." And with a final scowl in the Golem's direction, who issues a guttural growl in response, Pragmatic Critic is gone, the door slamming heavily behind him...leaving the Golem and I together in the darkness.

So I am ruminating on Pragmatic Critic's advice, and a marvelous quote by Ezra Pound springs to mind: "I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing: of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later." A preliminary excitement - what a gorgeously optimistic assessment! Of little account unless it contributes to the fundamental improvement of one's final narrative. So upon my next encounter with Pragmatic Critic I will keep Pound's wisdom firmly in mind,  extract any useful elements and mentally discard the rest, all the while offering a seat, a smile and a cup of tea to my most fastidious of guests.