Just checking in...

I realise I've neglected my blog of late - but in my defence, m'lud, I've been busy and I'm still reading books - I'm just not yet at a point when I can do another review or commentary (there's a plan, you see...)

One of the reasons is that I've had a wedding anniversary so my good lady and I went away for the long Jubilee weekend to Plaitford in the New Forest and stayed at the splendid Shoe Inn - great food, great local beers and a really warm welcome. We'll no doubt go back there again sometime. Check it out:
http://www.theshoeinn.co.uk/ 

I've been submitting Doctor Who-related material to some fanzines rather than putting it all on here. The first of them, the credibly-titled 'Fish Fingers and Custard' is available now from: http://www.fishcustardfanzine.co.uk/2012/06/issue-10-out-now.html

Also keep your eyes peeled for 'The Terrible Zodin' issue 14 in the next few months. You can check out what they're about here: http://doctorwhottz.blogspot.co.uk/ They're a great bunch of guys and as far as I've seen they don't hop around like kangaroos!

Anyway, that's my brief check-in done and dusted. Now to check up on the football scores and get on with the ironing...

Oh - and happy Father's Day if you're a father!

A Dickens of a birthday day out!

So, as it was my birthday during the week my good lady wife took me out for a surprise day out yesterday. As usual I frustrated her by not wishing to know where we were going or what we were doing until we actually arrived there! Mwa ha haaa!

It was a lovely day, and comprised a wander round St James's Park with a homemade picnic in the sunshine by the lake, then a jaunt up to Barbican and a visit to the 'Dickens and London' exhibition at the Museum of London. Nothing earth-shattering, just a great day out and thoroughly enjoyed. In the evening we went out locally for tapas at El Molino in Penge. Fabulous!

I'm only blogging about it because we made a couple of curious observations that got us thinking about aspects of contemporary life.

The first was in St James's Park, where we were picnicking on a bench - not having a rug to sit on the grass with. It was amazing the number of people giving us odd looks and making comments as they went past. We were getting as much attention as the waterfowl on the lake! And no, my flies weren't undone - I checked. Is picnicking such a rare or curious activity? Or was it the fact that we'd brought some wonderful homemade food with us (cheese muffins, red onion & goats cheese tartlets, mini cottage loaves - yum) and not picked up tasteless pre-fabricated sandwiches and some sort of 'meal deal' extras from a shop?!
To clarify:
- we weren't in anyone's way
- we weren't taking up anymore space than two seats on a bench between us
- we were fully and normally clothed
- it was nice weather for a picnic
Maybe if I'd put my hat out people would have thrown us some small change? If I thought there was a living in it I'd happily hawk us both around the fairs and bazaars of the land, picnicking for the entertainment of all and sundry.

The next 'issue' was when we had just entered the 'Dickens and London' exhibition, and is no doubt a popular subject for ranters and angry people everywhere: mobile phones. In fairness I didn't see any signs requesting that people turn off or silence their mobile phones whilst in the museum - but then should you have to? I don't think so. There's a certain reverential etiquette to being in libraries, art galleries, exhibitions and museums generally. So we're reading the first couple of displays and a mobile phone rings. The lady answers it. The lady then has a reasonably long and loud conversation on it. 'Hello?!' This woman was probably around 50 and therefore old enough to remember what life was like before we all had mobile phones.
I was rather surprised that the exhibition attendants didn't come over and suggest that since she was so near the entrance she might like to step away to take the call. Shamefully neither I nor anyone else said anything to her either, but barging in next to me and obscuring Edward Bulwer-Lytton once she'd finished her call did confirm my hunch that she had the manners and social graces of a goat.

The exhibition wasn't packed, but it was certainly busy and there was some jostling for position from time to time. My wife got annoyed with an old boy who obviously thought it was acceptable to lean against her backpack rather than ask if she'd excuse him. Some guy also took a call, but he at least had the good will to be discreet and whisper & head away from everybody. Interestingly when my mother-in-law visited the exhibition some time back she was asked by another lady to hurry up when she was trying to locate her home area on the large map of Dickensian London, because she also wanted to look in the same place. Presumably this lady also steals library books from people's hands, or shopping from other people's trolleys if she can't get to what she wants straight away...

Aside from the behaviour of other visitors, the exhibition itself was engaging and illuminating. Sometimes it can get wearisome just looking at dead people's personal belongings and day-to-day ephemera, but there was a good balance between personal items and the more contextual pieces representing society at large. The doors from Newgate prison probably impressed me the most out of everything. The manuscripts and corrected novel proofs are a timely reminder of how much labour went into his work, as well as how difficult his handwriting is to read!

We went in on the 14:30 session and easily lost three hours inside. It's not an exhibition for casual browsing - there is much to be learnt from the information plaques and from close scrutiny of the display items. We particularly enjoyed the reproductions of the periodicals containing the latest instalment of Nicholas Nickelby and other novels, and one really gets the feeling that in book form you lose so much of the cultural context surrounding these episodic publications, with their adverts for quack health remedies and announcements of local events.

As we staggered back out into the daylight, tired but educated, I realised yet again how badly read I am in Dickens, and Sian decided she wants to read Dombey & Son next, since she knows very little about it! If I'm going to read anything in the short term it'll be Sketches By Boz, which was probably the most quoted work in the exhibition and certainly the one that the most attention was drawn to, it being a collection of short pieces dealing very much with London culture and life.

It's only on until early June, but if anyone is umming and ahhing about it I'd say go, and go now! (and watch out for middle aged people who have forgotten their manners!)      

Death and War - the post-Shada come down...

Having already tackled Gareth Roberts' The Romance of Crime and The English Way of Death prior to reading his adaptation of Shada it was only fair that afterwards I should see out Doctor Who's 17th season fully and take on Jonathan Morris' PDA Festval of Death and the final Virgin MA The Well-Mannered War (also by the aforementioned Mr Roberts).

Various online chronological lists suggested I shouldn't read these two books in publishing order - so I didn't! They're not linked at all, but there is a logic to reading them this way round.

Festival of Death I found a curious read. A lot of the time I was thinking it's the kind of book I'd probably enjoy more the second time round, once I'm more relaxed with where it's going and what it's trying to do. I've enjoyed a lot of what Morris has produced over the years - The Tomorrow Windows is one of my favourite EDAs and Flip-Flop one of the best and most intelligent Big Finish audios, for example. But I couldn't quite find the 'joy' in Festival of Death, though - and that's what tends to mark out the Season 17 stories from the Season 18 ones. It's there on the surface, but I wasn't 'feeling' it underneath - like the author was ticking boxes. The story is a clever use of time travel (timey-wimey etc) and pre-destination, but I felt Morris was focussing too much on his convoluted story and this got in the way of character development and narrative progression (or even regression). There were some sly digs at the era, such as the Doctor effectively trying to 'direct' a scene at one point and K9 blasting a bit of structure that had obviously been recently re-plastered so you could still see the join. I couldn't tell if the author was being 'fond' here or critical. There are also occasional Douglas Adams-esque lines or moments but these tend to stand out unnecessarily and it puts me in mind of what an Adams script might have ended up like if Chris Bidmead had script edited it - intelligent sci-fi with occasional flashes of wit but overall too caught up with itself to relax.

In contrast The Well-Mannered War was a wonderful read. By his third Season 17 outing Gareth Roberts was very comfortable and confident with the characters and what he was doing. Like most of Season 17 on TV it is deceptive in its apparent simplicity, with much going on underneath. It trips along at a fast yet easy pace, with plenty for the Doctor to do and plenty for Romana and K9 to be doing elsewhere. Menlove Stokes, returning from The Romance of Crime, manages to avoid being too annoying - just - and the whole premise is wonderfully worked out with a gorgeous twist that makes the reader question their own basic assumptions about all Doctor Who stories. The final section is very dramatic, with a much darker tone, and as always with Roberts' writing you can picture it perfectly within the production constraints and the performances of the time. It was a great way for Virgin to finish off their 'Missing Adventures' range - in much the same way as BBC Books did with the EDAs in 2005. I don't want to say too much as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet, plus I've already gushed about how good a writer Gareth Roberts is elsewhere! I will mention, though, that the thought of Romana in the Third Doctor's costume may set some pulses racing (like when she wears the Fourth Doctor's current costume in Destiny of The Daleks, hubba hubba) but surely it would have dwarfed her? Or maybe that's the appeal - a saggy frilly shirt and an inverness cape you could use as a tent?!

Bye bye Fourth Doctor, Romana & K9 in book form. Thanks for the fun times.

Sherlock Holmes and the case of the rest of the novels

As I said in my last post, I finished A Study In Scarlet and immediately reached for The Sign of (The) Four - which I've read a couple of times previously but not often enough for it to be spoiled. Earlier this year I'd already read The Valley of Fear for the first time and The Hound of The Baskervilles for the second or third time, so I've now clocked up all of Conan Doyle's Holmes 'novels' or longer stories.
I've really enjoyed them all, but The Hound of The Baskervilles is my clear favourite and The Valley of Fear is the weakest in my view.

The Sign of Four, or The Sign of The Four (depending on which edition you read), is a good solid story and a good solid read. As with A Study In Scarlet the reader is given much to sympathise with the villain over and it's not such a black-and-white case as it at first appears. It may surprise some readers that Watson finishes up married at the end, so early in the Holmes canon - particularly when we are conditioned by popular mythology to think of them both as confirmed bachelors looked after by the faithful Mrs Hudson.
It's a definite progression on A Study In Scarlet, though, and I can see why my Nineteenth Century Culture tutor at university selected it in preference to its forerunner. There's much more for both Holmes and Watson to get involved with. There's pace, intrigue and action here aplenty, plus some cocaine injections to help you through the quiet periods.

The Hound of The Baskervilles is almost as famous on its own as Sherlock Holmes is, let's face it. It's easily the most popular of the novels, if not the most popular Holmes story full stop. This is not without some justification either. It is in plain and simple terms a brilliant read. In my mind it sits equally well alongside the fin de siecle gothic horror masterpieces Dracula and Jekyll & Hyde with its evocation of monstrous horror and dark foreboding in the wilds of Dartmoor. It's as much an exercise in atmospheric description for Conan Doyle as it is a detective story. I first read this at secondary school, when my English teachers complained that I was reading too many Doctor Who books and should read something 'proper' instead. This was an obvious choice. I then got marked down for quoting too much from it in my book review. Hmmm.

The Valley of Fear I found the most disappointing. It shares structural similarities with A Study In Scarlet and there's possibly even less for Holmes and Watson to do in this book than there was in that first novel. How much of this was down to Conan Doyle being fed up with his creations by the time this was written I wouldn't like to say. The story seems to me much more of a puzzle for Holmes to solve than an investigation for him to undertake per se. All the evidence is laid before him and he works it out, essentially. There are, however, some nice twists and clearly considerable thought, planning and research went into crafting the story. The power that  the hidden Moriarty wields at the end is a concern for the reader and either makes Holmes' nemesis a chilling unknown or it could be misread as a lazy Conan Doyle tying up loose ends with a sweep of his hand rather than proactively through the narrative. It was the only one of the four that I finished and thought 'oh' rather than 'excellent'. I'll certainly give it another read in the future, so I'll be interested to see how I react to it then.

I read the Oxford Classics / Oxford Sherlock Holmes editions of each of these novels, with their thorough introductions and copious explanatory notes. I find much to recommend them.

Having read all these, I do think it's clear that Conan Doyle's strengths lay in shorter stories. I can't imagine reading a full 500-odd page novel by him, nor do I feel his talent lay that way. These Holmes 'novels' are only long stories or novellas really. But they're great, engaging reads even at worst, which is why they are still very much a part of popular culture now and I'm sure they always will be. Thank you ACD.

Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Brilliance!

I've just finished reading A Study In Scarlet. Wow. What a great little read! I know Holmes is a little more affable and pleasant in this book than he is in some of the other stories, and Conan Doyle was still very much finding his feet with the character, but that didn't bother me in the slightest and Watson is there from the start, bang on. Everything you need to know about both men, and how Holmes operates and deduces is here in this first novel or long story, and there's a real feeling of literary history in its pages.

When I was doing my undergraduate degree back in the mid-nineties Conan Doyle turned up on the reading list for the Nineteenth Century Culture module, probably under sensation literature, and The Sign of The Four was the chosen text because (as we were told at the time) A Study In Scarlet was generally considered an unsuccessful first attempt and not a true Holmes novel. Well I saw pshaw to that!

From a stylistic perspective I found the whole Utah section very interesting, and a pleasant contrast to Watson's narration. Conan Doyle is clearly guiding the reader to sympathise with, and actually support Hope's murders - hence the choice of tablets - and there's the whole 'natural law' versus the 'law of the land' question going on.

I've finished the book wanting to reach for The Sign of The Four - which is very much to Conan Doyle's credit in creating or capturing a world that so ably immerses us with surprisingly little actual detail. A Study In Scarlet is very economically written - we pick up a lot of detail without long descriptive passages. That said, there's a kind of standard 'Holmesian London' setting in most people's minds anyway, courtesy of the characters being so very much in the public psyche.

I've read the Oxford World's Classics edition, with an introduction and notes by Owen Dudley Edwards. I adore the Oxford Holmes editions, and they are excellent value. For a short book like A Study In Scarlet you get almost half the novel's length again in explanatory notes, plus an introductory essay of about a third the length of the novel again. These additional critical apparatus offer us different ways to read the book, and potentially repeated readings are rewarded. I only read the text this time, but last time I also read the introduction as well for background information and on both reads so far I've occasionally dipped into the notes for clarity, but I know there's a whole lot more contextual and biographical information in those notes that I haven't yet picked up which may enhance future reads.
The introductions taken together essentially make up a critical volume in their own right. As Owen Dudley Edwards observes in his Genrral Editor's Preface, their purpose is not so much to introduce each volume, but to give an overall critical, contextual and bibliographical appraisal and they assume greater knowledge of the Conan Doyle / Holmes canon. New readers should avoid them on the first read. After all we already have Doctor Watson to ably guide us through these stories without any input from a modern editor. After I've read or re-read the rest of the Holmes novels and short story collections I'll probably return and read all the introductory essays without risk of accidental spoilers.

I've also got the single volume Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes but it's an unwieldy tome and sits on the bottom shelf. It may be more value as holiday reading...

A Doctor Who season in print: 25, more on Target

I'm still squeezing these short reads in around other books. This group of four are, on the whole, a great improvement on the Season 24 lot - but then few would disagree that this was true of the TV episodes too. Certainly my Betamax off-air copies of Remembrance of The Daleks and Silver Nemesis (7 episodes fitting nicely on a 3 hour tape!) got played endlessly back at the time. Yes, you read that correctly, even Silver Nemesis.

So, in this batch we have the following, in transmission order:
Remembrance of The Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch
The Happiness Patrol by Graeme Curry
Silver Nemesis by Kevin Clarke
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy by Stephen Wyatt

Alister Pearson was well settled with his Target cover illustrations by 1989 when these were published. Remembrance is a bit cluttered and probably could do without Davros on the off chance that a reader hadn't seen the TV version. The Happiness Patrol and Greatest Show are simpler and more effective, with almost photo-realistic illustrations of McCoy. The Happiness Patrol in particular is well-observed in limiting visuals from the TV version, since Graeme Curry describes much of it differently to how it was depicted on the screen. Silver Nemesis is OK, but neither The Doctor nor Ace look much like the actors for some reason. Maybe it's the expressions he's chosen? McCoy looks like he's got a beak. Seems a shame when he's captured them both perfectly elsewhere.
Since we're always told never to judge books by their covers (thankfully for Gareth Roberts' Shada!) this is what I also think of the content:

Remembrance of The Daleks by Ben Aaaronovitch.
I don't have a massive amount to say about this book simply because it's brilliant from start to finish. I know the TV version virtually word for word from repeated viewings but I still loved reading this. Aaronovitch has clearly thought about how best to adapt his script for the page, and not simply fill in the gaps between the dialogue with some description. There's back story and development but not at the cost of the story being told, or the pace of the book. A few bits are tidied up and there are occasional subtle changes as well, which make some aspects and events work better on the page than they might if literally translated from the TV version. I firmly believe that the seeds of the later Virgin 'New Adventures' were planted with this novel. It's not a childrens' book, it's a book for an intelligent early teen. I know that originally these Target novelisations filled the gap of later video and DVD releases, but by this point the BBC were regularly releasing videos. No doubt many of us would be less keen on re-reading these books now if they were just a literal equivalent of watching the episodes. Aaronovitch ensures that reading this story can be just as rewarding as watching the episodes.
The Happiness Patrol by Graeme Curry.
I don't recall ever seeing or reading any interviews with Graeme Curry so it'll be interesting to see if he's on the forthcoming DVD release. I was keen to re-evaluate this story, as it's one that's recently gained in fan popularity it seems. My issue with the TV version at the time was mainly with the visuals - spiky pink hairdos and mini skirts are not necessarily 'happy', and it seemed at times that the production team were confusing it with 'The Sexiness Patrol'. The 'Bertie Bassett' Kandyman got plenty of comments at school, I recall, and these were not wholeheartedly negative - which was rare at the time.
I get the feeling that Curry was not taken with the TV visuals either, as very little description on the page is recognisable - particularly the Kandyman. But this is very much to the book's credit. It's another novelisation that is looking to be 'adapted from the TV programme' not a faithful representation of it. Freed from the distracting visuals the story gets a chance to shine, and it does. Curry has little to offer in story terms and characterisation in addition to what was included in the TV episodes, but there is some valuable back-story. The book's limitations are the story's limitations - it's difficult to believe that in practical terms the Doctor can swan in and raise a successful revolution in one night. It's not a wonderful novel, which is a shame after Dragonfire and Remembrance, but it's a solid addition to a range which is clearly looking above and beyond being a video cassette in print.
Silver Nemesis by Kevin Clarke.
This was pretty awful, I'm afraid. Kevin Clarke has taken his TV scripts (extended versions, agreed) and added a bit of description between the lines of dialogue, essentially. It's a lazy affair when it could so easily have been so much more. The TV version is a non-taxing watch that trundles along nicely but on paper the limitations and structural inadequacies of the story are laid bare. There's no sense of tension or drama at all. It's like a formal dance: the various groups enter, they take their positions, they all come together, then they move around the space, then they all come together at the end. Even then most of them die in a vague order like taking a bow at the end of a show. Clarke puts the scheming, manipulative Doctor at the centre of the story, as the choreographer of the dance so to speak - but the story is that there is no story. All the interesting stuff went on before in an untold adventure with possibly the 2nd Doctor and Lady Peinforte back in sixteen something. Does the author take the opportunity to develop that back story here, where he can, given the freedom of the printed page? Nope.
The Doctor is pretty much passive throughout the whole farrago; there's never much of a sense that the plans he's laid will come to anything other than the fruition he wants. Silver Nemesis is a runaround, basically. It's like episode two of Planet of The Spiders spread over three episodes and without a hovercraft. Bits of validium change hands, baddies follow other baddies into crypts, out of crypts, and occasionally shoot at one another. Ace randomly has some 'teenage' moments in an effort to remind the viewers that's what she is, and the Doctor swans around and does what he wants to do. The only aspect that could be considered an improvement on the TV version is the building site setting for the climax , rather than a disused aircraft hangar. Ace's cat and mouse with the cybermen is far less one-sided and much more dramatic. But she's still firing gold coins into their chest units with a catapult, which miraculously kills them, and she still has a 100% success rate. This must be the most embarrassingly weak Cyber squadron ever: one sniff of gold and they have a fit of the vapours, poor darlings.
In what may be an effort to justify the book's title, Clarke starts to refer to the Nemesis statue as 'silver Nemesis' after a while. It seems unnecessary as the statue isn't really silver or specifically silvery. And anyway, does it matter? Probably not. It suggests that the author isn't confident he can trust his audience, and needs to guide them.
All told Silver Nemesis is a wasted opportunity by Kevin Clarke to do something challenging and exciting; it seems his novel writing is just as bland and uninspired as his scriptwriting.

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy by Stephen Wyatt
Phew! That's what I felt on reading this. It's pretty fab and a welcome success after the tarnished Silver Nemesis. I enjoyed the TV show more than I expected to (struck as I was with fears of a repeat of Season 24) and it's not a story I've over-watched since. It thoroughly engaged me throughout and Wyatt, like Aaronovitch and Curry, has clearly thought about the book as something independent from the TV script. As with The Happiness Patrol there's not a vast amount of new material, but dialogue is used well and is often paraphrased by the narratorial voice where it's not absolutely necessary and where the pace needs to be maintained or increased. There are nice character moments and bits of development which are again tailored to the written page more than the TV screen. I felt I could better appreciate Captain Cook's exploits seeing the exotic place names written down too!
It's an improvement on the previous year's Paradise Towers but one problem is shared between the two stories: Wyatt still stumbles over the time factor. It was not clear how long everyone had been living in Paradise Towers but the suggestion was that it was a very long time. Again here it's hinted that The Psychic Circus has been running for many years, and they seem to have been settled on Segonax for many years too, after touring for a long time. But it's only ever been the same set of performers running it. Do they seem old enough to have been running a circus for maybe twenty plus years? Possibly. The Whizzkid, though, is clearly a geeky teen so how old was he when he was in correspondence with a member of the touring circus troupe if they've been on Segonax for years? Were his letters written in crayon? Plus if he was a real geek he'd tell Morgana the name of the performer and try to meet them!
But that's a minor quibble and less of a distraction here than it was with Paradise Towers.

I don't know if Peter Darvill-Evans as editor was specifically liaising with Andrew Cartmel at this point or planning the 'New Adventures' range, but there are further suggestions in this novel that the Doctor was scheming behind the scenes and may have known what was going on all the time - like with the other three books this season, and very much the case with Season 26. That seems to me like a conscious range editor decision, in line with the TV production team, not just a coincidence - and with an eye to developing spin-off stories. This was exactly what I was looking for when I thought about revisiting these 7th Doctor novelisations.
I should add before I close that the schoolboy in me sniggered at chapter 4's 'Ace got really angry with the Captain about fingering the Doctor in this way.' (p.43) Ooh, matron!

Daniel Defoe: 1722 and all that...

Daniel Defoe was a very fortunate literary hack. I mean that in a good way. There were a lot of hacks in the early Eighteenth Century and very few of them are read or published these days. Defoe is the main exception: his works have remained in the popular public arena, even if most people these days only encounter Robinson Crusoe as a childrens' story.
1722 was a very important year for the man from Stoke Newington. He was always under threat from creditors and although already in his early sixties he was taking full advantage of the market for long prose narratives that he'd tapped into in 1719 with The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and its two sequels. 1722 saw him publish three such key works: Moll Flanders, A Journal of The Plague Year and Colonel Jack. For a man who'd almost single-handedly written weekly journals for much of the century so far this level of creative outpouring can't have been too much of a trial for him, but as with HG Wells two hundred years later you can't help but wish he'd written a little less a little better.

Defoe was something of a pioneer, that's certainly true. Critics forgive him a lot for that. If casual readers picking up these three 'novels' take the time to peruse the introductory essays (I'm specifically referencing the Oxford Worlds Classics editions here) they will find a lot of excuses in the main. Continuity errors, name changes, all sorts of mistakes in detail are acknowledged but usually accepted because Defoe was treading new ground and it's unfair to judge a writer of that period by our modern standards.
All three of these 1722 'hits' are uneven creations - but then Defoe was an untidy and uneven writer full stop. It's difficult not to imagine him just making it all up as he went along - or at the very least having a list of events or actions to tick off as he scrawled away, with perhaps the occasional flash of inspiration to flesh out some aspect or other. Occasionally sections of the stories are entered into in great detail - such as the lengthy period at Colchester where Moll is wooed by the older brother to whom she loses her virginity, and then marries his younger brother. Then at other times what we'd consider to be key events or moments of psychological trauma are glossed over in a matter of lines - such as when Jack's fourth wife Moggy, with whom he's raised a happy family, dies almost as an aside at the end of a paragraph.

Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack are linear tales, told from childhood start to penitent finish. A Journal of The Plague Year can be frustrating at times in the way that it flits about untidily to different periods of the infection and different areas of London, although over all it too tries to follow a linear continuity. There are other telltale preoccupations that all three novels share: lists, inventories, character titles instead of proper names, money & economics, religion (to a lesser or greater degree). Readers will rarely, if ever, find a description of a place in these novels. We might be told how the people behave, what the population is and be given some general geographical notes (near the mouth of the river, for example) but never a poetic description. Defoe never tries to tell us what the sunset in Virginia is like, or how the frost glinted off the empty plague-ridden cobbled streets. He is more interested in what the people are doing - the activities, the commerce, the auditable figures.
So why do we love them? Why do I love them? Is it because they are raw, undisciplined and charismatically immediate? Is it that, despite the inconsistencies and seemingly rambling accounts ,the characters come across to the reader as being real, having a life and credibility that we can believe in?

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders came first, in January 1722. For years it was thought (or possibly hoped) that this was actually a penitent Newgate rogue's biography, such as were often published around the times of public executions detailing the lives and crimes of the criminal, ending with their final confession. I guess that's a credit to the authentic voice Defoe created. The novel is one long uninterrupted text - chapters weren't commonly used at the time - but this compliments the sense of the narrative flowing out of Moll, even if it doesn't help those who can only read it during commutes to and from work! It's broadly split into four sections: childhood and early years; wife and whore; thief; wealthy 'penitent' transported felon.
For anyone looking for salacious tales there's nothing racy about her times as a wife or a whore - Defoe is shy on bedroom details. Readers should be prepared to have their patience tried at times - husbands and children come and go, seemingly without much of an emotional bond, only financial implications. After each marriage or affair she claims to be friendless and alone in London and not know anyone, which we know is not true - most of her children are there for a start, living with whoever she's left them with. Because Moll can't be happy or content until she has enough money to be untouchable she fails to see how fortunate she is for much of her life that she always has a nest egg tucked away and is never totally penniless and at society's mercy.

What is evident, though, is that Defoe gives 'samples' of situations throughout Moll's life. Whereas a later author would be more likely to expand each occurrence to show life and character in more depth, they'd probably find they'd have to include less incidents (or spread them over several books). Defoe gives us more action or headline detail but only occasionally expands on any of it: so we get in depth reportage of Colchester, and the third marriage to her brother, and the pain of her disposing of one child to her satisfaction, and a sample selection of her thefts - particularly the one she is caught for.
Maybe the intention is that the reader can extrapolate from these and 'fill in the gaps' elsewhere. That would make this a very interactive text. Or maybe I'm granting Defoe too much skill and artistry?

Also very few characters are given names, most are known by titles only - governess, mother, husband. We tend to grant more importance to characters that have proper names. Defoe is perhaps ensuring that Moll remains the reader's focus by limiting the number of supporting characters that are anything but titled cyphers. Jemy, Moll's Lancashire husband is a key example of this - he is important to the story over all so he gets a name.

Defoe was a deeply religious man, a Dissenter who had suffered much for his beliefs in his life. As an old man he was also very much aware that money was the route to personal comfort, if not necessarily true happiness and satisfaction. We are told by critics that Moll undergoes a Christian repentance and 'rebirth' in Newgate and it is this that saves her and allows her to live a worthwhile existence for the rest of her days. It is difficult to see this conversion, though, as anything more than a tool so she can escape certain death. Once she's wangled herself into transportation instead of execution and she's been reunited with Jemy (husband number four - the only one she truly loved, we are told) there's no real discussion about her beliefs or any hint that she's changing her life in any way other than she's stopped thieving and is living a good life off the money she's made through it and also what's been left her by her mother in Virginia. Maybe this is the irony that many critics claim for the text - that Defoe at 61 or 62 years old has actually decided that money is more important than religion, and he conceals this in what many claim to be a spiritual biography. Indeed in the Preface the 'editor' states 'she liv'd it seems, to be very old; but was not so extraordinary a Penitent as she was at first; it seems only that indeed she always spoke with abhorence of her former Life'. But again I may be allowing Defoe too much conscious skill and artistry here...


For many years it was thought that A Journal of The Plague Year was also an authentic record of the time. Are you sensing a theme here?! Whereas Moll Flanders was 'written by herself' and edited (censored!) by Defoe according to the Preface, the Journal was written by 'HF' and not edited by anyone. It claims to be 'observations or memorials, of the most remarkable occurrences, as well public as private, which happened in London during the last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen who continued all the while in London' (title page). It is, quote honestly, a pretty remarkable book. Critics postulate that 'HF' could be Henry Foe, Daniel's uncle who lived and worked in London at the time of the plague. Young Daniel Foe may have spoken to Henry about the period, but whether he made notes and kept them for years before writing them up is anyone's guess. The text is filled with lists and statistics - some more accurate than others - and just bursts with ordinary detail. Defoe won't have made all this up so it's clear he did a fair amount of research and knew his stuff. At the time the threat of plague was still very real so it's likely to have been very much in the public psyche anyway.
The Journal is a random and at times shocking ramble through the streets of London over the months of the plague in 1665. It details people's lives - more so actually than the narrator's life at most points. Generally the people are nameless but the power and credulity with which their episodes are told, the relentless lists of deaths, and the means people use to try to carry on living their normal lives in the face of potentially certain death is both moving and engaging. It's almost like the end of a symphony once it's over - in the silence the audience blearily realise they can now go back to their normal lives, that life carries on.

This is pretty much a book that does what it says on the tin. Like other Defoe works one can argue that it may have been improved if Defoe had the time (or the inclination?) to revise it once completed but maybe a more ordered structure or a linear progression would make it seem less authentic and more controlled? We're all inclined, I think, in our memoirs or when we relate tales in our lives to talk around a subject rather than tell the story from start to finish.

Because the Journal is a historical work and also in many respects a geographical work (detailing old London as it does) the reader may find more benefit from reference to explanatory notes - particularly with the statistics and dates given. For that purpose I would recommend the Oxford Classics edition; Louis Landa provided copious notes in his original 1969 edition and David Roberts has retained these and built on them in his subsequent editions. The Penguin Classics edition doesn't attempt to be anything like as encyclopaedic but it does have a good introductory essay by Cynthia Wall and reprints Anthony Burgess' introduction to the previous Penguin edition from 1966. 

If I had to pick three key works by Daniel Defoe for posterity it would be A Journal of The Plague Year, Robinson Crusoe and A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain.

Defoe managed to squeeze another novel in at the end of 1722. This one is commonly, but erroneously in my opinion, thought of as a male version of Moll Flanders. It is The History and Remarkable Life of The Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel Jack. And it's commonly called simply Colonel Jack these days too - although it's not been readily available in print for a few years now which is possibly a telling statement on its popularity and appeal. Both Samuel Holt Monk and David Roberts in their 1965 and 1989 Oxford Classics editions respectively make cases in favour of Colonel Jack (with some unavoidable admittance of it's shortcomings), but it really is down to the reader at the end of the day and it's difficult not to see this as a hurried mess by a writer getting carried away with his own success. And who can blame him either? It was very popular at the time and ran into several editions very quickly. What we see now, as enlightened early 21st Century readers, is a work which seems to take the worst aspects of Moll Flanders and the Journal and combine them into something messy and lesser.

Again it's one long text from start to finish, but it's even more uneven and rambling than its immediate predecessors. The text doesn't grab and hold the reader in the same way that the other two do, and there's a real sense that it was written and delivered up to the printer in real time, so to speak. There are careless errors, such as the title page: 'married four Wives, and five of them prov'd Whores', Jack's pickpocket tutor Robin a few pages later becomes Will and stays Will until he hangs. It's not clear that Defoe knew where he was going with this story and after tidying everything up satisfactorily in Virginia he then adds a coda about trade missions to Mexico which are done purely out of greed. There's a sense, actually, that Defoe realised he'd finished his tale without occasion for Jack's repentance. Rather than go back and re-write earlier sections he tacks this on at the end instead. If the copy was being delivered straight to the printer he wouldn't have had the opportunity to revise what he'd already submitted, so he was stuck. But throughout Jack is at worst a willing accomplice to some roguish activities and at best he cares very much for the people he steals from. He is careful to show us Major Jack and Captain Jack, his 'brothers' against whom he is a much better person, and he doesn't mistreat any of his wives as long as they remain faithful so it could well be argued that here is a character who doesn't need to repent as he's always had a sense of what's innately good. But that's me looking at it from a secular 21st Century viewpoint.

The obvious parallels with Moll Flanders: they are both 'edited' accounts presented by a nameless third person, both are set around Virginia plantations and have a focus on financial wealth to provide happiness; there's a spurious Religious repentance; both contain accounts of thieving in London; neither have known their parents; both keep comprehensive lists of stolen items and money; there are regular mentions that supporting characters' stories would make great books on their own; both have the desire to always be beholden to someone else (a governess or a tutor, for example) and both central characters are very long-lived.

I wonder if Defoe ever thought about writing the stories of these supporting characters that he mentions? If so it would have made more sense for Colonel Jack to be the story of Jemy from Moll Flanders, building on that novel's success in the same way that he'd continued Robinson Crusoe. Whereas I felt a bond with Moll, an understanding of her dilemmas, I never felt that with Jack at all. There's a false sanctimoniousness about him from the start and it's difficult to believe that a boy raised as he was would have been so naive about life - particularly considering how his 'brother' Jacks turned out. The book appears to be promising something that perhaps Defoe can't stomach - a full-blown, bad behaviour male rogue biography. Being a male-dominated world there is little that isn't open to Jack, but this may have been unpleasant to Defoe, so he makes Jack poor and homeless, and a good boy amongst others who are much worse.

Immediately I found myself mistrusting Jack and also mistrusting Defoe. The textual errors made me mistrust Defoe more than Jack, for whom I didn't feel any empathy. Jack says he doesn't like thieving, then thieves and is very good at it. He's not interested in soldiering but is then happy to sign up to fight in armies on foreign shores when he doesn't have to, simply because a war is there at the same time as he is. He's not interested in women until one takes a vague interest in him, then he's hardly ever without one again. It's ticking boxes, crossing things off a list again as Defoe goes through his 'menu' - only it lacks consistency.

There's an inadvertent challenge to the reader in the first section of this book. Jack has gained around £60 through pick-pocketing yet he doesn't have anywhere to put the money so he has to keep it with him at all times, safe. He doesn't have an overcoat, or pockets without holes. He talks at length of this dilemma and what the other street boys would do if they found he had so much money. But surely £60 in sovereigns, shillings, pennies & farthings is going to:
1) weigh him down considerably, and
2) make him jangle like nobody's business!
He is able to leave it with a kindly person in the end, with whom he has already deposited £50 for safe keeping and from whom he even gets interest paid on the amount! But it's another aspect of the narrative that could be put down to laziness or carelessness on the part of Defoe and it serves to further weaken the reader's faith in both him and Jack.
About half way through the novel Jack's 'tutor' (a transported felon who is working on his plantation and simultaneously educating Jack) essentially takes the same view as the 'editor' of Moll Flanders does in the Preface: 'In view of Death, Men are fill'd with Horror of Soul, and immediately they call that Repentance which I doubt is too often mistaken; being only a kind of Anguish in the Soul, which breeds a Grief for the Punishment that is to be suffer'd; an Amazement founded upon the dreadful View of of what is to follow' (p.166). Again we ask is Defoe being consciously ironic here? Is he challenging the reader not to believe either the tutor's repentance or Jack's first wife's, or Jack's himself when it comes at the end? Or is he making a general social comment on all the gallows conversions at Tyburn and elsewhere?

Having read Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom I can appreciate how a male rogue biography cataloguing many crimes and told with force and gusto can be tasteless, but I think the key qualifier about Colonel Jack for me is that Defoe embarked on something he couldn't deliver - or possibly didn't have the nerve to see through forcefully. For his next and final novel he returned to a female central character (Roxana, 1724) and although parts of that are more challenging and dark he is again showing the struggle of a woman in a man's world and is, in effect, able to hide behind his own society. In Colonel Jack he may have risked showing up the dark underside of a male dominated world too starkly and I think he pulled his punches - but too late after he'd already signed on the publisher's dotted line and had to deliver something regardless.