Classics Considered

Hope everyone’s New Year is off to a good start! Here’s what I’ve been reading lately…

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I’m about halfway through this collection and still feel I prefer the short stories to the novels. The pacing is superior, the characters and settings are more quirky and relaxed, and in these stories, Doyle takes us far beyond the murder-room mysteries of A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. His emphasis has switched to the seemingly small personal troubles of everyday people, which makes you warm immediately to the conflict. This is where Holmes becomes more than a detective: especially in the past three stories I read (“A Case of Identity,” “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” and “The Five Orange Pips”) he shows a deep, human concern for his clients. We get glimpses of a personality, too. In “Boscombe,” he talks about reading George Meredith (lesser known today, but the author of The Egoist). We don’t get the details, but these off-handed remarks give his character dimension.

Noli Me Tángere

I am nearing page 100 of this 400-page novel from the Philippines. It has been, in a word, uneven. Sometimes Rizal writes with incredible humor and irony, and it flies by… sometimes he devolves into 19th-century European tropes and a bland, serviceable prose that just gets you from point A to point B. As for the plot—not sure if there is one. We have an assortment of characters who have problems with each other, but the only thing that has really happened is the protagonist Ibarra has returned from Europe (and that happened in the first few chapters). In a way, this book feels like an eclectic snapshot of the Philippines which Rizal tried to shoehorn into a more conventional format; additionally, his motive and message tend to predominate over the artistic aspects of the book. I have no definite opinion on it yet, except that it is slightly frustrating but I like it enough to keep going.

The Samurai

I have read the first chapter of The Samurai by Shusaku Endo. It feels heavier in prose than his other works and requires more undivided attention than I can give it this week. However, it promises a fairly compelling story of a missionary and a samurai who set off to do some political bargaining with the Spanish on behalf of the Japanese authorities… and there’s something about building a ship… Already we have Endo’s signature strength, which is a complex but compelling portrayal of the missionary. This missionary is devout but struggles with pride, having aspirations of becoming the Bishop of Japan (if those pesky Jesuits would get out of his way). The clergy in Rizal’s novel take on a more sinister air, whereas the missionary in Endo’s novel is seriously flawed but sympathetic, so far. From an Anglican perspective, I feel both books serve an important purpose in exploring the history of Roman Catholicism. Taken together, these books provide a complex picture of the situation, the good and the bad. And the good is very good, and the bad is very bad.