Tales from the Bitface

I had read a lot of Sherlock Holmes, but none of Doyle’s other work; including none of the Professor Challenger stories. There aren’t nearly as many as there are Holmes stories, so it’s less of a challenge (ha) to do so. I was in a second-hand bookshop a few weeks back, in an unfamiliar town — let’s not be coy, it was Taunton — and I was there so long, going, ‘So many books, so little time,’ that I felt I had to buy something: it would be impolite not to.

And just as I was preparing to leave, I saw a collected Professor Challenger volume, and here we are. I’m treating the individual novels in it as separate novels, since they are, and will write about them here individually.

So to The Lost World . A tale of adventurers finding a fabled land where dinosaurs still live, even in the 20th century. In this case it’s on an inaccessible plateau in South America, not underground, for example.

In fact, this is the motherlode for all those kind of stories, predating Edgar Rice Burroughs and everyone else.

It’s presented as a work by a journalist, Edward Malone, a young man seeking both to please his editors, and (seemingly more importantly at first) to charm his beloved, one Gladys, who says she’s attracted to the adventurous type of man.

Challenger claims to have seen evidence of the prehistoric creatures' existence; his brother scientists don’t believe him; the Zoological Institute commissions an expedition to confirm or deny. Young Malone volunteers/is volunteered to go along and report back.

Stuff happens. Dinosaurs are found. Ape-men fought. An impossible fecundity of life exists on a twenty-by-thirty mile plateau, isolated from the rainforest and Amazon below it. (A question comes to mind: why wouldn’t the pterodactyls fly down from the plateau to the jungle? At least sometimes?)

It’s lots of fun, if very full of the idea that the white European (or really, British) man is the most highly evolved entity on the planet. It is, of course, of its time.

I first heard of Matthew Salesses when I was doing my MA. One of the tutors said his forthcoming book on the craft of creative writing was eagerly awaited by everyone in the business of teaching it. This was in early 2021. I got hold of an ebook copy of Craft in the Real World at some point, and haven’t got very far with it. The main thesis, as I recall, was about the typical method of critiquing creative works didn’t work well for all people.

Which is fair enough, if perhaps a bit slight to hang a whole book on (I’m sure there’s more). But when I was looking into it, I read the announcement of this novel (which came out earlier, in 2020), and thought it sounded amazing.

What’s actually amazing to me, having read it, is that it’s the second novel in a row I’ve read that makes almost no sense at all.

I expect it’s me. I suppose it must be, because again, the cover and inner pages here are festooned with glowing platitudes, while I was left cold by much of the action, and confused by what Salesses was trying to say.

A young Korean-American writer¹feels he’s disappearing. A near-duplicate of his girlfriend turns up. She used to have a boyfriend who looked just like the narrator, and who disappeared.

She has never heard of Boston, where the novel is set. Until it switches to the alternative universe where the doppelgänger woman came from, and a city whose name is given as XXXXXX. Why not make up an actual, believable, name, I wondered.

All of which is fine, and could explore some interesting ideas about identity, and indeed tries to. But the narrator is such an annoying character who keeps doing stupid things for no very good reason, that it’s hard to get with him. That in itself could be seen as good characterisation, of course.

But whatever is going on between the two alternatives doesn’t make much sense to me, and things don’t get resolved in any meaningful way, and I just didn’t enjoy it much. Cultural differences, maybe? That is, I believe, part of what Salesses’s Craft book was about: different cultures have different ways of telling stories. Maybe my understanding and expectations are just too western to appreciate this.

Which is my loss, I guess.

I heard Ann Cleeves on the Radio — probably Radio 3’s Private Passions — a couple of years ago. I must have seen her books in shops before that, but hadn’t really paid attention. And I vaguely was aware there was a BBC detective show called Shetland.

Turns out that show is based on this novel and its sequels.

Anyway, she sounded interesting on the radio and I seem to read almost as much crime fiction as SF these days, so when I was exploring a bookshop on our recent trip to Devon, and saw this, I thought I’d give it a try. I devoured it in a couple of days. Really good page-turner, engaging characters, unexpected ending, Just what you want.

I don’t recall where I first heard about this . It was probably Warren Ellis, but I seem to recall there being a second source. Anyway, I lived in Turin, or between Turin and my then-home in Walthamstow, for the best part of a year, 1989–90. My employers had a big contract with an Italian bank, and most of the work was done on site. Which seems amazingly old-fashioned for software development today, when we mostly don’t even visit our employers' premises very often.

All of which has nothing to do with the novel. It was written in the 70s and is set then. The unnamed first-person narrator is researching the titular event, which happened ten years earlier. It’s not entirely clear to what extent he experienced the ‘Twenty Days’ himself, but many people still living in the city did, and they don’t talk about it. It started with mass insomnia. Sleepless people took to the streets, some in their nightclothes. Then the violence started. Mysterious, brutal murders of the insomniacs.

But before all that, there was the Library. It seemed to be a project by well-meaning young people, possibly religious, who set up a kind of pre-computer social network. People were encouraged to share diaries or other writing — original manuscripts only, no published work. For a small fee, anyone could visit the archive thus formed, and read any of the pieces. For slightly higher fee, they could find the name and address of a chosen contributor.

The idea being ostensibly to help lonely people find like-minded folks. With a strange inevitability, that isn’t necessarily how it was used.

The implication is the Library somehow led to the sleeplessness, if not the violence. Perhaps not the violence, as our narrator’s explorations appear to find a more supernatural, if not downright bizarre, explanation for that.

And it all seems to be starting up again. The Library didn’t go away, it just went underground. And the narrator and at least one of his interviewees may be in danger.

It’s an odd one this. Reviews of the recent English-language publication speak of its prescience, comparing the combination of the Library and the insomnia with people up all night doomscrolling on their phones. Which is interesting, but takes no account of the violent attacks, and the supernatural element.

I think this will bear repeated readings.