Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself reading a number of novels featuring either Arthur Conan Doyle or Sherlock Holmes or both without ever actually picking up a book by Conan Doyle himself about the great Baker Street detective. The January meeting of one of my reading groups was focused on Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George, while thanks to a number of blogging recommendations I’ve also been reading the first two books in Laurie R King’s Mary Russell series, which features Sherlock Holmes as the young Mary’s investigative mentor.
I wasn’t too sure about the first of King’s books, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, which seemed rather bitty, but the second, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, holds together better as a story with just one plot running throughout rather than the more piecemeal structure of its predecessor. In fact I was congratulating myself on the fact that I found a new series and still had eight more to go right up to the point where I hit the last few pages, which contain a plot twist that I’m not sure I’m prepared to accept as credible. Obviously, I can’t say what that is without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t already discovered these books but so uncertain am I about the turn of events I shall have to think hard about whether or not I want to go on with Mary’s adventures now. I might try just one more to see if King can make her decision work, but I have to say that I’m sceptical.
Arthur & George is a very different kettle of fish. This was a re-read and I’m very glad to have been given a reason to go back and think again about a book that I thought was excellent the first time round and which I now think even more remarkable. As I’m sure most of you know, Barnes has taken a real life incident about a young solicitor, George Eydalji, who is accused of and eventually jailed for the mutilation of several horses. Some years after his release from jail Conan Doyle took up his case and set out to prove his innocence. The final outcome was a typically British piece of compromise with George exonerated but the decision taken that it was nobody’s fault that he was jailed and therefore no compensation should fall due. (We still do this today, as anyone listening to last week’s judgement about the helicopter crash blamed on the pilots when there was ample evidence that the machine’s computers were unreliable will witness.)
The first time I read this I was most taken up with the injustice, especially as the case was local and I felt the shame of what George was put through personally. This time, however, I found myself noticing much more what Barnes is saying about the relationship between fact and story. Maybe this was because I’ve been reflecting on the use of real characters in fiction recently, but I don’t think so. I think it really is central to the book. George is almost totally lacking in imagination. His world is one of logic and therefore he cannot understand why he is being accused of a crime when there is nothing but circumstantial evidence against him. What he doesn’t realise is that most people don’t relate to pure fact. As Barbara Hardy once said, “narrative is a primary act of mind” and so the people called upon to judge George take a few of the facts that suit them and then weave a story round them with him as the villain.
Conan Doyle, on the other hand, is totally taken over by story. From his earliest days he has lived in a world dominated by the tales of chivalry his mother told him and consequently has lived his life out as if he were a character in one of his own books. The defence he eventually offers in order to exonerate George is every bit as much of a fabrication from circumstance as that which originally condemned him and George is bemused as to why Doyle should ever think it would hold water. He may well be grateful for his support but he is as different in mind from the great writer as it is possible for two men to be.
What really interests me though is the fact that exasperating as Doyle is, as wrong as he is, it is still the story writer, the being with the narrative cast of mind, with whom I am most comfortable. I may be able to see logically that George is right in the perspective he takes on the case, but his total in ability to see the world in terms of story feels odd. He feels odd. It’s fascinating and very cleverly done. Kenneth Pike once said “man is a pattern making, pattern seeking animal”. This book suggests that the concept of man as a story making, story seeking animal is every bit as true.