BEFORE SHERLOCK HOLMES: WHODUNNIT PIONEER ANNA K. GREEN.

Anna Katharine Green, pioneer of American detective novels, wrote her whodunnit , THE LEAVENWORTH CASE, a decade before the debut of Sherlock Holmes. Here is a taste of her writing: 

• The victim: The horrible, blood-curdling IT that yesterday was a living, breathing man.
• The suspects: Eleanore and Mary, who will inherit the dead man’s money.
• The butler’s testimony:

The young ladies were attached to their uncle?

Oh, yes, sir.

And to each other?

Well, yes, I suppose so. It’s not for me to say.

The jury respected the reticence of the servant.

• The detective: Who do you suspect? I whispered. Everyone and nobody, he said. It is not for me to suspect but to detect.
• Eleanore despairs: Once a suspect, always a suspect: The finger of suspicion never forgets the way it has once pointed. My name is tainted forever!
• The dead man’s secretary, another suspect?: He had the habitual expression of one who in his short life had seen more of sorrow than joy, less of pleasure than care and anxiety.
• Another victim: The pallor and fixity of the pretty Irish face staring upon me from amidst the rumpled clothes of her bed struck me with so deathlike a chill, that had it not been for one instant of preparation, I should have been seriously dismayed.
• The surprise ending: If a bombshell had exploded at my feet, or the evil one himself appeared at my call, I should not have been more astounded!

Green went on to publish 36 novels and a volume of poems described by Harper’s magazine as “vigorous productions”.

JOSEPH ROTH:THE  AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN OFFICER ON THE EVE OF WW I. 

• It never crossed his mind that he could follow any other calling.
• He viewed death in the field as a necessary consequence of warrior fame.
• He wore a gleaming officer’s scarf, a lacquered helmet emanating its own black sunshine, smooth fiery waxed riding boots with glittering spurs, two rows of lustrous, almost blazing buttons on his coat, and the blessing of the ethereal power of the Order of Maria Theresa.
• He loved the Radetzky March, the roll of drums, the tattoo accelerated by the march rhythm, the shattering smile of the lovely cymbals, and the rumbling thunder of the kettledrum – the brief and jolly storm of military music.
• Her spoke a nasal German that vaguely recalled distant guitars twanging in the night and also the last dainty vibration of fading bells. It was a soft but also precise language, tender and spiteful at once.

The Austrian Empire was about to collapse, but

• His ears were not sharp enough to discern the whirring gears of the great hidden mills that were already grinding out the Great War.
• Only the tavern-keeper knew and felt no more need to prove himself a loyal subject to the Kaiser. He moved the official portrait from the taproom to the kitchen. And there it was, with the emperor’s snow white uniform densely flyblown as if riddled by minute grapeshot.

(Source: Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March, trans. J. Neugroschel)

EAT FIRST, TALK LATER. KAFKA GETS A LESSON IN TABLE MANNERS.

As a child Franz Kafka was intimidated by his father, who was a big man. He hated getting undressed in front of him in the change room of the public bath:

I was bony, weak, and thin; you were strong, big, and square. Even inside the change room I thought of myself as a miserable creature, and not only before your eyes, but before the whole world, for you were the measure of all things to me. When we stepped outside and mingled with the crowd, I holding your hand, a little skeleton, insecure, barefoot on the deck, afraid of the water, I was seized with despair because I was unable to imitate your swim strokes, which you kept demonstrating to me with the best of intentions, but to my deepest embarrassment…
Your physical superiority was paralleled by your intellectual supremacy… You ruled the world from your armchair. Your opinion was correct. The opinion of others was crazy, exaggerated, meschugge, abnormal. Your confidence was so great that you did not even have to be consistent and still prevailed in your opinion...  For example, you were able to abuse the Czechs, the Germans, the Jews, and not in selected cases but in every respect, and finally there was no one left standing except you. You became for me the enigma that characterizes all tyrants, whose right is based on their person rather than on reason…
As a child I was mainly in your company at dinnertime. Thus your education focused largely on correct table manners. Everything that was on my plate had to be eaten. No one was allowed to speak about the quality of the food. You yourself, however, often found the food inedible and called it “fodder”. “That animal”, the cook, had spoiled it.  Because you usually had a healthy appetite and you liked to eat everything quickly, hot, and in large bites, I had to hurry up. Dark silence prevailed at the table, interrupted only by admonitions: “Eat first, talk later.” Or: “Hurry, hurry, hurry.” Or: “Look here, I’ve already finished my dinner.” Others were not allowed to chew on bones. You were allowed to do it. Others were not allowed to slurp. You were allowed to do it.  The main thing was to cut the bread straight. That you cut it with a knife dripping with sauce was unimportant. Others had to watch out not to drop any crumbs on the floor. The largest amount of crumbs accumulated under your seat. During dinner, others had to concentrate exclusively on the food. You cleaned and cut your nails, sharpened pencils, reamed out your ears with a toothpick. Father, please understand, that these things are insignificant details in themselves. They were only depressing for me because you were such a hugely important person in my eyes and did not observe the commandments which you imposed on me…and I could not obey because I didn’t have your strength, or your appetite or your skill…That is how it appeared to me as a child – not in my thoughts, but in my feelings.
(Source: Letter to my Father, text on www.kafka.org; my translation)

LOUD, FORCEFUL, AND QUICK TO ANGER: KAFKA ON THE EDUCATIONAL METHODS OF HIS FATHER.

This is Part 3 of Kafka’s Letter to his Father. For Parts 1 and 2 see my posts of 9 and 12 April.

I was a timid child, but at the same time obstinate, the way children are. Certainly my mother pampered me, but I cannot believe that I was especially difficult to guide. I cannot believe that a friendly word, a quiet taking-by-the-hand, a friendly glance would not have obtained from me anything anyone wanted.
[But Kafka’s father tended to be “loud, forceful, and quick to anger”]
I remember one incident from the first years of my life. Perhaps you remember it too. One night I yowled continuously for water, not because I was thirsty, but partly to cause trouble, and partly to amuse myself. When a few strong threats had no effect to stop me, you took me out of my bed, carried me into the corridor, and left me there for a while in front of the closed door, alone and dressed only in my nightshirt. I won’t say that your action was wrong. Perhaps there was no other way of restoring quiet. I only want to characterize the methods of education you used and their effect on me.  In the wake of that experience I became obedient, but I was harmed internally. My nature did not allow me to properly connect the senseless begging for water, which seemed ordinary to me, with the extraordinary terror of being carried out of the room. For years I suffered from the painful idea that a giant man – my father and the highest instance – would come practically without cause and carry me from my bed into the corridor, and that I was a complete nothing to him. That was only a small beginning, but the feeling of worthlessness which often dominates me (which in other respects may be a noble and productive feeling) came about through your influence. I needed a little encouragement, a little friendliness, a little opening up of my path. Instead you closed off my path, perhaps with good intentions, to make me take another.
But I wasn’t cut out for that. You praised me, for example, when I saluted or marched well, but I was no future soldier, or you encouraged me to eat well and even to drink beer with my meal, or you praised me when I repeated songs I didn’t even understand or copied your favourite expressions, but none of that had any reference to my future.
(Source: unpublished works on www.kafka.org; my translation)

THE BEST QUOTATIONS FROM @HISTORYCRACKS.

Lawrence Osborne

This is what I have been reading/tweeting lately:

• Backpacking: just another twist in the history of Western voyeurism and exploitation (Tessa Hadley)
• Making love to an older man: you get the heavy hinterland of his worldly experience driven in behind the fine point of the moment (Tessa Hadley)
• Old carpets: have a sweet rancid sponginess that my English shoes like (Lawrence Osborne)
• Rowing: warmed him and made his back feel strong as if his shoulder muscles extended from his neck to his waist (David Mamet)
• End of story: The listeners felt as if they had let out a breath…and slowly began to rearrange themselves (David Mamet)
• Wealth: We wanted our American plenty to show, but not too much. We wanted to make it clear that our tastes were simpler than our means would have permitted (Wallace Stegner)
• People without a past of their own: Americans hang around national parks that enclose other people’s archeology (Wallace Stegner)
• Autism? He adopted an avuncular expression and squeezed my shoulder, one-two-three, an autistic mime of sincerity (Hari Kunzru)
• Intolerance: An address book filled with scribbled-out names (Hari Kunzru)

Stay tuned for another instalment of Kafka's letter to his father. Will post on Sunday.