Reviewing "Moon of Israel" by H. Rider Haggard

After the colossal disappointment that was She, I was dubious about trying another H. Rider Haggard novel that wasn’t part of the Allan Quatermain series. It was a pleasant surprise, then, when I read Moon of Israel: A Tale of the Exodus. In fact, I was immediately impressed when I read Haggard’s forward, which detailed where he got his historical information for this story from Sir Gaston Maspero, Director of the Cairo Museum and one of the first "serious" Egyptologists (as opposed to tomb raiders and sensational adventurers). As an Egyptology geek this intrigued me.

The Mabinogion - The Immortal Sir Kai

I had mentioned before how The Mabinogion’s stories contained a lot of gruesomeness. What I did not have time or space to mention, however, was that as I was reading the book, the majority of that violence seemed to be aimed at one character: Sir Kai.

Now, Sir Kai (also spelled Kay, Cei, or Cay depending on translation and author’s spelling preference) is the foster-brother of King Arthur himself. Anyone who’s read T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone (or seen the Disney movie, which is fairly accurate despite lacking the thematic depth of White’s prose) may remember that Arthur, although heir to the crown of England, was raised by rather mediocre knight named Sir Ector and everyone was ignorant of Arthur’s true birthright until he pulled out the sword in the stone. Sir Ector’s own son, Kai, although generally characterized as a bully or boor, is made knight of the Round Table upon his foster-brother’s ascension to the throne.

His role in these stories is usually negative—he serves as the brutish muscle, the hotheaded person picking fights and challenging duels, or mocking the new Camelot arrivals even though they are really diamonds in the rough who will show him up with their superior deeds of valor and questing. However, I’ve always felt sorry for him, and feel he gets a bad rap.

The Chronicles of Prydain: The Companions

This doesn't really fit my idea of The Companions themselves,
but it does remind me a bit of King Smoit and how I imagine his army "practiced" for battle.

One of the best things about The Chronicles of Prydain are the characters. Each is written with such care and obvious affection on the part of Lloyd Alexander, and each is very different from each other so that their interactions are dynamic and interesting no matter what the circumstance. There’s Gwydion, a warrior Prince of Don who is always compared to a shaggy gray wolf. There’s Achren, the beautiful but wicked and perhaps ancient enchantress and former queen of Prydain itself. There’s Dallben, an enchanter who is supposedly wise but spends most of his time either napping or cranky because someone woke him from a nap (although there is one extremely awesome chapter in The High King where he blew these preconceptions of mine out of the water). There’s Coll, a great warrior who just wants to get back to tending the turnips in his garden. There’s Orddu, Orwen, and Orgoch, three mysterious women who can appear as hags or beautiful women and perhaps represent the Fates, who are both horrifying and hilarious in their kindly attempts to turn the heroes into toads (or worse….Orgoch’s habit of licking her chops tips us off that she’s the grim reaper one).

Then there are characters like the good-natured but cotton-headed Prince Rhun, the philosopher-potter Annlaw Clay-Shaper, the resourceful family man Llonio, the pessimistic and hyperchondriac Marsh-wiggle watchman Gwystyl, the giant music-loving cat Llyan, the obnoxious former giant Glew, the very convincing villain Dorath, the sarcastic messenger-crow Kaw, Medwyn the animal-lover and possible Welsh interpretation of Noah, and the boisterous King Smoit. I haven’t even mentioned them all, but you get the idea of what a colorful cast of characters peoples the fair land of Prydain.  

But most importantly there are our heroes, the Companions:

The (Original?) Unreliable Narrator: Ishmael of Moby Dick

Call me suspicious. 

The main evidence of who Ishmael is—and by extension his reliability as a narrator—takes place during the first part of the story where he actually talks about himself and his actions.  After that, he sort of fades into the background.

Ishmael’s relationship with Queequeg seems to me strange, because of Ishmael’s initial reaction. It’s almost as if he’s a greenhorn, with no experience of the sea and in awe of everything around him, especially those of different cultures, rather than someone who has been to sea before—as Ishmael claims. And yet if I disregard Ishmael’s assertion that he has been to sea before and is simply looking for a different ship, then that may explain his complete ignorance to seafaring life, but not his immediate acceptance of Queequeg as a friend and equal in a time when a colored man would be treated as a servant or property.

When the Sidekick Tells the Story: Two Vernean Narrators for the Price of One

As I was making a mental list of narrators who are actually the sidekicks, I thought of the sidekicks of heroes in series of stories surrounding them. To round out this series of entries, however, I’m going to depart from that pattern to talk about two narrators of two distinct novels by one author, Jules Verne. 

When the Sidekick Tells the Story: Professor Brinton “Uncle Brinnie” Garrett

He’s been crushed by collapsing ancient ruins, trudged across the Sahara, paddled up Central American rapids, stopped government coups and archaeological frauds, and had everything explode around him from riverboats to gift-baskets of bratwurst. All things considered, it’s a wonder Professor Brinton Garrett survived long enough to narrate the six books that comprise the Adventures of Vesper Holly series by the often-overlooked and almost-always-underappreciated young adult author, Lloyd Alexander. 

And who, you may ask, is this Miss Vesper Holly? Only Professor Garrett’s adventurous teenage ward who keeps dragging him from his peaceful home in Strafford, PA to exotic and dangerous locales abroad!  With marmalade-colored hair and a penchant for danger, Vesper not only is the orphaned daughter of Garrett’s old colleague, she’s also a genius in her own right and has the wanderlust of a Victorian female Indiana Jones. She also owns a volcano. But just a small one.

When the Sidekicks Tell the Story: The Often Irrelevant and Confusing Archie Goodwin

[Wolfe's] brain works better when he is sitting down and mine when I am on my feet. Not that I would dream of comparing mine with his, though I do believe that in one or two respects – Oh, well. 

~ Rex Stout, Plot it Yourself

To recap my “When the Sidekicks Tell the Story” series thus far: Watson is the narrator for Holmes because Watson adds emotional depth to the mind puzzles. Hastings is the narrator for Poirot mainly for his good-hearted, relatable British familiarity in comparison to the eccentric Belgian. Wooster is the narrator for Jeeves because it would be uber annoying to have every sentence end with “sir” which would have been the case had Jeeves narrated it himself. 

Archie Goodwin is the narrator for Nero Wolfe for NONE of the above reasons. No, the true reason Archie is the narrator is because Nero Wolfe NEVER WILLINGLY LEAVES HIS HOUSE. Therefore without Archie, Wolfe would just sit and read and never solve any cases until he ran out of caviar. 

Recipe for a Detective: Nero Wolfe and the Amalgamation of Mystery Styles

Take one deductive genius with outlandish eccentricities.

Combine with one hard-boiled gumshoe with an eye for a good-looking dame and a .45 in his holster.

Stir in some hardnosed, cigar-chewing NYPD policemen who think both genius and gumshoe are concealing evidence.

Fold in a Swiss chef who has no personal life. 

Pinch of Saul Panzer (if desired). 

Yield: 33 novels and 39 short stories by Rex Stout.* 

When the Sidekicks Tell the Story: Bertie Wooster, Master and Sidekick

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”

P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves

Do you ever get that urge to write a complex story about a genius servant who, through intelligence, deadpan wit, and sheer luck manages to control his cheerful-but dippy master and even more dippy friend and enemies?  Does that urge come with the matching accessory of wanting to include dialog ranging from Shakespearean poetry to phrases like ‘What ho,’ 'oh rather!' and 'toodle off,' names like Gussie Fink-Nottle and Bingo Little?

Then I’m sorry to tell you that you’d be ripping off P.G. “Plum” Wodehouse big time.  But luckily he saved you the trouble of writing them, so you can straightaway start reading them.  

When the Sidekicks Tell the Story: The Watson that Started It All

Okay, so maybe the title exaggerates. I’m not sure Dr. Watson is the first sidekick-narrator in all of fiction. I’m pretty sure the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s mysteries is the sidekick of Dupin, and that was written before the Holmes stories. However, the narrator of those stories has no name. Not very sidekick of him. Any self-respecting sidekick would at least have a name, if not a catchphrase like “Holy morgue-murdering apes, Dupin!”  or “Great perniciously purloined letters!”

But I digress.  

My point is whether Watson was the first or not, he is the one who people will think about first when you say to a random passerby, “Hey, what literary character is a sidekick who tells the stories of an awesome hero?” He even has his own trope. 

Watson may not be the brilliant mind, avid detective or raving eccentric that makes Holmes one of the most iconic characters in literature, but Holmes owes a TON to Watson. Without Watson’s character describing the “lumbering” and emotional details of a case, the Holmes adventures would be sterile and boring.  

It is Watson who takes note of the beauty of the damsel in distress, or the malicious expression on the villain’s face when Holmes thwarts his dastardly scheme. If Holmes narrated his own stories (and he does in two of them, but it’s just not the same!!!) the brilliant deductions would be treated as obvious, if Holmes took the time to describe them at all. With Watson as narrator, however, every deduction is treated as stupendous and awe-inspiring. 

The other characters of the Holmes adventures are more important because of Watson, too. With Holmes, it’s the mystery itself, not his clients, who interest him in his cases. But Watson adds heart.  

This isn’t just a mystery to be solved for the good doctor, it’s a matter of saving lives, or putting them back together, or setting someone’s mind at ease, or helping a girl with no other protectors. The people who come to 221b are desperate enough to seek out a private detective rather than go to the police, and because Watson tells the story they are given some and humanity. 

Holmes might be a genius about the different soil types or cigar ash, but Watson is a genius at making the Holmes cases about the people as well as the puzzle.