I am among the world’s dorkiest tourists.  I don’t go where the tour books recommend…I perform book pilgrimages, often to some genuinely remote and not-very-picturesque places.  Once, I wandered around a rural Dublin neighborhood for two hours trying to figure out in which house Bram Stoker was born.  I gagged down an egg cream in New Mexico, because I was reading Harriet the Spy at the time, and wanted to taste her favorite drink (Harriet and I have very different tastes in soda-fountain faire…)

So during this trip, I decided to make another book pilgrimage.  The Eurostar–that train that links England to mainland Europe via a tunnel under the English Channel–was having a sale, so I decided to visit Oscar Wilde’s grave.

We all have stories that save us, and Oscar Wilde provided many of those stories for me.  His poems taught me how to feel poetry;  I still am not good at the academic analysis of verse, but Oscar didn’t much care if you “got” it, as long as you felt something…and feel something, I did.  His plays made me laugh during my high school years when nothing else seemed particularly funny at all.  But most of all, his life story taught me that it wasn’t just ok to be different–that you had an obligation to be honest with yourself, and be the person you want to be–and to respect others for being honest, as well.  That hypocrisy was the worst crime, and beauty was the highest achievement, whether that was a beautiful piece of art, a beautiful friendship, or a beautiful life.  I was, and continue to be inspired by Oscar’s bravery and intellect and sense of humor–I named by cat after him, for Heaven’s sake, is there any higher honor?

So, anyways, I have made a number of pilgrimages to Oscar…I creeped out some nice London residents when I was in high school by lurking outside the house he once owned on Tite Street.  I convinced by really very kind cousin to take me up to Portora School in Enniskillen so I could see the school he attended as a child.  And this time around, I made it to his grave.

Why Paris?  Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labor in 1895 for the crime of ‘gross indecency’ (homosexual activity, which was illegal in England until 1967).  The trial was such an overwhelmingly large media event that it destroyed Wilde’s name and reputation.  His wife was forced to divorce him by her family; his young children had their surnames legally changed to distance themselves from their father; many of his former friends refused to have anything to do with him.  When he was released from prison in 1898, Wilde left England forever and moved to Paris where he could live in relative anonymity.  He died in Paris in 1900, and his best friend, Robbie Ross (another of my personal heroes) arranged for him to be buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.  Eight years later, Ross had received some two thousand pounds from an anonymous donor to build a marker for Wilde’s grave.  He chose American sculptor Jacob Epstein, who moved in the same circles as Ross.

Epstein encountered any number of difficulties in completing his assignment; the French government refused to recognize it as “art”, and therefore charged £120 before Epstein could transfer his work to Wilde’s grave.  He had to bribe police officers to look the other way as he worked at the grave site, because he was crafted a nude, and was constantly running the risk of being prosecuted for lewdness.  The officials at Père Lachaise kept trying to cover up bits of his nude figure so as to avoid offending the public, making Epstein so furious he refused to attend the unveiling.

..So, back to my story: Père Lachaise itself is an enormous (110 acres), and very well-known cemetery, serving as the resting place for a number of very famous people (other than Oscar), including Frederic Chopin, Jim Morrison, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and Eugène Delacroix.  I know about Delacroix, especially, since a not-very-happy Frenchman chastised me for walking right by Delacroix’s grave without paying him proper attention (I apologized to Delacroix, by the way).

Oscar Wilde is buried towards the Porte Gambetta side of the cemetery (number 1 in the map above), and, for all the trouble Epstein had in crafting his monument, the thing itself is remarkable, and makes the gravesite a visually arresting one, surrounded as it is by very traditional late-19th century monoliths and tablets.  I should have been expecting the big plexiglass barrier around the grave; for years, people have been coming up and kissing the monument, leaving big lipstick marks all over it, and the chemicals in the cosmetics were actually damaging the stone of the grave irreparably, making this “kiss proof guard” a necessity in 2011.

What surprised me most of all, though, were the number of people who were there.  There wasn’t a throng by any means, but I had brought my lunch with me to eat with Oscar, and in the 45 minutes or so that I sat on the stump near his grave, I was never alone.  One man even came up with a bunch of flowers and dropped a red rose over the kiss barrier so it lay on the grave.  People came, just to sit near Oscar’s grave, to talk with their companions about his works, or his life, or what those things meant to each person, specifically.

For decades after Oscar’s death, his plays were not performed, his poems were not read, and it was assumed by many that his name would fade away eventually, or remained forever tainted by the scandal that surrounded his imprisonment.  It was for that reason that a quote from his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol was carved onto the back of his grave:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

But what I saw, instead, were a lot of other people whom Wilde had saved, paying their respects out of love and respect, not pity.  And that made the whole pilgrimage worthwhile.

With apologies for missing a few posts, dear readers.  We have now returned to The Land of Reliable Internet!

This poster was spotted in a number of London Underground stations this past week–namely, a young person, who I think to be a young lady, sitting in a large leather chair in a fancy waistcoat and jacket, looking very pleased.  The ad is for “The Sherlock Holmes Experience”…at Madame Tussauds Museum.

Now, first and foremost, Madame Tussauds is within walking distance of Baker Street, so, as a purist, I would argue that if you want a ‘Sherlock Holmes Experience’, you should go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street, but that is beside the point…

Seeing this poster made me realize just how popular Sherlock Holmes has become once again.  When I was a younin’ (you know, before cell phones and the high-speed internet and the wheel), and told people that I wasn’t as impressed by The Hound of the Baskervilles as I was by The Sign of the Four, or that I cried while reading “The Final Problem” and “The Case of the Dying Detective”, I got funny looks.  When I told people that my favorite part of going to London was visiting Baker Street, I was asked “Oh, is that, like, a real place?  How funny (you are!)!”  Now, thanks to Mr. Cumberbatch and Sherlock, in addition to Mr. Downey, Jr. and Sherlock Holmes, among a number of other things, to be a Holmesian is to be cool once again.  And while I would highly, highly, encourage everyone to read the original books, because they are terrific, or listen to the audiobooks, as read by David Timson, because they might actually improve upon the originals at times, it’s also pretty interesting to see how Holmes has made it into the 21st century, and shows no signs of tiring.

Part of the reason for this is because Holmes is such a perfect character to be spoofed, pastiched, and re-invented time and time and time again.  Fun fact: Did you know that the first Sherlock Holmes pastiche was written by James Barrie, who was a good friend of Conan Doyle’s?  Barrie and Doyle wrote a play together  that bombed spectacularly (partly because it wasn’t about Holmes, and no one wanted Doyle to write anything else), and, as a result, Barrie wrote “The Adventure of the Two Collaborators“, in which an irate writer confronts Holmes, who has managed to confound his attempts at fame.  It actually gets pretty creepy at the end, as the writer threatens Holmes with destruction unles he goes to see the play:

“I would rather melt into air,” replied Holmes, proudly taking another chair. “But I can tell you why the public don’t go to your piece without sitting the thing out myself.”

“Why?”

“Because,” replied Holmes calmly, “they prefer to stay away.”

A dead silence followed that extraordinary remark. For a moment the two intruders gazed with awe upon the man who had unravelled their mystery so wonderfully. Then drawing their knives —

Holmes grew less and less, until nothing was left save a ring of smoke which slowly circled to the ceiling.

The last words of great men are often noteworthy. These were the last words of Sherlock Holmes: “Fool, fool! I have kept you in luxury for years. By my help you have ridden extensively in cabs, where no author was ever seen before. Henceforth you will ride in buses!”

The brute sunk into a chair aghast.

The other author did not turn a hair.

Plenty of other pastiches and parodies followed this one, and the Sherlockian genre is alive and well today, as witnessed by the sheer number of Holmesian references on our own shelves.  Here are just a few titles to get you into the spirit of things.  But, you know, we also have the originals.  Just so you know….

A Study in Brimstone: I will admit, it takes a lot to get me to laugh at a book, and even more to get me to laugh at a parody, especially if it is a parody of something as sacred to me as Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson.  But G.S. Denning’s new book had me giggling so loudly that I may have frightened another reader (for which, hearty apologies).  This book may not be for everyone, but if you are one of those good people who have read Doyle’s stories time and again, have passages inscribed on your heart, and who roll your eyes when someone uses the word “Elementary” inappropriately, then this book is comedic gem.  Whereas Sherlock Holmes is a genuis, Warlock Holmes is a rather hopeless, hapless git, whose only use is being a beacon for dark magic, demons, and other nasty supernatural entities.  If it weren’t for his stalwart companion, Watson, he would probably be in prison–actually, one of my favorite aspects of this book is how much credit it gives to Watson throughout for helping Holmes survive in the real world.  I know this won’t be everyone’s brand of humor, but it was absolutely mine.  And I hope it’s yours, so I have someone with whom I can giggle.

 A Study in Charlotte: This teen novel is set in a Connecticut boarding school, where two students named Holmes and Watson set about solving a murder mystery.  You know what makes it great?  Holmes is a young woman named Charlotte.  Charlotte has all of Holmes’ observational skills, gifts for math and science, and anti-social tendencies towards rudeness.  Which is simply sensational, not only because of the somewhat problematic way in which woman are treated in the original Holmes works, but because those problematic assumptions are still with us today.  But Charlotte is a gem of a character, with strength and nerve and akwardness aplenty, making this book–and the series to come, something that every Holmes fan should check out.

 Mycroft Holmes: It turns out, Holmes fans are a worldwide group, representing not only Library Staff and patrons, but internationally-renown NBA stars, as well!  It turns out that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been a long-time fan of The Great Detective, and used Holmes’ own skills to overcome opponents on the basketball court.  And now that he is retired, he took it upon himself, with help of writer Anna Waterhouse, to write a novel about Sherlock’s big brother, Mycroft.  I love this for so many reasons: first, because anyone who loves Holmes is cool with me.  Second, everyone forgets about Mycroft, who is a fascinating character, even if he only shows up twice in the whole canon.  Third, Abdul-Jabbar takes Mycroft off the shores of England and involves him in a case in Trindad, which not only gives him a terrific back-story, but also involves so much historic detail, real-world issues, economic, racial, and social, that are so often overlooked in our study of Holmes, and fourth, it’s a pretty darn good book, with some great character development, plotting, and atmosphere, making this a super selection for any fellow Holmesian devotee.

It’s that time of year again, beloved patrons, when your favorite Blogger heads off to get some research done…and I know we’ve been to Belfast before, but I’m working on the same Dissertation, so we are heading back to the same city.

I’ve tried to make thing a bit interesting for you, dear readers, by going on some new adventures, however.  This time around, I trekked out to Falls Road, in West Belfast, to visit the only operational Carnegie Library in Belfast.

Originally, the area that became the Falls Road was a petty kindgom known in Irish as Túath na bhFál, or Territory of the Enclosures.  It was incorporated into Belfast by the British government in the 19th century, and today, the Falls Road is very much a working-class area of Belfast.  Since the late 1960’s, has been a bedrock of Socialist and Irish Nationalist politics.  The worldwide Civil Rights movement united Northern Irish Catholics into a political group that rallied for better housing and voting rights (it’s a complicated system, but essentially, business owners had more say in elections, and the economy was structured to favor Protestant business owners).  This prompted Protestants in power to fear a Catholic uprising that would unite Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and resulting in a backlash against protestors that, to many, seemed very excessive.  The result was what has become known as The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and, in many ways, the Falls Road was at the center of the conflict.

In 1970, the British Government imposed what was called “The Falls Curfew”, during which some 3,000 British troops sealed off the Falls Road neighborhood–home to about 10,000 people–with arms and tear gas.  For those who were not already die-hard Republicans (who believed in a united Ireland), this was the final straw.  Even today, the area is marked out by garlands of the Irish national flag, and a huge number of murals that demonstrate allegiance to political prisoners around the world, as well as those who are victims of violence, like this one that commemorated the shooting in Orlando, Florida in June.

One of the most prominent and famous murals is the one dedicated to Bobby Sands.  In 1981, Bobby Sands, who grew up in the Falls Road area, was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and became the leader of IRA who were being held in the Long Kesh Prison at the age of 26.  Sands was in his sixth year of a fourteen year sentence when he led a hunger strike that was intended to force the British Government to give IRA prisoners special status (effectively recognizing them as prisoners of war, rather than common criminals).  He died 66 days later,  the first of ten men to die on the strike.  The Hunger Strike itself garnered worldwide attention, radicalized Irish politics, and was instrumental in getting Sinn Fein, until then a fringe political party, into mainstream politics.  This is the 35 anniversary of those hunger strikes, and, in additional to being commemorated all around the Falls Road, a new documentary has been released about Sands himself, and the movement he led, which is getting a huge amount of attention, praise, and criticism, particularly from families of IRA violence.

The Falls Road Library was opened in 1908, and was the first of three libraries built in Belfast with money from the Carnegie Foundation, which also built the Melrose Library (as well as a number of others that are not on the NOBLE network).   Carnegie Libraries were all built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman Andrew Carnegie, who didn’t always treat his workers terribly well (see the 1892 Homstead Strike, for example), but who built over 3,000 libraries around the world.  Like George Peabody, Carnegie wanted people to have access to libraries, and beautiful libraries, at that.  His natural-born curiosity made him an active learner all his life, and he wanted to share that sense of intellectual adventure around the world.  However, these buildings aren’t always easy to keep-up, or to run, so the number of Carnegie Libraries is falling away (many are being turned into larger municipal buildings or private residences, and many more have been demolished or have burned down and never replaced).  So the chance to visit one–and a thriving one, at that–is always a treat.

On the outside, The Falls Road Library is a stunning turn-of-the-century building, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post.  On the inside, though, it’s been beautifully renovated, with lots of room for books, meetings, and programs (you can check out their website here, if you like).  I must also comment on their super-comfy chairs, from which I took this not-very-good picture of the ground floor reading room:

If you want to learn more about the Falls Road, its legacy, and the people who call it home, here are a few books you can check out today!

Shattering Silence: Begoña Aretxaga spent a year living with the community in the Falls Road during the height of The Troubles in the 1970’s, and her descriptions of living conditions and activism there is extraordinarily powerful.  The premise of her book, however, is how women, specifically, gained power and political agency through their activism, in a way that men couldn’t.  It focuses on motherhood and women’s health, on public protests and education, and is as helpful a book on gender studies as it is on modern Irish history.  You’ll have to order this book from the Boston Public Library, but, believe me, it is completely and totally worth the wait.

Nothing But an Unfinished Song : Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker who Ignited a Generation: Originally released to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes, Denis O’Hare’s book not only deals with Bobby Sands himself, but of the movement he helped lead within Long Kesh prison, a deeply Socialist movement that was as much cultural as it was political, and the world in which he operated–a world of deep economic deprivations, particularly in Northern Ireland, and a time of enormous change within the Irish Republican movement.  He also deals with the worldwide implications of this strike, from the speeches made in Peru to the hunger strike that Nelson Mandela held in support.  Without shying away from the more idealistic and unsavory aspects of Sands and the movement as a whole, O’Hare’s book is a well-rounded and very engaging piece of work that will really help those looking for a good introduction, or follow-up, to this crucial moment in Northern Irish history.

Hunger: Alexander McQueen’s first film is enormously powerful for a number of reasons–many of the actors in the cast are Northern Irish or Irish natives, whose own memories of The Troubles and the 1981 Hunger Strikes influenced their performances; Michael Fassbender’s performance as Bobby Sands is a truly remarkable example of dedication (and the truly terrible nature of a hunger strike); perhaps, most of all, McQueen was very dedicated to showing how conditions for prisoners and prison workers alike was a unique form of hell, making this a remarkably balanced–though not easy to watch–film.

Carnegie Libraries; Their History and Impact on American Public Library Development: Just like the title says…here is a history of America’s Carnegie Libraries, and the way in which they changed our national Public Library system.