Entry 136: "Four Faultless Felons"

Dear Internet,

                Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a writer of paradoxes.  The various novellas, novels, and short stories he penned are filled with them.  Just about anything that you pick up by the man has a paradox at its core.  Not to be confused with the oxymoron which is more a contradiction in the purest form, Chesterton's paradoxes require the two things that they present to be both true yet seem like they contradict one another.  For example, the courage of a soldier when caught behind enemy lines can only save his life by throwing away his concern for his life and risking death.  If he stays still, he will surely die, but if he risks his life, he may save it.  Another example would be Chesterton's arguments for the smallness of man against God yet hugeness to that of the rest of the universe.  But I will not go on and on since you are most likely wondering what any of this has to do with "Four Faultless Felons."  The title of the book probably holds a clue.

                "Four Faultless Felons" is a collection of four novellas or shorter tales telling of four individuals who are more than mere criminals.    Each of the four men tells his tale to reporter Asa Lee Pinion, an American reporter gone to England to find a story on Count Raoul de Marillac.  Pinion goes to London hoping to learn about the extravagant lifestyle of the count.  In one way, he is not dissapointed.  The count frequently eats expensive dishes and goes out to see the newest bawdiest plays that are being produced.  It is only when the reporter is left alone with the four men that he learns the truth.  The count is in fact living a rather penitent lifestyle.  All the dishes he eats are counter to his tastes, and he goes to the plays because they are boring and uninteresting.  The men that tell Pinion this truth about the count have each committed a crime of sorts, but there is obviously more to each tale.  The crimes committed are murder, fraud, theft, and treason.  Like the count, each man is counter to what he originally appears.  Together, the men form the "Club of Men Misunderstood."

                The stories are told in a classic detective manner with the catch that there is usually no crime being committed.  The reader is privy to this understanding just from reading the title of the book.  It is understood right from the beginning that there is going to be mysteries that go beyond the immediate ones being told, but that does not mean that those mysteries are going to be easy to solve.  I do not wish to even go into the details of each story since doing so will end up giving away a clue or two.  So, you will just have to take my word that the tales are each riveting and play out well.

                The book is less like a detective novel than I might be leading on.  A normal detective story flows in a rather strict formula.  The various characters are presented, giving each just enough of a presentation that the audience can understand them in an instant.  The setting is likewise given such treatment.  Afterwards, the crime is committed.  The clues are presented either at this point or in the following moments.  Depending on the length of the story, a number of false accusations and incorrect attempts to the solution are presented.  Eventually, the mystery is solved with the truth being presented to the audience at least and the various characters at most.  In "Four Faultless Felons," just one of these elements is skewed.  The crime itself is given scrutiny.  The crime itself is called into question.  The crime itself is brought forward to testify in the witness chair.  If anything, the book is more of a vanishing act.  The crimes, not the criminals, pull escape acts.

                I have already done a review of Chesterton's more famous mystery stories, the Father Brown books.  It would be probably best to compare this book with those stories since the Father Brown stories are more widely recognized.  In the same way that the Father Brown stories center around the criminal rather than the crime, "Four Faultless Felons" center on why the individuals act in the manner that they do rather than merely figuring out how they pulled off their actions.  It is not enough to know how the action is committed but to figure out why it is committed in the first place.  The motive is what lays down the groundwork for each tale.  Without motive or intent, a crime is usually just an accident.

                Unlike the Father Brown stories, which are usually less than twenty pages, the stories here average near the forty five page mark.  Also, the four stories are broken into subsequent chapters.  This means that each of the stories is given a wide birth to be built, examined, and solved.  This of course leads to a number of notable characteristics.  With the lengthening of the story, there is much wider chance for the audience to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed.  Yet at the same time, the story can become much more intertwined and complicated.  Chesterton walks right down the middle without leaving the reader ensnared in the thicket of connecting lines.  The added lengths do not make the stories convoluted.  They allow the stories greater depth and life, but they also allow Chesterton a greater ability to explore a specific theme.  In the Father Brown stories, most of the themes would end up being a short speech delivered out by the amateur sleuth at the end each story.  They were very much "and the moral of the story is" type of deliveries.  This was due to the brevity of the various stories.  Here, Chesterton is able to dig into the themes well before the solution is presented.  He is able to have the characters expand their positions well before the curtain is going to set.  The antagonistic characters are even able to express themselves without being curtly cut off or summarized.  

                "Four Faultless Felons" is a great small collection of mystery stories.  The only thing that I wonder is why it went out of printing for so long.  The most immediate answer in my mind is that it is so similar to another book by Chesterton.  "Manalive" is right next to this book in how it handles crime mysteries.  Unlike this book, "Manalive" attributes all the crimes to a single individual instead of four.  "Four Faultless Felons" can be considered a continuation of the same themes, but the breaking up of the crimes allows a small variety of settings and characters to be created.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next week is "The Worm Ouroboros."

Entry 102: "Brick" (2005)

This is less a title and more the description of the emotional depth of the characters.

Dear Internet,

                "Brick" is a 2005 noir thriller mystery film set in the suburbs.  More specifically, the film is set in a suburban high school and the surrounding area.  We follow around Brian, a take no nonsense hard boiled guy that does not play by the rules.  He receives a message from his ex lover, Emily.  The girl asks for his help over a pay phone before hanging up abruptly for mysterious reasons.  Brian tracks her down and finds a coded message on her person.  He eventually figures out the code and goes to meet her at a hidden location.  When he gets there, he finds her cold corpse in a storm gutter.  Afterwards, Brian sets out to find out who killed her, for what reason, and why she called him for help.  He will have to dive deep into the underbelly of the suburban jungle and come against some of its deadly vices.

                With that I can stop trying to keep a straight face.  For the most part, "Brick" does try to keep to this plotline, even if it seems to go nowhere for the longest time.  The heaviest part of that brief description is in the noir part.  The film draws heavily upon a genre that rarely is brought up now-a-days.  Specifically, the story plays out like a super cliché detective story where there is a PI who is out to find the murderer of his old flame.  He is not doing it for a client but because it is personal.  There is the smart sidekick, nicknamed Brain, who helps the protagonist on his self appointed mission.  There is a femme fatale, a drug lord kingpin, and a muscle character.  Everything feels so directly drawn out from another noir work that the film struggles to make something new.  It feels less like an homage and more like a display of a bag of tricks, the kind that other films have done before and much better.

                The first thing that struck me as annoying was the dialog.  For at least the first half of the film, the bulk of what people say is a convoluted mass of unbelievable dialog that makes the characters even less believable than they already were.   No one, for the longest time, speaks in a manner that reflects the reality of who they are.  None of them sound like 18-21 year olds.  Instead, they sound like disgruntled old men and jaded women in their mid thirties.  It is again pulled from the noir films and books that "Brink" stems from.  While it is understandable for the characters in those works to rattle off dialog like "Throw one at me if you want, hash-head.  I got all five senses, and I slept last night.  That puts me six up on the lot of you," it feels painfully out of place when an 18 year old says it.  Maybe if the film was not taking itself so serious it could be chocked up to being willfully hammy, but I doubt this is the case because of how the film treats itself.

                The film is sadly not a parody.  It should be.  Noir films are so heavy and depressing that they are easy to parody, but "Brick" tries to do the same thing that those films do.  There are moments when the film breaks from the uber-dramatic plot, like when the protagonist talks face to face with the drug lord while the drug lord's mother prepares a meal for Brian, wondering if she has apple juice in the fridge.  The film pokes fun at itself from time to time, but it does so sparingly.  When it does poke fun, the film shifts so quickly from one mood to the next that it does not act as the comical relief that it is trying to accomplish.  Take for example when Brian is picked up in the drug lord's van.  The guy sits there with a living room lamp besides him, inside the car.  Besides being a tacky piece of furniture, it shows the mindset of the character, that he makes use of such props to make himself into a character from out of a book.  While at first it seems like a comical placement of furniture inside a van, the scene continues to be a serious one because of the topic being discussed and the manner that the characters talk.  A talk still filled with dialog that fits characters twice their age.

                Then there is the problem with the film's ability to render an emotional connection with the characters and the situations that are present within the narrative.  By this I mean the film could not get me to care about the cast.  Let me describe one character: he/she is a manipulative, depressing, pseudo-intellectual who has a chip on their shoulder and does not let anyone close to them.  If you have seen the film, you might have an idea about which character I am talking about.  If you have not, I will tell you.  There at least five that fit that description and another three who can fit if you chop off one part of the description.  The problem is that the film makes nearly everyone unlikable.  Perhaps this is supposed to be a reflection of how noir stories have an anti-hero who acts not for or because of some greater good but for his own shallow intentions, but this creates an inherent problem quickly.  In "Brick," I could not make myself care about the safety of Brian.  He was so unlikable that if he died while trying to uncover the truth about Emily's death, I would not care.  Worse yet, Emily was given next to no character presentation that by the time she was found face-down dead I had no interest to find out the details of her death.  The rest of the film was hoping that I cared enough about her that I wanted to know the answers that I ended up finding the story rather boring because it was resting on a point that it failed to deliver.  This mostly is because Emily is just as unlikable as everyone else.

The best acting in the whole film.

                The noir genre, and "Brick" as a part of it, seems to take the opposite track that most stories do when creating a protagonist.  Most stories will take a character, imbue them with heroic qualities, and then throw in a few faults that make him either more believable as an individual or help him to be even more heroic.  Take Indiana Jones for example.  He hates snakes and is afraid of them, but that only makes his bravery against them all that more impressive.  Odysseus's promiscuity while lost at sea shows his hypocritical attitude that he takes with his wife.  These faults and vices are meant to illustrate a point.  In noir, it seems to be the case where a protagonist is made by imbuing a character with vices and then adding just a few virtues to make them a technical hero.  It is supposed to make the character and those near him to be shades of grey rather than clearly defined black and white.  Instead, it makes everyone shades of black with nothing of interest to say.

                "Brick" is a bad film that masquerades as a deconstruction of the noir genre.  Sure placing a murder mystery in a suburban setting with high school setting points out some of the absurdities of the genre, but if the film plays these quirky spoofs as straight, it only makes itself absurd first.  If I want to watch a noir deconstruction I would watch the "Fillmore!" TV series.  At least that show knew how to entertain while poking fun at noir.  "Brick" forgets to entertain while it tries to be a "Hardy Boys" meet "The Maltese Falcon."  The characters are not individuals but character types with clichés piled on top.  The fact that the whole story boils down to a drug deal and a murder being solved and acted by kids make the film feel like it is trying to tell a story that it quite frankly cannot.  The plot does not correlate to the setting or the characters.  Maybe the creator wanted to portray an "adult" mystery and show how children have to rise to the occasion, but it feels more like that if it was not a murder mystery it would have become an after school movie about who stole the fundraiser money.  I would have preferred nearly any other kind of mystery story to this because "Brick" treats murder and everything else so lightly, and not in a satirical manner or with black humor.  It is just so underwhelming that even when the big reveal occurs, I find myself not even caring about the plot twist.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next is "Singin' in the Rain" (1952).

Entry 044: "The Complete Father Brown" Pt. 2 End

Dear Internet,

                Well, I have finished "The Complete Father Brown," which I have learned is not actually complete.  There are 51 "Father Brown" stories, and this collection only covers 49 of them.  Before you ask, no, I will not hunt them down and speed read them for this review.  If you want an opinion bad enough for them, you can go ask Cleverbot.  I am already terribly behind and am writing this well after I should have started it.

                The fourth and fifth books, "The Secret of Father Brown" and "The Scandal of Father Brown," are really where Chesterton takes a strong emphasis on the nature of Father Brown and the manner that he approaches the mysteries placed before him.  In fact, it is the main focus of the vignettes that frame "Secret," the forth book.  What separates Father Brown from Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes copycats is the manner that Father Brown solves each case.  He does not pour over the evidence with a fine tooth comb and recall a mountain of obscure scientific knowledge that no sane individual would be able to retain.  He does not withhold evidence like a smart alec.  What he does do is examine the crime from the perspective of the supposed criminal and go through everything that would make the person commit the crime to the point just shy of committing it himself.  He examines the individuals that are suspected, those that are not, and examines the philosophies of each.  Father Brown attempts to understand the people that he meets as well as the philosophy that each lives by.  That might be putting it bluntly, since most characters, and real world individuals, would not admit to living by a specific philosophy.  Father Brown searches for a motive foremost and the manner of the crime falls into place.  This manner of crime solving is most apparent in the last two books.  

                What are also apparent in the last two books are the same length and flow elements that I had already mentioned.  The stories can sometimes get too complex at first for my taste.  It can be a bit hard to determine just who is essential to solving the crime, but I feel that is more my own fault that the book's.  Especially since that is a core aspect of the mystery story.  Creating a little confusion is tantamount to making the reader feel like a fool.  All mystery stories are made to make the reader feel like a fool, but a rightful and fair fool.  Nobody likes being made a fool if they are made so dishonestly.  Chesterton makes sure not to let this happen.  Everything is there for the reader to figure out for themselves.  Sometimes it is what is left out that makes a clue, but it is pointed out once the solution comes around and is usually shown to have been an obvious hole.

                Overall, "Father Brown" is a wonderful collection of stories that are simply enjoyable all around.  Some of the stories feel dated.  Considering that some of them are at least a hundred years old, this should be expected.  A large majority of the stories, however, are still solvable by today's standards.  The characters are enjoyable and well made, stretching a large spectrum of characteristics.  The crimes have a large range of possibilities that rarely do they feel like they are repeating.  The settings are illustrated well enough that they are painted before the reader.  All of this adds up to a good series of stories, but "Father Brown" is more than just that.  It has good dogma, which is essential to a work being great.  There are underlining levels of the human condition and how the characters react to it which are essential to the stories.  If a character is a Communist, Bolshevik, Christian, Puritan, Atheist, or some other group, it is essential to the plot, but never in the way might that one expect.  The doctrine of each group is analyzed and examined.  There is an amazing insight into each one that reveals the hidden facets that would be rather obvious, but somehow might not be.  Chesterton is a writer that constantly points out the truth and calls out the problem in any given situation, whose insight continues to resonate a hundred years later.

                On the matter of murder stories that I mentioned yesterday, there were 49 stories.  Approximately 18 were murder cases, 11 were theft ones, 10 had the crime avoided, and 10 had no crime actually take place.  These numbers are not very accurate since some stories had both theft and murder.  There were also a few that might be easily categorized a fifth category.  The concentration of murder stories were highest in the latter books, and book two had the least concentration of murders.  It still felt like those Brits were dropping like leaves on a windy autumn evening.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S.  Next is the anime "Saki."

Entry 043: "The Complete Father Brown" Pt. 1

Dear Internet,

                I suspect you have been well.  I surely hope that you did not stop working whilst I was gone.  Even while I was away, I was busy reading while I could.  Even when I was completely sick with a stomach ache for the entire duration of my time away, I kept reading when I could find the chance.  But alas, I was unable to complete "The Complete Father Brown."  Although, 554 pages out of 718 is nothing to sneeze at while being sick.  At the same time because of the abundance of stories that I have read in those 554 pages, doing a single post for the complete book would have forced me to cover too much material for a single post.  In a way, it is better that I did not finish it in these two weeks and force to shrink down a review.  So, here is what I will do for you, Internet.  I will try and cover the first three books that "Complete" includes in this post, and tomorrow I will try to cover the remaining two books, provided that I can finish the remaining 164 pages, which should not be that difficult.  The first three books are "The Innocence of Father Brown," "The Wisdom of Father Brown," and "The Incredulity of Father Brown."

                Father Brown is the titular character, a small and simple Catholic priest who normally resides in England.  Occasionally he will travel to far off lands for missionary work or travel from other reason, but the majority of his time is spent there in England.  The stories he is a part of are mysteries that abound with the usual list of theft, disappearances, murder and so forth.  All is in a day's work for the little priest who relies on common sense and reason to determine the culprit.  Unlike the private eye or the police officer of other mystery stories, Father Brown is less concerned with the justice of mankind but with the soul of the man who falls by the evils of his deeds.

                "The Innocence of Father Brown" and "The Wisdom of Father Brown" should be taken hand in hand for a number of reasons.  The first is the timeframe of the publication.  "Innocence" was published in 1911, and "Wisdom" in 1914.  "Incredulity" was not published until 1926, which marks a twelve year gap between books and the largest gap between any of the Father Brown books.  The second reason is the style of writing.  While it can be argued that Chesterton has a unique and almost iconic style of writing, after that twelve year gap there is a very distinct difference between how the stories are handled.  The manner that Father Brown handles the cases presented before him are the same but there is a slight difference that might be overlooked.  This is mostly due to the third reason, the length of the stories.  In the first and second books, there are twelve stories apiece.  "Incredulity" only has eight, as well as later books.  With each book averaging 150 pages, this means that the first two books move much quicker from one story to the next than the later ones.  This is probably due to the fact that Chesterton had to write the stories in "Innocence" for individual publications and had to keep them brief.  I cannot find information that hints that "Wisdom" was published in the same manner, but it can be reasoned that "Incredulity" definitely did not have this limitation because of the length of the stories and because of how long after it was published hints to a different manner of publication.

                The first two books with their quicker stories are fast paced and include less detail.  There are fewer characters and the mysteries are wrapped up sooner.  The stories are bite sized and quickly eaten and digested.  That quickness is a rather nice in that the stories never sit too long and mull constantly over the mystery.  There is also a certain lightheartedness to the stories that are harder to find in the later books.  I might have to come back to this point in my next review, but in the first two books, there seems to be a lot less murders going on.  I will get a final count to you tomorrow.  Instead there are thefts or implications of theft, much more often.  With the way that the stories go, I would be deadly afraid of ever meeting Father Brown, because it seems people are constantly getting killed while he is around.  The only way to prevent such from occurring to myself would be to stay constantly near the priest until someone else does die.  But I digress into that topic that all mystery series all fall into as they go on.  Eventually people are going to be killed, a lot.

                The third book, however, takes a slightly different turn.  Father Brown is recognized the world over as a sleuth and his advice on mysterious matters are sought out.  The stories are longer and more in-depth.  The mysteries are then of course more complex and harder for the reader to figure out.  I do not want to come across saying that more complex mysteries are a bad thing, but after reading two books filled with much shorter stories, it required me to change gears to reading ones that are more multifaceted in its presentation.  This has an instant effect on the reader.  Since more information is available, the clues can be hidden in more places and every little detail can set off the hairpin reflexes of the reader.  Chesterton knows this and works it to his advantage.  At the same time, Chesterton is able to expand on some of the core dynamics that make Father Brown unique.  

                Father Brown is a priest first.  Saying his business is in souls would be accurate but at the same time blasphemous to say is as such, lest it imply that he trades them like a money lender does with collateral.  He cares about the individuals that he meets, but not in a showy fashion.  He does not chase after the criminal at the end of the story many times, especially if there is a police officer around to do so.  His duty is foremost that of a confessor, and if he can see some redeeming light in the criminal, Father Brown will seek out the soul to save it.  It is a refreshing change from cop dramas where the main character is constantly itching to punch the criminal in the face.

                The only thing that I can say against the third book is that there is not enough of Flambeau, the world renowned thief turned private investigator.  For one reason or another he is my most favorite character in the books.  Perhaps it is because he is more relatable than Father Brown, because sometimes Father Brown's quiet nature comes across as being indifferent to his surroundings when in fact he is mulling over the details.  It could be that Flambeau lives so much more passionately than Father Brown.  I am not sure what exactly my reason for liking Flambeaus is so much.  What did strike me was that he does not even show up in the third book, or at least not much at all.  He makes a key appearance in the forth book but that will be for tomorrow.

                With that I think I will stop here for now, Internet.  There are one or two things that I still want to talk about, but I will roll those in together with the fourth and fifth books.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop