Interview with William Todd, Author of A Christmas Coda (2016)

It’s not often that a Christmas book crosses our desk as smart, as moving and as ornate as A Christmas Coda, by William Todd.  We were lucky enough to read and review his new book last week, and even luckier when Mr. Todd graciously consented to an interview.

A Christmas Coda is a sequel to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and is a worthy addition to the Scrooge mythos.  It has excited a great deal of interest among Dickens scholars and Carol enthusiasts alike, and is well on its way to becoming a holiday classic in its own right.

Here Todd responds to our questions….

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your career?

I was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan, and spent the first couple decades of my life doing non-writing stuff.  So let's start at age 23, when I moved to Los Angeles to begin my first job (of any type, ever) as an aerospace engineer.

Like a lot of new hires, my first couple weeks on the job were basically "free roam," where not much is really expected of you except learning how to use the copy machine.  That's how I found myself one day sitting in my office with a bunch of other new hires, shooting the breeze, until someone raised one of those "Book of 1000 Questions" type of questions, which was:

"If wages were no object, and you could do ANYTHING you wanted to do with the rest of your work life, what would it be?"

To my surprise, I started hearing such answers as "I'd play the saxophone" or "I'd race boats" (which I didn't even know was a career option!).  But an even bigger surprise was that not one of the new hires in my office, aerospace engineering majors all, said, "I'd build the best spaceship ever" or even "I'd become the head of NASA...”

...including me - which was by far the BIGGEST surprise of all.

You see, I'd grown up loving the world of entertainment - books, plays, and especially movies and TV.  But I'd also grown up in Michigan, about as far away from the centers for these activities as you could get, geographically and psychologically.  Entertainment as a career path was never even remotely on my realistic radar.  I was good at school.  I was good at math and science.  An engineering career was a guaranteed job back then.  Why aerospace?

I loved Star Trek.  That should have been a clue.

Instead, I did what I was expected to do.  I got my degree (or two), got my guaranteed job, moved out to the Promised Land...

...and for the first time, stared down the barrel of 50 years doing this.  And, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, waiting my turn to answer the "Book of 1000 Questions" question, not having ever REALLY considered what I'd REALLY like to do with those 50 coming years.

And as it turned out, somewhat to my surprise (and somewhat not), the answer wasn't "to become the best damn engineer I could."

So what DID I want?

And that's how, within a month of graduating from college with two aerospace engineering degrees, and within a week of moving my life out to Los Angeles...

...I started writing scripts.  After work.  Every night.

And didn't stop until I finally sold one, four years later.

Yep, my self-administered "university education" on How To Become A Writer was four straight years of just doing it.

Which, of course, turned out to be only the beginning...

What was it about A Christmas Carol that told you that it needed a sequel?

A Christmas Carol has always been my favorite Christmas story.  Especially Act Three, where the reborn Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning.  I love this part so much that I often watch just this sequence from several of its many movie adaptations, all in a row, for the simple shared joy of it.

But there have always been lingering questions.  And for years, like the spirits that haunted Scrooge, these would occasionally visit me:

- How did Scrooge help Tiny Tim to walk again?

- Could there be any chance for Scrooge to redeem lost love?

- How could Scrooge ever repay a debt of the magnitude he owed Jacob Marley?

Inevitably, these led to speculative musings (most often in the shower, a writer's greatest think tank!) and the eventual forming of answers, image by image and scene by scene.

It took years.  Literally.  But there finally came a time when the enterprise as a whole elbowed its way to the fore and said, "It's time."

And so I began what would be, for me, the most difficult thing I ever wrote in my entire life.

Are there any real-world events that make a sequel to A Christmas Carol particularly pressing at this time?

Yes.  And no.

And forgive me, because my intention is not to waffle, but to hope that A Christmas Coda, like A Christmas Carol before it, is more universal in nature, rather than tied to any specific place, time, or event.  Certainly, there are things in the real world today that beg a re-acquaintance with "goodwill toward men," just as there were very real issues in Victorian times that coincided with the motions of Dickens pen.  But these are universal, ongoing, human issues, not fixed in time, as the longevity of Dickens tale instructs.

The economic realities of Scrooge’s world are pretty bleak; have we come far enough?  Have we lived up to the ideals of The Carol?

We can never - and will never - "come far enough"...

...but that doesn't mean we should stop trying.  I'll broaden the point philosophically to say, there will always be evil in the world, just as our goal should always be to completely eliminate it - even though we know that to be impossible.

We'll never completely "live up to the ideals of The Carol" because that would involve an end point, a state of flawlessness in an inherently flawed universe.  But this is not a matter of despair, because fighting the good fight is what our lives are all about:  It gives us meaning.

[And before anybody beats me to it, yes, I'm the guy who wrote the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie!]

So much of A Christmas Carol and A Christmas Coda are about redemption, and then making good on that redemption.  Why does redemption resonate with you?

I think it relates to the above:  Trying your best to be as good as you can be, inevitably failing to achieve any ideal standard, but finding that it's never too late to do better.

I’m delighted that Jacob Marley is such a large presence in A Christmas Coda, even though he doesn’t appear onstage.  What is the heart of the Marley Paradox, for you?

I'm not sure what the "Marley Paradox" even is!  But I'll give it a shot:

The thing that always bugged me the most about A Christmas Carol was the idea that Jacob Marley, the guy who moved (presumably) heaven itself to save a friend, was himself never saved, but instead, forever condemned to chains, and in his own wailing words, "doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what [I] cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"

That's not fair!  That's not right!  Scrooge got a second chance...

...why not Marley???

And thus the seed of a sequel was sown...

What is it about A Christmas Carol that has made it such a classic?  Is it the story?  The character of Scrooge?  Or something else?

If only the S.A.T. had been this easy--

e.)  All of the above!

And, yes, more.

But mostly, I believe, is its message of Redemption:

It's never too late - for anyone - to change for the better.

Take THAT, Relentless Focus On The Negative In Modern Culture!

I can imagine that someone who wrote A Christmas Coda is a fan of the holiday.  What are your thoughts and feelings on Christmas?

I've always loved Christmas.  It's been my favorite holiday ever since childhood, when I actually experienced the magic of a Midwestern winter morning transformed by the kindness of parents into a warmly glowing treasure hunt initiated by siblings in knit pajamas well before the rise of the sun, tearing open package after package of colorfully wrapped gifts, piled 'neath a twinkling tree... made of aluminum.

I thought it the most beautiful thing in the world.  I used to lie under it at night reading Archie Christmas comic books, staring up at the ornaments, slowly changing hue from the rotating color wheel with its ratcheting metal plate and blindingly hot floodlight bulb that could only exist in a fairy-tale era before OSHA.

The gifts are the very least of it for me now.

I love it for the music, and the food, and, yes, the fact that people at least try to experience it as "a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time".

In other words, I love it for a lot of the same reasons Charles Dickens did.

How do you envision Scrooge?  Is there an actor or interpretation you had in mind while writing your novel?

I sometimes envision a specific person (such as an actor, but not always) as a physical model when writing a script, and it was (perhaps too) easy to let Alastair Sim slip into the role of Scrooge, given that the 1951 film version of A Christmas Carol has become all but canon amongst movie adaptations.

Certainly, in the opening sequence of A Christmas Coda, Mr. Sim was much in mind, right down to the whooping of his post-salvation laugh, since his interaction with Mrs. Dilber was purposely reminiscent of the scene in the 1951 movie (which does not exist in Dickens' novella) where she threatens to "scream for the beadle".

Soon thereafter, however, I abandoned all physical reference to Scrooge, even the original John Leech illustrations, in favor of the original character Dickens described, and thus available to be cast to the particular taste of any reader, in their own mind's eye.

Do you have a favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol?

Actually, no.  Not even what seems to be the consensus pick for "Best Adaptation," which, as mentioned above, is the 1951 Renown Pictures version starring Alastair Sim.

As alluded to farther above, I tend to judge A Christmas Carol adaptations by their third acts, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

A particular strength of the 1951 version is the scene in which Scrooge goes to his nephew Fred's house on Christmas Day to finally accept his annual dinner invitation.

[An aside:  In an example of just how much people love that 1951 movie version of A Christmas Carol, and for anyone who might particularly appreciate a story of heroic research, there is the tale of "Fred's Maid".  She appears in a scant 42-second scene in which she answers the door to Scrooge, and silently encourages him to enter the party.  This actress didn't have a single word of dialogue, and is nowhere credited in the film, but she became such a beloved character to many over the years that she eventually sparked an internet hunt for her identity.  Only recently has the mystery been solved!  If anyone cares to, you may read about it here:  http://dickensblog.typepad.com/dickensblog/2013/05/meet-the-maid-an-interview-with-theresa-derrington-cozens-hardy.html]

There, he encounters Fred and his wife, a woman he had heretofore refused to acknowledge (previously thinking it a bad match - financially) and, in one of the most emotional scenes in the entire movie, asks forgiveness.  And all to the strains of "Barbara Allen" - quite the concentration of weepy emotion in and of itself!

Similarly, the 1984 movie adaptation starring George C. Scott finds its deepest emotional resonance in that very same scene, Scrooge literally capping it with, "God forgive me the time I've wasted."

I love these scenes.  Perhaps best of all.  And the most fascinating thing about them is this:

These moments DO NOT EXIST in Dickens' original "A Christmas Carol".

Instead, he wraps up the entire Fred visit in barely half a page:

In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.  He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it:

“Is your master at home, my dear?” said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge.

“He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I’ll show you up-stairs, if you please.”

“Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. “I’ll go in here, my dear.”

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.

“Fred!” said Scrooge.

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have done it, on any account.

“Why bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s that?”

“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let

me in, Fred?”

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!

And now, a Sacrilege:

I actually like the movie versions of the Fred scene better than Dickens' original.  To me, they resonate with far more emotion.

But before you gather pitchfork and torch and set GPS coordinates for my home address, pause a moment, as I once did, to consider that perhaps some good can come out of this realization...

...because for me, it was a sign that I, too, might dare extrapolate the work of The Inimitable.

Or that you, perhaps, could actually enjoy it.

My fond hope, of course, is that you will.

For my dearest hope is that A Christmas Coda, like The Carol before it, will become a small part of YOUR love of the Christmas season - blessed to Dickensian fullness--

With Tidings of Comfort and Joy,

William Todd

A Christmas Coda, by William Todd (2016)

Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx know of the central place Christmas holds in my life, and the paramount importance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in my personal philosophy and worldview.  To Your Correspondent, Ebenezer Scrooge is not just a fictional character, but a friend, an example, and a terrible lesson all-in-one.  The book is my secular liturgy, my heart-laid-bare, the best reflection of my best self.  People who wish to reimagine or write a sequel do so at their peril.

There have been many continuations of A Christmas Carol since 1843, many of them created in Dickens’s own lifetime.  Most of them have been dire.  We have seen Scrooge and Sherlock Holmes, Scrooge and Cratchit taking on corrupt businessmen, a grown Tiny Tim involved in international conspiracies, Scrooge and zombies...  Sigh.  There have also been several serious literary visitations to Scrooge: for example, Robertson Davies (1913-1995), one of the great voices of 20^th Century letters (if not the great voice), wrote a continuation of A Christmas Carol which is utterly indigestible.  It is almost as if the Christmas Cosmos created by Dickens is too big, too intimidating, too … honest for other writers to approach on an equal level.

So, it was with some little trepidation that I approached A Christmas Coda, just e-published by author William Todd.  Trepidation entirely unjustified, as Todd has written a wise, moving and wonderful book, fully in keeping with both Dickens and the Carol, and a worthy literary achievement in its own right.

In Todd’s novel, it is exactly one year since the events of A Christmas Carol.  Scrooge is as good as his word, and has become as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as he possibly can.  But … the thing that most occupies him is repaying his debt to Jacob Marley.

Readers versed in the Carol will remember that the visitation of the mighty Christmas Ghosts and Scrooge’s redemption were all at Marley’s intervention.  While Scrooge has his reclamation, poor Marley is doomed to walk forever fettered in chains, witnessing what he cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.  Scrooge is determined to alleviate the otherworldly suffering of his late friend.

To do this, he creates The Jacob Marley Foundation to help those who need it most.  He also practices personal philanthropies, such as sponsoring the surgeon who cures Tiny Tim, creating an annual Fezziwig Ball, and helping dozens of the needy on London streets.

The linchpin of the novel is Scrooge’s association with a young businessman, Midas Stump.  Stump – rapacious, consumed with gain, unthinking of the human toll his ambitions would take – is much like the younger Scrooge.  Scrooge hopes to reform him while helping the Jacob Marley Foundation; this task becomes more urgent when he learns that Stump is engaged to the daughter of the woman he loved in his youth, Belle.  To achieve his ends, Scrooge must assume the tasks of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-to-Come to save a young soul, and relieve another in torment, but without supernatural aid.

It is nearly impossible to say enough good things about this book.  Todd assumes a sustained Dickensian diction and prose line that is surprisingly successful.  The new characters – Stump and his assistant, Pockle, for instance – come wonderfully to life.  (Todd also has a knack for Dickensian names.)  But best of all, Todd understands Scrooge and the others from the original novel with a humane, novelist’s empathy.  Here is Scrooge talking to Tim, “You see, Tim, sometimes we get used to things that aren’t good for us.  It becomes hard to imagine living any other way.  But we can be shown, by those who care, how to walk a better path. To change.”

One of the most interesting things in Dickens’ original novel is the sense of … ritual.  Scrooge, before his reclamation, does many things by route and habit.  In Todd’s novel, that remains; he has, to some extent, fetishized his experience with the Ghosts into his own secular ritual.  He wants Tim to walk specifically on Christmas Eve, as explained here:  Scrooge made straightaway to Tim, still in his father’s arms.  “You see Tim,” he began, in earnest chord, “that’s why I arranged the doctor’s visit today.  Christmas Eve is very special to me.  I wanted it to be just as special for you.  For us all.  Every one.”

This is great stuff; true characterization without shtick or caricature and, mercifully and blessedly free of irony.  Better still is the climactic scene with Scrooge and Stump at the gravesite of Jacob Marley on Christmas Eve – Scrooge, avenging angel, merciful father and very human man all at the same time. 

Todd gets Scrooge – which is wonderful, as so many do not.  The popular reading of A Christmas Carol is that it’s a parable against greed – but that is a complete misreading of the text.  Scrooge is not damned because he’s a miser, or even because he is a business shark – he’s damned because he has cut himself off from his own humanity and the humanity of others.  His soul was barren – he filled it up with business and gain, but it could’ve been alcohol or sex or anything else, and the effect would have been just the same.  He lost the fact that all of our actions affect those around us, and to be uncaring of other people and their fates has profound consequences. 

That is the Scrooge that Todd gives us, not the bah, humbug cartoon so often served up. 

Readers who love Christmas tales – and you know who you are – will also find little Easter eggs strewn throughout the book.  Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who has no last name in Dickens, is christened Gailey by Todd – the name of the lawyer in Miracle on 34^th Street.  There are also a few lines that reference that other great holiday icon, the Grinch.  But these references never become jokey or dumb; they are merely there for the eagle-eyed to spot.

I cannot recommend this book enough.  It is only available – inexplicably – in e-copies.  (Why was this book not published by a mainstream house?)  You can find it on Amazon here:  https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Coda-Will-Todd-ebook/dp/B01LDWH7BS.

Buy this book.  Buy this book now.  Buy this book now and read it today – and God bless us, every one.

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, by Glen Weldon (2013)

A few weeks ago, we looked at Glen Weldon’s delicious The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture.  We enjoyed it so much, we moved onto Weldon’s earlier book on the world’s first superhero, Superman: The Unauthorized Biography.  With Batman, Weldon had hoped to put nerd culture into some type of larger perspective; his Superman book is less ambitious, but more focused and successful a production.  If you are a Superman buff, it is highly recommended.

We here at The Jade Sphinx have always much preferred Superman to his darker counterpart.  This is a prejudice we suspect that Weldon shares, as his book on Superman is relentlessly amusing, affectionate and reverential.  Superman’s creators, Siegel and Schuster, says Weldon, saw their creation as quite simply, the ultimate American: a Gatsby who’d arrived on a bright new shore, having propelled himself there by burning his own past as fuel.  The Old World could no longer touch him, and now it was left to him to forge his own path.  Throughout the book, Weldon’s prose seems charged with a powerful nostalgia for a simpler, and perhaps wiser, America.  One that still believed in heroes and other symbols of hope; and, we suspect, one where childish delights were viewed in perspective by adult fans, and not with the soul-crushing scrutiny of today’s Perpetual Adolescents.

One of Weldon’s strongest passages concerns science fiction writer Larry Niven’s 1971 essay on the possible outcomes of Superman having sex with Earth women.  The essay, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, made excruciating (and amusing)  conclusions, and it can still be found and makes for great reading.  But Weldon places this now 45 year old work in contemporary perspective:  The gag, of course, is the deadpan, painstaking manner in which Niven lays out his thought process.  This is where you end up if you take this stuff too seriously, he seems to say: killer sperm from outer space.

Looking back on Niven’s humorous essay today, it’s impossible to see it as anything but a chilling harbinger of the high-level weapons-grade nerdery that would seize comics in the decades that followed.  All too soon, legions of fans and creators adopted Niven’s let’s-pin-this-to-the-specimen-board approach and proceeded to leach humor and whimsy and good old-fashioned, Beppo the Super-Monkey-level goofiness out of superhero comics, leaving in their place a punishing, joyless, nihilistic grittiness.

Weldon sees Superman as an ever-changing figure, who always reflects a constantly evolving America.  The New Deal crusader of the late 1930s is different from the patriotic boy scout of World War II, and very different indeed from his Jet Age counterpart.  What Weldon sees as the core of Superman is not his persona, but his motivation.  And that is, simply, that Superman always puts the needs of others over those of himself, and he never gives up.  That is the definition of a hero.

Weldon also posits that Superman has long ago transcended the various media that deliver him to us: he has become an idea that is bigger than the comic books, cartoons, TV shows and movies that feature him.  It is an idea that has weathered 75 years, and Weldon predicts that will last at least another 75 more.

It is this protean quality that makes Superman much like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula or even Ebenezer Scrooge: each generation can find something new and vital to say about him, and, in doing so, say something about their own era.

Fortunately, Weldon is also laugh-out-loud funny.  We had the giggles paging through most of this book.  Here he is on the sexy aesthetic of Legion of Super-Heroes artist Mike Grell: Detractors have dinged Grell’s designs for their Ming-the-Merciless collars, bikini bottoms, and pixie boots (and that’s just on the men) – and it’s true that in some panels, Legion HQ crowd scenes seem more like the VIP lounge at Studio 54, but his designs made the book look like nothing else on the shelves.

Here he is on Superman writer Marv Wolfman’s prose: Wolfman proceeded to slather on the pathos, gilding the emotional lily so fervently it makes Dickens’s death of Little Nell read like an expense report. 

It would be hard to imagine a better guide through Superman’s complex history, and we look forward to hearing from Glen Weldon again.

A Special Christmas Message From The Jade Sphinx

The Christmas spirit, like most truly important things, is difficult to define.  It means more than just being ‘aware’ of Christmas, just as it means more than waiting for gifts or looking at glittering decorations.  (Delightful as these things are!)  No, the Christmas spirit is a shared moment when we open our shut-up hearts and pause for a moment to realize the subtle, quiet miracle of our lives. 

It is also that moment, when, during the long calendar of the year, we make the conscious decision to be happy.  Yes, our jobs are irritating, our bank accounts low, our presidential prospects dire, the climate is changing.  But … none of that really matters for just a few scant, magical weeks in December.  We are still here, the potential for fun and joy (two different things) remains, and we are free to delight in the time we have left and that the pleasures of having one-another has not yet been closed off.  It’s the time when we’re reminded that it’s possible that our souls may indeed be as eternal as Christmas itself, and that our lives are, ultimately, what we make of them.

Space, scientists tell us, is vast, and life seems to be quite rare.  The conditions for life are exacting – a few subtle alterations in conditions millions of years ago, and the Earth would be as dead as Mars.  The sheer improbability of our very existence illustrates a staggering triumph against near incalculable odds.  Honestly and objectively recognizing this fact can lead only to endless wonder … In the face of such mystery, how can I – how can anyone – fail to be happy?

And, if life is so rare, how can we fail to recognize that each and every one of us is special?  Are we perfect?  Certainly not!  Troubled?  Quite possibly.  Unique in all the universe?  Most definitely!  Christmas, again, draws the map to follow: we must cherish ourselves and one another.

It is at this time of year particularly that Your Correspondent finds it impossible not to believe in the invisible world.  Just as an ant is innocent of knowledge of the human beings that teem around it, we are unaware of the great mystery that surrounds us.  Christmas plugs us directly into great channels of mystery and wonder, leading to a realization of the simple, abundant joy of creation.

The tradition of Christmas has been a boon to Your Correspondent that is impossible to measure.  Its celebration has made me part of a millennia-long tradition of finding light in the darkness, warming the human heart, and celebrating the wonders of existence.  Just as the food and drink of the season underscore the pleasure of our physical, corporeal selves, the Christmas spirit nourishes and replenishes our emotional, philosophical and spiritual selves.

For the past several years, I have shared with readers that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the central text of my holiday.  In view of the above, I can find no better way of closing this year’s message than with the closing lines of this, perhaps the greatest of all novels:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations: Dickens’s Story on Screen and Television, by Fred Guida (2000)

Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx know of my deep and abiding romance with literature, and of how alarmed I have become over contemporary literary criticism.  Since the introduction of Theory and Deconstruction, the deconstructionists have … destroyed.  Tearing down pillars of artistic merit, transcendence, beauty and tradition, contemporary literary critics have succeeded only in leaving little but devastation in their wake.

Readers interested in this catastrophe should read When Nothing is Cool, by Lisa Ruddick in the current issue of The Point.  (The article can be read here: http://thepointmag.com/2015/criticism/when-nothing-is-cool.)  Ruddick succinctly summarizes the state of affairs by writing:  Repeatedly, we will find scholars using theory—or simply attitude—to burn through whatever is small, tender, and worthy of protection and cultivation. Academic cool is a cast of mind that disdains interpersonal kindness, I-thou connection, and the line separating the self from the outer world and the engulfing collective … I have spoken with many young academics who say that their theoretical training has left them benumbed. After a few years in the profession, they can hardly locate the part of themselves that can be moved by a poem or novel. It is as if their souls have gone into hiding, to await tenure or some other deliverance.

The state of contemporary criticism was often back-of-mind while reading A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations: Dickens’s Story on Screen and Television by Fred Guida.  Thankfully, Guida is utterly free of irony, agenda and the canons of Political Correctness.  He comes to Dickens’s ‘ghostly little tale’ as a Carol Connoisseur, a man who loves Dickens, the Carol and the great, ghostly tradition of all it stands for.  He is an expansive humanist, at heart, nostalgic for the best of the past and hopeful for the best of what is to come.  If The Christmas Carol is as important to you as it is to myself, then Guida’s book is indispensable.

Guida provides not only cogent and reasoned critiques of the various film and television adaptations of the Carol, but also looks at the literary, political and economic roots of the work.  He bravely addresses both Dickens’s Christian philosophy and his distaste for organized religion. Guida also strives to be more than a simple reference work, opting instead to be wonderfully comprehensive, transcending the mere facts and figures of actors, directors and broadcast dates, and instead talking about the intent, approach and emotional truth behind each adaptation.

Best of all … Guida gets it.  The Carol is a very special work, transcending literature and becoming secular liturgy.  Most who have only a fleeting experience of Dickens mistake the book for a light Christmas confection, ignoring the harsh realities and social terrors that Dickens bravely tackles.  This is a book that includes both joyous Christmas parties, and a scene where the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge the horrible children, Ignorance and Want, the legacy of man’s indifference and venality.  The key component of Guida’s argument is that the best Carol adaptations are those that: (a) maintain the core integrity of the book (b) focus on some component of it overlooked by other dramatizations and (c) comment on the times in which they are made.

Here’s an example of Guida rifting on the meaning of it all:  There is often an implication (or an inference) of frivolousness connected with the use of the world nostalgia; but we see that the nostalgia at work within Dickens was a rather complex thing.  Small wonder then that the heart and mind that would articulate so beautifully the need to touch all of the past, the sweet and the bittersweet, could also be so sensitive to, and inspired by, a very different kind of stimulus; and that this stimulus would culminate in the shattering images of two children named Ignorance and Want.

Criticisms of Guida and his book would mostly boil down to matters of preference.  Though all of his critical choices are well-reasoned, they will not always be the reader’s own, so mileage varies.  But whether you are a partisan of Basil Rathbone or Alistair Sim or Mr. Magoo or Albert Finney or George C. Scott – you will still feel united with Guida in a larger brotherhood of Carol aficionados.

Guida provides exhaustive coverage of not only the major productions of the Carol, but homages and takeoffs found in sitcoms; he looks at the history of magic lantern shows and examines operatic works inspired by the Carol.  Your Correspondent would have liked an overview of radio adaptations (for example, there is a wonderful version starring Ronald Colman that can easily be found on the Web); but that would swell an already fecund work to the breaking point.

Often throughout the text of The Christmas Carol, Dickens alludes to the fact that he is sitting beside us in spirit as we read; for many people, Christmas is a time to reconnect with both Dickens and the Carol.  Guida understands that our annual visit with Scrooge and the Christmas Ghosts is an ongoing conversation that changes every 15-to-20 years, with no end in sight.  A reflection of where we’ve been with Carol adaptations and intimation of where they might go, Fred Guida’s book is simply terrific.

Some Notes on the Christmas Spirit

A Christmas Illustration By William Joyce, Holiday Artist Deluxe

Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy 2015 to all of our friends and readers.

We here at The Jade Sphinx are in the Christmas spirit – and have been for several weeks now, despite the fact that our neighborhood, our city and our country seem to be in a fairly dire place.  Our lives are very disrupted and in constant flux….

But we are still in the Christmas Spirit.  But, at this late date, just what does the Christmas Spirit mean? 

Well … I’m one of those people who is always predisposed to be happy.  I’m a happy man.  And, though I’m most happy at Christmas, I don’t think that’s quite the reason.

I think, for me, being in the Christmas Spirit is being aware of our time and the experience of being alive, and then enjoying it.  Being aware of passing time encourages you to be grateful for the many blessings that you have, for still being alive, for realizing that the world, no matter how terrible things sometimes are, is full of wonders and marvels.  It means reconnecting with the young person that you were, and seeing the world through the eyes of a child.  Of realizing possibilities, of feeling joy, of remembering that we are all human beings who are somehow inter-connected.  And of being happy – even when you don’t want to be.

In short, Christmas is a time for recognizing the miracle of our lives.

And, to be honest, I simply adore all the things that come with Christmas.  I love Christmas trees.  I love Christmas music – both traditional carols and popular Christmas songs.  I love the decorations and the garland and the mistletoe.  I love tinsel.  I love the traditions that are hundreds of years old that are briefly given life once again, only to immediately fade from our modern world.  I love the way people change and the kindnesses and recognition of the season.  I love the whole thing – it’s the centerpiece of my year.

Christmastime is an oasis.  An oasis not just in the course of the year, but in the course of our lives.  In the course of 2014 we did many things.  But Christmastime is a period that is completely removed from that bustle of activity.  It is a brief moment when people really do seem to be of good cheer, and to recognize one another and to live, too briefly, a little differently.  For me personally, it's a moment to reconnect with my sense of wonder, because wonder throbs through Christmastime like a powerful current hums through a high-power cable.  And, more importantly, it's a moment for me to realize that I'm alive, and that's a pretty terrific and wondrous thing.

We will resume blogging in the New Year!  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Batman says, "and I don't smell!"

My Friend, Ebenezer Scrooge

Few books are more consistently misread than A Christmas Carol (1843), by Charles Dickens (1812-1870).  Everyone has seen some adaption of the story – featuring anyone from Basil Rathbone to Michael Caine to Mr. Magoo – or, more ubiquitous still, some parody or sendup of the tale.

Ask anyone what A Christmas Carol is about, and almost certainly they will tell you it’s a parable about greed.  Ebenezer Scrooge, they will tell you, is a miser, hoarding his money at the expense of his employee, Bob Crachit, and refusing to use a portion of it for the common good.  His late partner, Jacob Marley, sends to him the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, they will go on to say, showing him the error of his ways, and he reforms by becoming more generous.

That, however, is not the story Dickens wrote, nor the lesson he wished to impart.

Scrooge as miser is a woeful misreading of Dickens’ story.  The great sin of which Scrooge was guilty was not a niggardly withholding of money, but of personal warmth, distancing himself from the rest of humanity, and refusing his place in the community. 

Again and again the mighty Ghosts of Christmas haunt our protagonist with his refusals of human interaction, not mere miserliness.  As a boy, Scrooge was left at school during the holidays, alone and unloved.  His mother is never mentioned, and his father only in passing (‘he is so much kinder now’), but not in any way that demonstrates he loves his son.  Worse yet, Scrooge’s beloved sister Fran dies early; and Scrooge is later apprenticed to a man who provides one of the few positive influences of his life, Mr. Fezziwig.  But the lessons of Fezziwig do not take, and Scrooge turns away his chance at lifelong love by allowing his fiancée, Belle, to leave him.  Scrooge devotes himself to business, not simply to grow rich and comfortable, but to fill up his ever emptying life.  He keeps fellow human beings at a distance… alienating his one relative, his nephew Fred (presumably Fran’s child), and closing himself off from his colleagues or employees.

The great tragedy of Scrooge is that we see him as an imaginative boy, delighting in childhood tales of Ali Baba and Robinson Crusoe … and we watch that boy almost obliterated by the unimaginative and unforgiving man he becomes.  What the Ghosts do, in essence, is connect Scrooge with his inner child.

Few authors wrote of children with the insight and intelligence of Dickens; perhaps that is because he was one of those few adults gifted with a childlike sense of wonder.  Mind – not a childish sense of wonder, for that rare commodity is no such thing.  Dickens, as Scrooge would, too, after his visitations, was able to see the world with the clear-eyed view of a child, and reprioritize what’s important.  As Dickens himself writes in the book, for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

Though not a children’s novel by any stretch of the imagination, A Christmas Carol has been read and enjoyed by children for more than a century.  This is fascinating, because a great deal of children’s literature (most notably Peter Pan) is about putting away childhood things and parting ways with wonder and childhood passions.  That is the way, these books argue, to health.

Dickens, on the other hand, believes in an integration of wonder into the adult for successful and happy maturity.  Scrooge becomes whole by adopting the wonders of his vision of the Christmas Ghosts.  They are not, like a visit to Neverland, temporary, but permanent.  This is much to our taste.  We here at The Jade Sphinx like our heroes (and worldview) to incorporate wonder!  Bravo Dickens.  At ‘em Scrooge!

If you are visited by Christmas Ghosts tonight, we sincerely hope that the experience is as terrible, as wondrous, and as life-affirming as that of Ebenezer Scrooge.  We could wish you no greater gift.

A special Christmas message tomorrow!

Holmes For the Holidays, Edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg and Carol-Lynn Waugh

Longtime Jade Sphinx readers know of our weakness for all things Christmas and all things Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle combined the two himself with his wonderful story of a Christmas goose and valuable gem, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.  So what could be better than various authors collaborating on a volume of Sherlock Holmes Christmas tales?

Well … I’m sure that was the idea, but sadly the execution is often wanting.  Holmes For the Holidays is yet one of many collections of stories continuing the career of Mr. Sherlock Holmes long after the death of Doyle.  As is often the case with such anthologies, some entries are markedly better than others.  This book contains stories by such celebrated authors as Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008), William L. DeAndrea (1952-1996), Loren D. Estleman (born 1952) and Jon L. Breen.  It is a pleasant enough time-waster, but one wishes that the ratio of good stories was a little higher than five out of 14.  In addition, the fact that two stories flirted with pedophilia, and an additional two included descendants of Ebenezer Scrooge, indicated to this reader that three editors meant none of them were actually reading the tales prior to publication.

The cream of the crop included “The Adventure of the Canine Ventriloquist” by Breen.  In it a long-winded professional writer (paid by the word) is the victim of a Christmas haunting.  Holmes and Watson are both shown to good effect, and Holmes’ disdain for the supernatural world well portrayed.

The late William L. DeAndrea’s “The Adventure of the Christmas Tree” is excellent, and easily the jewel of the collection.  In it, Holmes must determine why someone would steal a nobleman’s Christmas tree, only to return it.  Though the story felt more like a thriller – fairly reminiscent in tenor and tone to the author’s wonderful novel, The Lunatic Fringe – it still managed to distill a distinct Holmesian flavor.

Estleman, who in previous novels paired Holmes with Count Dracula, here has the Master Detective consult with a now-adult Tim Cratchit in “The Adventure of the Three Ghosts.”  Tim, now Lord Chislehurst, acquired Scrooge’s firm long ago, and saved it from the brink of financial ruin.  Now he too is visited by Christmas ghosts just as he is about to indulge in a little corporate downsizing.  (The more things change….)  It is all a little too pat, but, for all of that, quite amusing.

Gwen Moffat (born 1924) provides the most disturbing story in the collection with “The Adventure in the Border Country.”  Here, Holmes and Watson investigate a missing husband, only to find that some crimes are more terrible than others. 

Hoch – simply the most indefatigable short-story writer in the mystery field – delivers the delicious “The Christmas Client,” in which Prof. Moriarty is blackmailing Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) over some artistic pictures the Reverend made of underage children.  (The more things change….)   

Though certainly not everyone cup of holiday cheer, Holmes For the Holidays is a diverting read for undemanding mystery buffs during the holiday season.

Halloween at The Jade Sphinx

Look … before your correspondent is branded as the Ebenezer Scrooge of the Halloween set, let me say that I really like Halloween.  Readers of this blog know my high respect for the tradition of Gothic literature, my taste for Gothic films, and my sometimes recherché taste in the arts.  So, I like Halloween quite a bit.

But, something has gone seriously off-kilter.  When I was a boy, my brothers and I went out trick-or-treating for several hours in home-made costumes (or some pretty spiffy store-bought ones made by Ben Cooper), went home and ate candy and then looked at whatever spooky movie the local television channels played until bedtime.  And, let me tell you, this was a great night.

Now, children are kept off the streets (have you seen an unattended child anywhere lately?) and adults get into sometimes quite gruesome or lewd costumes and party with abandon. 

Think I’m kidding?  According to the NRF’s Halloween Consumer Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics, more costumes than ever will be bought in 2014.  Add to that, more than two-thirds (67.4%) of celebrants will buy Halloween costumes for the holiday, the most in the survey’s 11 year history.  And the price tag?  Wait for it …. Americans will spend $7.4 billion on Halloween this year.

I will not say that this money would be better spent on books (though it would), or clothing, or on-line courses or simple, edible food.  But, I have to say that this is madness.  We have taken a simple, fun holiday away from children and tarted it up for adult consumption.  Do we really need to see Halloween zombie masks complete with rotting jaw bone sliding from the skull?  Or adult women in bunny suits or corseted as seductive vamps?  And does Halloween have to mean a complete abandon of the governors of decent behavior and a celebration of the untrammeled ID? 

Again – I get it.  I like Halloween fine.  We are hosting a Halloween party ourselves, this year.  But somehow the more innocent pleasures of Halloween have given way to Mardi Gras excess.  Can't we find a way to integrate children into this holiday once again?  Because no matter how much I like Halloween now, I sure liked it more when I was 12.

And now, onto Thanksgiving….