Golems and Bed-wetters

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) by Peter Ackroyd: Dan Leno was a real music-hall legend in England during the 1970's and 1880's. The Limehouse Golem is a fictional English serial killer created by Peter Ackroyd for this novel. 

That sort of sums up the balance between the historical and the fictional throughout Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, in which Karl Marx and George Gissing share the stage with fictional protagonist Elizabeth Cree, her husband, and an assortment of fictional police detectives, music-hall performers, and horrifyingly mutilated victims of The Golem.

Peter Ackroyd's many histories and biographies often cross the line between factual and fictional, or at least factual and speculative. This isn't a problem in a historical novel. Ackroyd structures Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem in both narrative and documentary terms. Some chapters follow key characters through third-person narration, sometimes 'panning back' to discuss things in broader historical and narrative terms. Elizabeth Cree narrates some chapters in first-person. Some chapters are the (fictional) court transcripts of Elizabeth's testimony. And some chapters purport to be the diary entries of the Limehouse Golem.

It may seem a bit post-modernist, but it all works together quite smoothly. Karl Marx and George Gissing illuminate some of the odder places and truths of Victorian London, including an early computer, the dance halls, and Gissing's own peculiar life. And in Elizabeth Cree, Ackroyd has created a compelling, unreliable narrator whose life's journey focuses the narrative on the poverty and pleasures of London -- especially the music-hall pleasures.

It's all something of a treat, albeit an often bleak and difficult one (though not as bleak and difficult as Ackroyd's Hawksmoor or The House of Dr. Dee -- compared to them, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem is a warm-hearted romp. Be careful where you place your sympathies. And don't be fooled into thinking a baby Charlie Chaplin shows up. He doesn't. Ackroyd is messing with you. Highly recommended.

The Little Gift (2017) by Stephen Volk: Volk eschews the supernatural for the all-too-natural in this melancholy and chilling novella. An extra-marital affair leads to regrets and repercussions for a married man -- but not the sort of regrets and repercussions one might expect. You might call it a story about "Survivor's Relief." And you'd be right. Recommended.

The Bed-wetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee (2010) by Sarah Silverman: Published at what I guess was Peak Silverman, The Bed-wetter takes the reader through the first 40 years of the comedian's life in occasionally hilarious fashion. In the aftermath of the #Me Too movement, Silverman's portrait of the writer's room for The Sarah Silverman Program seems sort of icky, though. There just isn't as much comedy in the idea of men regularly wandering around with their balls out in a public space as there used to be. Lightly recommended.

H.G. Wells vs. Jack the Ripper

Time After Time: adapted by Nicholas Meyer from the story by Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes; directed by Nicholas Meyer; starring Malcolm McDowell (H.G. Wells), Mary Steenburgen (Amy), and David Warner (Stevenson) (1979): It's 1893. After a 5-year absence, Jack the Ripper has returned. And only H.G. Wells can stop him!

In this charming, clever time-travel story, writer H.G. Wells is a scientist as well as a writer. And he's built a time machine. And Jack the Ripper steals the time machine to escape the police. Once the machine returns to Wells' basement on automatic pilot, Wells follows Jack the Ripper to the future. So it's now 1979. And we're in San Francisco.

Malcolm McDowell makes the most of one of his rare heroic roles, playing Holmes as alternately bewildered by the future and fascinated by it -- though with that fascination comes a mounting level of disgust at the violent world of 1979. Admittedly, in the real world, Victorian London was far more violent than 1970's San Francisco. But we'll leave that alone. In the real world, Wells didn't build a time machine, either.

Mary Steenburgen is charming in only her second major screen role, playing a bank employee who falls for Wells, as he does for her. David Warner completes the trio of actors who take up most of the screen time. He's Jack the Ripper, who in his 'normal' life was a physician and chess-playing friend of H.G. Wells.

Nicholas Meyer adapts and directs the movie. He's most famous for writing and directing Star Treks II and VI, and sharing screen-writing duties on Trek IV. Some of his interests, including Sherlock Holmes (he also wrote two well-regarded Holmes novels), show up in this film. As well, a paradoxical bit involving eye-glasses shows up both here and in Trek IV. 

Time After Time is a fun, fairly tight movie with a nice mix of comedy and suspense. Warner makes a good antagonist, especially as he towers over Wells (McDowell and Steenburgen are both 5'8", Warner 6'2"). The 'fish out of water' bits that involve Holmes are hardy comedy perennials, especially a trip to McDonald's and a climactic bit of business that forces Wells to drive a car. Thank heaven it's an automatic. Recommended.