“He sat up, his head cocked at an angle that among parrots would have signified mild sexual arousal but that among apes denoted vigilance.”
(Bruno the parrot, in Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution)
In 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story called “The Final Problem,” in which the author plunges Sherlock Holmes over a cliff to his death.
Strangely (if not surprisingly), this didn’t take.
Doyle was weary of Holmes as a fixture in his life & as the definition of his career. However, as Star Trek fans may understand better than most, Doyle was totally unsuccessful in killing off his fictional character, who by then had taken on a life & fame quite independent of his maker. Outraged fans rallied for Holmes' resurrection & Doyle spent much of the next two decades churning out Sherlock Holmes stories. As a writer, I find this failure intriguing. And very alarming.
So it’s one final game afoot for The Old Man, as Chabon calls him, disinterring the ancient sleuth from obscurity & dereliction as a
But this is Michael Chabon [also HERE], so it’s not purely an homage to Holmes / Doyle. In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, he also addresses the sorrow & horrors of Hitler’s Final Solution. Holmesian mystery or not, Chabon's The Final Solution is at least a timely study of social red herrings—specifically issues of security (eg: defense codes) & profit (eg: bank account numbers)—that distract from basic human tragedies.
At heart this is a book that asks: What is worth remembering?
So it's not just an homage. Neither, as some complain, is this truly (or purely) a work of genre fiction. In this respect Chabon is no snob: he's a writer who uses anything that works. His writing here flirts with a Victorian voice. Sometimes his phrases can seem shaken in a Boggle box & laid out as they fall, a sentence gambling on for a paragraph. But that’s quintessentially Chabon: super-energetic images; quirky characters; red herrings; a romping plot; erudition; tongue-twisting vocabulary; great pathos; The Human Condition. A willingness to pass the point of view to a parrot.
Here are some suggestions for discussion. As you’re talking about “The Arrival” as well, I’ve given you fewer than usual. I’ll append a note on approaching Rushdie’s book in the next post. Enjoy!
--A. Campisi
Discussion Questions & Suggestions
• During your meeting, just for fun, consider dropping at least 2 of the following Chabonian words in casual conversation.
Extra points for accuracy, topicality & straight faces.
.Ignis fatuus (pl. ignis fatui) .......Tatterdemalion
.Echolalia.......Bibulousness
.Dryasdusts.......Mundungus
.Aspergillum.......Gephryrophobia
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• If you didn’t know in advance, how long did it take you to recognize who the old man was? What were your clues?
For example: "Then he reached into the old conjuror's pocket ... and took out his glass. It was brass and tortoise shell, and bore around its bezel an affectionate inscription from the sole great friend of his life" (29)
• What did you think about never naming Holmes?
"Years and years ago his name -- itself redolent now of the fustian and rectitude of that vanished era -- had adorned the newspapers and police gazettes ... " (43).
• Separately, what did you think about calling him The Old Man, the only unnamed principal character? What effect did it have on your reading?
• The Title. Talk about the various meanings & references contained in the title.
• The Mysteries. So the old man solves his mystery with signature alacrity & style: He finds Bruno & reunites him with the boy. But that’s not the only game in town. Why is he so intrigued as to rise again to this particular mystery & not to the one that everyone else is trying to solve?
• The Train Song. “The sound of the train song, arising in the middle of the night, would jar the man from his slumber, send him scrabbling for his pencil & pad.” (117, Harper Perennial Edition) (This is my favorite page in the book.)
What is it that’s worth so much to remember? Answer the book’s other mystery: What is the parrot actually singing?
• Revealing Errors. What do people think Bruno is singing with his German strings of numbers? What’s the basis for their various theories? Why don’t any of them guess the real answer? What’s the social commentary contained in those specific errors?
• The Ending. What did you think of the ending, which does not spell out for you in so many words the answer to the mystery?
What do you make of it when the old man says at the end, "I doubt very much ... if we shall ever learn what significance, if any, those numbers may hold" (129).
• Illustrations. What meaning or clues, if any, did you find in the illustrations?• Talk about the Panickers. Their name. Their racial mix. Their family dynamics. Their marriage. As foils. In context of the greater social themes of the book’s Zeitgeist.
• Mr. Panicker "... his shame was compounded by the intimate knowledge that Richard Shane's brutal murder in the road behind the vicarage had echoed, in outline and particulars, the secret trend of his own darkest imaginings" (94). What are Mr. Panicker's 'darkest imaginings'? Why is he so tortured?
• The Stranger. Talk about the old man in terms of our theme. How is he a stranger, how is he estranged?
• The Stranger. More importantly, talk about the boy in terms of our theme. How is he a stranger, how is he estranged?
• Selective Mutism. Why doesn’t the boy talk? Clearly his youth & his not speaking are at least a device to enable & preserve the mystery. What else does it add to the story?
• The Writing. How does Chabon’s distinctive style strike you? How would you describe it? Examples of what you liked / didn’t like & why?
• Bruno. What did you think of the chapter that slid into the parrot’s point of view? Why did or didn’t it work for you? What did it accomplish, do you think, that it could not have accomplished as well with a human perspective?
