Yeah.  Soooo.

 

 

 

The Angel of the Opera: Sherlock Holmes Meets the Phantom of the Opera by Sam Siciliano, 1994

Grade: C

 

You guys are going to have to be understanding about this one. I read the book; I digested it; I wrote many notes. Yet, I am still sort of confused and befuddled by the whole business. The problem is that the major theme I picked up on in the novel might be entirely my imagination, and thus I am unsure how to chronicle it. I think I decided on blunt honesty and swearing, but if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free.

 

Now, this is not a bad book. It is... fine. Okay. It is a book full of galloping mediocrity, so I suppose if the author wrote the whole thing going, "Oh please, oh please, oh please god don't let me suck," he was successful and may stop praying over his typewriter. Sadly, there's just not much about it that's particularly good, either. It's just... eh. So-so. Nothing to write home about. Suitable for a plane. You get the drift.

 

Except, of course, for the element which I may or may not be imagining but I really think I'm not but if I'm not then so many things are confusing and I just want to call up the author and be like WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO SAY HERE PLEASE I CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT.

 

Now, I realize that I am mildly biased here. I was effusive over Meyer's treatment of the Sherlock Holmes/Phantom of the Opera idea, so the comparisons are inevitable, and I feel sort of bad about making Siciliano follow that act (although, really, it wasn't my idea for him to write his book a year later). But there's just no way I can give this book the lauding it obviously wants, and I'm forced to sigh sadly (and, in many passages, snore loudly).

 

First, let's check out the foreword, which is unintentional comedy on a large scale. To begin with, in contrast with the vast majority of Sherlock Holmes fiction, the story is not narrated or transcribed by Watson. It is instead told by a Dr. Vernier, a cousin of Holmes' that wants to narrate his story "as it really happened". Yes, you heard me: he is a doctor but TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM WATSON, even though he acts the same, talks the same, fulfills the same story functions even to the point of making Watson's patented vapid statements that miraculously jog Holmes' mind, and has so few distinguishing characteristics as to make me accidentally refer to him as Watson in my notes at least once every other page. His only singular characteristic is a girlfriend, who has absolutely no role in the story and is seen only in the epilogue. Entertainingly, NOT WATSON hates the real Watson, calling him a sensationalist, a liar, a fraud, a loser, a moron, and any other pejorative he can think of. There are a lot of them. He has 255 pages to think of new ones.

 

The kicker is that there just isn't any reason for this character substitution. I mean... if the new character is going to be exactly the same as the established one, why substitute at all? If Siciliano was trying for a new and different spin on the Holmes sidekick, I'm sad to say that he failed miserably. If he was trying to distinguish his Holmes story from all the others with small details like this... well, it worked, but not necessarily in a good way. It just irritated me. I don't have a deeply entrenched love of Watson, but there was just no reason for the change, and I hate it when authors do things for no reason. Also, the purposeless Watson hate begins to wear thin after a few chapters.

 

The other completely hilarious (not in the fun way, though) part of the foreword is when Vernier explains to us that Watson lies through his teeth about Holmes' character. His explanation, involving some more Watson hate and something about how Watson is seeking to characterize Holmes as just as stuffy and British as himself, is hilarious (again, in a sad way) for anyone who's read the original stories. Check it out: he tells us that A) Holmes was not a semi-racist Imperialist bastard (yes, he was), B) Holmes was not a Christian (yes, he was), and C) he was in perpetual longing for love and romance in his life (he'd be mortally offended by the notion of that appearing in print). In essence, Siciliano decided that he wanted to write a Sherlock Holmes story, but he didn't like Sherlock Holmes, so he'd change him. He's writing a story about characters that aren't even the characters he's writing about. It blows my mind.

 

Hey, man. I have this novel concept. You write a story, and you use NEW characters, and you can give them whatever name you want and whatever political and religious leanings you want and they're YOURS. As opposed to writing new characters but PRETENDING THEY'RE REALLY OLD CHARACTERS WHEN THEY'RE SECRETLY YOUR OWN CRAZY BRAINCHILDREN IN DISGUISE.

 

I mean, not that I have strong feelings about this or anything.

 

Also entertaining is the description of Holmes himself: he is described as skeletal and grotesque, with blazing eyes. Sound familiar? If you've ever read Leroux's description of the Phantom, it should. I thought, "Oh, ha ha, that's kind of cute. I like a good oblique reference as much as anyone else." Because I was naive, my friends, and I assumed this wouldn't be a conceit carried over throughout the whole novel. But I was tragically, tragically wrong--Siciliano does everything but hire a marching band to tromp around trumpeting "LOL OMG TEH PHANTOM IS THE SAME AS HOLMES!!!1!"

 

Yes, I know, we're still only in the foreword. When I hate, I hate at length. Let's move on to the chapters now, and hopefully my bile will subside here and there.

 

Chapter 1:

The first chapter has nothing to do with the Phantom story, being instead the end of the previous case that Holmes was apparently working on. Presumably Siciliano wanted to ease us into things; like Meyer's novel, this is first and foremost a Sherlock Holmes (well, a guy called Sherlock Holmes who appears to be an entirely different person, at any rate) novel, and the Phantom story is secondary. Right away, I was completely confused by the narration. The end of this previous case has to do with a British ex-soldier being caught because he sacrifices people to Kali, the Indian goddess of death/destruction/icky stuff. Having just finished hating all over Watson in the foreword for being a sensationalist bastard prone to overstatement and blowing things out of proportion, Siciliano then gleefully treats us to one of the most sensational end-of-case showdowns I have ever seen, including screaming, entreating of heathen gods, weeping, begging Holmes not to tell his daughter, personification and general evil from religious statues, and all of this culminating in a grand gesture suicide. Again... if you're going to make the narration exactly as sensational as that produced by the character you supposedly loathe, what exact reason was there to change it? Not much of one is my answer, beyond the somewhat obvious answer that Siciliano is indulging in a bit of male Mary-Sue-ism and putting himself directly into the story as the NOT WATSON doctor. There are, amusingly, many more references to how much Watson sucks in this chapter, which is funny for the reasons enumerated above.

 

The New and Improved Holmes starts right in being the little paragon of perfection that Siciliano has tweaked him to be, even to the point of flying into a rage and nearly beating the old guy to death for making a racist comment. Never mind that the original Holmes was as Imperialist and snobberifically superior as the next British dude of the era--he wasn't really, that was just bad reporting on Watson's part. Again, I wouldn't mind if Holmes changed his mind through doing something in the story, such as having experiences that caused him to reevaluate his preconceptions and naturally arrive at a new Kinder, more Ethnically-Conscious point of view. But he doesn't; he just IS that way, don't you know. It's just laziness on the part of the author, and I hate laziness almost as much as I hate authors doing things for no good reason.

 

Miss Lowell, the lovely blind piano-player, is also introduced in this chapter. She will now disappear and you will not think of her again. Why does she even exist? I could not have told you for the vast majority of the book. My notes say something about how she's an innocent, guilt-stricken musical prodigy and thus a parallel of Christine, and that her literal blindness echoes Christine's figurative blindness, but she gets left in Wales while Holmes and NOT WATSON head off to Paris, so fuck if anyone cares, right?

 

Chapter 2:

Time to examine one of my pet peeves: the mixing of languages in character dialogue. Now, there are cases where this is permissible; characters that do not speak the main language particularly well and occasionally lapse back into their native tongue are an example, as are situations where languages have become integrated into a native patois (stories set in older New Orleans often do this well, for example, or the use of Chinese in the Firefly television series). It is not, however, to be used willy-nilly as a device to convince people that you are multi-lingual and that your book is really truly full of well-researched authenticity. In these cases, it makes you look like a pretentious prick, which I unfortunately doubt was what Siciliano had in mind. In this case, as Holmes and NOT WATSON are Englishmen in Paris being written about by an American, the text is thusly mostly in English, but with annoying French interludes everywhere. This is unnecessary because both Holmes and NOT WATSON speak perfect French. While I understand that Siciliano would like to give the readers a real sense of being in France, a skilled writer can do that without resorting to the cop-out of just using a lot of French so things will seem more... well, French. Observe as I demonstrate:

 

Original text (from page 29):

"'Whom?' I asked.

'Le comte de Changy. He left a note for me at the desk last night inquiring if he might see me on a matter of some urgency.'

Holmes stopped at the front desk, an ornate construction of carved oak with a marble top. 'Pardon, mais auriez-vous un message pour monsieur Sherlock Holmes?'"

 

Non-Lingual Melange Version:

"'Whom?' I asked.

'The Count de Changy. He left a note for me at the desk last night inquiring if he might see me on a matter of some urgency.'

Holmes stopped at the front desk, an ornate construction of carved oak with a marble top. 'Excuse me, are there any messages for Sherlock Holmes?' he asked politely in French.

 

See what I did there? I made it in French, yet also did not assault all the non-French speaking people who are reading the novel. And don't anyone get cute and tell me that this novel isn't for the unwashed, monolingual masses; it's a SHERLOCK HOLMES/PHANTOM OF THE OPERA CROSSOVER, for god's sake. Anyone who can give me a good reason for Lord English to rape poor Lady French all over this novel will get a gold star.

 

(Am I pretentious myself for presuming to correct a published author's novel? Possibly. Then again, possibly said published author is WRONG WRONG WRONG. Did I mention that it was a pet peeve of mine?)

 

It should also be noted that none of these passages in French are translated. I'm not saying you have to have someone explain every time someone says "Oui," but speaking as a non-French speaker, it was a pain in the ass when people were speaking French and I couldn't understand them--particularly since the French people WERE SPEAKING FRENCH ALL THE TIME ANYWAY, so why oh why didn't the author translate all of it instead of leaving French passages scattered throughout the text like horse droppings? I had enough rudimentary French from singing and knowledge of Romance language roots to know what they were saying most of the time without looking it up, but it irked the crap out of me anyway, and a random guy off the street looking for a mystery book might have been entirely turned off.

 

One good thing that came out of all this English/French silliness, however, was that Siciliano made a point of noting that while the dancers and opera singers refer to the Phantom as le fantome, the ghost, the managers refer to him as le revenant, one who returns. It lets the reader know in a nice, subtle (well, sort of subtle) way that it is not a foregone conclusion either way that the Phantom is mortal or supernatural, and that the managers come down in the mortal camp while the artists are more superstitious.

 

I know I'm harshing on Siciliano pretty badly here, but I'll throw him a bone and say that it did make me smile to see that he had kept the shaky, childish handwriting of the original Phantom's notes. Well, it made me smile until I got further into the novel and it then made no sense, but we'll save that for now. I've whined enough in this chapter already.

 

The Count's relationship with La Sorelli, the lead dancer of the opera, has been reinstated here, which I enjoy; it not only shows attention to the source material, but also sets up the class divide and the artist/patron sexual relationship very nicely. That is one thing I will say for Siciliano; he does a great job of presenting the very marked divide between the French aristocracy of the day and the lower classes. The Count in particular lays out many of the lines, explaining to Holmes that he encouraged Raoul's preference for Christine in order to get him into women, but that of course there could be no earthly chance of marriage (any more than there was between him and Sorelli). The artist receives patronage, money, baubles, status; the patron receives sexual and social favors in exchange. A lot of authors skip over this social convention in their haste to show us that Raoul really loves Christine, honest, but I think that's a shame; after all, forbidden love is much spicier than boring old regular love.

 

Chapter 3:

Siciliano begins in this chapter his relentless, all-encompassing campaign to make us hate the characters. All of them, pretty much. In much the traditional vein of fanfiction everywhere, in which the author's biases rear their ugly, not at all integrated into the story heads, all the characters that don't fit into the author's view for the story are demonized. Which means, pretty much, that you are not allowed to like anyone except for Holmes, NOT WATSON, and the Phantom (I'll get into exactly why later... trust me). This can be done subtly enough that I don't argue with it, but subtlety is not Siciliano's strong point. He takes several gigantic bats and beats us over the heads, screaming, "HATE HATE HATE HATE ONLY THE PHANTOM AND HOLMES ARE WORTHY!" until we bleed and cry and promise that we get it. The Count de Chagny (spelt "Philippe" in this version, for those keeping score at home) is a stone-hearted, manipulative asshole who only cares about his reputation and has a nasty habit of throwing money at any and all problems until they go away. Raoul is a whiny, effeminate, bitchtastic little jerk incapable of true emotion and always one short step away from a hissy fit of such magnitude that my three-year-old neighbor would step back and say, "Whoa, damn, ya little drama queen." Christine is a vapid, petty, backbiting little people-user with no concern for anything beyond her own personal comfort. The Persian is an evil prick. The managers are dumbasses. Meg is ugly. Carlotta is fat. Buquet is a womanizer. And so on, and so forth. The only people you're allowed to like are the Phantom, who is a tortured, beleaguered and misunderstood genius capable of true emotion; Holmes, who is as we've already noted a paragon of forward thinking and nobility; and NOT WATSON, who has no particular intelligence or artistic talent, but dammit, he's got heart.

 

Sadly, this is not a normal case of me just hating the characters because the author inadvertently wrote them in such a way as to get my back up. Siciliano really has intentionally created the world this black and white, and no amount of hysterical whinging on the parts of the managers and chorus members ever caused me to doubt for a moment that the Phantom was One of the Good Guys. It would be like suspecting that that Jesus fellow might be up to no good because those nasty dudes in the feathered helmets over there said so. Siciliano has no interest in character depth, conflicts of conscience, redemption, or any of the other ideas that can make the whole good guy/bad guy thing so interesting. And that saddens the heck out of me.

 

So first we meet the Count, who is a supercilious bastard who does everything but call Holmes and NOT WATSON peasants to their faces, yet still tries to hire them to keep Raoul and Christine from getting together. Holmes tells him to go to hell, and he and NOT WATSON agree that they don't like him. Douchebag status is assured.

 

Then we meet his brother, Raoul, who is limp-wristed, watery-eyed, pale, and possessed of a tiny dusting of pubic hairs masquerading as a moustache and a consumptive complexion. He is also overdramatic, immature, and prone both to sudden fits of impotent, tantruming anger and despondent weeping. He wants to hire Holmes to find out who Christine's other suitor(s) is/are, and break them up. Holmes and NOT WATSON agree that he is a waste of carbon. Douchebag status is assured.

 

We go on to meet Christine. She is limp, sickly-looking, pale, pretty only "in a conventional sense", and also waspish, nasty (she calls Carlotta an "old cow, but she bleats like a billy goat!"), and calculating without being more than a bit dim in the intelligence department. Holmes doesn't like her; NOT WATSON agrees after he gets over the fact that she's pretty. Douchebag status is assured.

 

Holmes continues to display the same bizarre political correctness that Siciliano seems to feel canonizes his version of the detective, giving Raoul a stern talking-to about how he should not ruin Christine's virtue and reputation if he doesn't mean to make an honest woman of her. Despite the fact that this is a perfectly normal convention of the time, and Holmes almost certainly would waste no time worrying about whether or not an opera girl decides to take on a patron. But there, again, I'm projecting the personality of the original Holmes onto a character which bears him very little resemblance, and I need to stop doing that.

 

As a side note, we're almost--almost--allowed to like Madame Giry, for the sole reason that she is loyal to the Phantom. Holmes likes her for some reason, even though she's abrasive, overpowering, offensive, and no expense is spared in describing her lack of physical charms. She does, however, say the intensely painful line, "Then I shan't trouble you no more," which forever dashed any hopes Siciliano might have cherished of making me like her.

 

As with Meyer's version, the novel has been jumped forward a decade to 1891; while I understand that this was necessary to make the two time periods jibe, it's confusing to just see it there with no explanation. At least Meyer was nice enough to note in his afterword that he had changed the time period and why; for Siciliano, I find that the lack of explanation makes it seem as though he didn't really check out the time periods, or worse, just janked it from Meyer's (I know, I know... they were published only a year apart, so Siciliano's probably doesn't have time to be a response to Meyer's, but the idea keeps trying to take root in my head). It's a bit jarring to listen to the stage managers talking about refitting the opera house for electric lighting in the next few years, when I generally assume for a Phantom story that that's a good two decades off at least.

 

Speaking of the electric lighting, there is a long-winded aside here where one of the stagehands shows Holmes (and the reader) how an old-fashioned limelight works. At length. Seriously, it took forever, and being as I was always an indifferent student of the sciences, I really didn't care what chemicals were being used for what effects. I'm all for some interesting background information, particularly when it gives the reader insight into the time period, but after a page or so I was bored. The emphasis on each little step and action in the process was so great that I eventually capitualated and told the book to its face that I got it, okay, I know this is going to be used later in some flash of insight as Holmes figures something out based on this knowledge, I get it. And in this, the book had the last laugh; it was never mentioned again. Ever. That's THREE WHOLE PAGES of my life I lost to you for no reason, Siciliano. You're a literary terrorist.

 

I do have to love the re-insertion of the "siren" guarding the Phantom's lake, however. As it's one of the most ambiguous points of Leroux's original novel and serves little purpose, most offshoot authors leave it out, but it's used to beautiful and haunting effect here.

 

Chapter 4:

Christine's retreat into Brittany to visit her father's grave includes quite a bit of description and many references to the region's Celtic ties and origins. Being a bit of an Anglophile myself, I find Celtic culture and history fascinating; but my fascination unfortunately could not surmount the glaring truth that Brittany's cultural roots had absolutely nothing useful to contribute to the stories of the Swedish Parisienne and her admirers tromping around a cemetary. I did appreciate it in the description of the rustic inn at which they all stayed, but pretty much everywhere else it was just a distraction from the flow of the story. Again, this makes me sad, because well-described surroundings can really add a lot to a story, and I just wasn't feeling it.

 

The violin playing in the cemetary has the unexpected side effect of producing a crazy, unexplained sentimentality in Holmes. I mean, I got from the description that it was breathtaking, unbelievably beautiful music the like of which no one had ever heard before; but Holmes summarily declaring that maybe this was a real Angel of Music was kind of... ridiculous, really, considering the detective's usual firm basis in logic. And contradictory, as NOT WATSON made such a point earlier of beating it into our heads that Holmes is an atheist.

 

My only other note for this chapter, in a despairing scrawl in a margin, says, "God, stop whining about Watson! Male Mary-Sueism depresses me." Which really doesn't need a lot of explanation.

 

Chapter 5:

This chapter is where my BUT IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE thunderbolt of realization comes into play. I know that earlier I was sounding hesitant, but then I realized that as I am always, always right, there is no possible way that I could be misinterpreting, and also, I'm right. It had been building for a little while, particularly with the dynamics that Siciliano had set up, but it finally burst into brilliant blossom here: this entire novel is swimming, nay, drowning, in homoerotic subtext. I was hesitant to come to this conclusion at first because Siciliano says absolutely nothing overt about it, and I was worried about inventing so far-fetched a thing out of pure speculation, but after a while the evidence became too much to ignore. Holmes' idealization makes him the perfect man, much as the idealization of the Phantom will do later in the novel; NOT WATSON's hyperactive jealousy of Watson takes on a whole new dimension; and Raoul, the only major male character besides the two Englishmen and the Phantom, is an undesirable and is therefore feminized so thoroughly that I expect him to start asking in a quivering tone about what it means when you start bleeding "down there". Every time someone encourages Holmes toward romantic entanglements he replies with some variant of "No, you know my feelings toward the fairer sex," but never elucidates. A thousand little remarks and conversations about the differences between men and women and the gulf between their understanding each other combine to make this very much a man's novel, and I don't mean in the using tools and having the wife starch their shirtcollars kind of a way. More than once the sentiment is echoed that men and women are perfectly equal but very, very separate, and that only tragedy comes of trying to bridge the two sexes; the only man-woman relationships in the novel are tragic, unhappy, or otherwise undesirable ones--the Count & Sorelli, Raoul & Christine, the Phantom & Christine--while the male-male relationships (Holmes & NOT WATSON, Holmes & the Phantom) are positive and intelligent. NOT WATSON is prone to waxing philosophical about his lady love (crap, I have already forgotten her name, probably because she is not in the novel until the epilogue), but curiously enough she is never described--not so much as an eye color or the vaguest of physical descriptions; as this continues over the course of the novel, she becomes little more than a placeholder. I will harp on about this homoerotic subtext A LOT in chapters to come, because it is everywhere, and even when I was trying not to read into things it leaped out and snarled at me.

 

In keeping with a Sherlock Holmes mystery, the Phantom is very logical in his actions and grounded in reality, for the most part, such as when he must buy a train ticket back to the opera house from the cemetary in Brittany rather than simply being there without explanation; while normally I would have no problem with this, it does have the unfortunate side effect of highlighting Holmes' inexplicable descent into mysticism and credulity.

 

Like the Meyer Phantom, Siciliano's Erik is one of the original architects of the opera (though he is in this case deformed from birth with the death's head, rather than scarred from an accident). The idea of the Phantom as builder of his own kingdom is a provocative one that I enjoy every time an author makes use of it, and Siciliano does a good job of milking the concept for all it's worth, making several comparisons to the passage in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame wherein he states that Quasimodo was the very soul of Notre Dame (the implication, of course, being that Erik is likewise the soul of the opera house).

 

I was amused by the phrase "Theseus himself would be confounded," referring to the maze beneath the opera house. Of course, Theseus did find his way out of the minotaur's maze, but he needed a magical ball of thread to do it; he would have been screwed otherwise. At least the Greek mythology reared its head; I always enjoy that. Another excellent reference to other literature had NOT WATSON quoting Tennyson and Keats, and I enjoy both, so arbitrary points there.

 

One element of historical accuracy that is often missing from Phantom adaptations is the actual behavior of the audience during an opera performance; in the time period, the majority of opera-goers were there to be seen and to socialize, not to sit meekly and watch the show. It's only recently that the novel idea of concerts and performances as sacred spectacles has evolved; the audiences of yesteryear were prone to conversing, hissing, booing, cheering, and catcalling at whomever pleased or displeased them on the stage. The idea of dimming the lights was practically unheard of until after the turn of the century. Siciliano does an excellent job of illustrating this, making the spectacle both irreverent and enjoyable, and very true to the time period in which he is working.

 

Alas, there is a typo on page 93. I know, I'm suuuuuch a bitch, but if I can notice it, why can't the copy-editor?

 

Chapter 6:

The first meeting between Holmes and Erik, the Phantom, is fraught with tension but strangely warm. They meet at the Masquerade ball, where Erik is dressed as the Red Death and Holmes as Quasimodo; in a respectful yet humorous scene, they quote passages of one another's novels at each other as they pass. Their conversation is telling in more ways than one; it exposes Erik's bitterness toward a society that ignores his intelligence and talents because of his appearance and elevates buffoons like Raoul (as in most of the novel, Raoul here functions as a representative symptom of societal illness) while simultaneously establishing Holmes and Erik as kindred spirits, two sides of the same genius coin, nearly superhuman in their perfection and ability to rise above the common man. The symbolism is simple; the subtext made me expect them to rip their clothes off and go at it right then and there. Holmes' hideous Quasimodo brings him to Erik's physical level of grotesque deformity; intentionally or not, Siciliano seems to be equating ugliness (or more likely, the social stigma of it) with homosexuality.

 

Raoul, in keeping with his role as Chief Limp-Wristed Dickhead, causes many a scene wherein he accuses Christine of being a whore and shoves her around, et cetera et cetera. Christine's one admirable trait is her fiery temper and self-assurance; while it doesn't by any means make up for having to put up with her the rest of the time, it's still a real pleasure to see her slap Raoul and tell him, in essence, to stop being such a little bitch all the time.

 

Chapter 7:

The first two pages of this chapter are devoted to a conversation between Holmes and NOT WATSON about the utter silliness that women drive men to, how marriages inevitably descend into cynicism and hatred, and how men just really can't be expected to have to deal with women for god's sake. The implication, of course, is that men are perfectly sensible and preferable in one anothers' company; it's just the ladies that screw everything up.

 

The continued comparisons between the Phantom story and The Hunchback of Notre Dame multiply; while I originally enjoyed them as a clever tie--after all, both stories are offshoots of the same Beauty and the Beast myth--it all became rather wearisome after a while. I mean, I get that the stories have parallel themes, but there comes a point where I'm no longer relating things to the novel but just yawning and saying, "I get it, Siciliano, don't be so goddamn pleased with yourself."

 

I found the random prediction on page 122--Holmes predicts that the Eiffel tower, which everyone in France sort of hates, will one day be its national symbol--irritating and trite, and hated how it yanked me out of a story already struggling to keep me in. Of course, I was already pretty irritated by that point, so it might be a cumulative effect. Still, subtlety wouldn't have killed him.

 

It is during Holmes' confrontation of Christine in the church that she finally becomes an interesting character (not really admirable, but interesting). None of her roles from the original Leroux novel survive; she is too calculating for the innocent maiden, too worldly for the virgin, too mercenary for the healing messiah, and too self-absorbed for the mother. Nevertheless, Siciliano at least never pretends that the character is anything other than what she is. She all but admits that she loves Erik, but also makes it perfectly clear that she will choose Raoul for his attractiveness, his riches, and his title; as Holmes says, the fact that she hesitates is to her credit as the vast majority of women would not, but the choice is ultimately a foregone conclusion.

 

We are also finally introduced to the Persian, who in a complete 180 from his original role in the Leroux novel is now an evil, murdering bastard always looking to turn a profit and completely without morals of any kind. Holmes, of course, goes into another of his bizarre puritanical rages, ranting about the Daroga's sins and evils while Siciliano gleefully runs around in the narrative shouting "Look look look what a good and awesome guy Holmes is!" The Persian very obviously fills the "villain" role for Siciliano, who is bent on making Erik one of the "good guys" and thus needs another antagonist (or at least, one with a bit more malice than poor lily-livered Raoul). Interestingly (and sadly) enough, considering that Siciliano has just gone to such lengths (the foreword, the rage in the first chapter) to make sure that we know Holmes isn't a racist, the fact that the big evil bad guy of the novel is the only non-white, non-European (and one to whom Holmes constantly refers to as "your kind" or "you people") doesn't speak well for him. Perhaps it simply didn't occur to him that he had chosen the one foreign nationality in the entire damn book to be the Super Asshole, but frankly, having done so unconsciously is not a hell of a lot better than doing it intentionally. Incidentally, to heighten the Daroga's power and thus his capacity for evil, he is promoted in this version from policeman to the head of the Persian secret police.

 

Chapter 8:

Now, I love character development. Without it, books make me cry a little bit inside. But the wise author reserves character development for some times in his novels, and action sequences for others. Siciliano kept confusing me by attempting to have serious character discussions while there was frankly just too much going on for it to be even remotely realistic. Holmes and NOT WATSON seize every available moment to talk about their personal relationships--at the opera, during dinner, while chasing subjects, while rowing about Erik's creepy underground lake. Not only do men (especially Victorian men) not really go for the relationship discussion every minute of the damn day, but as a generality they will usually not descend into soul-searching while poling around in the dark looking for a murderer. It just doesn't seem like an opportune time.

 

Holmes gets into quite a lot of supernaturalism and spiritualism here, talking about angels and God and I don't even know what else. Not only is it very out of place in his normally utterly realistic mentality, but it's confusing as Siciliano went to such pointed lengths to make sure that we as the readers were aware that Holmes was an atheist (as opposed to the respect for a Creator that that rat bastard Watson keeps attributing to him, apparently).

 

The Siren, always one of the more confusing elements of Leroux's novel, is here offered a solution that I actually really enjoyed. The lovely woman's voice heard luring men to their doom is not a supernatural agency (as implied in the Leroux) or a result of clever voice distortion through the use of pipes or something (my crappy internal guess), but Erik's voice without artifice. Erik is simply so incredibly vocally talented that there are no limits to his range; he can sing from the lowest bass role to the highest soprano with no difficulty. Of course, that is utterly impossible for any human voice, but I strangely have no quibble with Siciliano on this one. It's a lovely explanation that increases the supernatural and ethereal element to the Phantom without affecting anything so badly that it becomes a problem in the reality of the novel. One thing Siciliano does do an excellent job with is the overall tone of the novel when it comes to Erik, always hovering somewhere between sorrow and reverence, fear and curiosity.

 

Chapter 9:

There is a lot more of the not-so-subtle romantic subtext between Holmes and Erik in this chapter; Holmes begs Erik to be allowed to help him, talk to him, give him companionship, only to be turned away by the ever-suspicious and lonely Phantom. Holmes seems very reluctant to leave Erik's underground world, appearing almost spellbound by the strange allure of the place, and repeatedly asserts that he has nothing but the utmost respect for the Phantom in all ways. NOT WATSON merely shrugs at all of this and reflects that both Erik and Holmes are "beyond the comprehension of mortals like myself."

 

Interestingly, Raoul hates and fears Christine's voice; he tells her that it hurts his ears, asks her not to do it when they are together, and generally sits as far away as possible when attending her performances. As it is well-noted that Christine has a lovely voice, the problem isn't physical; rather, Raoul is discomfited by her voice because it is a very real and present reminder of his rival Erik and the Phantom's influence, past or present, over her. Additionally, Christine's voice is something Raoul can neither understand nor control, and his rampant jealousy and need for control cannot abide it.

Erik's status as tragic, tortured anti-hero is cemented in this chapter; everybody and his or her uncle muses on what a tragedy it is that God should curse such an intelligent, talented, wonderful man with such a hideous deformity. Erik is a noble figure in some ways, true, but the removal of all his flaws has much the same treacly effect that it does in Holmes' case; I no longer believe in the characters, and frankly think they could stop being such emo kids over the cruel, ebil world. Which is not really a reaction I should ideally be having to a Phantom story that attempts to expose society as corrupt in its perceptions.

 

Somehow, however, the whole budding underground romance between Holmes and Erik sort of grew on me a little bit. I mean, yeah, it's kind of silly, and pretty obviously just a fanboy going insane with this pairing of ideal paragons business, but it's done with a lot of obvious emotion on Siciliano's part that makes it compelling even when I'm snorting in disbelief.

 

I spoke too soon earlier, by the way: Holmes again makes a reference to Erik's maze being complicated enough to "baffle Theseus himself." A sort of not really appropriate reference was okay once, but Siciliano used it twice in the same novel. The first time it irked me mildly, and I smiled indulgently at his close-but-not-quite attempt at making a mythological reference; the second time I wanted to shake him. I am not a woman of great patience in these sorts of areas.

 

Chapter 10:

NOT WATSON spends an extended interval of internal musing reflecting upon his fear of love and marriage. I mean extended; it takes up several pages. I really can't seem to find any good reason for it, except that A) it shows him as a serious, intelligent dude who enters his relationships for good reasons instead of all the Raoul/Christine flightiness are him, and B) because he is a Mary-Sue (Marty-Sue?) for the author.

 

The transformation of the Phantom from deranged but noble psychopath into tragic hero continues apace. Holmes mentions a few times in the novel that Erik must be insane, but no one seems to be in the slightest bit fazed by this, and Erik certainly never behaves with anything but the utmost gentility (which makes the strange, childish handwriting from the beginning make little to no sense in context). His line during the disastrous frog-croaking performance, "She is singing to bring down the chandelier!", is here construed to be a warning to those in the seats below so that they can bail out in time; the only person actually injured or killed by the falling chandelier is the unpleasant woman the managers hired to replace Madame Giry, who refuses to move out of her own stubbornness and is so unflatteringly described as to leave little doubt that Siciliano wants us to feel that this wasn't Erik's fault and, anyway, she was kind of a bitch. By contrast, the plot of Raoul and the managers to capture Erik adds to the nastiness quotient of their characters, since Erik is apparently awesome and they're just doing it out of jealousy/spite/pettiness/general bitchery. As everywhere else in the novel, Siciliano paints the world in black and white and gleefully tells all the shades of grey to get lost.

 

Chapter 11:

Holmes gives Christine his pledge that he will protect Erik from capture, hurt, or any other ills that might befall him. Holmes is both perfectly happy to promise that since he has a serious love-on for Erik, and amused by the question, as he considers it a foregone conclusion that no one can capture Erik unless he wishes to be caught. As always, mere mortals can have no hope of triumphing over a Holmes or an Erik.

 

Holmes also says something here alone the lines of, "No, it is life I am angry with, but as I am not Jehovah I cannot change the blasted thing." Excellent atheism there, dude.

 

I realize that I'm not praising Siciliano to the skies the way I did Meyer over the whole opera knowledge thing. Siciliano isn't an opera idiot; actually, his description of the production of Faust is spot-on and obviously that of a person very familiar with the art form. But Siciliano is familiar with the art form as a listener only, not as a performer; he knows the shows and the music well, but lacks the deeper insight into the backstage happenings and technical work of the performers and stagehands. He really does merit some kudos for knowing quite a bit about the operas themselves, but he doesn't have the more intricate inner knowledge of the workings of an opera that would have given the book that much more oomph.

 

Being my nitpicky, bitchy self again, I have to note that there is a mistake on page 211. The verb "breathe" is misspelt as the noun "breath". If this is a typo... dammit, copy-editors, I'm not going to do all your work for you unless you start sending me royalties! And if it's a spelling error... a crime of this magnitude can never be spoken of again. My blood pressure won't stand for it.

 

The lynch mob invading Erik's underground rears its ugly, collective head again here (despite not being in the original novel, many many many later versions like to include it). In this case, that slimy no-good bastard the Persian tipped them off as to its location. I've already made my views on the characterization of said Persian pretty clear, though.

 

Chapter 13:

A new twist that I haven't yet encountered in the many versions is the addition of an accomplice for Erik; a mentally damaged boy that he brought with him from Persia, victim of that evil evil Persian's machinations. An accomplice character could have been extremely interesting--his motivations for hanging out with a criminally insane opera house lurker, his origins and how he came to be involved with Erik, his specific goals and how those might affect the events at hand (how cool would it be if said accomplice was, say, jealous of Erik's attention and deliberately sabotaged the whole Christine affair? Eh? It could be done well!)--but, like the many other could have beens in this novel, he wasn't. He existed for a few measley paragraphs, largely ignored and under-described, until he could be shot and killed by Raoul to serve the twin purposes of making Raoul yet more of a jackass than he was already and giving the Phantom yet another facet of life to get all emo over. This second part wasn't even followed through on, since after a morose "now I don't even have him to keep me company" statement, Erik reacts much the same way he would have had Raoul shot his dog. His old, smelly dog that was left to him by an ex-girlfried. I mean, it's tragic, but on the plus side... you didn't really care that much.

 

Raoul gets to be further trivialized by his overreaction to the torture chamber; Erik tells Holmes that he has been screaming and fainting like a little girl after twenty minutes in there, despite the fact that (unlike the original in Leroux's novel) the chamber is perfectly nonlethal and won't do a damn thing except make the two men in it uncomfortably hot. Hysterics: an excellent way to make people look stupid. At this point, it all just feels like a cake that has been so drowned in icing that no one has any idea what flavor it was before.

 

Erik is further exonerated from any shadow of ill intent here by the revelation that he didn't kill Buquet; Buquet just stumbled into one of the noose-traps he sets up to prevent unwelcome visitors, and hanged himself by accident. I fail to see how that exempts Erik from blame since he set those traps for the express purpose of killing intruders, but apparently it shifts enough blame over to Buquet to mollify everyone else.

 

There is also another great line here, as Holmes tells Erik, "I have often seen men of great ability reduced to idiocy by women." Normally I would ignore that as period-appropriate parochialism, but in light of all the other references... there's subtext here, that's all I'm saying.

 

Oddly enough, the grasshopper and scorpion statues are reversed; here, the grasshopper is the symbol of Christine's acceptance while the scorpion symbolizes the destruction of the opera house. I can't fathom a good reason for this, unless it's that we as a culture view the scorpion as a much more menacing figure, and Siciliano for some reason didn't like the grasshopper representing and explosion because of its ability to hop. I'm sure he thought he was changing it so that it made more sense, but all it does is make me wonder if he read only the cliff notes version of the novel.

 

As noted, Christine is no redeeming angel in this version; in keeping with her self-absorption, her kissing the Phantom buys her own freedom and Raoul's, but everyone else is still stuck waiting for the impending explosion. Holmes--naturally, didn't you know that he was far more excellent than any woman?--gets to rescue everyone else with his mad skills at talking down depressed Phantoms.

 

The climax of the covert behind the scenes romantical shenanigans comes in this scene, where Holmes is attempting to persuade Erik not to kill himself. The following incredibly charged conversation had me watching with rapt attention to see if anyone would come out and SAY IT already (but of course, no one did):

 

"Erik laughed, but we heard only pain. 'Please do not say such things. Do not try to make me hope. My face condemns me to perpetual solitude.'

'You need not hide your face from me. I do not find it particularly frightful.' Holmes hesitated. 'You will always have one friend so long as you live.'

'Forgive me if I am amused. I do not mock your friendship, but only seventeen minutes remain of my miserable existence. I would greatly value your friendship, but it would not suffice. There are men who can live alone without the society, the intimacy, of women, but I am not such a man.'"

 

Or, if you will permit me to paraphrase:

 

"Erik whined about the pain of life. 'I am so hideous!'

'I don't think you're hideous,' said Holmes. 'Come with me to the Casbah.'

'Sorry. The Phantom don't swing on that vine.'"

 

Seriously. I could not make this stuff up if I tried.

 

The Afterword:

Here, I was reduced beyond ranting or disgust and just had to lie there limply and despair. Remember Miss Lowell? No? That's okay. No one else does, either. She was the blind chick with no reason to exist in the first chapter. Drumroll please.... Holmes sets her up with Erik! Because Erik's ugly and she can't see him! And also they can both make the musics! It is genius, no? Can you hear me crying from here? I have seldom seen such a slapdash, I'm-not-even-trying-anymore happy ending bandaid on a story. Holmes wanders around the gardens being emo over the whole thing; NOT WATSON tells him that he's very noble for giving up the chance to date Miss Lowell.

 

But is that really why Holmes is emo? I think not. You ain't foolin' no one, Siciliano.

 

There are no themes in this novel. The themes are dead. There is no redemption, no salvation for Erik, because he was never damned in the first place. The entire novel is an exercise in the worst kind of fanfiction--characterless, populated by Mary-Sues who deviate incredibly from their supposed models, and stripped of all its original themes in favor of whatever message the author thought was more pressing. At its heart, this is not a doomed romance between Erik and Christine, or a successful one between Raoul and Christine; it is a tragic, mute, and unrequited love story between Sherlock Holmes and Erik, the Phantom.

 

Beyond that rather intriguing idea--which I would have enjoyed so much more had Siciliano had the balls to bring it out into the open and discuss its issues--my entire reaction to this novel can be summed up as follows:

 

I GET IT. GOD.

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