Walking Shadow |
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Walking Shadow |
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Latest Update 15 September 2006 by Bob Ames
| Hardcover Edition | |||||||
| Published by: | G. P. Putnam's Sons | ||||||
| Publication Date: | 1994 | ||||||
| ISBN: | 0-399-13961-3 | ||||||
| Paperback Edition | |||||||
| Published by:: | Berkley | ||||||
| ISBN | 0-425-147746 | ||||||
| Large Print Edition | |||||||
| Published by | Wheeler Pub. | ||||||
| ISBN | 1-568-95108-X | ||||||
| Audio Editions | |||||||
| Published by: | Books On Tape | Dove Audio | www.Audible.com | ||||
| Read By: | Michael Pritchard | Daniel Parker | Daniel Parker | ||||
| Length | 8 cassettes, 480 min. | 4 cassettes, 360 min. | audio file, 6 hr. | ||||
The above information is from the online catalog of the Minuteman Library Network and my own collection.---Bob
For Joan
"for whom, if ye please, I care for other none." See
Annotation below.
Taken from the book jacket of the hardcover edition.
"With an unbroken string of best-selling suspense novels behind him, Robert B. Parker is nothing if not world-class. Now, after the success of Paper Doll, applauded by The Boston Globe as "one of the best Spensers in a decade," Parker returns with his two-fisted sleuth in Walking Shadow--a twisty, ambitious whodunit, which finds them both breaking new ground.
A Massachusetts waterfront town. A small repertory theater with a big reputation. A soupçon of scandal. And Spenser is on hand to steal the scene.
Hired by the Port City Theater Company's board of trustees to investigate the director's claim that he is being followed, Spenser feels like a fish out of water--until an actor is gunned down during a performance of a politically controversial play. Then Boston's premier private cop and his cohort, Hawk, go into action, plunging straight into a maze of motives that constitutes a master class in the difficulty in judging reality from appearances. Spenser soon discovers that solving the actor's murder is only a piece of the puzzle. From covert carnal connections within the community to municipal corruption with international tentacles; from petty troublemakers to major malefactors for whom murder is merely a day at the office--this case has everything it takes to stump the sharpest of Sherlocks. And nobody loves a challenge more than Spenser.
Heady and sardonic, with an unpredictable cast of lovers, liars, killers, and clowns, Walking Shadow entertains even as it ponders the instability of identities. It is a thoroughly engrossing performance by a classic talent.
This one's obvious, due to the enormous theatre-related content of the story. One can go deeper and compare the metaphor of the play to life, and the abrupt ending of the play in the story, as compared with the abrupt ending of Craig Sampson's life, but I'll leave that to you.
For those of you who (like me) don't consider it obvious let me quote the lines in question:
"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Conrad Rubinkowski writes:
"Beyond here there be monsters" I believe is from old nautical maps. I think."
Yep. Usually with a drawing of a sea serpent near the edge, out beyond sight of land where anything might be possible.
Terisias is an interesting character in Greek mythology.
For some reason (sources differ) he was turned into a woman for seven years and then turned back into a man.
Zeus and Hera argued about which gender more enjoyed the pleasures of love. He replied:
"Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart."
Not a comparison of orgasms, as is often cited, it is rather a comparison of emotional views; sex v. love, penis v. feelings,
as each generation of feminists think they are discovering anew.
For this revelation Hera struck him blind but Zeus made him a seer. I don't understand the motivation but they're gods; go figure.
And it was blind Tiresias who told Oedipus that he killed his own father and married his mother.
Talk about recycling characters.
"An old man with wrinkled dugs (breasts)" is just another example of the play being, as Spenser notes, "heavy handed but obscure."
I hope that somewhere in the literary afterlife Euripides is holding
Leonard O down while Sophocles is kicking the shit out of him.
"The work of the so called
Wakefield Master, probably a
cleric, is part of the mystery plays in the
Towneley Cycle.
This remarkable poet seems to have written his
pageants
between 1400 and 1450 in Wakefield, a prosperous
market
town in Yorkshire, where his plays were also
performed."
"I think [it's] from Will Rogers. I'm including a link to a quotes page that shows it attributed to him, but I'll try to verify it further."
The link no longer exists but it sure looks like his style, although it is often just given as "an old cowboy saying." Verification sounds like a rather daunting task; Will was a showman, radio and movie star, columnist, and author for many years and his clever turns of phrase could easily fill up several web pages. Thank you for finding this one Michael.
If I recall correctly that's from the introduction to the Canterbury Tales and is in reference to one of the character (perhaps the Pardoner?)
The quote ("I trow he was a gelding or a mare") from chapter nine of Walking Shadow comes from the end of the "General Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I believe the narrator refers in the quote to the Summoner, one of the less appealing pilgrims, and his effeminate ways. I haven't read this Spenser novel since it first came out, but I suspect the allusion is the detective's way of identifying that the character in question in the novel is gay.
Many years after Mike posted the above Joe Ugoretz wrote in with what looks like the definitive answer:
Your informants ... quite correctly identify the quote as coming from the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales (line 691), but the narrator is referring to the Pardoner, not the Summoner. It's a crucial line, and a problematic one, in studies of the Pardoner and the Canterbury Tales and Chaucer's work as a whole. It's meant to be read much more deeply than the surface meaning, in the context of the narrator's entire description of the Pardoner and in the context of the Pardoner's tale.
I wouldn't bother to point this out, except that it fits so neatly (intentionally on Parker's part, I'm sure) as a characterization of the playwright O in Walking Shadow. The Pardoner's true perversion, most critics agree, is not only sexual, but moral as well. In addition, the Pardoner is a distinctly mixed and ambivalent character. Is he evil? Disgusting? Yet he tells a tale with a strongly moral theme...but then when he has the audience under his spell, he makes a crass intrusion to ask for money. He's an artist, a professional, but he sells his art very cheaply. He neatly treads the boundary (one that Chaucer finds quite blurry) between artist and con-man.
All very interesting. I could go on and on (a chapter of my dissertation dealt with Chaucer--The Parliament of Fowls, however, not Canterbury Tales), but I won't.
The Seven Deadly Sins - pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth were laid out in "A Catechism of Christian Doctrine for General Use, 1866" Victorian England, no doubt.
'The Tiresias stuff you stole from Eliot." - See chapter 3 above.
Then again consider another of Parker's favorites, Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. "For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" See Poetry
"Summertime, an' the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' an' the cotton is high"
See Lyrics
"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me."
Parker quotes this poem only slightly less than he does certain lines from Shakespeare, so I agree with Tim that it is a great second level of reference.
"The original is in popular lore attributed to H.M. Stanley (sent by the New York Times) who led an expedition into 'darkest Africa' to ascertain whether Scottish explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone was still alive. When they met in Ujiji, Stanley phlegmatically doffed his pith helmet and uttered the words 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'"
"Blue Book. This is a term used to describe both an object and a type of exam.
1. A blue book is a booklet containing 8X12 blank pages (some are larger), with a sky-blue cover, for use during a midterm or final exam. Students are often expected to bring their own blue books to exams. (Blue books are on sale at any of the local bookstores.)
2. Because students use blue books most often for essay exams, you will occasionally hear this type of exam referred to as a "blue book" or a "blue book exam."
"You load 16 tons, and what do you get,
Another day older an' deeper in debt.
St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store."
The story goes much deeper than that. Merle Travis wrote the song, and its recorded history is available at http://www.ernieford.com/Sixteen%20Tons.htm If you get a pop-up window press the cancel button. While you're still here, see Lyrics
"He was in there reading a book on the Elizabethan age by E. M. W. Tillyard" - Almost certainly The Elizabethan World Picture, published in 1959. A classic work on the ideas of world order during that time.
Chacun à son goût - Loosely translated, "to each his own." Thanks go to Chris McLaren for the translation.
Well, the word is obvious but it doesn't answer the context. The sentence reads "The last boat from Xanadu." Iain Campbell asks
"Why the last boat from Xanadu? Because of the 'sunless sea?' Perhaps because of the ocean, one paragraph earlier, which is described as 'ceaseless,' which is the adjective used to describe the seething turmoil of the water in the poem."
My web searches for "last boat from/to <anywhere else>" have led nowhere. To me "Xanadu" calls up the 1980 movie starring Olivia Newton John and Gene Kelley, a remake of the 1947 Rita Heyworth vehicle Down to Earth, which centered on Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance.
Corey Bradford proved to be a much better detective then I. The book being referred to was "Race Matters." The clues I overlooked? Chapter 25: "Hawk was reading a book by Cornel West." Chapter 33: "Hawk was still reading Cornel West." First published in 1993, it would likely be sitting next to Parker's typewriter as he wrote this novel.
Go to the library and look it up under 305.8, West. I think you will be as impressed as I was with his take on racial issues.
My only problem is that Parker has never misquoted a title before. In twenty seven novels I've easily tracked every one of them. Why is this one different?
"Is this a dagger which I see before
me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"
I like to quote the whole passage as a reminder of where the classic Star Trek series got the episode title "Daggers of the Mind."
"Here's an obscure cultural reference. 'Since Hector was a pup' is a catch phrase, a popular figure of speech, which has been around at least since the 1920's, when 'Hector' was a popular name for dogs. 'Since Hector was a pup' means 'since a long time ago,' and is actually a sort of pun, because it refers to both 'Hector' as a dog's name and another, far older, 'Hector.'"
Thanks Doug; I'd heard the phrase for years but couldn't turn up anything else that made any sense. I assume "far older" refers back to the siege of Troy and a number of memorable characters that I will leave as an exercise for the student.
"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's
being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."
Richard Barid responds:
District Attorney (D.A.) is an elected position. A D.A. does not spend much time actually trying cases, but hires several (usually younger) attorneys to do the litigation work. One must be an attorney in order to be an assistant D.A. However, most D.A.'s offices have investigators. Sometimes those investigators are former police detectives and sometimes they pull double duty.
To be even more specific, Spenser was a detective with the State Police.
In Chapter 40 Spenser is hitting the office bottle and thinking. He remembers the office building that used to be across the street and Linda Thomas in the window. Talk about a blast from the past.
"The houselights dimmed. The play began. On stage there were men dressed as women and women dressed as men, and white people in blackface and black people in whiteface, and a rabbi named O'Leary, and a priest named Cohen. I knew the names because they were printed on a big sandwich board which each of the actors wore throughout the first act. There was someone in a dog suit who kept saying meow. There was very little dialogue, and the actors moved slowly about the stage with angular gestures, stopping periodically in frozen tableau, while an offstage voice recited something ominous that sounded like a hip-hop adaptation of Thus Spake Zarathustra.
After an hour of this Susan leaned toward me and said, 'What do you think?'
'It's heavy-handed but impenetrable,' I said.
'Not an easy achievement,' Susan said."
"'A good shot that knows anatomy,' DeSpain said as if to himself. 'Hell, we've got the bastard cornered.'
"'This place is so Cambridge,' Susan said, 'it gives me goose bumps.'
'Cambridge give you goose bumps?' I said to Hawk.
'Hives,' Hawk said."
"The entrées arrived. Susan cut her tuna steak in two and put half of it aside on her butter plate. Hawk watched her.
'Trying to lose some weight?' Hawk said in a neutral voice.
'Yes. I have three or four pounds of disgusting fat that I want to get rid of.'
Hawk said, 'Un huh.'
'I know, maybe you can't see it, but it's there.'
Hawk looked at me.
'I've missed it too,' I said. 'And I'm a trained detective.'
'Remember where we are,' Susan said. 'I could have you both arrested for sexual harassment.'
'I counter with the charge of racial insensitivity,' Hawk said.
'Yes,' Susan said. 'That would be appropriate. Then we join forces against our common oppressor.'
They both turned and gazed at me.
'The white guy,' I said."
"The red-faced guy who had been resting his eyes let out a sort of blubbery snort and his head jerked and he looked a little puzzled for a moment about where he was. He spotted his champagne glass, still partially full, and picked it up and drained it, then he settled back in his chair and tried to look as if he knew what was going on. It was a look I had often worked on myself."
"'House needs a lot of work,' I said.
'We prefer the term, 'great potential,' the real-estate lady said.
'I bet you do,' I said.
'In this price range. In a lower price range we would prefer the term "handyman's special,"' she said."
"'Do you ever get a case where there are no clues? You know, when you can, like, never figure out who did it?'
'I solve all my cases,' I said. 'Some of them are just not solved yet.'
Dierdre clapped quietly.
'Great line,' she said.
'Thanks, I'm trying it out for my ad in the Yellow Pages.'"
"My gun was a Smith and Wesson .357. Six rounds. It had a blued finish and a walnut grip, and it was alleged to stop a charging bear. Normally, unless I expected to encounter a bear, I carried a comfy little .38. But for office use the .357 was an effective negotiating tool."
"When I got Homicide I asked for Lt. Quirk. He picked up his phone, still talking to someone, and held it while he finished the conversation.
'Fuck ATF,' he said to someone. 'They got their problems, we got ours.'
Then he spoke into the phone.
'Quirk.'
'Hi,' I said, 'This is the ATF charitable fund...'"
"'You think it's a tong thing?' Hawk said.
- 'I don't know.'
'You think Wu's involved in the killing?'
- 'I don't know.'
'You saying that a lot.'
- 'Yeah, I'm thinking about having it printed on my business cards.'"
"'What if we're wrong.'
'I'm not usually wrong.'
'That's because you're closer to the jungle than I am. But maybe we better be sure.'
...
'Besides,' Hawk said. 'They never had no jungles in Ireland. Your ancestors just paint themselves blue and run around in the peat bogs.'
'Well, it was a damned nice blue,' I said."
"I settled for spring water, hoping not to sever a limb with the Sawzall, and Lee did the same. Susan had a Diet Coke, warm. Farrell stared at it.
'Diet Coke? Warm?'
'I hate cold things,' Susan said.
'People clean battery terminals with warm Diet Coke,' Farrell said.
'That's their privilege,' Susan said and drank some."
"Vinnie was looking for ways to improve his corn muffin. He broke off a piece and dunked it in his coffee, and ate it.
'Any improvement?' I said.
'Still tastes like a Frisbee,' Vinnie said."
"Vinnie and Hawk lounged in the theater lobby, blending in to the theatrical scene like two coyotes at a poultry festival."
"I no longer smelled the cigarette smoke. My nose had gotten used to it. If I hadn't quit smoking twenty-five years ago, I'd probably have opened my front door without noticing anything and walked right into a bullet with others following hard upon. Further argument to confound the Tobacco Institute."
"He said something to Herman. Herman shook his head.
'Wants a cigarette,' Herman said.
'Tell him he'll get one just before the blindfold.'"
"Yan smiled faintly and looked at Herman while Herman translated. His smile widened a little as he listened. Then he spoke very fast to Herman.
'Says you must be on something. Says his lawyer's going to show up inside of an hour and he's going to walk. Says the streets are crowded with people got busted on worse than what you got. Says you're an asshole.'
'What's the Chinese word for asshole?' I said.
Herman smiled.
'Loose translation,' he said."
"Pearl had located a crow at the very top of a large white pine, and was pointing it with quivering immobility. Paw up, nose extended, tail straight out, every part of her shouting soundlessly, 'There's a bird.'
'Want me to shoot it for her?' Vinnie said. A .12-gauge pump gun was leaning on the picnic table.
'No,' Susan said. 'She's gun-shy.'
'What you got for load in there?' Hawk said.
'Fours.'
'Won't leave much bird,' Hawk said.
'I didn't load it for birds,' Vinnie said."
"I held up Sampson's picture again.
- 'Ever see him in here?' I said.
'Who wants to know?'
- I looked carefully over each shoulder and slowly around the room, and back at the bartender.
'Must be me,' I said.
- 'You looking for trouble?'
I grinned at him.
- 'If I say yes, will you tell me I've come to the right place?'
The bartender opened and closed his mouth. I knew I had stepped on his next line."
"'My word is my bond,' I said. 'I'll be happy to back it up.'
- 'In front of the baby?'
'She could wait in the next room,' I said.
- 'She'll cry and scratch at the door,' Susan said.
'I know the feeling.'
- 'On the other hand, if we don't put her out she'll jump on the bed and bark.'
'I know that feeling too.'"
"With me was a young woman named Mei Ling, who was fluent in English, French, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and, for all I knew, Martian."
"'Dr. Silverman. This will be hard to hear, maybe, but you need to know. Your boyfriend is not faithful to you. I know this from personal experience, which I regret. But you have the right to know. I am not the first one.'
There was a pause, then the sound of the phone hanging up. Susan hit the stop button and looked at me.
I looked sheepishly at her.
'That damned Madonna,' I said. 'Can't keep her mouth shut.'"
'Either of you got a VCR?' I said.
Hawk shook his head. 'Already seen "Debbie Does Dallas,"' he said."
"Healy ignored me and cut into his steak.
- 'You want to give me the name of your next of kin?' I said.
Healy grinned.
- 'My cholesterol is about 150,' he said. 'I weigh the same as I did when I got out of the Marine Corps.'
I looked at my cold seafood assortment. I looked at Healy's steak. I was glad I wasn't eating it. I was glad I was eating cold seafood. Cold seafood was virtuous."
"I heard Susan's key in the door. Pearl exploded off the couch, put one hind foot in my groin, and dashed at Susan as she came in.
Susan said something to her that sounded like 'fudding wuddying pudding,' but maybe wasn't, and came on into the living room and gave me a kiss."
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