I'm tempted to just make a joke about HG Wells fan-fiction and then get the hell out of the way.
But then they'd just stop inviting me and if there's one thing I find myself unable to live without, it's the author mixer happy hour. The half-price margaritas are worth fighting through the crowd at the bar. And just try to keep me away from the midnight karaoke.
So, instead, I guess we'll do this properly and productively because if you're going to go to all the trouble of doing something, going halfway really isn't much of an option.
With that in mind, let's look at my opening attempt at humor again. Fan-fiction, eh? What is that, exactly? I mean, we're all fans of fiction, I imagine, or else we wouldn't be here, writing it or reading it or writing about reading it in various degrees. But fan-fiction itself seems to be defined as the taking of characters that you didn't create (i.e. copyrighted characters) and writing stories about them that the original authors didn't quite intend or want you to write.
These days, most of us associate fan-fiction with odd adorable people who like to write about two characters having sex who shouldn't normally be having sex, or perhaps writing themselves into the story for a quick literary threesome, as it were. Which is a true definition, as far as those go, but it also winds up turning fan-fiction into some kind of weird fetish exercise, where people use the characters as templates to express all the bizarre desires and quirks that we'd sometimes prefer that they kept to themselves.
But sometimes we get so caught up in cringing because it looks like Kirk and Spock are totally going to do it that we miss the larger point and purpose of the whole affair. Yes, at its worst and simplest, fan-fiction is simply an exercise in somewhat pointless nostalgia, putting known characters through the motions because we can't think of anything else to do with them, dragging out the old corpses (or the current corpses, for those who like to write while the concepts are still alive and kicking) to make them merely reenact what we've seen other people make them do, just in different ways. Shadow plays projected with familiar contours. All the old voices coming out of the same puppets. Kind of like retired ballplayers coming out onto the field, you don't expect anything magical to happen, you're just happy to see them in action again, however briefly.
But that kind of writing is just an excuse for treading well worn ground. It's having the clear shot for a three-pointer and instead going for the lay-up simply because you don't feel like putting the effort into it. Or just passing the ball to someone else and telling yourself that you were content just to hold it for a bit. That defeats the purpose of having the shot. The shot that fan-fiction can give someone, this ability to take concepts that have been gone over time and again, and approach them in the hope of maybe saying something new about them. The fresh perspective, the reboot. The curtain drawn back just a little further. Wandering around the garden and looking for new paths, or maybe ones that were overgrown. Writing as more than a callback to past victories that didn't belong to us, but a way of pushing forward to new ones that are nearly uniquely ours.
In that light, we have "My Salieri Complex", which I previously and flippantly noted was truly "HG Wells fan-fiction". And yet, instead of using that phrase to dismiss it, I want to see if there's something worth teasing out of it, to use the notion as a starting point instead of a place to halt and pass all judgments. To see if there's something to it other than the abject novelty of "Oh, look, it's the people from The Invisible Man".
Because, yes, that's what we have here. Essentially a prequel to the story that Wells told us over a hundred years ago, we have future transparent man Griffin and future calm narrator Kemp coming back to do the calm narrator thing, in a story that takes place during their university days to show us how they met, and what came of that meeting.
Clearly, there's precedent for it. Kemp mentions in the original novel that he knew Griffin when they were both medical students at the university and the initial question is . . . so what? Wells' novel, like the best of them, acts as its own self-contained world, making it clear that a world has existed before the first page and life will continue to go on after the last page but also making it abundantly clear that this now, this moment defined between the covers of a hardback book, those pages are all that matter for this particular story. A thing has been set in motion years ago and comes pinwheeling across to us in the course of the story, but the first kick of the boulder down the hill isn't as important, just the knowing that it started. And when it is over the wake of its destruction will linger for a while, but there's nothing more for us to see. A stillness has come over and it's best to close our eyes and look away. All that you need to know happens during what you see. The novel does not demand a sequel or require a prequel.
And yet we have one here. Clearly, Ms Neary thought we did need a prequel, or at least her version of one. The risk one runs with prequels is that we already know what's going to happen when the actual book finally kicks into gear. So one can't deviate too much from what has already been established, or its merely dance steps practicing for a rehearsal that finished years ago. Filling in the blanks of a crossword puzzle from two days ago, with the answers already in front of you. You're right before the beginning but what do you want to say that won't directly point us toward where this is all going.
There can be great careers in this. Wicked more or less exists because someone wanted to see what happened before The Wizard of Oz began, and it’s hard to claim that the effort hasn't been unsuccessful. But as someone who has seen the musical, you reach a certain point where a sense of inevitability kicks in and you're just waiting for the pieces to fall into place exactly where you'd expect. Some people find that immensely fun. I just thought the songs were decent (I can't speak for the novels, alas). Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were asked to construct a prequel to Watchmen based on some of the backstory, but both decided that was unnecessary because they'd merely be working around filling in events that they had clearly drawn the first time. There would be no revelations in that, only a moneymaking exercise.
There's no real moneymaking in fan-fiction however, and I really can't see the estate of Mr Wells authorizing a prequel to The Invisible Man unless Stephen King were writing it. So if making tons of money isn't in the offering, what exactly is the reason for doing it? Why do we need to go back and see what these people were up to before we get to the point where we see what they came down to? We know the ending isn't this ending but if we're seeing the beginning, what exactly are we being shown?
So, go in. We're back at the university. Kemp has been there for a while already, studying medicine, when Griffin decides to come along and upset the world, streaking in like a weird and abrasively albino comet. This goes with what we knew before, that the two of them knew each other at the university. Yet the story is being told from Kemp's point of view yet again, making it almost explicitly a prequel to the original novel. We're not getting another perspective at all here, but merely the same one that informed the original work. Things, for the most part are exactly what they seem, because why would we expect Kemp to be any different or feel differently after his old school chum? Griffin still remains a cipher, still obsessed with his version of science, still the big friendly love-makin' machine that we all knew he was . . . or not. Making him totally different from what the novel showed us would have been an interesting tactic but in its own way a cliché, because knowing where he has to end up means that the journey automatically becomes more interesting than the destination. So instead we get him how he was, a model of consistency.
And yet, wouldn't it have been an interesting analysis to have him as he was, but more solid? To show him stepping into the university scene like a rock dropped into a shallow pool, creating all kinds of waves, forcing everyone to pay attention. But attention isn't what he wants, correct? He wants to study and excel in his field of research. And in doing so, in becoming more and more obsessed with that line of research he starts to fade out, fade away. Not literally, of course. That comes later. But metaphorically, socially, existing on campus but in the shadows, in rumors, in graded papers and academic discourse, a whisper heard between hallways, the fruits of his research never seen even as he's clanking around in the laboratory night after night. Becoming the, wait for it, invisible man, slowly vanishing from society because no one is willing to follow him.
Except for Kemp, out of some degree of admiration and jealousy. As the story shows us, he was big man on campus before Griffin showed up, being invited to all the wacky Victorian keggers and the man who knew where all the hot girls were at, and the good times that followed. But then Griffin arrives and he goes from being the most brilliant to being the second-most brilliant, a knockdown that is of course galling. But here, they merely circle each other without actually going anywhere. Handley wants them to work together, neither of them wants to. Kemp becomes fascinated by Griffin, Griffin starts to feel a friendship toward Kemp, Griffin gets sick and leaves and then the story is over. That seems fairly simple on the surface and leaves everything in place for when the original novel starts. The reset button isn't so much hit as things never progress.
But instead what if we tried to delve into the relationship between the characters further? Instead of Griffin being the utter center of attention with his weird research and strange appearance, everyone starts to get tired of the novelty after a while, his dismissive ways, his sealed-in nature? So they all start to go away and ignore him, and Griffin begins to become more and more a specter haunting the university, operating under the assumption that when nobody can see you, that's when you become the most free. Nobody pays him any mind . . . except for Kemp. The one person who can still see him.
We get hints of that here, not only because Griffin's presence is literally causing Kemp physical harm, stifling the air in his lungs and reducing him to a wheezing wreck. He is Kemp's version of pollen, the invisible particles in the air that every year torments you, even when you can't see them. The allergy that he can't shake, so the only way to perhaps get some relief is to study it. So Kemp provides all of his focus on this strange new man, treating him like another branch of science.
That's the contrast there. Kemp lends a spotlight to Griffin, a magnifying glass and a microscope. The two men, working at cross-purposes. Griffin wishes to be seen through, to become totally transparent, to fade out from humanity all together. Kemp, meanwhile, wants to make him totally solid and opaque, so that he might understand him better. Tugging at each other, one attempting to drag the other into his world. Kemp, via his proximity to Griffin, starting to fade out himself, spending less time with the other students, his betrothed, becoming just another whisper against the window at night, branches quietly shuffling on glass. The two men becoming the only things that matter in this world.
Those quiet obsessions are here, but instead pinched and compressed and skipped. We get one conversation between the two of them before Griffin's collapse, a conversation where he admits to admiring Kemp and wanting to work with him. Whether it's because he sees Kemp as a means to an end or because he's simply tired of fading out, we're not quite sure. But it seems to spark in Kemp a certain degree of . . . desire that stops just short of being sexual, his fascination reaching intense heights that seem to veer toward a baroque form of homosexuality. Or at least that's what we're told via implication.
The story seems to engage in a kind of shorthand here that risks leaving some of the readers behind. Kemp and Griffin have their conversation where Kemp apparently revels in heretofore unrevealed feelings for Griffin, so latent that it almost becomes a love-hate kind of thing. The translucent man becoming even more visible. Yet a mere section later, after Griffin has collapsed, Kemp is speaking about him like he knows his deepest secrets, like he has somehow been spending his time in the further recesses of the man's heart. When so far he has only seen and studied him from afar. In fact, perhaps most interestingly, Kemp reveals that he has stood outside Griffin's bedroom door for hours while the man slept, listening to him talk in his slumber.
Whoa. As far as revelations go, it seems to come out of nowhere and even after several rereadings refuses to become anything other than elusive. It casts Kemp in a sort of creepy light, unable to control his own impulses toward repulsion and attraction, so obsessed with Griffin that he needs to learn everything about the man that he can. Seeking to graph the shadow of a man who is attempting to emit no light, and leave no trace.
But as revelations go, it reveals without really describing what it's unveiling and as such, doesn't exactly sit right. There's hardly progression or foreshadowing, which means that their final conversation before Griffin departs seems to come from another story entirely. A talk between two men who know each other far better than anything we've seen as evidence in this story. Who want to know each other even better, at least in one case. And as much as I was joking about some aspects of fan-fiction earlier, there's a certain out of placement . . . lust in Kemp's recitation of all the features of Griffin's body, to the point where you expect him to say something along the lines of "I would like to make his body the focus . . . of my research." By the time we get to the end, Kemp is waiting breathlessly (literally, probably) for Griffin to just say the word and take him away. Away from college, away from the stilted university life and into a world of . . . mad obsession?
Anyone who is crazy enough to read more than a few of these little essays has probably come to realize that the one point I hit over and over, the one thing I always come back to in my own grand obsessed way, is this: what does it all mean? What exactly is the story trying to say? And while I tend to belabor that notion to the point of monotony for the regular stories, it almost goes doubly so for stories that could be considered fan-fiction. For me, I feel there should be an extra burden placed on them, because by co-opting these characters that aren't yours, by taking them and putting them in a setting that the original author didn't entirely intend, you are signaling to me that there is a reason for all this. That these are choices made deliberately, that you are not doing this just to tell a story. That you're trying to tell me something, and it is something I should be listening to. Or for, as the case may be. Why should this story exist, basically? What should I see in here other than imagining Griffin as looking like Antony of Antony and the Johnsons on the cover of the first album (go find it, the androgynous sexuality of it sort of fits the story too).
It boils down to two reasons in cases like this . . . by bringing these characters back from a sort of literary limbo you're either hoping to give us new insights into the characters or highlight new aspects of them that weren't as apparent the first time around. Or, you're hoping to steer us into new insights into the novel itself via a different reading of events, even if at the end of your story you're just hitting the giant reset button.
What are we told here? The story has proven that they knew each other before the original novel started. Okay, but we knew that already, so we can discard that as a reason for the story to exist. We know that they were both brilliant in their ways. But the story seems to be trying to hit several themes at once, and none of them completely. We have Kemp's growing obsession with Griffin, leading into . . . into what? He doesn't abandon his research, and he's not all that into his fiancée anyway, so it can't be said that Griffin ruined their affair or derailed him from his studies. By showing that Kemp had a fascination with Griffin bordering on a latent homoeroticism, does that give us new insights into their relationship for when the book starts, perhaps the aura of spurned lovers or a festering jealousy? We have Griffin surging through the university in pursuit of his secret research but that doesn't tell us anything new about Griffin other than he was obsessed with becoming invisible. We knew that already too, we don't see him set out on that path here, he's already well on that road and this is just another stop. If we were to see the roots of what would become his eventual madness, that would be one thing, or even the origins of his desire to be invisible. Instead, he's just researching. The novel itself explains those points anyway, completely enough. The formula drives Griffin mad and his desire to be invisible stems from just wanting to disappear and enjoying the ability to run around and wreck stuff without getting caught. We can't even say that he was fairly normal before all this invisibility stuff and his quest drove him nuts . . . judging from this story, he's already creepy and weird.
Right at the story rockets toward the end, it seems to be making a comparison between the stilted regimen of university life compared to Griffin's flaunting of convention, and how the realization of that grates on Kemp, who was previously moderately content to work and get his degree and marry his boring wife. And while he gives up some of the things that he was heading toward when the story began, it doesn't derail his course too much as focus him into what he really wants. It gives us the image of a man who is quite thrilled to be the top scientist on the block, until Griffin comes along and becomes the new top scientist on the block. So Kemp seems to learn that being the world's best academic isn't everything, which is an interesting life lesson in itself, but what does he replace it with? A higher degree of self-loathing and a general dissatisfaction toward his profession? He doesn't so much progress as discard and seems to be an emptier, hallower man as the story closes. Which is not the man we're presented with in the original novel. What does he want to be toward the end, if anything? Or does he just want to, pardon the language, f—k Griffin? Even so, the image of Kemp at the end, literally trying to shake himself free of his obsession and attraction to Griffin, barely jibes at all with the level-headed and somewhat courageous protagonist of the original novel.
I think that's what is hard to square most with reading the story. It gets the feel of HG Wells almost exactly right in terms of prose style, but there are times when it feels like the only reason the story exists is to painstakingly get that tone right, regardless of what else happens. The title gives us the suggestion that we're supposed to perceive Kemp as the brilliant genius forced to work in the shadow of an even more brilliant genius, but we get from that is Kemp having to face the galling, but not fatal notion that, no matter how smart you are, there are just some people smarter than you. Which is a blow to the ego but certainly not something that would derail one's life unless one was a few degrees off-center already. We don't get any hints of a bitter rivalry or competition (Kemp certainly isn't engaging in his own weird obsessed experiments, he's just training to become a doctor) or even a scientific game of oneupmanship. Instead, it's just the opposite, where they implicitly seem to fall for each other. Sort of. Does that mean we should read Griffin's ultimate fate in the original novel, and Kemp's part in it, as a sort of revenge from a spurned lover or rival? Maybe, but the story doesn't really suggest that one day he's going to "get" Griffin. Instead, he wants to know him better, to get in on his secrets.
But the only secrets we get are the ones we already know, or don't seem to impact us. And for a story like this, we need more, we need a certain heaviness to exist underneath it, to weigh it down and give it some heft. To keep it near and give it some solidity, so that it stands at our backs, breathing its details in our ears far too closely. So that it suggests other faces in the shadows other than we originally thought we saw, and impressions in the snow other than what were originally made. Letting us see what was there the whole time, or hidden under veils.
It has to do that, or otherwise it runs the risk of just drifting away, out of our grasp and, if its shade is a touch too close to the transparent air, out of our sight entirely.
-MB
5.01.10
"He was really harmless, he only used the hammer to smash the windows of the parked cars on the way home . . ." – Mark Eitzel, "The Boy With the Hammer"
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