(urth) Short story 2: The Case of the Vanishing ghost

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

Ummmm, shoo-fly pie is NOT a southern dessert. It's a Pennsylvania Dutch thing.

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:50 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Case of the Vanishing ghost
>
> I might as well finish out the first few stories that are available online.  Feel free to add any details or observations after my initial post if you are so inclined - this will be much easier to do once we get to the 1970s Gene.
>
> This is clearly a parody of Sherlock Holmes and his imitators and it begins with an exhortation as such.  Much of the cleverness of this piece is in the way that strange facts that are mentioned are revealed to be banal observations.  Pastiche and mockery are overt.  Character is supposed to be derivative, and the text is metafiction insofar as it also mocks its original publication.
>
> Here is a link to the story, from 1951.
>
> http://www.revolutionsf.com/fiction/vanishing/01.html
>
> SUMMARY:  The great detective (characterized by such odd habits as a perennially uncleaned horse blanket and playing the xylophone with his toes) is accosted in his domain by the Poor Stooge.  He makes several assessments that mostly mock the Stooge (all small children bite the stooge when he touches them, obviously) and then similarly seeing through the disguise of his next visitor, Sir Humphrey Blassington-Smyth of Little Slopshire on the Gimlet, who has a case for him.  The real strength of this piece is the metatextual comments about the detective’s reasoning “The Poor Stooge stands mute. He is too numb for further amazement. The reader is simply numb. “
>
> Sir Humphrey indicates the American Ghost of a University of Texas student (definitely effete and possibly homosexual) who fell into the moat one night, accidentally mistaking their path for the Slopshire-Digby Highway.  He drinks their tea only to expire from the horror of realizing that it is better than the tea at the fraternity Shu Fli Pi (mocking the southern dessert dish, shoofly pie.)  Sir Humphrey’s family uses the ghost to make money, charging admission, but it vanishes.
>
> The ghost has been, according to the detective, lured away by the neighbor, G. reusom.  He has probably used parliament cigarettes or crème de menthe.  The Detective knows that a military shoulder patch, boots, and the commentator (the original place of publication) will scare the effete snobbish ghost back to the castle so that everyone can continue to make money.
>
> COMMENTARY:  There are plenty of historical details that are humorous, like a Louis XIV commode used for warmth and the mockery of the made up fraternity at UT, Shu Fli Pi.  It is very aware that it is not a serious work.  It is shame at having inferior tea that kills the fraternity Texas boy vacationing in England, and it is this effete nature that the detective uses to GET MONEY from his guest, who has been using the ghost for monetary gain as well.  In the final analysis it is money that motivates these characters (except the ghost)
>
> ALLUSIONS: obviously the detective/inductive fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Poe’s Dupin stories, but it is also clearly aware of its identity as parody, and as such is Metafiction.  None of the detective’s observations are actually sublime – green ice cream stains mean a child was eating green ice cream, for example.
>
> FUTURE ECHOES: This is a clever story but it is clearly from Wolfe’s college days – there is really no religious impact, though obviously it presages his interest in detective fiction and in the character of a man of perception interpreting signs.  It also has the effete lisping possibly homosexual presence that would later lurk in Long Sun with characters like Incus.
>
> We can infer that the ghost is scared of military service, démodé boots, and the magazine itself, so in large part the entire story is an elaborate joke that does not neglect it’s source: a University of Texas magazine that will scare the ghost.
>
> Wolfe will employ the detective tropes much more effectively later in Free Live Free, The Detective of Dreams, many other short stories, and perhaps even in works like An Evil Guest, but we can see he has two loves:  the supernatural and the mysterious, and we can already see that in the young Gene’s topics, even when it is as light and non-allusive as this work. He is not afraid to use old material and still make it entertaining somehow.  This time he chose parody. There are probably not any enduring mysteries to this work but it is fun to read.
>
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes