Drood the obscure, reimagined
If death had not intervened, the concluding installment of Charles Dickens's last novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," would have appeared 138 years ago this month; instead, it was cut short at six of the intended 12 numbers. Still, those unrealized pages have been exceptionally fruitful, spawning an entire field of literature, an enduring debate, and any amount of theatrical high jinks. Just recently, two further novels with origins in the mystery of the "Mystery" have been published: last month, "Drood," by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown, $26.99), this month "The Last Dickens," by Matthew Pearl (Random House, $25).
Simmons's novel doesn't concern itself with the standard questions about Dickens's book: Is Drood really dead? Who really is Datchery? Could he be Drood himself? What's the story on India? And John Jasper's black scarf? Does Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone" shed light on Dickens's plot? Those questions, and Dickens's novel itself, are only tangentially related to the exceedingly renegade story told here. The book's central focus is on the relationship between Dickens and his friend and colleague Collins. It extrapolates from the known facts about the two writers' sometimes strained friendship and nicely conjures their world and the literary circle in which they moved. But it also takes the action to the sewers beneath London, noxious and dangerous, and from there to the supernatural realm, where things are even more sordid and creepy.
Collins narrates the book, and almost immediately proceeds to denigrate Dickens, detailing his shabby treatment of his wife, Catherine, and his secret affair with the young actress Ellen Ternan. His friend's iniquity established, Collins goes over the famous Staplehurst railway accident of June 9, 1865, in which a number of passenger cars plunged off a viaduct, killing 10 people and injuring many more. Dickens was on the train with Ternan and her mother, a fact he attempted to keep secret. Beyond that, it was a traumatic event in the writer's life, and Simmons, through Collins, makes it all the more so. We learn that it is here that Dickens, bringing aid and succor to the injured and dying, first came across the ghoulish creature called "Drood," a tall, "cadaverously thin" man in a top hat and cloak. His nose was "mere black slits opening into the grub-white face," and a few of his fingers were "like tapers of white wax that had been partially melted." He, too, was attending the victims of the crash - leaving everyone he ministered to dead.
It seems that this ghastly individual is a notorious robber and murderer, and as we discover, he may actually be . . . dead. Whatever his condition, he appears to have mesmerizing powers and a connection to ancient Egypt and its horrifying rituals. He holds court in a special chamber in the sewers of London, and it looks as if he has made Dickens his creature. Soon enough, he moves in on Collins, causing one of his minions, a scarab beetle, to burrow into the appalled writer's body. Taking up residence in his skull, the bug scuttles about, rushing to peer out of Collins's eye sockets when things start hotting up in the plot - an exercise that is both dreadful and comic.
Does this sound a little far-fetched? Yes it does. But Simmons's Collins is not the most reliable narrator - or, put another way, his reality may not be everyone's. A martyr to gout, he is (and was) a dedicated drug addict, pounding down copious drafts of laudanum daily and frequenting an opium den weekly. What is more, it becomes clear that Collins is consumed with resentment toward Dickens. He finds the adulation paid to the great man galling; he is stung by his friend's criticism of his work; he is irked that his own contributions to their joint projects are scarcely acknowledged. This expenditure of bile may or may not be justified; who can say? But his acrimonious narrative does provide a true picture of an enduring state of affairs: the one-upmanship and begrudgery that are endemic to literary circles.
As he showed in "The Terror," Simmons is a master at fashioning competing worldviews, and emergent ones too. Many species of reality materialize in this almost-800-page story. Aside from creating a world colored if not actually created by resentment - and something else, which I dare not name - the action includes germinal elements of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Prototypes of characters who make appearances in its curtailed pages abound, among them a Datchery, a stonemason called Durdles, and a pesky boy called Deputy. Beyond that, both Dickens and Collins appear in settings that will later crop up in the unfinished novel. The two novels, Dickens's and Simmons's, have an off-kilter, fantastical relationship to each other that is both ingenious and unnerving. At another level, the book provides a simple tale of horror, and at yet another, a vivid and convincing picture of life in Victorian England.
"The Last Dickens" is half the length of "Drood" but took twice the time to get through. Its prodigiously banal writing and incoherent plot almost conquered me, hardened reader though I am. At the novel's center is one of Dickens's American publishers, James Osgood ("It was when I read Walden that I knew I wanted to be a publisher"). Sharing center stage is Rebecca Sand, a strong-minded divorcee and bookkeeper for Fields, Osgood & Co., who is determined to make her way in the working world. The first bad thing that happens is that her brother is murdered on his way from the Boston docks where he was meant to pick up the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," just arrived from England. The manuscript goes missing, stolen by some guy; but the publishers send off for other copies, so that's OK. Nonetheless, they're hell-bent on discovering how the recently deceased Dickens meant to finish the novel. "I shall go to London and use my knowledge of its literary circles to investigate what was in Dickens's mind," declares Osgood's partner, J. T. Fields. But no! It's James and Rachel who take on the task, leaving historic Boston for historic London and historic Gad's Hill (Dickens's historic home) and back again. India crops up too in this excruciatingly tedious jumble of potted history, murder, mayhem, mesmerism, sexism, stalking, piracy, secret identity, and opium. Add to this one blood-thirsty Parsee and a vast shoal of red herrings and you have "The Last Dickens."
Katherine A. Powers lives in Cambridge. Her column appears on alternate Sundays. She can be reached by e-mail at pow3@verizon.net. 
