I’ve been continuing to work on
my stories regarding the further adventures of the criminals Malartic and
Lampourde, liberated from the page of Theophile Gautier’s 1863 novel Captain Fracasse, and I’ve started to
hit a slight stumbling block.
The thing is, I actually think
they (and the ideas I have for stories not yet written) are fairly good. Maybe even publishably good. This has thrown me into a couple of dithers.
First off is the old question of
perspective. I’ve written before about
my considerable personal preference for fiction written in the first person,
but so far the stories I’ve written about Malartic and Lampourde have been
written in the third person, following the style of Captain Fracasse. I can’t
help but wonder if they wouldn’t be better reworked into the first person,
probably from the point of view of Lampourde, whose view point I lean towards
even when writing in the third person. I
could couch them as stories being told by an elderly Lampourde, sitting in a
tavern a la Brigadier Gerard, or as memoires written by (or for) him a la
Flashman. I’ve said in a previous post
that I’d like to do for the two villains what George MacDonald Fraser did for
Harry Flashman, but turning the stories into the recollections of one of the
main characters seems an homage too
far.
Next, although the stories are
fairly good, do I really want to be recycling someone else’s pre-existing
characters? They’re long out of
copyright, and MacDonald Fraser certainly had no problems recycling Harry
Flashman in this way, but might it not be better to create my own, and maybe
even shift the setting? I once
entertained some ideas of writing a novel about a pair of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser-esque criminals in an alternative
history Georgian London (using my Anno Geometrica world, for those familiar
with it), and what I’ve already written on Malartic and Lampourde could be
quite easily converted to this. The
alternative historical timeline and existence of magic-like phenomena in the
setting could also possibly make it more interesting (at least from a
publishing viewpoint) than something merely historical. I could also introduce plots and/or
characters from the Nano novel I wrote based on this setting, about a pair of
Bow Street Runners. And of course, if I
did convert the stories to these characters and setting, what perspective would
I write them in?
The thing is, I really like the
punctilious, verbose and quixotic swordmaster Jacquemin Lampourde, and his more cynical, cunning and bizarre-looking colleague the
Chevalier Malartic. I love the approach
they take to their criminality.
Superficially, they’re similar to Arturo Perez Reverte’s Captain
Alatriste, being hired blades in a crowded 17th century city. However, Perez Reverte’s noir-ish, gritty
anti-hero is a soldier by profession, and his criminal activities are very much
something he is forced to resort to due to circumstance. There is no hint that Malartic and
Lampourde’s criminal career is anything they resorted to. Instead it is their calling and
vocation. Like Alatriste, they are
upfront about the fact that they are murderers and footpads, but unlike
Alatriste, they take a genuine pride in the fact.
Alatriste is professional, but in
a utilitarian, workman-like way, taking no joy in the violence that he inflicts. He effectively prostitutes his blade, and
knows that it’s beneath him to do so. He
does it because he’s good at it, and the alternative is to become a beggar. Malartic and Lampourde on the other hand (the
latter especially) are artists and craftsmen who take great satisfaction in
their work, even when all they’re doing is running a man through in a darkened
alleyway, but without any trace of brutality or sadism. They do it because they consider it beneath
them to do any kind of manual labour, or earn an honest living in any other
way, while seeing violent crime as an honourable profession, as long as it is
conducted within certain (very loose) bounds.
Writing them, with all of their
pride, swagger and moral ambiguity, is considerable fun. Added to this, I’ve discovered that the
version of Captain Fracasse that I’ve
read is actually (and to a great extent, thankfully) abridged, but it means
that it left out quite a bit of description regarding Lampourde’s dwelling
(which is much more squalid than I would have thought) and of the Crowned
Radish tavern (which is just as squalid as I thought), as well as fuller
physical descriptions of both Malartic and Lampourde, and accounts of
conversations between them that were almost completely cut from the version I
read. Malartic is revealed to have had a
considerable classical education, and his clothes are described as having once
been incredibly elegant, both of which hint at a background which is not at all
discussed, and leaves me considerable scope for exploration. These have all led to slight revisions of the
stories I’ve already posted here, and to what I’ve got down of another couple
of stories.
I think that for the moment, I
will continue writing about them, and see how it goes. I have one particularly good idea that won’t
work for any other setting, in which I will vaguely attempt to do to The Three Musketeers what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
did to Hamlet, and hopefully it will be fairly entertaining.
Watch this space.