I have long been a fan of John Myers Myers novel Silverlock. This novel is about A. Clarence Shandon, who is rescued from a life of quiet despair by adventuring in the Commonwealth of Letters, the allegorical land of great literature. His guide is a man well-traveled in the Commonwealth, who seems to be all the great storytellers of fiction embodied in one person.
The story is well-told and watching Shandon (named Silverlock by his guide, Golias) develop as a result of his encounters is a pleasure. The true joy of Silverlock for me, though, is identifying the places and characters in the book, since they are all from other works of literature. In an introduction, Jerry Pournelle comments that he recognized about a third of the references on first reading. I did not do nearly as well as Mr. Pournelle - I was able to identify maybe a fifth of the references. Maybe not quite that many.
I have often thought a really good web page could be built tracing all the references in Silverlock. I never got around to doing this but my idea was to identify the references I could and then let other people fill in the rest. Fortunately, a very talented and diligent person has done just this - Arnitra Freeman's Silverlock page is not only beautifully crafted but delves deeply into the literary references, with help from the book The Silverlock Companion and some other web pages.While browsing this page, finally learning what some of the references that had puzzled me for several years were, I was struck by the thought that Silverlock was not unlike a Web page. A Web page contains hyperlinks that take you to other pages. Jumping from link to link to link could ultimately take you through the entire World Wide Web. Silverlock contains references to many works of literature. Many of these works of literature, of course, contain allusions of their own. I suppose that if you followed from reference to reference you could ultimately have read much of literature.
And then I thought, "Why not give it a try?" I'm always trying to decide what to read next - why not retrace the route of Shandon Silverlock? So that is what this web page is all about - a journal of my progress through the Commonwealth, with notes on discoveries and what I liked and what I didn't. Of course, this project will take a very long time to complete - as a matter of fact, will certainly never be completed. This is a good thing - there is no end to the Commonwealth!
Arnitra's Silverlock page - mentioned above but worth mentioning again.
Samuel Seung-Jo Paik's page - Another place to check for that puzzling reference.
Mike Berro's book page has scans of the front and back cover of the first edition, printed in 1949. The back cover contains an interesting literary quiz (which Samuel's page has the answers to in an appendix).
A Treasury of Alliterative and Accentual Poetry - this site quotes The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane from Silverlock (click on Fantasy Poetry in the left-hand frame) but that's just an excuse - this link is included because there is a lot of good stuff here. Trust me, try this site - particularly if you think you don't like poetry and/or think poetry is all about rhyme.
Paired books - this site is a different approach to reading: the contributors suggest books to read in pairs. Silverlock is paired with Anno Dracula by Kim Newman because both "are one long exercise in spotting the metareferences". Of course, I think Silverlock is more than that but nonetheless Anno Dracula goes on the reading list.
A Dani Zweig's Belated Review of Silverlock.
This site reviews the Mythago Woods books of Robert Holdstock. Holdstock evidently plays much the same game that Myers does and even has a character that is a reference to Silverlock, sort of completing the circle. I have purchased two of the books and will be reading them soon. I will let you know what I think as soon as I do.
An update page for the Encyclopedia of Fantasy has the following entry for Marvin Kaye: "The direct influence on the Fillmore series (as opposed to the generic base provided by L. Sprague DE CAMP) was Silverlock (1949) by John Myers MYERS." I will have to consult the book to find out what this is about and then will report the details.A brief review that mistakenly uses Shandy instead of Shandon - although the name Shandon could have been influenced by Shandy, of course....
My friend John Adcox has an excellent page on books on which he laments the lack of a page for Silverlock. (John, I'm working on it but the one you really want is Arnitra's.) Also make sure you visit John's mythology and folklore page.
An interview with Stephen Donaldson, who mentions that one of his works was inspired by Silverlock.
The Transformation Stories List includes a favorable mention of Silverlock. This site is a bibliography of stories that involve physical shapeshifting (and believe it or not, there is more than one - the site is part of a Web ring).
Sea Change is an on-line novel based on a Dungeons and Dragons world that was inspired by Silverlock. Mentioned here only for completeness, not literary value.
Tim's review of The Harp and the Blade. A real rarity, a review of a Myers work that isn't about Silverlock or The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter.
We first meet our hero, A. Clarence Shandon, on a tramp steamer named Naglfar. Shandon's name, suprisingly, doesn't seem to be a reference to anything in particular. At least, not as far as I could tell. Francis Mahony (1805-1866) wrote a poem called The Bells of Shandon, about a famous church belltower near Cork, Ireland but that seems to have nothing to do with A. Clarence Shandon. Still, I read the poem and you might as well, too, because we're going to discuss a line. Even though the poem was found by accident, my rules (well, actually, there aren't any rules) for reference hunting allow serendipity and there is a fascinating reference to be tracked down. Look at the line:
I've heard bells tolling / Old Adrian's Mole in,
So what is Old Adrian's Mole? Well, my first Web search turned up dozens of pages devoted to Adrian Mole, the lead character in a series of British novels that start out as coming of age story but continue to follow Adrian to adulthood. These books, which I had never heard of before, start with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4. There are several books in the series and at least one play and a TV series was based on them. From the descriptions I have read, they sound pretty interesting (but then again I tend to like anything British) so the first book goes on my future reading reading list. I assume the name Adrian Mole comes from the same reference as the one in Mahony's poem - the author seems to use names from literature: Adrian's romantic interest is named Pandora. Among the many web sites devoted to this character I saw two that seemed especially good for anyone wanting more information, the official web site and a very complete fan website.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the original reference. I still don't know what Adrian's Mole is - if you do, e-mail me!
Update! I found Adrian's Mole. Details will follow when I have a little more time to update this page with my notes.
Another possibility was suggested to me by a mistake made by a reviewer who referred to Shandon as Shandy. Tristram Shandy (another book I know I should have read but haven't - yes, I'll add that to the list of things to read soon, too) is a novel that, to quote the Electronic Labyrinth page "is thoroughly performative, not so much a story but an extended act of and meditation on story-telling." Sound familiar? Myers could have been thinking of Shandy when he came up with the name Shandon. At any rate, even without having read the novel, I am aware of a few references that need to be mentioned. Remember, we are looking for literary hyperlinks! Tristram was a knight of the Round Table in Malory's Morte d'Arthur and before that was a hero of a twelth century poem, Tristan. The Camelot Project's Tristam page has a good synopsis of the literature Tristram has appeared in through the ages. Also, Yorick the Parson's name comes from the famous scene in Hamlet.
Don't look at this! Ignore that man behind the curtain! These are links I stuck here because I know I will need them later on. Circe: Odyssey by Andrew Lang Tam Lin: The Tam Lin Pages