The Phantom of Manhattan
“The man I had come to call simply the Phantom of Manhattan stood alone with his head bowed, the very distance that separated him from the others seeming to represent the distance to which the human race had pushed him.”
I had been warned by several friends and fellow fans to stay away from this book, but, call me a glutton for punishment, I decided to give it a try anyway. My mother was worried it would make me angry. Well, I can honestly say it didn’t make me mad. It was far too ridiculous to do that.
The book claims to be a sequel to the musical, which, according to Forsyth, corrects many of the “errors” of the original novel. In a preface, he explains the many ways he believes the novel to be imperfect and what Leroux got wrong. I found it rather ironic that he talked about how foolish it was for Leroux to use facts that were provably untrue…and then went on to do the same thing himself! I even found myself wondering at times if it was meant to be a parody – but it took itself a little too seriously for that.
The characters bear little to no resemblence to Leroux’s creations, or even to those in the musical. Erik (surnamed Muhlheim) is a good 20 to 30 years younger than in Leroux, and much more boring. According to Forsyth, Erik didn’t kill Buquet, and Piangi was an accident. He seems to miss the point that the fact that Erik is dangerous is an integral part of his character. Perhaps more important, he’s missed the point of Erik’s final sacrifice. It seems to me to defeat the beauty of that act if, 13 years later, he tries to take Christine away again.
Many things also just exasperated me. Like Raoul’s “accident”. Whatever. And why would Christine call the tune the monkey plays “Masquerade”? The only reason it’s called that is because it’s a song in the Lloyd Webber musical. And I would like to see most mothers swing their 13-year-old sons around like Christine does at the novel’s “climax”. The climax itself was extremely unsatisfying, though by that time I wasn’t expecting much more.
He also fell into the habit a lot of writers seem to have when writing historical books – of trying to insert anecdotes or references to people who we know become famous. Sometimes they do it well – Forsyth does not. Example:
“I noted that a piano had been positioned in one corner with a young man at the keyboard producing light-hearted music of our era in contrast to the more serious classical arias of the opera. He turned out to be a young Russian immigrant, still with a strong accent, who told me he had composed some of the airs he was playing himself and wished to become an established composer. Well, good luck, Irving Berlin.”
My view of that paragraph is pretty much my view of the whole novel – pretentious, unimaginitave and bordering on ridiculous. If you’re just too curious to resist, go ahead and read it, but be prepared for the stupid. Otherwise, I’ll have to echo the advice of my friends and say this is one Phantom novel to steer clear of.
Oh, but one positive thing was this last quote – which sums up many people’s opinions about Christine. 🙂