There is no question that at this point, that within the popular genre of literature in which children are much smarter than adults, the best work is to be found within the expansive Encyclopedia Brown series. To put it plainly, Encyclopedia Brown is rad. He solves mysteries all the time, and quite frankly proves that solving crime is pretty easy.
The debate then is not whether or not Encyclopedia Brown is awesome, it is which selection with the series is the awesomeist. Several come to mind. Encyclopedia Brown gets his Man, Encyclopedia Takes the Case, Encyclopedia and the Case of Pablo’s Nose (the first in the series to take on the controversial issue of characters who may not be white) are all fine examples. But it is Encyclopedia and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers that achieves a level of complexity, daring and, if I may be so bold, awesomeness, not achieved before or (sadly) since.
Based on the cover, this novel involves a pair of smelly sneakers, a canoe, a helicopter, a cup of tea or soup, and a vase. I don’t have to read a single word to know this is going to be one heck of a who-done-it (my money is on the vase). What is great about this book is the way it subverts the sleuth genre by showing how modern day literary conventions can converge with post-colonial aesthetics to produce a challenging read that questions the authority of the author as narrator, while empowering readers to create their own meaning in the mystery as text. Also, those sneakers really do look disgusting!
Now, it’s not a perfect book. There are some strange plot holes as when Encyclopedia Brown asks the kid at the gym if he’s ever played baseball before based on the granule of dirt he sees stuck to his ankle. But then, this is the guy that prevented murder once simply by staring at a guy name Pablo’s nose! Truly, there is no limit to his sleuthing.
Of course the real fun of this series is trying to solve the mystery yourself (Wolfgang Iser famously said of this structure: “The first structural quality of the blank, then, is that it makes possible the organization of a referential field of interacting textual segments projecting themselves one upon another,” but that is likely because he always suspects Dr. Gordon, when the thief is inevitably Dr. Gordon’s suspicious gardener).
One question I kept thinking about: Why are these sneakers disgusting? Is that a value judgment on contemporary culture’s fixation with athletic prowess over intellect, or merely an empirical observation of the odors emitted by certain peoples feet, particularly when they are from the South? Certainly both readings are entirely possible, and, at the risk of getting on my political soapbox, I couldn’t help see the entire symbol as a categorical rejection of contemporary market-based value systems that carry no object moral code, but rather achieve their meaning through commoditization only.
Disgusting indeed!
Tags: Book of the Month
I love these books! But post-colonial? Really? You went there, huh?