Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: evaluation

Transcript context

…If you look at the cover, here’s your name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and there’s the name of Mycroft Holmes. I think that’s on purpose. In a sense you are Mycroft Holmes. He was Sherlock’s older brother who collected information, knew more than Sherlock, had more information. He advised the British government. In a sense, you’re coming out of not quite a retirement, but you’re Mycroft. You’ve been collecting information all this while. This book is like announcing the real Kareem is now here in the public, and the actual story of this book is you reimagining a world in some ways the way you would like it to be. Mycroft goes off to solve a crime with this fellow Cyrus Douglas who is black and from Trinidad, and they do this as equals. So it’s a rewrite of colonial history. Your father’s family came from Trinidad. In the story, they go to Trinidad. At the end of the story, Cyrus — this is now in Victorian England — is actually allowed to enter the royal enclosure. You look at page 60. There’s an apparently obscure reference to James Cowles Prichard. Who’s ever heard of him? But, of course, in 1813, James Cowles Prichard, if you think about it just a bit, wrote a work which in Victorian England was considered the defining statement of the equality of the races and the unity of mankind. Not mentioned in your book, but, of course, Mycroft would know such a thing. Finally, on page 10 of your book, we have Mycroft humming the tune of Figaro from Rossini, and anyone who knows even the slightest bit of information from your life knows you’ve been a fan of The Barber of Seville since high school. Therefore, I conclude you’re Mycroft. This is your fantasy. This is the real Kareem. Mycroft and Cyrus are both you, and this is your coming out party saying “I really am a writer. I’m a novelist. Here’s the real me.” Yes or no? Where do I begin? I think that I tend to be more Cyrus Douglas than Mycroft, and just my vision of their interaction is the fact that there was a lot of value in the colonies that the Victorian British did not appreciate. In forming his friendship with Cyrus Douglas, Mycroft actually gets a glimpse at how the British colonial system has affected people for the good and the bad, and he has the courage to develop a friendship with a black person, which was frowned upon, really, by the British. But he can see, obviously, that it has no value, that gold is where you find it and golden people is where you find it. I think that’s why their friendship is so strong because Mycroft appreciates the fact that Cyrus is a good person with a good moral center, and he accommodates him as a friend because of that. Mycroft, being not necessarily well-to-do, but a British citizen with all of the wonderful parts of his life are coming up. He’s just recently graduated from Cambridge, and he has a beautiful fiancée, and he has a great job with the British Foreign Office, which has found him to be a very capable administrator. It’s all looking up for him, and then things start to happen. I can’t tell you about that. You have to buy the book. It’s a very deep book. There’s much more in here, I think, than reviewers are picking up on.…

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