Another day, another book (hello, Night Magic!) that isn't the one I need to start. Instead of tearing my hair out, I turn to you, gentlemen and ladies, for your opinions.

I've had a few discussions about this before, but what would be the best way to approach this in terms of which materials to tackle first? Should I go at it chronologically--i.e., start with the original novel and then hit everything else in order of its being written/filmed/what have you, or should I try to organize more by type--all books, then all movies, then all musicals, etc.? And what further delineations should be made within those categories as I figure this out?

I'm leaning toward fully chronological, but as that would entail a lot more sitting around while my deadlines slowly tick down and materials are lost in the mail or orbiting Neptune or god knows where they are (Leroux, why do you want to make me cry?), it might have to be... pseudo-chronological. No one tell the profs.

Another book arrived! I've added Into the Light to the pile and to the progress page, but... it's still not the original, which I need before I can get started.

What do I have to do, Leroux? What do I have to do?

Sigh. Maybe tomorrow... just in time for vacation to be over.

Terry Pratchett's Maskerade and Rebecca Ashe's Masque of the Swan have found their way to my door! Unfortunately, my annotated Leroux still isn't here, meaning that I get to sit on my hands for a little while longer as I wait for it to show up so I can get started. It would be kind of silly to do a comparative study without reading the original first, wouldn't it? Le sigh.

A plague on iUniverse's houses. To include the self-published, or not to include? That is the question. I'm trying to be as all-encompassing as possible, obviously--what good is looking at the diffusion of literature if I don't include enough literature to get a representative sample?--but if I start trying to plow through all the Phantom fanfiction on the web, I'll drown. Literally. In reams of electronic letters that will come out of the screen and choke my nose and throat. On the one hand, self-published volumes are really only fanfiction that someone had a few dollars to put in shoddily bound format; but on the other hand, many of the works we consider from the Gothic era were published by vanity presses. Some of these self-published novels are popular enough to have made it onto Amazon; who am I to say they aren't real literature?

I think, for completeness' sake, I'll include them. After all, everybody's novel is amateur at some point. I wish I could include all the fanfiction out there, too, but I can't write a very effective dissertation if my eyes are bleeding from strain... not to mention the homicide that might occur after the fiftieth really bad one. My powers of mockery can only stretch so far before I snap.

Of course, this means I now have to troll Lulu and iUniverse for material. As if I didn't have enough going on yet.

The first of my ordered books is here! Susan Kay's Phantom gets to join the distinguished company of my Sherlock Holmes pile.

Further interesting news in the case of the Phantom, whose mythos continues to spread like a particularly pernicious but prettily colored mold. Apparently, Andrew Lloyd Webber confirmed back in March that he was going to be starting work on a sequel musical to his original adaptation of Phantom, supposedly based on Forsyth's The Phantom of Manhattan, which is currently sitting on my coffee table pining because I haven't started it yet. It's a daunting undertaking; it's hard to imagine a sequel being able to measure up to the smash-hit popularity of the first one, which is one of the most popular musicals of all time at this point.

Leaving aside all the industry scuttlebutt/gossip that goes along with it--who would get cast? Quick, develop your Dream Casts and follow along!--there's the question of fan response. It appears that The Phantom of Manhattan is almost universally hated by fans of Webber's musical, though as I have yet to read it I don't yet know why. Thematically, as well, the idea is problematic; I mean, a lot of the themes of the original story, including the poignant loss at the end, could be invalidated by suddenly plunking the same characters back together as though nothing had happened.

But! I will analyze themes later. When I've actually read the book. For now, I'll just spend time I should be doing work (actual work in my office, that is) scouring the internet for further information. Even knowing it'll be a disaster in terms of the themes of Webber's first musical, I'll still probably be disappointed if it doesn't get made.

...that's the great thing about being a literary vulture. I'm happy if it's good, and I'm happy if it's a hideous carcass of a production. Both will give me insight. Ain't psychology grand?

The more work I do, the more work I make. Go me.

So, originally, I was planning to do this Phantom project on English-language materials only. This is hypocritical, I know, since the original novel is French, but cut me some slack; I don't speak French, so I have to stick with what I know. I can't really have much of an insight into a piece of literature if I can't read most of the words. Up to this point (yes, this highly advanced point of five days or whatever into things), that hasn't been a problem; I've tripped over a couple of Spanish language films, but they were mostly in the bad pulp film arena, without having much to contribute that the English-language films wouldn't. So I wasn't worrying about it, until I encountered a film that's made me reconsider my stance and praise the gods of subtitling: Ye Bang Ge Sheng.

This is the Chinese version of Phantom, and its title translates roughly to "Midnight Song". There are seven or eight versions of it, from 1937 all the way up to this year. The original 1937 version was a massive cultural event over there from what I can understand, being a hugely popular hit that incorporated elements of the 1925 Lon Chaney version but was magnificently acted and adapted for Eastern culture. The music is supposedly amazing, and each subsequent version has kept some of the original score because of this.

That's probably reason enough to include the films on my list, but as I'm looking at plot synopses, the ideas are practically drowning me. I don't want to say too much in case I'm misreading a translation or something, but there are certain key differences in the plot--for example, it's not a young woman opera singer that the Phantom takes under his wing, but a young tenor--that make it almost irresistible. The whole point of this project is to examine interpretation and the psychology thereof, so a chance to see how an Asian culture's view differs from the Western? Oh, yes, please.

So, despite the fact that it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to import copies, and despite the fact that unless I'm lucky the translations and subtitles probably won't be very good, and despite the fact that I'm opening an entirely new can of worms--another entire paper's worth, really--by bringing in a radically different cultural interpretation... man. I cannot pass this up. At least the original version and the highly-touted 1995 version are going to have to be added to my list.

I think I'm just setting myself up to never finish, ever.

Edited to add: I just found a further two Phantom films, which are both takarazuke (a form of Japanese theatre wherein all roles are played by women) productions, and which are musicals--not the Webber musical, either, but the Yeston! My glee is uncontainable.

As many famous philosophers have frequently said, the quest for knowledge is fraught with peril.

In this case, I've just discovered far too many Phantom pornos. Good god. There are about five more that I found that I didn't even finish investigating, because I somehow failed to want to keep up with the looking at porn while John wonders what the hell is wrong with me.

I need to scrub my brain with bleach now. I can accept Phantom porn--hell, I was excited about the erotica novel--but does it have to be such bad porn?

Clearly, I will need to include some of these in the research process. It's for knowledge!

I went to raid the library today, and discovered that the New York Library not only doesn't have most of the books on my list, but the ones it does have are... drumroll... the Sherlock Holmes crossovers. As my sister says, WTF, mate. I don't want to confuse the process by reading those first, so they'll get to sit on my coffee table for a few days, leering at the other books in my room and scaring them.

Today's notecards (man, I can barely read my own scribbles when I'm going fast):

Phantom cult; frequent references to the "magic" or the "passion" or the "beauty" and gag me with a spoon. Fans as rabidly frothing as anime fans. All books given either a 5 or a 0 star review as some point out they suck and others argue that the "purity & beauty" outweigh the suck. Discuss degradation of LeRoux over time/cultural diffusion/popular culture & artistic interpretation vs. original version/themes & mutation via public opinion. Consider pithy quip/hilarious and/or insightful comparison, deformity of Erik = paralleled by deformity of text over time, pat self on back and bask in ego (man I kill me).

I'll be raiding the Manhattan branch libraries tomorrow, but in the meantime I went out to the Strand and picked up one of the books in question. I always feel accomplished when I go to the Strand and actually find something I was looking for. It's akin to the feeling one gets when one finds Waldo.

For the time being, the New York Public Library system is letting me down a bit (because if there's one thing the library system exists for, it's to supply me with obscure books for my even more obscure and professor-despair-inducing research project); I've so far only been able to pin down about five or six out of that list of thirty-five books, and maybe three of the films. Clearly, my pocketbook will be the one to suffer here. I've already ordered two of the remainder from Alibris, but does anyone else know of good places to look up online for these bad boys? Sadly, for me, cost is more a factor than anything else; with Christmas coming up soon, I'm going to probably have to abandon buying books until far, far in the future, but it's a nice pipe dream.

With the help of my friendly neighborhood Erika, I've gotten all organized and stuff (well, okay, not really). The bare, bargain-basement bones of things are here for now. Yes, it looks like crap. Give me a break. I did it in ten minutes. This isn't an html editing project, it's a literature project. Dammit, Jim!

It's mostly just so I don't do boneheaded things like buying the same book twice or forgetting what the hell I've just written a review of. Because believe me, I will do those boneheaded things without supervision.

Related thoughts that I wrote on notecards as I worked on things today:

Male vs. female authors, preponderance of females; belies gender-specific tendencies or collective subconscious? Suspense/thriller versions mostly male, romances mostly female, discuss? No go, could be pen names, no way to tell actual gender of authors, epic fail.

Author influences: 80% Webber, 19% transference, 1% Leroux. Poor Leroux.

Tortured hero vs. fluff hero--Byronic influence? Original influences/references for Leroux, annotations or footnotes useful or need further materials? Catharsis = audience reaction = preference for Erik, i.e. tragedy with emotional redemption, vs. good feelings = no closure = audience coolness for Raoul, further fleshed out? Raoul = cardboard character, or just audience preference for extreme suffering as leading point to more impressive resolution?

Harass people for related media? Genres left out--theatre (non-musical), others? Input from other sources, any friends/readers got any ideas?