boxed in

while i was out running errands this afternoon, taking a break from the endless editing and revising of my travel grant proposal (blogland props to G, who was kind enough to help sort out the more practical details of my upcoming research trip, all while waxing rigorous and playful about the future of the academic blog. did you know she has superhuman powers?) i stumbled acro ... okay, okay, i actively sought out, the complete boxed set of the thin man movies starring william powell and myrna loy. based on dashiell hammett's wonderfully satiric 1933 detective novel of the same title, the series, 6 films in all, follows hard-drinking detective nick charles and his socialite wife nora as they lackadaisically solve crimes all while knocking back as many martinis as possible. though the satire of the film adaptations is diluted as the series moves from the first entry, the thin man (1934) through to the last, the song of the thin man (1947), there's something about the blend of detective story and screwball comedy that has intrigued me from the time i first heard nick decree that a martini should always be shaken to waltz time.

this isn't the only boxed set of a mysterious variety that has entered my life lately. for xmas, the ever-thoughtful j&j gave me the complete new annotated sherlock holmes, an offering from w.w. norton that compiles all of ac doyle's writings on the detective in three fully-annotated volumes, complete with the original illustrations from not only the strand magazine, but also the german and american periodicals that holmes made appearances in. i had to be careful not to salivate all over the two boxes that contain the three volumes when i first opened the wrapping.

these fortuitous boxed set events mark, surprise surprise, my embarking on the beginnings of the next chapter of my dissertation on sport in Victorian detective fiction. i'm not sure what to make of the fact that so far, so many of my sources (both directly connected to the chapter and less directly connected to the chapter) have come in boxes. even another, early edition of a conan doyle source that i've taken out from the library arrived in a box! the battered and worn volume, tucked away in the expanding shelving on the fourth floor of the library had been inserted in a cardboard sleeve with a velcro fastener to ensure its longevity. i *know the detective genre is all about societal control in moments of more general cultural upheaval, a narrative of enforcing normalcy if you will, but this is a little ridiculous.