1920s References in Speakeasy Dead: The Golem
One of the things I knew when I wrote Speakeasy Dead was that my male lead, Bernie, was going to have a golem housekeeper named Gladys.
What’s a golem [goh-lum], you ask? Dictionary.com says: Jewish Folklore. a figure artificially constructed in the form of a human being and endowed with life. One story (there are many) is that a medieval Rabi, wanting to defend his hood in Prague, made a clay giant and gave it life. Things went well for a while until the Rabi and golem developed different opinions on what to smash.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
Golems were famous in silent movies. First came The Golem: How He Came into the World, a 1920 German film, following the basic text. There’s a nice print on YouTube:
In 1927, Golems returned in somewhat altered form in Fritz Lang’s famous German classic, Metropolis.
So golems were hep in the roaring twenties, but there’s another reason Gladys entered Speakeasy Dead. I wanted to pay homage to Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal. It has a subplot where golems have formed a trust to buy themselves, and one, Gladys, becomes hilariously transgendered.
It’s a wonderful book. Seriously. If you haven’t read it, go grab a copy or, better, the audiobook read by Stephen Briggs. The book stands separate from the main Discworld series, so you don’t have to read them all. (Although, who can resist?)
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The last reason for (my) Gladys was P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster. Right from the start, Bernie was shamelessly modeled on Bertie Wooster. Wooster has J. Therefore Bernie required G.
Many of Wodehouse’s Jeeves of Wooster books are out of copyright and can be had for free, although I highly recommend the audio versions read by Jonathan Cecil, another brilliant narrator. (Audible doesn’t have Cecil reading the first one, but some libraries do.)
The Jeeves and Wooster books are snappy, witty, and highly worth a read. In a stroke of good fortune, the BBC did a TV show that’s almost as good some years ago, starring a very young Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Annoyingly, you can’t stream the TV show. But it’s worth $29.99 to own the DVDs.
Jeeves is, of course, the archetypal gentleman’s gentleman, who under no circumstances lets standards drop. Gladys, being ancient, is more progressive. She’s learned to enjoy new fashions and pounce on her weekly Argosy.
Our hero, Bernard Benjamin, claims to despise excitement. He asks for nothing but to spend his evenings playing the ukulele with college chums. Gladys enjoys a bit of adventure from time to time.
Of course, as a loyal family retainer, she’ll never go against her master’s wishes. Unless adventure happens to glide their way….
