Usual Suspects: a most stimulating evening!
Those of us who were privileged to attend the Usual Suspects’ end-of-year assessment Tuesday night of last week were treated to a discussion that was – well, it was just plain terrific! (So much for my resolution not to gush…)
The first hour was devoted to book talking. Each Suspect was enjoined to talk about one title. I recently wrote that I was chafing slightly at this stricture, but in the event, it proved exactly the right decision. We only ran slightly over the hour allotted to this activity; moreover, the discussion moved at a brisk and invigorating pace.
Working in the library all those years, I had the pleasure of hearing some terrific book talks. Now, book talking is one of those activities that is much harder to do than you would suppose. Or I should say, it is hard to do it well. Most of us have a tendency to get tangled up in the chronology of the plot, to the detriment of the book’s other aspects, e.g. characters, setting, and crucial for many of us, the quality of the writing.
As far as the art of the book talk is concerned, the Suspects soared! Carol kicked off the proceedings with a lively traversal of Agatha Christie’s autobiography. For Yours Truly, this brought back intensely pleasant memories of our visit to Torquay, Dame Agatha’s birthplace, in 2006. Located on Devon’s South Coast, Torquay possesses a lovely harbor and a surprisingly temperate climate. If I’m not mistaken, Carol and several other group members will be staying in Torquay as part of a mystery-themed tour this coming spring.
To Carol’s recommendation of the Christie autobiography Ann added this suggestion: 
In her turn, Ann commented on the difficulty she had this year finding mysteries that appealed to her. She then mentioned two books by Suzanne Arruda, March of the Lion and its sequel, Stalking Ivory. While she likes this author’s African setting, she finds her protagonist somewhat inauthentic.
For his part, Leo was having the same problem as Ann. Sometimes, in this situation, the only consoling course of action is to return to an author that you’ve known and loved for years. In Leo’s case, this meant going back to the books of Bruce Alexander, aka Bruce Cook. Alexander wrote a series of eleven novels featuring Sir John Fielding, “the blind beak of Bow Street” and younger brother of novelist Henry Fielding. Sir John lived from 1721 to 1780, and Alexander limns the time and place with great vigor and conviction. ( The particular title Leo read was Murder in Grub Street. This is the second entry in a series that ran from 1994 to 2005.)
Bruce Alexander passed away in 2003, leaving us with an historical fiction series that is a model of the subgenre. (I especially recommend the audio versions read by John Lee.) Here is an interview with Alexander that appeared in January Magazine in 1999.
And what’s this? In the course of researching this subject, I discovered City of Vice, a BBC series based on the lives of the Fielding brothers. The DVD is already available and is owned by the Howard County Library. (I have not thus far found any indication that these programs are based on Bruce Alexander’s novels.) 
Next, it was Mike’s turn. She began by commenting that her frustration with the inadequacy of many new books has led her to a return to older titles. (I feel this way much of the time myself.) She read this: 
Now, Mike’s choice really intrigued me. I have long cherished the film version of Anatomy of a Murder but I’ve never read the book. Mike, on the other hand, has read the book – and greatly enjoyed it – but not yet seen the movie. Mike, you are in for a real treat! 
Louise recommended Fire and Fog by Dianne Day. 
I had almost forgotten about Day’s Fremont Jones series. Fremont is an enterprising young woman who flees her stifling New England milieu in order to make her way in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. I read the first series entry, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, shortly after it came out in 1995 and enjoyed it very much.
On to Frances, who is a relative newcomer to the Suspects. And what a great addition to the group she is – she possesses great warmth and wit, with a terrific mind into the bargain. It follows naturally that such a person would love crime fiction. (How could I possibly stop myself writing that last sentence?) Frances is our resident Sherlockian, and her recommendation, Dust and Shadow by Lindsay Faye. In this debut novel, Faye pits Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper. The tale is told by – who else? – Dr. Watson. By the time Frances had finished her eloquent summation, I wanted to dash right out and get the book immediately! Ditto for The Tale of Murasaki by Liz Dalby. I don’t think this delicious-sounding historical novel is a mystery, but somehow it got thrown into the rich stew of irresistible fiction titles that we were brewing that night.
Frances concluded by praising the novels of Rita Mae Brown and Asa Larsson.
And now it was my turn.
I indicated in a prior post that I was having a good deal of trouble deciding which book to talk. In fact, I didn’t actually decide until about fifteen minutes into the discussion. Yes, I had done some narrowing down. Several candidates were stowed in my book bag; I finally settled on this one: 
It turns out that several group members had fond memories of Ellis Peters’ s Inspector Felse series. In particular, Ann was quite familiar with them. She informed us that the detecting duo of Dominic Felse and Tossa (real name Theodosia) Barber also appear in two series titles set in India: Mourning Raga and The Knocker on Death’s Door. (You can see why it is such a joy to talk about mysteries with these people, with their vast knowledge of the genre coupled with a boundless enthusiasm!)
I now realize that the real joy of this series is not so much Inspector Felse himself – though he is a pleasant and intelligent enough gentleman – but his son. Dominic, with his heart-on-his-sleeve and his winning ways! Why do we not encounter more characters like him in mystery fiction – young men and/or women approaching adulthood with that tantalizing mix of avidity and trepidation…
In the post I referred to above I mention my delight in being introduced, by Ellis Peters, to the fujara. What is it? Click here to see – and to hear.
At the tail end of my spiel – and emboldened by Frances’s having mentioned more than a single title! – I threw in the anthology Line-up. This delightful compendium is edited by Otto Penzler, legendary proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop.
Pauline followed me with a recommendation of Locked In by Marcia Muller and Skin and Bone by Tom Bale. (From what I can determine, the latter has not been published in this country.)
Finally, Marge praised the novels of John Lescroart, whom she feels has never achieved the recognition he deserves among crime fiction aficionados. In particular, she recommended these two titles: 
Marge’s persuasive pitch certainly convinced me to give this author a try. In addition, she raved about Sara Paretsky’s latest, Hardball.
Communicating via e-mail, Barb seconded Marge’s praise of Hardball, adding this observation: “It is curious that in their latest books, both Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton (in U Is for Undertow) have reached back into the ’60’s for a part of their plots.” Barb then added her title choice for the evening: 
So: so far, so good…for Hour One.
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Next, we were asked to consider and comment on the salient points raised in Pauline’s erudite handout. In it, she examined our year in crime fiction from various angles, such as subgenre, gender of the author, and gender of the protagonist. These last two yielded an interesting fact: of the ten novels discussed in 2009, seven were written by women. Yet only one – A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton – featured a female protagonist.
Here’s what we read in 2009:
A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly
The Tinderbox by Jo Bannister
The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler
Still Life by Louise Penny
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
Although many of us have an abiding affection for mysteries set in the past, only two of our ten selections were clearly historical: A Free Man of Color and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (the latter being nonfiction). There followed a discussion of what actually constitutes historical fiction. The handout contained this definition, courtesy of the Spring 2008 issue of Mystery Readers Journal: “A book…written at least 50 years after the events described or…written by someone who was not alive at the tike of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research).” This is taken more or less verbatim from the one provided by The Historical Novel Society, and while one could certainly take issue with it, it strikes me as a reasonable jumping off point.
As to the other subgenres, we agreed that the edges around some of these category definitions are starting to blur. Is it hardboiled? softboiled? lightly boiled? three minute? (As you can see, at this point we were in comic relief mode!) We also felt that the term “cozy” is becoming diffuse. Louise Penny’s Three Pines mysteries have been called cozies, but we don’t think the term applies accurately to this series.
When we examined the question of setting, we were surprised that at no time in 2009 did we venture beyond North American and the British Isles. We are of course very aware of, and generally enthusiastic about, the ascendancy of international settings and crime fiction in translation. In the past, we have read and discussed the novels of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, Boris Akunin, Andrea Camilleri, Donna Leon, and others. But we didn’t venture to such foreign climes this past year. Should we make doing so a priority? asked Pauline. Only if the books are worth our while, was Marge’s rejoinder. No arguing with that.
So: suggestions? Marge mentioned A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley (Botswana); Pauline brought up The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (Australia). The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall was thrown into the mix (India). Someone mentioned Karin Fossum, whose writing I especially love and whose latest novel, The Water’s Edge, was to my mind a small masterpiece. Finally I whipped out Judge Dee at Work. I continue to be fascinated by Robert van Gulik’s amazing evocation of China in the seventh century AD. At which point Ann reminded us of I.J. Parker’s novels, which are set in eleventh century Japan.
At one point during the meeting, we had been given ballots on which we were to indicate which book and/or discussion we had most enjoyed. Apparently, the nine people present all voted differently; the only title that got more than one vote was Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. (Last month, Marge led us in an excellent discussion of this title.)
After some vacillation, I cast my vote for Strangers on a Train (with The Maltese Falcon and Raven Black running a close second). Interestingly, Strangers was the book-cum-discussion that Carol liked the least. She felt that there was enough evil in the real world without our having to deal with the pure malevolence emanating so strongly from the pages of Highsmith’s book. But I felt that the novel offered a brilliant portrayal of a man who was not fundamentally evil but was fundamentally weak, whose artist’s gifts and love for a fine woman should have led him to higher ground but didn’t, who should have been able to resist the evil incarnate of another man, when his influence bore down so powerfully.
Final thoughts? At a remove of one week, I’m mostly remembering my own: I appreciated the inclusion of classic titles among the selections. I found that reaching back to discuss the first novels in long-running series – Sue Grafton’s A Is for Alibi and Robert B. Parker’s The Godwulf Manuscript – was illuminating and fun. I was surprised that two titles that I thoroughly enjoyed got a thumbs down from almost every one else (the Parker title and Tinderbox by Jo Bannister). Finally, I feel deeply fortunate to be part of this wonderful group of crime fiction fans!
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A note to the Usual Suspects: I apologize for any errors and/or omissions, and I welcome your comments.
One book – just one!
The directive issued to the Usual Suspects for our December meeting: “you can talk about one book, and one book only.” Gulp!
I have to say, I understand where our (fearless!) leaders are coming from on this. After all, there are people like me, who get going and can’t stop. My favorite mystery of 2009? Oh, dear, I’ve read so many great ones; let me see…
Provision has been made, I’m happy to say, for the overly prolix among us: We can put a list together and give it out at the meeting. This provision at once got me beavering away on my list. This is where I am so far on that little project:
The Water’s Edge by Karin Fossum 
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
*Judge Dee at Work by Robert van Gulik
*Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey
*A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie 
*Turning Point by Peter Turnbull
*Piper on the Mountain by Ellis Peters 
*The Marx Sisters and All My Enemies by Barry Maitland
The Suspect by L.R. Wright
The Private Patient by P.D. James
*Hit Parade and Hit and Run by Lawrence Block
Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor
About Face by Donna Leon
The Accomplice by Elizabeth Ironside 
Chat and The Catch by Archer Mayor
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine
August Heat by Andrea Camilleri 
*The Skeleton in the Closet by M.C Beaton
Ash Wednesday by Ralph McInerny
Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger
*The Demon of Dakar by Kjell Eriksson
Pix by Bill James
I’ll probably just stop here.
The titles and/or authors I’d really like to talk about are designated with an asterisk. I’ve linked (both above and below) to those I’ve already written about in this space.
My paperback of A Caribbean Mystery is bristling with post-it flags. I wanted to note in particular Christie’s astute observations of human nature, which are freely intermingled with some rather disconcerting comments on race. Disconcerting but not mean-spirited, I think. All the same, this is the kind of stumbling block one encounters at times when reading the classics of the Golden Age. With the fiction of Dorothy Sayers, one is more likely to encounter comments denigrating Jews. Yes I know – both writers are simply reflecting the attitudes prevalent in the time and place in which they lived. Still, some remarks, casually tossed off, can cut, even now.
For this, and other reasons, I think A Caribbean Mystery would make for a very interesting book discussion.
I’ve written briefly about The Marx Sisters, the first of Barry Maitland’s Brock and Kolla novels. A few weeks ago I read the third book in the series, All My Enemies. I really like this author and am very glad to have found yet another series of British police procedurals in which I can happily immerse myself. In All My Enemies, Maitland takes us into the world of Britain’s regional theatre companies. As you would guess, it’s a fascinating place to visit – although I don’t know if I’d want to stay there for a prolonged period, what with professional jealousies and personal crises taking a constant and relentless toll on company members.
At any rate, I learned interesting bits of theatre lore – the process of “corpsing,” for instance: “‘Corpsing is where you do something to try to try to throw somebody else out of their character, like make them laugh in the middle of a death scene.’”
I enjoy Maitland’s polished prose and frequently memorable turns of phrase. Here is Kathy Kolla tracing a murder victim’s route to and from work:
“The suppressed violence of commuting struck her, of squeezing into a metal tube in one part of the city, of being crushed against sweaty strangers for a while and then abruptly ejected into a charging mob in another part.
As you may have already concluded, these novels are very much in and of London, with the different neighborhoods (which after all began their existence as distinct villages) coming vividly to life.
As for the two titles by Lawrence Block, they make up part of a new series featuring Keller, a paid assassin. O horrible! you may shudder in revulsion. Don’t. They’re incredibly engrossing, and in the case of Hit Parade, very funny while being totally subversive. The tone is more somber in Hit and Run – so much so that I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But I loved it. Keller gets himself into a predicament that caught me completely off guard. I can’t imagine how it can possibly be resolved. I’m dying to read the next book! And when I finished Hit and Run, I wanted desperately to talk to someone about it. So discussible? You bet! (BTW – Block’s reading of Hit Parade was highly enjoyable; Hit and Run, read by Richard Poe, equally so.)
Click here and scroll down to the bottom for two videos featuring Lawrence Block. In the first, he reads from Hit Parade; in the second, he explains how Keller came to be a series character.
Ellis Peters is justly held in high esteem for her incomparable Brother Cadfael series. I have recently been listening to her other series featuring Inspector Felse. The books are narrated wonderfully by Simon Prebble, and they have been a revelation to me: fascinating, engrossing, and of course, beautifully written. In The Piper on the Mountain, Peters gives full play to her longstanding affection for the land and people of Czechoslovakia, as the country was called at the time of her writing (1966). Setting and atmosphere are a big plus in this novel, as is the presence of the Inspector’s son Dominic, an Oxford student. Dominic is such a lovable young man – a winning combination of resourcefulness, courage, and vulnerability – especially where comely young women are concerned.
I love it when a book introduces me to something entirely exotic and new. This novel introduced to the fujara, a large wind instrument native to Slovakia. 
This is the instrument upon which the eponymous piper is playing.(Click here to hear it.) Not counting the Greek vases of beloved recent memory, the fujara is the niftiest new object to come into my life since the Towie Ball!
I’d like to mention The Demon of Dakar because I feel that Kjell Eriksson is not as well-known as his Scandinavian contemporaries – and he should be. Demon of Dakar moved me profoundly. 
I cannot conclude this post without mentioning the handout given out at our November meeting. Primarily composed by Pauline, the resident scholar of the Usual Suspects, in anticipation of our end-of-year meeting and evaluation, it consists of a spreadsheet showing who presented what title and when, an analysis off the mystery subgenres in which we’ve been reading, a grid designed by Barbara that addresses issues such as gender of the author, gender of the protagonist, time period and/or setting, etc.
Finally, questions are posed such as:
Are there common threads to be discerned in this past year’s reading selections?
What kinds of books do we want to read in the coming year?
Did a book that you personally didn’t like still make for an interesting discussion? Did the discussion cause you to change your opinion of the book?
Have we neglected any areas or genres this year? Are we sufficiently diverse with regard to setting, nationality of author, time period, any other relevant categories?
There’s more, but those convey the refreshing erudition and creativity of the enterprise. Professor Pauline and Professor Barbara: Well done, both of you!
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale: a book discussion
I confess I approached last Tuesday night’s discussion with a certain diffidence. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher presents such an array of complex issues, I doubted I could do the book justice. But – doubts were vanquished almost as soon as we began. I have the incredible good luck to be associated with The Usual Suspects, a gratifyingly brainy group of people who brought their impressive intellects to bear full force upon Kate Summerscale’s many-layered, remarkable narrative. (Click here to read my original review of this book. Also, be warned: this post contains spoilers.)
I began our discussion by a reading a passage from the introduction:
“A Victorian detective was a secular substitute for a prophet or a priest. In a newly uncertain world, he offered science, conviction, stories that could organise chaos. He turned brutal crimes – the vestiges of the beast in man – into intellectual puzzles. But after the investigation at Road Hill the image of the detective darkened. Many felt that Whicher’s inquiries culminated in a violation of the middle-class home, an assault on privacy, a crime to match the murder he had been sent to solve….
That paragraph in its entirety summed up many of the issues explored by the author in this book.
I next asked everyone to look at the Kent family tree. Several of the birth and dates there given serve as a sobering reminder of how prevalent infant death still was, even in the mid-nineteenth century in a progressive Western country.
I then went on to provide some biographical information on Kate Summerscale. This Wikipedia entry pretty much sums up what I was able to find. In addition, here is an interview with the author:
Then it was time to look at the murder itself, and the context in which it took place. When I asked what emotion this core aspect of the book evoked, someone immediately responded, “horror.” Everyone agreed at once. It seemed an especially heinous crime, compounded as it was of cool calculation and unimaginable rage. As Summerscale puts it, concerning the weeks that followed the grisly revelation :
“The puzzle of the Road Hill case lay in the killer’s peculiar combination of heat and cold, planning and passion. Whoever had murdered, mutilated and defiled Saville Kent must be horribly disturbed, possessed by unnaturally strong feelings: yet the same person, in remaining so far undiscovered, had shown startling powers of self-control.
The author concludes this paragraph by pointing out that “Whicher took Constance’s cold quiet as a clue that she had killed her brother.” And though he was made to pay dearly for it, he was exactly right to do so.
We all agreed that this book was greatly enriched by the frequent allusions to works that were seminal in the evolution of the detective fiction genre. Some time ago, the suspects had discussed The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, so it was particularly enjoyable to encounter this great writer once again, in this context. Collins coined the phrase “detective fever,” declaring that Charles Dickens had a bad case of it where the Road Hill House crime was concerned.
Inspector Bucket in Bleak House and Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone are both to some extent modeled on the real life character of Jonathan Whicher. Another novel mentioned in connection with the Road Hill House case is Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. When I first read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, I was intrigued by the mention of this title. It was a book – and author – which rang only the faintest of bells for me, dating from my English major days at Goucher College and Georgetown University. I then tried to read it, but got bogged down in the rather protracted description of Audley Court with which the novel begins.
This time, after completing my second traversal of Summerscale’s book, I decided yet again to read Lady Audley. And a strange thing happened:I was mesmerized by this novel! Once past that slow-moving opening passage, I found myself completely engrossed in a genuinely fascinating story. It was hard for me to believe I that a work of such positively juicy readability was originally published in 1862. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, you sorceress – where have you been all my life? 
Lady Audley’s Secret is the exemplar of a genre known as the novel of sensation. Attaining great popularity in the 1860’s and 1870’s, such works aimed to jolt the reader by turning certain staid Victorian conventions on their collective heads, and by dealing deliberately in shocking subject matter, such as “adultery, theft, kidnapping, insanity, bigamy, forgery, seduction and murder” (Wikipedia). Well gosh, no wonder that was so much fun!
To a considerable extent, novels of sensation were the forerunners of the detective story, so they should naturally be of interest to those of us who are ardent readers of crime fiction. Kate Summerscale advances the possibility that “…the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional…[is] to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away.” Summerscale goes on to quote Raymond Chandler to the effect that “The detective story…is a tragedy with a happy ending.” Our group kicked this provocative observation around a bit. IMHO, this is Chandler speaking with tongue firmly in cheek. This is, after all, the man who wrote, at the conclusion of one of the greatest mystery novels ever written:
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
No happy ending there ( though the writing itself is stunning.) Summerscale’s theory, on the other hand, has real merit.
I’ll have more to say about Lady Audley’s Secret in a later post. But first: more on the book under consideration Tuesday night.
As with much sensation fiction, madness runs as a dark undercurrent throughout Kate Sumerscale’s narrative. The Kent family was a blended one, comprising Samuel Kent’s children by his first wife, Mary Ann Windus, and those he fathered subsequently by Mary Drewe Pratt.
Samuel Kent
Mary Ann Windus was a sad case. Married to Samuel Kent in 1829 at the age of twenty-one, she became repeatedly pregnant. Out of a total ten live births, only five children survived infancy. When still young, Mary Ann purportedly showed signs of ‘weakness and bewilderment of intellect.’ The repeated pregnancies and infant deaths she had to endure can only have made matters worse.
Also unhelpful was the introduction into the household of Mary Drewe Pratt as governess to Constance, who was born in 1844. Pratt, an apparently imperious presence on the domestic scene, disparaged and marginalized Mary Ann Windus. The latter finally died in 1852. A year later, Samuel Kent married Mary Drewe Pratt. Proving to be just as fecund as her predecessor, Pratt gave birth to three children in quick succession. Francis Saville, born in 1856, was the murder victim in 1860.
The initial revelations concerning the murder caused a kind of feeding frenzy among members of the public and the press. Jack Whicher obstinately insisted that Constance Kent was the culprit, but his methods were blunt and ham handed, and he lacked any convincing evidence. People found another theory more compelling; namely, that Samuel Kent and the nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough, were lovers and had been observed in flagrante by little Saville. Gough slept in the same room with the younger children and was present when Saville was taken from his bed. Although she insisted that she had slept through the abduction, neither seeing nor hearing anything, she nevertheless made an attractive suspect.
In the short term, no further compelling evidence appeared. No breakthrough was achieved. The hubbub gradually died down. Whicher, his investigative techniques and seemingly arbitrary conclusions thoroughly vilified by both the press and the public at large, slunk back to London. The public’s attention was diverted to other matters. (Whicher stayed with the police force for several more years. After retiring from the force, he became a private “agent of inquiry,” a career path similar to that of Anne Perry’s fictional protagonist William Monk. It’s also worth noting that amid the general disapproval, Whicher did have his defenders.)
Jonathan Whicher
Then, in 1865, Constance Kent came forward and confessed to the murder of her step-brother. Her initial explanations in regard to her motive tended to be murky and contradictory. Ultimately, however, it emerged that Constance was possessed of a great animus toward her stepmother. Mary Drewe Pratt had sewn a huge resentment in the bosom of Mary Ann Windus’s daughter by denigrating and ultimately seeking to replace her own mother. To make matters worse, Pratt displayed blatant favoritism toward the children she and Samuel had together. With Saville’s murder, she seems to have reaped the fruits of her own actions. If her sole aim was to secure Samuel Kent for her husband and thereby make a place for herself among the middle classes of nineteenth century England, she achieved her goal, but at a terrible price.
Constance Kent
When it became known that Constance had confessed of her own free will, the question arose as to whether she, like her mother, suffered from “the taint of madness.” How else to account for an adolescent girl’s commission of such a terrible act? In recent years, the theory has surfaced that the real trouble – or at least, the medical trouble – in the Kent family was caused by Samuel’s having had syphilis, and having passed the infection on to Mary Ann Windus. Among its other scourges, this disease can cause early infant death and mental instability. Men were extremely reluctant to seek medical help for this particular ailment, or even to admit to be suffering from it.
At any rate, Summerscale advances this theory cautiously, warning that “Syphilis is an affliction easy to suspect in retrospect.”
We talked about the strange lack of emotion displayed by members of the Kent family. Samuel is reported to have been seen weeping at one point, but we are not told of any other demonstrative displays. This is perhaps understandable in the context in which the crime occurred. First of all, Summerscale could report on only what was supported by written testimony. And this was an era in which people – especially those belonging to the upper classes - were taught to reign in their emotions.
The one member of the Kent family to whom Constance felt genuinely close was her brother William. Indeed, several years before the murder, the two had attempted to run away to sea. Some commentators on the crime believe that it would have been impossible for Constance alone to have abducted and killed Saville. She must, in other words, have had an accomplice. Was that accomplice William? Proof positive of this has never been found. Many, though, consider it to be highly likely. Our group was of that opinion. We felt it likely that Constance deliberately “took the rap” for the crime, insisting that she acted alone. This admission effectively lifted the cloud of guilt from other members of the Kent family. Constance would have been especially keen to have William no longer suspected of complicity. And in fact, William went on to enjoy a distinguished career in microscopy and marine biology.
William Saville-Kent, in the 1880's
As we discussed this outcome, Pauline put this question to us: in the matter of the murder of Saville Kent, was justice done? The group’s consensus: in the main, it was not. Constance Kent did serve a 20-year prison term, but she was still only 41 years old upon her release. Assuming the name Ruth Emilie Kaye, she emigrated to Australia, where she received training as a nurse. She never married and spent the remainder of her life in service to others. And it was a very long life: Constance Kent, aka Ruth Emilie Kaye, died in 1944 at the age of 100. Her obituary mentions that at one time, she nursed lepers.
It would appear that Constance was trying to make restitution for her crime to society. Did she achieve this? It’s a subjective question, one that can never be answered conclusively. (And the same question could be asked of the aforementioned Anne Perry.) Even if one wishes to concede that a good faith effort was made here – What, then, about William Kent? His role in the events at Road Hill House was never proven and remains a matter for speculation. As an adult, he was free to live a full and productive life.
From the question of justice in this particular instance, our discussion widened to include the issue of the death penalty. It was necessary to tread carefully here, as people have strong opinions on this issue, but I thought our group handled that part of the discussion with admirable tact and diplomacy. I observed that Britain had come a long way since the day when executions were a form of public spectacle. Pauline, our “token Brit,” told us about the John Christie and Derek Bentley cases. Both involved wrongful execution; the ensuing revulsion proved instrumental in the decision to abolish capital punishment in the UK.
Several of us had read “Trial by Fire,” an article in the September 7 issue of the New Yorker concerning the possible wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004. (At one point in this article, author David Grann recounts the following case from British history:
“In the summer of 1660, an Englishman named William Harrison vanished on a walk, near the village of Charingworth, in Gloucestershire. His bloodstained hat was soon discovered on the side of a local road. Police interrogated Harrison’s servant, John Perry, and eventually Perry gave a statement that his mother and his brother had killed Harrison for money. Perry, his mother, and his brother were hanged.
Two years later, Harrison reappeared. He insisted, fancifully, that he had been abducted by a band of criminals and sold into slavery. Whatever happened, one thing was indisputable: he had not been murdered by the Perrys.
This was the famous Campden Wonder, which I first heard of from our seemingly omniscient Smithsonian tour guide, Ros Hutchinson.)
We talked about other high profile murder cases in which justice has proved elusive. We’ve all had the experience of learning of a verdict or a sentence and exclaiming in disbelief: How could they? or words to that effect. What is the answer to this perennial question? Mine is that just as human beings are hard wired to want to solve puzzles, so are we equally hardwired to yearn for justice – and to keep up the relentless effort to see that justice is served.
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Kate Summerscale won the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction for The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.
“He felt like a machine, beyond danger and invulnerable. He had been here many, many times before…” – Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith: a book group discussion
Guy Haines, an architect, meets Charles Anthony Bruno by chance on a rail journey. Bruno is one of those aggressively friendly people that are often hard to deflect. Although Guy resists, their conversation becomes intensely personal. Gradually, Bruno elicits from Guy the facts concerning his wrecked marriage and his difficulties in obtaining a divorce. For his part, Bruno’s revelation is simpler and more direct: he feels an implacable hatred for his father.
[Caution: Spoilers are coming...]
Finally, Bruno divulges his brilliant idea for a murder: he’ll kill Guy’s wife, and Guy will murder his father. The two murders would be utterly detached from those who had the motive to commit them; this would render them difficult, if not impossible, to solve. Guy is almost physically sickened by Bruno’s scheme:
“Guy had at last thought of the door. He went out and opened another door onto the platform where the cooler air smashed him like a reprimand and the train’s voice rose to an upbraiding blare. He added his own curses of himself to the wind and the train, and longed to be sick.
What exactly is happening here? At this point, Guy has no cause to reproach himself. Yet the words “reprimand” and “upbraiding” suggest that he is already guilty of some kind of transgression. Could it be that he finds that Bruno’s plan, so outrageous and evil on the face of it, also possesses elements that make it intriguing, even attractive? When Guy curses himself, is he acknowledging that attraction, and feeling mortified by it?
At any rate, Guy has only one more night on the train. The next morning he alights in Metcalf, Texas, his home town, to see his mother and to confront Miriam. For the moment, these other concerns drive Bruno from his thoughts. But it turns out that this is a brief respite. Bruno is not so easily dismissed from Guy’s thoughts - or from his life.
Strangers on a Train is a fascinating novel with many twists and turns. Its cast of characters ranges from the severely warped and damaged to cheerfully ordinary folk. But the strangest and hardest of them to understand is Guy Haines. As the novel opens, Guy has everything to live for. Having made the youth mistake of marrying Miriam, a woman in no way worthy of him, he is preparing to divorce her and marry Anne Faulkner. The daughter of wealthy, indulgent parents, Anne is Guy’s lode star, the source of all the goodness and virtue that he longs for in his life: “…she is the sun in my dark forest.” In addition to having found a genuine love that promises future happiness, Guy is a rising star in his profession, the practice of which affords him intense satisfaction. (The almost idolatrous regard in which architecture and its practitioners are held put me in mind of The Fountainhead, and of Frank Lloyd Wright’s seemingly endless hold on the American imagination.)
There is a sense, even from the novel’s beginning, that Guy is poised on a knife edge. Although he sees a way to break through to a radiant life, he has been sullied by Miriam’s crassness and bad behavior.
Here, Guy reveals to Anne the depth of his disgust with Miriam – and by extension with himself and the rest of the world:
“‘She’s everything that should be loathed….Sometimes I think I hate everything in the world. No decency, no conscience. she’s what people mean when they say America never grows up. America rewards the corrupt. She’s the type who goes to bad movies, acts in them, reads the love-story magazines, lives in a bungalow, and whips her husband into earning more money this year so they can buy on the installment plan next year, breaks up her neighbor’s marriage–’”
At this point Anne, alarmed and dismayed by this tirade, begs him to stop. He does, but not before admitting that “‘the fact that I once loved her…loved all of it, makes me ill.’” Guy desperately wants and needs to be rid of Miriam, and not just so he’ll be free to marry Anne. Miriam was like a disease that Guy must expunge from his body and soul in order to feel himself cleansed of sinfulness. Yes, he needs to be rid of her. But not in the way that Bruno envisions.
Bruno, though, has fixed his mind on killing Miriam. He know the act will bind Guy to him. And it does. And so begins a cat-and-mouse game that is at once enthralling and terrifying.
Guy knows full well how repulsed he should be. Sometimes he feels nothing but hatred for Bruno, but at other times he feels a strange fascination, even a twisted kind of love. In the margin on p.146, I scribbled, “Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frere.” This phrase, whose exact meaning I can only guess at, has haunted me ever since I studied T.S. Eliot in a graduate school seminar. ( Eliot got it from the poem “Au Lecteur” by Charles Baudelaire.) As the novel progresses, the themes of doubleness and twinning emerge with increasing strength. Increasingly, the reader senses that Bruno is an externalized manifestation of Guy’s own evil impulses.
Just prior to the hardening of his resolve to commit the murder, Guy endures a night of almost exquisite suffering. He senses that all the good in his life – his love for Anne, his artistic creativity – is in danger of slipping away, to be vanquished and replaced by something dreadful:
“‘Bruno?’”
“Hi,’ Bruno said softly. ‘I got in on a pass key. You’re ready now, aren’t you?’ Bruno sounded calm and tired.
Guy raised himself to one elbow. Of course Bruno was there. The orangey end of his cigarette was there. ‘Yes,’ Guy said, and felt the yes had been silent, not even going out from him. It undid the knot in his head so suddenly that it hurt him. It was what he had been waiting to say, what the silence in the room had been waiting to hear. And the beasts beyond the walls.
And so there has been “a great reckoning in a little room.”
With that ‘yes,’ Guy has signaled that he is ready to commit an unprovoked act of consummate evil, a thing he would not have considered doing before the advent of Charles Anthony Bruno. Guy is now in league with the Devil. Here he is, finally, in Bruno’s house, moments before murdering Bruno’s father:
“He took the knob in his left hand, and his right moved automatically to the gun in his pocket. He felt like a machine, beyond danger and invulnerable. He had been here many, many times before, had killed him many times before, and this was only one of the times.
The sense of evil personified – and yielded to - puts one in mind of the Faust legend (recently encountered in To Heaven By Water – Is everything connected, after all?). An ineluctable fate is being played out in the only way possible. (There is also the sense of base, unconscious impulses working their way up to the surface, of the powerful, amoral id, which values self-preservation above all else in the world, achieving dominance in Guy’s mind.)
Virtually the entire second half of Strangers on a Train is taken up with Guy’s efforts to come to grips with a new sense of himself and to find salvation in the two beacons of his life: his work, and his love for Anne. This struggle is ultimately sabotaged by his equally desperate need to rid himself of the burden of guilt that torments him without respite.
Although compelling, at the same time I found this section of the novel somewhat flawed structurally and in need of tightening. It was Pauline’s view that the ending felt contrived and that Highsmith, to some extent, lost control of her material, IMHO valid observations. In yet another post-discussion e-mail, Barb suggests that with regard to that last point, “…perhaps [Highsmith's] very brilliance can lead us to be more critical of her than of some lesser writers.” And keep in mind, this was a first novel. (And yes – this was the book discussion that kept on going after it had apparently ended!)
Several of us were put in mind of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Others mentioned Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Although I know the story of the Dreiser work, I’ve never actually read it. The plot of An American Tragedy is based on an actual crime. One of my favorite films, A Place in the Sun, is a variation on the same story. IMHO, its stars are two of the most beautiful people ever to grace the screen: Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift:
We expended a great deal of effort Tuesday evening parsing the character of Guy Haines. We thought him weak and easily played upon. During the novel’s second half, he alternately agonizes, broods, and vacillates, thereby arousing impatience and exasperation on the part of some readers (myself included).
Frances felt an urgent need to penetrate to the crux of Guy’s personality. She even had recourse to this famous – and at times controversial – reference work: 
!
After our discussion, Frances e-mailed us her thoughts. I find her analysis perceptive and beautifully expressed, and with her permission, quote part of it here:
I’m still thinking about Strangers on a Train. I am trying to fully understand Guy. So far all I have come up with is that his personality is not fully integrated in a healthy way, making him prone to self doubt and unable to take a solid moral stance when seduced and psychologically tortured by Bruno into a psychologically exhausted state which made him “ready” to do anything to get rid of Bruno. Guy’s belief in ordered thinking, whether from Plato’s philosophy of Truth or as in the ideas of the Golden Mean, are constantly undermined by the Chaos, which in this case I think is tantamount to Evil, injected by Bruno keep Guy unbalanced, conflicted and weakened. Blackmailers or sadists never give up and Bruno was both. Guy knows man is capable of good and evil yet is never strong enough to side with the Light. He never decided who he was at his core. He was not able to dismiss his dark side and live a life of rationalized pretense nor is he able to forgive himself understanding he was manipulated into murder…. Maybe he tried to think too much and should have followed his instincts that Bruno was insane and beat a hasty retreat from him. Bruno was relentless though and kept insinuating himself into Guy and later Guy and Anne’s life….. In the end, this is a sad story of two men who were lost before they even met. One wonders if Guy could have been happy with Anne and the child as Anne gives us peeks into her perception of Guy as someone who needed her and who was not a happy sort of man.
Oh, well. It was a great book. I am glad I struggled with it despite my distaste of evil. It slid off the page and disturbed me just as poor Guy was disturbed by Bruno. That is no mean feat for an author to achieve. I sense Highsmith was trying to work out some of these issues in her own life. That is what I thought the long ramblings of the tortured Guy about social law, as well as the wonderings about God and creativity, lost souls and personal conscience were all about, in part, at least. They seemed very personal to me. Just imagine, there she is the author of great talent yet her works are not beautiful in the classic sense. They are marred and defined by their psychological depravity and views into the mind enveloped by darkness. Was she a lost soul as well? Perhaps.
Frances mentioned Tuesday night her feeling that the evil bodied forth in this novel was “seeping” into her. I didn’t have that feeling while I was reading it – but oddly, I have had it while working on this post. I find one point in Frances’s analysis to be especially provocative: “In the end, this is a sad story of two men who were lost before they even met.”
As for Patricia Highsmith and her demons – well, beginning with her troubled childhood and on into her adult life, she certainly had them.
Patricia Highsmith
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The familiarity of most people with the title Strangers on a Train is largely due to the fame of Hitchcock’s film:
It is almost impossible to talk about the novel without also bringing the film into the discussion. Hitchcock made radical alterations in Highsmith’s narrative. Some of the changes are small: Charles Anthony Bruno’s name becomes “Bruno Anthony.” (Why, I wonder.) But there is one change that is radical: Guy sneaks into the Bruno mansion not in order to kill the paterfamilias but to warn him that his “lunatic” son is trying to arrange his murder. Hitchcock transforms Guy into a beleaguered but basically decent person, a far cry from the tormented soul in Patricia Highsmith’s novel. For those of us who were familiar with the movie but not the novel, the fact that in the latter, Guy actually carried out the murder of Bruno’s father was deeply shocking.
Chris, our discussion leader, asked whether we preferred the film to the novel or vice versa. For me, they were not really comparable. Starting with a very cunning plot premise, Highsmith proceeded to write an immensely powerful psychological novel. Hitchcock’s film is a masterpiece of suspense and contains some of cinema’s most memorable scenes (the tennis match, Miriam’s murder, the out-of-control merry-go-round at the climax). But they are two distinct and different entities.
(In the role of Bruno, Robert Walker is riveting. It was his last great role: he died soon after making this film. He was 32 years old.)
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In addition to those already mentioned, Strangers on a Train brings to mind other writers and literary works. Guy’s brooding indecisiveness put me in mind of Hamlet – “Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt….” His losing battle with the forces of evil made me think of Hawthorne – the Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter and even more so, some of the short stories. In tales like “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne evokes a sense of sinfulness so dreadful it cannot even be named. The Devil lurks at the margins, waiting to spring into action. Henry James internalized this force brilliantly in the hapless, hysterical ( or is she hyper intuitive?) governess in The Turn of the Screw.
Patricia Highsmith may have been a troubled individual with her own share of negative personality traits, but one senses that her education in the liberal arts (at Barnard College) served her well.
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Tuesday night’s discussion was immensely enjoyable. I can thinking of nothing more invigorating than hanging out with a group of such vibrant intellectuals. It’s like being back in a college, minus the papers and exams. And the fact that all are so devoted to crime fiction gladdens my heart and heightens my respect and affection for the genre.
Monsieur Monde Vanishes…and reappears in Hanover, PA
This past Monday, I gave my lecture presentation at the newly renovated library in Hanover, Pennsylvania. 
As usual, I am feeling a mixture of relief and exhilaration. I don’t need to fret any more about how it’s going to go. It went well, I think, judging by the audience reaction.
Those in the Hanover group like their book discussions accompanied by a healthy serving of author information. One of the reasons I selected a novel by Georges Simenon is that I knew that he led a turbulent, eventful life. Just how turbulent it was, and how some of the events unfolded, is often open to question. To put it kindly, Simenon was not averse to embellishing the facts from time to time. In its turn, le monde litteraire was full of contradictory opinions about Simenon the man and Simenon the author.
I began my talk by referencing an article that appeared in the L.A. Weekly in May of last year. In “The Escape Artist: John Banville on Georges Simenon,” John Banville won the Booker Prize in 2005 for this novel: 
. Despite receiving this accolade, Banville was starting to feel dissatisfied with the direction his writing was taking. Then a friend recommended that he read Simenon, specifically les romans durs, those darker, non-Maigret novels of which Monsieur Monde Vanishes is an example. Herewith, Banville’s reaction to this first reading: “’I was really blown away by this extraordinary writer. I had never known this kind of thing was possible, to create such work in that kind of simple — well, apparently simple — direct style. …’” In short, Simenon provided Banville with a new direction in which to take his fiction. The most obvious result: Christine Falls, the first mystery in the Garret Quirke series (written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black). 
The first part of my presentation consisted of a summary of Simenon’s and life and work. The two are so closely intertwined that’s it is virtually impossible to discuss them separately. One of the facts about Simenon, invariably mentioned first in most books and articles about him, is how astonishingly prolific he was. In his lifetime he published some four hundred novels under his own name and using various pseudonyms. He also write numerous short stories and several screenplays. All this, before the age of the word processor! He was a veritable human word processor, all on his own. Here again is John Banville:
“As one contemplates the life and work of Georges Simenon, the question inevitably arises: Was he human? In his energies, creative and erotic, he was certainly extraordinary.
Demonstrably true, that second sentence, although in the area of erotic adventures, Simenon almost certainly stretched the truth. He claimed to have slept with 10,000 women, many of whom were prostitutes, whose “professionalism” he praised!
Simenon was born in 1903 in Liege, Belgium. In his early twenties, he took off for Paris, seeking fame and fortune and finding both. He developed a restless, peripatetic way of life, leaving France after the Second World War for Montreal and then the U.S. He lived at various times in Maine, Connecticut, Manhattan, and Arizona. Also during this period he divorced his first wife Regina, with whom he had had a son, and married his secretary Denyse Ouimet. This union, which produced two more sons and a daughter, proved even more turbulent than the first. In 1955, Simenon returned returned to Europe, living briefly in France before finally settling in Switzerland. In 1964, Simenon separated permanently from Denyse. By that time he had already taken up with Teresa, who had been hired as a housekeeper three years earlier.
Simenon’s daughter Marie-Georges, whom he always called Marie-Jo, became increasingly troubled emotionally as she grew to adulthood. In 1978, at the age of 25, she committed suicide. From that moment, Simenon abjured the writing of fiction and began instead to work on his autobiography. Intimate Memoirs - Memoires Intimes – was published in 1981. (The English translation became available in 1984.) Appended to this volume is what Simenon called “Marie-Jo’s book” – a collection of letters, short fictional pieces, and poems written by Marie-Jo in the course of her short life. 
As Intimate Memoirs opens, Simenon speaks directly to his daughter, whom he calls “My tiny little girl.” He goes on to describe the final farewell and its aftermath, continuing to address his words to Marie-Jo:
“I scrupulously carried out your last wishes, found on your bed. No ceremony. The next day, just a few people gathered before your casket while an organist played some of the Johann Sebastian Bach music we both loved. Flowers galore. Mine were armfuls and armfuls of white lilacs, which, in my view, harmonized with the laughing little girl I had known….
The next morning, early, the undertaker’s man brought us the box with your ashes, and, once we were alone, I fulfilled your last wish: to have those white ashes strewn over the little garden of our pink house.
***
A little later, your brothers came in. The sun was bright, the grass a fine green.
For the last time, I was sleepwalking as I had done in my childhood, but, as I kept looking out on the garden, the violent pain that had kept me doubled over during the long week of waiting gave way to a feeling of tenderness, which I still experience every time I see that garden and the birds pecking in it, and considering the position of my armchair, which you know so well, that happens a hundred times a day.
I’ve gotten into the habit of saying good morning to you when the shutters are opened, and good night in the evening when they are closed, as well as talking inwardly to you.
It took me a long time to get used once again to living like everybody else.
Simenon and Marie-Jo
Marie-Georges Simenon
Teresa remained as Simenon’s companion until his death in 1989. ( Click here for more on Simenon’s life and work.)
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The most important advice about writing that Simenon ever received came from Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who is usually known solely by her last name. In her capacity as editor at Le Matin, she rejected several stories submitted by Simenon to that publication. In an interview he gave to the Paris Review in 1955, Simenon reiterated Colette’s objection to his work: “‘Look, it is too literary, always too literary.” The interviewer asked Simenon what he took to be her meaning: “Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect.” What action did he take as a result? “You know, you have a beautiful sentence – cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.”
This counsel from Colette, then, was key to the development of the lean, spare prose style so emblematic of Simenon’s work.
The first Maigret, The Strange Case of Peter the Lett (I’ve seen several titles assigned to this novel), came out over the winter of 1929-30. Despite the publisher’s initial reservations, the police procedurals featuring Maigret and his colleagues in the Quai des Orfevres eventually achieved enormous international success. In the meantime, Simenon became rather ambivalent about the success of his fictional detective, preferring instead les romans durs, as typified by Monsieur Monde Vanishes, as well as these:
John Banville calls these novels “superb and polished works of art masquerading as pulp fiction.”
We are indebted to New York Review Books, which is currently reprinting these books. In addition, they have commissioned new introductions from distinguished contemporary authors. The introduction to Monsieur Monde Vanishes was written by Larry McMurtry, who offers some interesting insights. He points out that where style is concerned, this novel, with its “flatness of tone and, for that matter, mood,” bears more than a passing resemblance to Albert Camus’s The Stranger. I also liked McMurtry’s concluding comments about Simenon: “His preference was for the seedy, the slightly tawdry, the not-best-dressed, the none-too-clean. It was in such melancholy places that he worked his magic.”
(I do have one problem with McMurtry’s piece. In naming some famous instances of mysterious disappearance, he lights on the example of Agatha Christie, who, he states, “vanished for a couple of months, but was found taking tea in Yorkshire and allowed herself to be persuaded to return.” Yes, she turned up in Yorkshire in 1926, at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, whose lobby I found myself happily wandering through four years ago. If you’ll read the text on the hotel’s site, you’ll note that it gives the time period of Christie’s clandestine stay there as ten days. I’ve also seen the number eleven, as in this Wikipedia entry. But “a couple of months?” Quite simply not the case.
I e-mailed New York Review Books several weeks ago about this misstatement. I have not heard back from them.)
In some ways, in regard to his authorial duality, Simenon reminds me of Ruth Rendell. No matter how awful the crime, both Rendell’s Wexford procedurals and Simenon’s Maigret novels provide some kind of resolution. Order is restored, justice is meted out; some degree of consolation is afforded to victims and/or families. Both Wexford and Maigret are reassuringly normal family men; they tangle with malefactors and unbalanced people from a position of strength. They have not only the unwavering support of their respective wives – they have, ready to assist them, a team of investigators and the entire apparatus of the police force and the judiciary.
In the novels of psychological suspense, however, no such reassurance is on offer. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. Just think of Judgement in Stone! And think of Monsieur Monde Vanishes.
It is the difference between getting on a roller coaster at an amusement park, and, having experienced the usual thrills, getting back on firm ground in a matter of minutes; as opposed to being driven to the edge of a cliff, all the while hoping desperately that someone or something will rescue you from the abyss.
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The impression I came away with Monday is that the Hanover readers found Monsieur Monde Vanishes and its author intriguing; the verdict on the actual experience of reading the novel was more guarded. Gail said that she was surprised by the book, as were several others in the group. For one thing, they were expecting something that could more readily be classified as a mystery – something, in other words, more like the Maigret books. Also they felt misled by the title. The book begins with Madame Monde going to the police to report her husband missing. The reader is given the impression that we will now be following a missing persons investigation. But no – later in the same chapter - the first - we meet Monsieur Monde himself, as he is leaving for yet another day at the family firm. And we remain with him for the duration, as he cuts one by one the ties that bind him to family, to work, and to his entire bourgeois existence:
“When, a short while before, he had decided…But he hadn’t decided anything! He had had nothing to decide. what he was living through was not even a completely new experience. He must have dreamed about it often, or have thought about it so much that he felt he had done it all before.
This is about as close to introspection as Monde, or any of the novel’s other characters, gets. In our discussion of The Maltese Falcon, Barb, our leader, emphasized that readers get to know the dramatis personae through their actions – we are not made privy to their private thoughts. Much of the time this holds true as well for Monsieur Monde Vanishes. But added to the latter is an enveloping air of fatalism:
“Once again, he was following a preordained plan, for which he was not responsible. Nor had he made any decision the day before. It all came from much further back, from the beginning of things.
Standing on the platform of the bus, he patted his pockets; he leaned forward to see his reflection in the window. He felt no surprise. But he was still waiting as he had waited after his First Communion, for something he longed for, which was slow in coming.
To me, that last sentence is a thing of beauty and almost unbearably poignant, signifying as it does “the melancholy, long withdrawing roar” of religious faith, with its promise of hope and consolation.
We agreed that there are many memorable passages in Monsieur Monde Vanishes. But of course, we are encountering them at second hand, since this is a translated work. I would be interested to read this novel in the original French. I could probably just about handle it, with my trusty Larousse by my side! In fact, the English translation of this novel’s title is what misleads first time readers (as it misled me on my own first reading). The French title is La Fuite de Monsieur Monde: literally, “The Flight of Monsieur Monde.” This more accurately describe the novel’s subject, which is not the void left by the man’s disappearance from his quotidian existence but the radically new life into which he emerges.
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Here is the most comprehensive site I know of for Maigret / Simenon information.
I was not able to obtain Pierre Assouline’s definitive biography of Simenon until shortly prior to my going to Hanover. I do hope to read it at some future time; it looks to be fascinating and beautifully written. 
One final word on the subject of deliberate disappearances, both real and fictional. A member of the group reminded me that Anne Tyler used this plot premise in one of her novels. We couldn’t recall the title at the time, but I found it later: 
. In this context, I also brought up the strange and haunting Flitcraft parable from The Maltese Falcon.
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The research process can sometimes yield surprising, even disconcerting results. It happened to me when I found this article, which appeared in Britain’s Independent newspaper in 2002: “Simenon’s great-niece on trial for killing lover.”
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In a comment on a previous post on Simenon, Barb Fisher of Hanover wrote: “Don’t know if you realized that all four of us who heard your ‘Art of Mystery’ talk in Howard County made it to the Hanover meeting along with the rest of the crowd.” What a lovely compliment! And what a great group of book lovers.
As we wind down our session, a brave Hanoverian attempts to refold a 24-page printout containing a list of Simenon's complete oeuvre!
“The wilderness of the time passed into the soul of the people…” The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, a book discussion
In the book Sleuths, Inc., Hugh Eames quotes from The American Commonwealth, written by James Bryce and published in 1888. In this passage, Lord Bryce offers his own rather unique version of California’s history:
“‘A great population had gathered there before there was any regular government to keep it in order, much less any education or social culture to refine it. The wilderness of the time passed into the soul of the people, and left them more tolerant of violent deeds, more prone to interferences with, or suppression of, regular law, than are the people in most parts of the union.’
Bryce had something to add about the place that he considered to be the epicenter of California’s corruption:
“‘That scum which the western moving wave of emigration carried on its crest is here stopped, because it can go no further. It accumulated in San Francisco and forms a dangerous constituent of the population.’
These thoughts may have been penned in the late 1800’s, but there is evidence that these conditions persisted into the twentieth century – or perhaps were jump-started by Prohibition and its destructive effect on the forces of law and order. Dashiell Hammett once told a reporter that California had the most corrupt politics in the world. And Raymond Chandler said the following in a letter to his agent:
“‘The thing I love best about S.F. is its go to hell attitude…The narrow streets are lined with NO PARKING AT ANY TIME signs and also lined with parked automobiles which look as if they had been there all day…The taxi drivers are wonderful too. They obey no laws but those of gravity and we even had one who passes street cars on the left, an offense for which you would probably get ninety days in Los Angeles.’
All of the above quotations and other information come from Sleuths, Inc., which is subtitled Studies of Problem Solvers: Doyle, Simenon, Hammett, Ambler, Chandler. This book, published by J.B. Lippincott in 1978, is the most idiosyncratic and prized volume of crime fiction criticism in my (fairly large) collection of same. 
(It is owned by the Howard County Library.) I had never heard of Lord Bryce and The American Commonwealth until I encountered him in its pages. The only information provided about Hugh Eames was that he was also the author of Winner Lose All: Dr. Cook and the Theft of the North Pole. I had no luck with Google or Wikipedia, but the Gale database Biography Resource Center did feature a brief entry on this author. Eames was born in Philadelphia in 1917 and obtained his degree from Northwestern University in 1939. He served in the army during World War II. From 1945 to 1950, he was a reporter for Fairchild Publications in New York and Chicago. He then spent five years in Europe, during which time he studied at both the University of Madrid and the University of Paris. He then worked in the hotel business in Carmel, California. It was during this period that he began to write, beginning with fiction in 1956 and switching to nonfiction in 1968.
The Biography Resource Center cites by title only his two works of nonfiction. There’s something oddly sketchy about this information; I’ve been intrigued some time now by the question: just who is this man?
Well, I didn’t actually mean to get off on that tangent… but rather interesting, yes?
Anyhow – the somewhat anarchic state of things in the City by the Bay came up in our discussion of The Maltese Falcon. 
Our leader Barb also provided some fascinating information about the workings of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the days when Hammett was in their employ. But the most interesting part of the discussion had to do with The Maltese Falcon itself: can the book can still be read with enjoyment, all these decades after its initial appearance? The verdict was mixed. There was impatience with Hammett’s depiction of women, although we agreed that the male characters were themselves rather stereotypical. For some in the group, that fact was a deal breaker – that, and a general dated feeling about the narrative. But for some of us, that very datedness was a plus, as it brought a particular time and place so vividly to life. (The novel’s action takes place in 1928; it was published in 1930.)
Barb emphasized the groundbreaking aspect of The Maltese Falcon: although Carroll John Daly originated the fictional hardboiled private eye, he was nowhere near as gifted a writer as Hammett, who is generally credited with refining the form and giving it heft. Some of that heft has to do with the moral dimension of detective work. Barb was much concerned with this question, and it proved an interesting one. Does Sam Spade act in accordance with a moral code, or is his interest in the recovery of the falcon purely mercenary? In the end, the need to obtain justice on behalf of his murdered partner Miles Archer – a man for whom Spade had little liking and less respect – and whose wife he was carrying on an affair with! – trumped all other considerations, including his undeniable attraction to Brigid O’Shaughnessy.
Toward the end of the evening, we viewed two scenes from the classic 1941 film version of this novel. First, we see Brigid coming to Spade for help. She presents herself to him as “Miss Wonderly” and proceeds to tell a story about a missing sister whom she wants Spade to locate. The whole thing is a farrago of lies, but Spade is at once fascinated by this woman and willingly lets himself be sucked into the intrigue in which she herself has become embroiled.
We then watched the film’s final scene. Brigid is entreating Sam Spade not to turn her over to the police. Finally he’s had it with her begging, pleading, and manipulating, and he rounds on her angrily:
“‘I’m not going to play the sap for you. I won’t walk in Thursby’s and Christ knows who else’s footsteps. You killed Miles and you’re going over for it.’
(These lines of dialog are actually from the novel, but words very like it are spoken in the film.)
At this crucial point in the story, Sam wants it made clear to Brigid that he’s not going to “play the sap” for her. He feels so urgently on this score that in the novel he repeats the sentiment, using the same expression, several times before the end. Is this, in fact, a basic credo of his; namely, don’t let a woman’s wiles cause you to do the wrong thing or be made a fool of? Spade also tells Brigid quite frankly that if he lets her get away with murdering Miles, “‘…you’d have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to.’” In my mind, as soon as he says that, their relationship instantly became the stuff of a very debased currency – an impoverished thing, with no component of trust in it.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy being taken away by the police. The grille of the elevator mimics the prison bars through which she will soon be peering out at the world.
At the conclusion of the film, after Brigid’s fate has been sealed, one of the cops asks Sam Spade just what the falcon is, anyway. Spade answers, “It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.” I’m not sure if that’s the exact quote, but it’s something very close to it. As Barb pointed out to us, that final line of dialog was added by director John Huston; it does not appear in the novel. But one feels that it could have, and that it is true to the novel’s overarching theme.
Here’s a fascinating piece on the falcon in January Magazine. It’s by Hammett biographer Richard Layman.
Barb did a great job leading this discussion. She shared a wealth of background material with us, and her questions were provocative and thoughtful. She recommended Spade & Archer, a new title by veteran crime writer (and former private investigator) Joe Gores. 
I recommend this American Masters film: 
It was made in1999; in it, people who knew Hammett are interviewed.
Finally, I brought this along: 
This book has some priceless photos of Hammett’s family, and Hammett himself, when he was a young man “on the make.” Hammett had two daughters; Jo was the younger. Her reminiscences, included here, are poignant. Hammett scholar Richard Layman served as the editor of this volume, along with Julie M. Rivett, Jo Hammett’s daughter.
[Thanks are due to Mike Humbert and his wonderful website for this picture.]
The annual parley of the Literary Ladies produces an enticing array of titles
Friday night’s planning session of the Literary Ladies book discussion group produced the inevitable profusion of must-read novels. ( I’m always leery of writing about books that I have not read, so I’ll beg your indulgence to begin with if I get anything wrong here.)
From Marge came these suggestions:
Marge’s description of the plot premise of A Fortunate Age – a group of Oberlin graduates relocate to New York City in order to make their way in the world – put me in mind of Claire Messud’s wonderful novel from 2006, The Emperor’s Children. I also liked the sound of The Laws of Harmony, since it is set in two places of exceptional beauty: New Mexico and the islands of Puget Sound in Washington State (known in these parts as “the other Washington”).
When Marge talked about Sarah’s Key, though, I became somewhat apprehensive. The Holocaust figures in this novel, and that is a subject I find it very difficult to read about. If I am going to read about it, I’d rather do so in nonfiction. I have a problem with the use of that terrible blight on Europe’s history to enhance the seriousness of a fictional narrative – or to provide subject matter for the novelist, to begin with. Marge has not actually read this book yet, but she said that both her husband and her son were deeply moved by it. In fact, she has the same reservations about reading in that subject area that I do. She said she’d report back to us, at the same time making no promise that she’d be able to get through the novel herself.
Teresa’s turn was next. She suggested these:
Then it was Cristina’s turn. It has always seemed to the rest of us that Cristina devours with amazing speed large numbers of new fiction titles as soon as they make it into the library’s collection. She is a voracious as well as a passionate reader and so had plenty of titles to suggest. Here are several:
Though possessed of a ready laugh and a great sense of humor, Cristina tends to favor novels that vary between high seriousness and…well, higher seriousness. Marge, with some degree of desperation (which I confess I shared), asked her if she’d anything recently that the rest of us might consider “light.” She readily proffered 
. I’d heard of this slender volume but didn’t know its subject. Here’s a “rapid review” presented by two delightful young Englishwomen:
An Uncommon Reader looks like so much fun; I am definitely going to read it, especially since I know nothing disturbing happens in it. (The Corgis are just fine, thanks!)
Cynthia suggested these:
Here is an interview with Toni Morrison in which the Nobel laureate discusses her latest novel with NPR’s Lynn Neary:
Emma suggested 
. I haven’t so much as set eyes on this book, but I know already that it evokes extreme reactions from readers, who seem to either love it or loathe it. I admit to being put off by the title, which seems to me gimmicky and silly, although I understand that the novel itself is anything but.
So what did Yours Truly bring to the table? I admit – I went with the old, since, with the always-important exception of mysteries, I had read virtually no new fiction in weeks, maybe even months. The group has from time to time asked that I lead them in discussing a classic, so I brought along these:
I’ve led discussions of both for the library, so I know they work well for that purpose.
Lately I’ve been noting how much great reading there is to be had in nonfiction. I brought along two examples to share:
Mary Shelley’s life was almost unbearably sad, starting with the fact that her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, renowned author of On the Vindication of the Rights of Women, died giving birth to her. Yet in between all the terrible tragedies that dogged her life, Shelley produced several distinguished works, with one towering above the rest, at least as far as renown is concerned:
Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler are an interesting, not to mention venturesome, writing team. This is the fruit of their latest collaboration:
They are also the authors of In Darkness, Death. I’m not a great reader of YA literature, but I love historical fiction and I really enjoyed this novel, which is set in 18th century Japan:
As for Katie Roiphe’s Uncommon Arrangements, not only would this be a great discussion book in and of itself, but you could structure an entire seminar around it, since most of the individuals who form Roiphe’s subject here were themselves writers of distinction.
In this elegant video presentation, Roiphe talks about her book and the writers who appear in it:
I was unfamiliar with the majority of books and authors brought to the table Friday night. Some weeks before the Italy trip, I got really turned off on contemporary “literary” fiction (with the exception of certain short story collections). Most of it seemed to me overly earnest, humorless, set in bleak places amid war, famine, and pillage. Either that, or more domestic forms of internecine strife took center stage. Often I found lacking the structural elegance which I consider de rigueur in a good novel (and the best example of which I can think of off the top of my head being Case Histories by Kate Atkinson). On top of all this, the writing was often mediocre.
In recent years, when choosing what to read, I’ve felt a need for the structure and resolution of crime fiction, the wonder and enlightenment of history, and the consolation and encouragement to be had from books like The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. And since returning from Italy, I’ve becoming newly interested in the literature and history of antiquity (about which more in an upcoming post). Fact is, I approached last night’s gathering with some apprehension.
But I left feeling exhilarated. For one thing, I received a much-needed reminder of the necessity of keeping an open mind. And for another, I felt privileged to be among such a great group of book talkers, and book lovers!
At one point in the meeting, this question arose: How much of a book do you read before you decide it is just not working for you? Teresa said that she once she begins a book, she feels obligated to stick with it to the end. Cristina says she allows about one hundred pages before giving up. At that point, Marge and I looked at each other and couldn’t help but laugh. I don’t recall what she said, but I know what I said: “I give it about ten pages!” Yes, I know – what could possibly justify such peremptory judgment? I can only say, in my defense, that I am now 65 years old, and after a lifetime of loving books, at this point, I want to read only what I love.
(Having made this statement, I should also add that I have given up on more novels than I probably should have because I was put off by the way in which they began. Violence – against humans or animals – well, all right, especially against animals – a profusion of characters introduced all at once, a complex/bizarre scenario that I can’t get my mind around – any or all may be enough to make me postpone the effort or give it up altogether. Bottom line for me: reading should not feel like work. Margaret addresses this subject in “Sticking with it,” a post on her blog Booksplease.)
Titles so far definitely selected for upcoming discussions are The Housekeeper and the Professor, A Mercy, and Little Bee. Various other commitments were secured, including mine to lead a discussion on either Brat Farrar or The Professor’s House in December. One of our best discussions in recent years occurred when each of us read a different title by Penelope Lively and then met to discuss her work as a whole. This year we’re going to examine the oeuvre of one of my favorite authors, Anita Brookner. Since several of us recently obtained our reserve copies of Strangers, her first novel to appear in four years, this incomparable chronicler of the vagaries of the human heart naturally came to mind.
Anita Brookner
These days, our lives are filled with so many distractions, many of them electronic in origin. Don’t get me wrong – I love our TV viewing set-up, fine tuned by Ron, and this wonderful Gateway laptop as well. It’s not the devices themselves; it’s the trivial (and some times pernicious) uses to which they are sometimes put. If there is one thing I have learned from working at the library, it is that the book club members are the ones holding up the banner for the written word. Seeing the Literary Ladies in action, doing just this, filled me with hope and pride.
Robert B. Parker’s The Godwulf Manuscript provides yet another occasion of exuberant good times, not to mention no-holds-barred assessment, for the Usual Suspects
Robert B. Parker
Last week, the Usual Suspects met to discuss The Godwulf Manuscript, the first novel in Robert B. Parker’s long running Spenser series. Or at any rate, that was our topic, in theory…
I don’t mean to imply that we did that famous Book Club Thing where you talk about everything except the book – au contraire! Ably led by Mike, who shared with us some great material on Parker’s personal and professional life, we ranged far and wide on the subject of this now-venerable author of crime fiction and his oeuvre. But we also touched on other mystery authors, such as
Donna Leon: “I didn’t like the new one at all!” “What!! I thought it was terrific!”
and
Elizabeth George: “The TV films are terrible.” “Actually, I think they’re an improvement on the books.” “How can you say that! She’s a great writer!”
The above snatches of (approximately replicated) conversation illustrate the ability of the Suspects to agree to disagree. Well, most of the time anyway…
Then we got onto the subject of Frank Sinatra, with Leo recalling some of the lore of Ole Blue Eyes that was part of the currency of his years of living in Hoboken. Loved the story about the baseball bat, Leo! And speaking of baseball, Leo reminisced about taking the subway to Yankee Stadium. Since, when young, I did likewise with my Dad and my brothers, I joined him in this fond recollection. Yet it was bittersweet as well: that storied ball park home no more to the New York Yankees, and my father gone these nine years.
But you cannot dwell too long on any one topic at a Suspects gathering – unless that topic is the book currently under consideration. And so, back to The Godwulf Manuscript. This first entry in the long running Spenser series came out in 1973, and as is usual in such cases, we found that the novel contained plenty of “time capsule” elements. Much of the action is set at a university, and the depiction of the speech and behavior of students is both interesting and jarring. As a whole, the kids are pretty obnoxious, with their imitation jive talk and anit-establishment cant. All this, mind you, while they drink and smoke more or less continuously. The drinking seemed par for the course, but the smoking came as a surprise – at least, it surprised me.
Then as now, there is drug use. Yet another difficulty is posed by the casual expression of anti-gay attitudes. Spenser does not indulge in these slurs; in fact, his stance indicates disapproval when others use them. Ethnic slurs and cruel stereotyping can pose a problem for readers of older crime fiction. I”ve encountered both in the novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers – especially the latter – but it was somewhat disconcerting to come upon such sentiments in a novel written in the early 1970’s.
Even those of us who enjoyed Godwulf Manuscript were annoyed by Spenser’s casual bed-hopping. Ostensibly he’s trying to assist a young co-ed who’s gotten herself involved in a very dicey situation. When he meets her parents, they are portrayed as a couple of blue bloods with ice water in their veins. But before you know it, the mother is throwing herself at the detective! And who is he to refuse and risk hurting her feelings? Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there…
Perhaps allowances needed to be made for the randy sleuth, someone suggested. After all, the Sainted Susan Silverman had not yet appeared on the scene to tame the beast. True, but even so! (Susan Silverman joins the cast of characters in the next book in the series, God Save the Child.)
Finally, there was criticism of the plot. Although I’m a long time fan of this series, I’ve never read this particular novel. I’ve known the title though, and always wondered what Parker might have to say about a rare and precious document dating from medieval times.The answer is…not much.
Spenser is initially hired by a university to find the Godwulf manuscript, which has unaccountably disappeared from the library where it was housed. Parker is at pains to give the document an impressive, though entirely fictitious, provenance. The following information is provided by a rather pompous university president:
“‘A handwritten book, done by monks usually, with illustrations in color, often red and gold in the margins. This particular one is in Latin, and contains an allusion to Richard Rolle, the fourteenth-century English mystic. It was discovered forty years ago behind and ornamental facade at Godwulf Abbey, where it is thougght to have been secreted during the pillage of the monasteries that followed Henry the Eighth’s break with Rome.’
To which Spenser cheekily responds, “‘Oh…that illuminated manuscript.’” (Spenser’s ability to crack wise was already fully formed in this initial outing. Then, as now, it tends to activate readily when a windbag needs deflating.)
(BTW – the president’s tale is in no way improbable. Last year, a psalter dating from the fourteenth century was discovered by a Sotheby’s cataloguer in the library of a stately home in England. Also, although Spenser likes to play the rube, he really isn’t one. Even less so is Parker himself, holder of a PhD in English from Boston University.)
The manuscript is a prime example of what Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin. Having served as the springboard for all that follows, the document itself quickly fades into the background. In point of fact, it is, in an of itself, of little importance. Pauline cited this fact as a contributing factor to what she considered to be the novel’s poor plotting. She then mentioned a principle propounded by Chekhov; I believe she was referring to the dictum known as ‘Chekhov’s gun’ (Pauline, please correct me if I’m wrong):
“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
Pauline disliked the book; a goodly cohort of Suspects joined her in this verdict. Yet again, I found myself very nearly “alone, upon a promontory” (with my long time partner in crime, Marge), liking a book that almost no one else liked. (Are my critical faculties inadequate? Do I need to worry about this?)
One person who did like Godwulf was Frances, one of our newer members. Now Frances has come to the Suspects from the rarefied world of ConanDoyle/Sherlock Holmes devotion. (I’m right there with you, Frances!) She had actually never read a Spenser novel and so was able to bring a fresh perspective to our discussion. What struck her was the artful way in which Parker seeded clues to Spenser’s character throughout the narrative, so that by its conclusion, you felt that you knew the detective as well, if not better, than any of the other characters did.
One other small but interesting point: I can’t imagine two more dissimilar writer than Alexander McCall Smith and Robert B. Parker. Yet in Godwulf, Parker quotes from the same poem that McCall Smith alludes to in The Careful Use of Compliments. Here, Spenser has stumbled on a murder scene:
“I looked at her for two, maybe three minutes,feeling the nausea bubble inside me. Nothing happened, so I began to look at the bathroom. It was crummy. Plastic tiles, worn linoleum buckling up from the floor. The sink was dirty and the faucet dripped steadily. There was no shower. Big patches of paint had peeled off the ceiling. I thought of a line from a poem: “Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course / Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot.” I forget who wrote it.
W.H. Auden wrote it; the title of the poem is “Musee des Beaux Arts.” It appears in full in the post entitled Feeling Scottish.
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Back in January, Pauline led us in a wonderfully illuminating discussion of Sue Grafton’ s first Kinsey Milhone novel, A Is for Alibi. I’m rather liking this idea of going back to an author’s early oeuvre and seeing how it compares to his or her present work. A few years ago, I went back in Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series to the third entry, A Ruling Passion (1973), and really enjoyed it, not least because it depicts Peter Pascoe and his spirited lover, Ellie Soper, as they head toward matrimony. Dick Francis has always been sparing in his use of continuing characters; nevertheless, I was delighted to make the acquaintance, albeit brief, of steeplechase jockey Alan York in Dead Cert (1962), Francis’s wonderfully accomplished first outing.
We Suspects mostly agreed that the television versions of the Spenser novels have never quite gotten it right. I’d like to add, though, that whether or not you read Parker’s Jesse Stone series, you should definitely watch the films. The production values are extremely high, cinematic in quality, and Tom Selleck is close to perfect as Stone, the brooding, small town cop who can solve any mystery except that of his own broken heart.
Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone
Feeling Scottish…
Because I’m listening to M.C Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth mysteries and being mesmerised by Graeme Malcolm’s beautiful, subtly inflected reading and by the author’s loving evocation of the Highlands, and
Because Friday night, I led a discussion of Alexander McCall Smith’s The Careful Use of Compliments. Re-reading this novel, I was enraptured all over again.
Alexander McCall Smith
I love Isabel Dalhousie, ethicist and intellectual. I love the mixture of elements in her: brainy one minute (and not averse to showing it off), passionate the next; possessed of an insatiably curious nature and yet at times preferring solitude, and the possessor of a heightened aesthetic sense that makes her exquisitely responsive to poetry, music, and art.
I was especially taken this time around by the by the poetry quoted and alluded to in this novel. W.H Auden is a great favorite – Isabel calls him her poet. While she and Jamie are bathing little Charlie, she finds herself reflecting on one of Auden’s best known poems:
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
(I was ready to identify the artist as Pieter Breugel the Elder; however, a Wikipedia entry claims that this attribution is now considered to be highly doubtful. I tried in vain to find additional information about this controversy. The work resides in The Royal Museums of Fine Art in Brussels – aka, ‘Musee des Beaux Arts.’)
As she and Jamie exclaim over Charlie’s perfect little body, the poignant “Naming of Parts” comes to Isabel’s mind:
LESSONS OF THE WAR
by Henry Reed
To Alan Michell
Vixi duellis nuper idoneus
Et militavi non sine gloria
I. NAMING OF PARTS
To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.
Later in the novel, when Jamie exclaims that he is falling in love with Jura, their vacation destination, Isabel quotes the following, again from Auden:
Love requires an Object,
But this varies so much,
Almost, I imagine,
Anything will do:
When I was a child, I
Loved a pumping-engine,
Thought it every bit as
Beautiful as you.
Click here to read the poem, “Heavy Date,” in its entirety.
I had trouble finding the full text of “Heavy Date.” Tracking down the other poetry referred to in the novel turned out to be even more of a challenge. I was so determined to locate Hugh MacDiarmid’s “Island Funeral” that I am now the pleased owner of this book:
In this edition of MacDiarmid’s works, “Island Funeral” is eight pages in length. Here’s an excerpt:
“They are weather-beaten people with eyes grown clear,
Like the eyes of travellers and seamen,
From always watching far horizons.
but there is another legend written on these faces,
A shadow–or a light–of spiritual vision
That will seldom find full play
On the features of country folk
Or men of strenuous action.
Among these mourners are believers and unbelievers,
And many of them steer a middle course,
Being now priest-ridden by convention,
But not one of them betrays a sign
Of facile and self-lulling piety,
Nor can noe seee on any face
‘A sure and certain hope
Of the Resurrection to eternal life.’
This burial is just an act of nature,
A reassertion of the islanders’ inborn certainty
That ‘in the midst of life we are in death.’
The poem concludes with these lines:
“The cornet solo of our Gaelic islands
Will sound out every now and again
Through all eternity.I have heard it and am content for ever.
I have not had the chance to read the other poetry, but “Island Funeral” was powerful and moving and well worth the cost of the entire volume.
When the scheming yet superficially congenial Christopher Dove comes up to Edinburgh to confer with Isabel concerning his upcoming assumption of the post of editor of The Review of Applied Ethics, a post cherished and heretofore admirably filled by Isabel herself, she must struggle to be civil to the man. He mentions that he’ll be returning to London on the sleeper train, an experience he has previously enjoyed. “‘Norman MacCaig didn’t,” she responds, and goes on to quote the following: “‘I do not like this being carried sideways through the night.’” I love that line, especially the rhythm of it, imitating as it does the actually rhythms of riding on a train. Research revealed that the poem is entitled “Sleeping Compartment.” I have not yet obtained the full text.
During the bath scene, the Auden work puts Isabel in mind of yet another poem:
“‘There’s a poet called Alvarez who wrote a lovely poem about angels appearing overhead. The angels suddenly appear in the sky and are unnoticed by a man cutting wood with a buzz saw. But [she adds] then it was in Tuscany, where one might expect to see angels at any time.’
Oh, dear, off to the chase yet again! I’m thinking that the Alvarez in question is A. Alvarez. Years ago, I read a powerful book by this author, a meditation on suicide entitled The Savage God. I have not been able to find the poem alluded to above. The final puzzler is a poem by an Irish poet “which suggested that we could all be saved by keeping our eye on the hill at the end of the road.” No title is given or author named.
I’ve concluded that this novel should come with a concordance!
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Near the novel’s end, Isabel attends a concert in which Jamie, a professional musician and music teacher, is playing the bassoon. The second half of the program is to consist of the works of contemporary composers: Peter Maxwell Davies, Stephen Deazley, and Max Richter. There’s a piece by Peter Maxwell Davies that I really like, though I haven’t heard it for quite some time. It’s called Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, and there are bagpipes at the end, which is probably why I’ve never forgotten it.
The Requiem by Gabriel Faure comprises the first part of the program. These are Isabel’s reflections on it:
“It was not complex music, with its cautiously developed melody and its utter resolution; it was a lullaby really, and that, she thought, was what a requiem really was. If one were to be taken up to heaven, then it would be Faure who might accompany one….Grant them rest, rest everlasting; they were such kind words, even in their finality, and the music that accompanied them, as in this requiem, should be gentle.
Not a believer herself, she nonetheless concedes that “this was music which might, for a few sublime moments, nudge one towards belief…” – belief, she means, in some kind of afterlife.
The following are excerpts from the Requiem:
Sanctus, performed by the King’s College Choir, Cambridge
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Pie Jesu, sung by the incomparable Lucia Popp
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The concluding movement, In Paradisum, performed by the Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Carl Marie Giulini.
I first encountered this music when I sang it with the Chorus of my alma mater, Goucher College. From it I have received both exaltation and consolation all my life, and yes, Isabel, I hope it sees me off into the next!
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Now art, of course, is the springboard for the plot of The Careful Use of Compliments. Alas,the group felt that the intrigue, such as it is, surrounding the fate of painter Andrew McInnes is the least interesting aspect of the novel. I couldn’t help but agree with them. Far more compelling are Isabel’s efforts, which seem at times almost desperate, to keep the dominant elements of her life in some kind of harmony. There’s her much younger lover and all the insecurities entailed in that relationship, despite the fact of their having a child together. The intensity of feeling is stronger on her side, and she knows it. To further complicate matters, she is also far more financially secure than Jamie.
Then there’s her niece Cat. Each is the other’s only near relation in Edinburgh – in all of Scotland, for that matter. But Cat is a mercurial, rather shallow young woman who is capable of spiteful and injurious behavior toward Isabel, despite the latter’s kindness .
Finally there is Isabel’s position as editor of The Review of Applied Ethics. Isabel does not have a “day job; her inherited wealth relieves her of the necessity of shouldering that particular burden. But her work for the Review is a labor of love, one that keeps her connected with her chosen field of study and with colleagues from all over the world. When that position is threatened – by the oily Christopher Dove no less! – her first instinct is to acquiesce with as much grace as she can muster. But then another instinct arises within her: the instinct to fight.
Isabel decides to use her vast resources in order to save her position and the Review itself from further interference by potential adversaries. But she has qualms about doing this. Is she using her money in an arrogant, unscrupulous manner? Eventually she overcomes these reservations, and once she has made her move, does not look back.
The group did not have a problem with Isabel’s actions in this case, but in some of the book’s ticklish social situations, we felt she could have acted with more tact. Showing up at Cat’s flat with Charlie in tow seems a particularly egregious act, especially considering that young woman’s prickly nature and extreme sensitivity regarding Isabel’s relationship with Jamie, her own former lover.
Although the mystery surrounding the painter Andrew McInnes does nor engage the reader as it might have, it does nonetheless provide motivation for the journey Isabel and Jamie make to Jura in the inner Hebrides. McCall Smith’s description of this windswept island make you want to go there immediately. Approximately 170 persons currently live on Jura, while the population of red deer is about 5,500.
The Paps of Jura
(I was delighted to read about the Paps of Jura, as they immediately reminded of the Grand Tetons. This, then, is the second time I’ve encountered mountains named after that portion of the female anatomy!)
Included in this portion of the book is fascinating (and factual) background on George Orwell, who stayed at Barnhill, a house on Jura, while he wrote 1984. And here’s news for all you intrepid vacationers: you can now stay at Barnhill yourself! But you’ll need a Land Rover to get there…
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My reading of the Dalhousiee novels has awakened me to the rich heritage of Scottish art. I acquired this fine book:
Cover painting: Poets' Pub by Alexander Moffat (1980)
In its opening pages, I discovered an object which I loved (and wanted to hold) instantly: the mysterious Towie Ball.
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Here are some portraits by Scottish artists:
Margaret Lindsay, by Allan Ramsay (1713-1784)
Niel Gow, by Henry Raeburn (1756-1823)
Sir John and Lady Clerk of Penicuik, by Henry Raeburn
Isabella McLeod, Mrs. James Gregory, by Henry Raeburn
And here, a cityscape I find immensely appealing:
The Tay Bridge from my Studio Window, by James McIntosh Patrick (1948)
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With one exception, I had the feeling that group members were not quite as enthusiastic about The Careful Use of Compliments as I was. For one thing, they had not read previous titles in the series, and I think that proved a disadvantage. In particular, they lacked the back story of Isabel’s ongoing and rather tortured relationship with Cat. Even so, I think we all agreed that the conclusion was pure poetry.
Just before drifting off to sleep, Isabel and Jamie are sharing a few intimate thoughts. Then:
” Isabel closed her eyes. There is a sea of love, she thought. And we are in it.”
The Tinderbox by Jo Bannister: a book discussion…
…in which, among other things, Your Faithful Blogger receives a much-needed lesson in humility.
When I reviewed The Tinderbox in July of 2007, I had nothing but praise for Jo Bannister’s novel concerning a runaway daughter’s disappearance into a loosely constituted community of homeless individuals. Last night, however, the book – well, quite simply, it bombed! Out of ten Usual Suspects members present, only three of us liked it: the discussion leader Louise, Frances and myself. Everyone else found fault with it; one person found it unreadable, and the rest were disappointed with it in varying degrees. Several people seemed downright disgusted with it. I was at a disadvantage as regards mounting any sort of defense of the novel because it had been so long since I read it. I knew only that I had enjoyed it very much, as my blog post reflects.
Criticism of The Tinderbox was specific and cogently reasoned. Some disliked the unspecified location of much of the action; the colony of the homeless – the “tinderbox” of the novel’s title – exists beneath a highway overpass on the outskirts of London, but Bannister never pinpoints the exact location. Carol felt that there should have been some differentiation in speech patters among the various homeless characters. Many thought the actions of the girl’s father, Lawrence Schofield, ill-considered or just plain crazy. People were irked by the lack of explanation as to why Cassie, the daughter, ran away from home, and almost everyone was deeply frustrated by the fact that the book ends without informing the reader as to whether Schofield’s efforts to locate his daughter ultimately meet with any success.
As often happens in book club discussions, especially when the selection proves unpopular, the group moved on to other topics. The Schofield family problems led to a discussion of homelessness and runaway children. As an exemplar of the phenomenon of children and/or young adults leaving home and rejecting their families, I brought up the true story of Chris McCandless. In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, McCandless becomes a real, tangible person, even while his motives – particularly his cruel refusal to communicate with his parents or his sister – remain murky (at least, they did for this reader). We proceeded to discuss other forms of familial dysfunction, using certain currently infamous families as examples (and that’s as specific as I’m going to get!). We revisited the case of mystery author Anne Perry’s participation in a murder in 1954. This crime took place in New Zealand while Perry – then Juliet Hulme – was still in her teens. This story, dramatized in the disturbing film Heavenly Creatures, still has the power to shock. I voiced the opinion that Perry rode out the storm caused by this revelation with as much dignity and stoicism as was possible. She took full responsibility for her actions and offered no excuses. Furthermore, I believe that she has tried to expiate her adolescent transgression – admittedly a terrible one - by living a productive and virtuous life as an adult.
Usual Suspects benefits greatly from the varied backgrounds of its members. Pauline’s English roots help her to place some aspects of British novels in context. Ann’s experiences as a nurse and Chris’s as an employee of the Social Security Administration were relevant to last night’s discussion and added to our understanding of the actions of troubled individuals and communities. Chris was surprised that Jo Bannister did not acknowledge the role that drug use almost invariably plays among the homeless. The need to feed an addiction can turn normally kind people reckless and vicious.
Finally, I always enjoy Mary Edna’s reminiscences about growing up in Baltimore in the 1950’s. I didn’t mention this last night, but for those interested in reading about the “real Baltimore,” Rafael Alvarez’s stories are quite wonderful. And Edward P. Jones’s masterful tales provide a similar window into the day to day lives of African Americans in mid-twentieth century Washington DC. I particularly enjoyed his first collection, Lost in the City.
Somehow in the course of the evening, the case of the tainted peanuts also got tossed around (but not the peanuts themselves, thank goodness!). As I said, we ranged far and wide…
So: with regard to The Tinderbox, it was a fairly unanimous thumbs down from the Suspects. I have to say, I feel slightly idiotic for having glossed over what others perceived as major defects in Jo Bannister’s novel. But such is life, and particularly, book club life. As my Dad would have said with a shrug and a smile, “That’s what makes horse racing!” (And he would have known, having spent nearly every Saturday afternoon at the race track. In the way of children, I always assumed that come the weekend, everyone’s Dad did this!) If the title you select for your book club is not well received, you have to work at not taking the negative reaction personally – at least, I have had to work at it, in the past. I am full of admiration for Louise, who more or less took it on the chin and appeared completely unfazed by the disapprobation expressed by group members – and they should express it, if that’s how they honestly feel. The entire exercise is a wash, otherwise.
So, did we have fun Monday night? we certainly did! Usual suspects is a terrific group of ladies (and one gentleman). The members are savvy, perceptive, and thoughtful. Wittiness abounds; there are plenty of laughs. And I’ve never sensed any of the ill feeling of the sort so entertainingly recounted in an article in December’s New York Times.
Jo Bannister
Louise mentioned that she had great difficulty finding author information on Jo Bannister. There is an article on Bannister in the Biography Resource Center, a Gale database. This resource and others are available via the library’s website; you’ll need to enter a library card number in order to gain full access.
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I’ve been thinking that it’s about time for me to step up to the plate and offer to lead a discussion. I think I’ll pick a classic – a universally acknowledged classic. I noticed when the sign-up sheet was going around that someone is thinking of doing Poe stories in August. Wise choice – very wise choice!
