Books to the Ceiling

Ever since Martin Edwards started Do You Write Under Your Own Name in October of last year, it has been one of my favorite destinations in the blogosphere. If you love crime fiction, this is a site to die for! But even if that genre is not one you favor, you can still enjoy Martin’s thoughtful observations of the cultural scene in the UK. Of course, the writing is wonderful - Martin himself writes crime fiction. If you have yet to read the three titles (so far) in his series set in England’s gorgeous Lake District, then you should rush out and get them ASAP!

Here are some of the delights you can expect to encounter on Martin’s blog:

1. Unjustly forgotten writers from the past. This entry on Margot Bennett will make you want to read her as soon as possible. Good luck trying, though; the books are out of print, at least in the U.S., and our library does not carry them. Ah, well, abebooks or interlibary loan - here I come!

2. Praise for his contemporaries. I really enjoyed this post on Simon Brett. Brett entertained us wonderfully at Claridge’s in London during our Smithsonian Mystery Tour in 2006. I enjoy his Charles Parris series; I especially recommend Murder Unprompted, which, besides being hugely entertaining, offers intriguing insights into the theater scene in England.

3. Appreciation for those writers who have recently left us. Here’s his memorial for Edward D. Hoch. Although Hoch had been writing for decades and was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2001, he’s never been that well known. This, I think, his because he wrote primarily short stories rather than novels. Now crime fiction lovers have simply GOT to realize that many mystery short stories are absolute jewels and eminently worthy of your attention. (It’s so much fun to get into finger-wagging nanny mode once in a while!) Writing this has reminded me of all the terrific stories I read while I was teaching a class on mystery fiction at the local community college. (Now I think about it, I kind of miss doing that…) I’ve written about Best American Mystery Stories of the Century and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps; in addition, I posted Mystery short stories: classics, with links to the full text of those famous tales. Here are some other anthologies that I used in that class:

The World’s Finest Mystery & Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection, edited by Ed Gorman. I particularly liked “Spinning” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, about an obese young woman’s struggle to lose weight. A big part of her effort involves attending a “spinning (cycling) class. She describes how when she first joins the group, member stared at her grotesquely overweight body with ill-concealed disgust. At one point in her struggle, “She wanted a piece of chocolate cake so badly that it hurt….Comfort food. She wanted comfort food because she needed comforting.” Do I empathize with this poor girl or what?!

“Spinning” is the first story in this generous volume. Other outstanding entries are “Let’s Get Lost” by Lawrence Block, a true master of the form; and “The Country of the Blind” by Doug Allyn, which will appeal to fans of medieval history.

Writers of short stories can be remarkably resourceful when evoking past eras and bringing them to life in the space of relatively few pages. Anthologist Mike Ashley has been collecting these tales for a number of years in the “Mammoth”series published by Carroll & Graf. I’m especially partial to The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, published in 1993. The book is divided into four sections: The Ancient World, The Middle Ages, Regency and Gaslight, and Holmes and Beyond. Some of the standouts in this collection:

The Ancient World: “The High King’s Sword” by Peter Tremayne, and “He Came with the Rain” by Robert Hans Van Gulik, who, in addition to writing detective fiction, was an artist, translator, and celebrated Sinologist. Van Gulik’s tales of Judge Dee, an actual historical personage who was a magistrate in eighth century China, are simply astonishing. (For a great listening experience, get the recordings made by Frank Muller.)

[Judge Dee, as rendered in pen and ink by Robert van Gulik]

The Middle Ages: “The Price of Light” by Ellis Peters, of fond memory. (This is an early Brother Cadfael story.)

[Ellis Peters, with Sir Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael]

Regency and Gaslight: “Murder Lock’d In” by Lillian de la Torre, whose tales, now almost impossible to find, recreate the life and times of the famed eighteenth century lexicographer Samuel Johnson; “The Doomdorf Mystery” by Melville Davisson Post; and one of my all time favorites, “The Gentleman from Paris” by the endlessly cunning John Dickson Carr.

Finally, there’s The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories edited by Patricia Craig, who also contributes an insightful and enlightening introduction. The first story in this collection, “The Stir Outside the Cafe Royal,” was written around the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a female police officer who goes under cover in order to facilitate the arrest of a criminal for whom she harbors a personal animus. Clarence Rook, the (rather obscure) author, is described in Gale’s Contemporary Authors Online as “…a shadowy figure whose writing rested uneasily between fiction and journalism.”

Many splendid stories fill out this fine anthology. Arthur Morrison’s “The case of Laker, Absconded” depicts in careful detail the way in routine banking transactions were carried out in the early part of the last century. (Yes, you have to trust me here - this really is interesting!) Other stories of note: “The Oracle of the Dog” a lovely, poignant tale by G.K. Chesterton, featuring one of the earliest of the clerical detectives, Father Brown; Agatha Christie’s sensational courtroom drama “The Witness for the Prosecution;” and “Thornapple,” one of the most chilling tales ever written by that past master of the dreaded - and dreadful - outcome, Ruth Rendell.

Finally, to return to Edward D. Hoch: “Anything in the Dark,” which appears in Crime Through Time (a collection edited by Miriam Grace Monfredo and Sharan Newman) is a miniature tour de force in which the author contrives to solve two mysteries in the space of just a few pages: the disappearance of British envoy Benjamin Bathurst in Perleberg, a small city near Berlin, in 1809, and the death of Meriwether Lewis in the same year in Tennessee.

Okay - end of digression! Martin Edwards’s blog, on which you’ll also find news about crime shows on television and reflections on trends in crime fiction. And here’s a video clip of an interview with Martin about The Arsenic Labyrinth.

I’d like to thank Lourdes of Lost in Books for pointing me to this video, and also for the many terrific news items, reviews, and recommendations regularly found on her blog. And I do love the quote from Louisa May Alcott: “She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” Ah, so that’s my problem…

At present, I’m being greatly entertained by the stories in Eclipse One, which bills itself as an anthology of “new science fiction and fantasy.” In“Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse,” a precocious, eccentric Southern girl is brought together with a world-weary Catholic priest. In this story, Andy Duncan creates a scenario that is at the same time heartbreaking and hilarious. And it’s based on an incident that actually happened in the 1930’s and has been captured on film!

I read a review of Eclipse One as I was finishing Best American Short Stories 2007. Two terrific stories in that collection, “The Boy in Zaquitos” and “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” contain supernatural elements. The great pleasure I derived from reading them convinced me that it’s time - finally! - to take a look at what’s currently happening in the field of science fiction and fantasy. I have to say, I really like what I’m seeing. The originality, the quality of the writing, and the frequent and very welcome presence of wit and humor are all causes for celebration. (I’m primarily interested in short stories at the moment. Recommendations are welcome.)

I have more to read in Eclipse One, but I couldn’t wait to recommend “Reverse Chicken.” Among its other virtues, it features a really nifty surprise at the end, when the author reveals the true identity of the girl with the miraculous chicken.

Here is a poem by Andy Duncan entitled “The Genetic Engineer Throws a Cocktail Party and Drinks Too Much: A Sestina.”

[Andy Duncan]

A couple of weeks ago, as I was experiencing mounting frustration with contemporary fiction ( with the very definite exception of crime fiction), I went back to Best American Short Stories 2007. I’d read only three or four of the stories; now I read twelve more. (There are twenty in all.) Whenever I approach an anthology such as this one, I like to see which selections especially pleased the reviewers; I read those first. And now, Dear Reader, I shall do the same for you!

First off, let me say that there are some real gems here, thought-provoking, beautifully written, and highly original. One of these I’ve already written about: John Barth’s “Toga Party.” Here are some others of that same high caliber:

In “Balto” by T.C. Boyle, a twelve-year-old girl is asked by her father’s lawyer to lie in open court. Will she? You won’t know until the very end of the story.

In Mary Gordon’s”Eleanor’s Music,” a sophisticated Manhattanite finds she is not as immune from pain and injury as she had thought herself to be. (Many of us have cherished Mary Gordon since reading Final Payments, all those years ago!)

I laughed out loud at “Wake,” Beverly Jensen’s tale of a fractious but loving Canadian family getting ready to bury their paterfamilias. Fate seems determined to sabotage the proceedings; for starters; Dad’s body goes missing!

Bruce McAllister’s “The Boy in Zaquitos,” about the deliberate spreading of plague bacteria, enveloped me in dread. This story, which first appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, singlehandedly convinced me that I need to go back and read more stories in that genre. (A very intriguing anthology, Eclipse One, is currently on my always-about-to-collapse night table!)

I have said that Amy Bloom’s novel Away served to awaken the ghosts of my ancestors. Eileen Pollack’s story “The Bris,” veering crazily between rollicking and poignant, did the same. Marcus Lieberman’s father is on his deathbed when he makes a most startling confession to his son: not only was he not born a Jew, he has never formally converted to Judaism, either. And he was never circumcised. It is that omission that he wants to remedy before it’s too late. For his part, Marcus is stunned. Who would possibly agree to circumcise a dying man? Oy gevalt! What to do?

Richard Russo’s unadorned, down-to-earth prose style is perfectly suited to his usual subject matter: ordinary people struggling to get by and to make sense of life in the workaday world. Sometimes, when you get to know his characters, you realize that they are anything but ordinary. In “Horseman.” Janet Moore is one such character. At first, she comes across as a prissy academic; she reminded me of the observation some wag once made about the infighting being so fierce in academia because the stakes are so small. But gradually, Russo leads the reader deeper into Janet’s life and her past, and I found myself responding to her with compassion: “So this, she thought, was heartbreak. She’d read about it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to get any closer.”

There are three stories I admired but had a problem with. The first, Alice Munro’s “Dimension,” is the story of a horrific crime, narrated with the author’s characteristic understatement. She had me with her right up until the end, when an incident happens to the bereft mother that seemed too obvious, too much like a set-up, at least, in my eyes. I still recommend the story; for the most part, it bears all the hallmarks of this celebrated author’s mastery of the form.

Stellar Kim’s “Findings & Impressions” a story told by a radiologist, was moving and beautifully written, but, I also found it pretty predictable, at least as far as the sad outcome is concerned.

Finally, “Sans Farine” by Jim Shepard was in many ways an astonishing feat of imagination. In it, the author re-creates the life and times of a family whose members, over succeeding generations, held the post of executioner in France before, during, and after the Revolution. Shepard really had me during most of this extraordinary tale, but by the end, I felt he had piled on the gore a bit too relentlessly.

Finally… drum roll…three stories that in this standout collection, IMHO really soared: “L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story” by Lauren Groff, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, and “My Brother Eli” by Joseph Epstein.

Set in 1918, “L. DeBard and Aliette” is the story of a passionate affair between a championship swimmer and a polio victim. It may be the most erotically charged love story I’ve ever read - truly amazing in its intensity.

In “St .Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” Karen Russell takes a pack of feral - perhaps I should say, lupine - girls and throws them into a Catholic boarding school. They’re there to be civilized and un-wolved, as it were, and the results are predictably outrageous. I didn’t expect to laugh so much while I was reading this story, but I did, over and over again.

Finally, in “My Brother Eli,” Joseph Epstein posits the question as to whether a novelist should be forgiven for using the lives of friends family members as thinly disguised fodder for his work. And believe me, this free and unapologetic using is merely one of numerous sins committed by the eminent novelist Eli Black. This story is told by Eli’s older brother Louis in a simple, straightforward way that quite simply, broke my heart. I feel haunted by it; I’ll undoubtedly read it again - and again…

I looked Joseph Epstein up on the Gale database Literature Resource Center and was quite frankly stunned. Born in 1937, Epstein has had a long distinguished career as a man of letters. I have heard of him, but only barely, and I’m pretty sure “My Brother Eli” is the first thing I’ve read by him. I intend to remedy that deficiency. One of the many praiseworthy aspects of these Best American anthologies is that they bring truly gifted writers to the attention of those that appreciate their gifts.

One of the most rewarding features of this anthology is found in the back of the book and is called “Contributors’ Notes.” For each of the authors whose stories appear in this book, there is an entry giving some background information, followed by an explanation by the author as to what inspired him or her to write the story. Fascinating!

[Jim Shepard, Karen Russell, Mary Gordon, and Lauren Groff]

[Joseph Epstein, T.C. Boyle, Alice Munro, and Eileen Pollack]

Best American Short Stories 2007 sees the debut of a new series editor, Heidi Pitlor. This year’s guest editor is Stephen King. He wrote a terrific introduction to this volume; it appeared in the New York Times Book Review this past September. (I particularly relish what he wrote about big box bookstores. I’m with ya there, Stephen; boy, am I ever!) I’d like to personally thank King for the passion and enthusiasm that he brought to this undoubtedly daunting task.

W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants consists of four lengthy narratives, each concerning a German living in exile from his native land. Sebald’s style is unique and enigmatic. He employs little if any dialogue in these stories; there’s also not much in the way of a discernible plot. They have a semi-documenary feel to them. Black and white photos of (deliberately?) poor resolution are scattered throughout the text. The atmosphere is suffused with melancholy.

I read this book in the late 1990’s, shortly after it was published. I remember being especially affected by the first story; in particular, I have never forgotten a sentence that occurs near the end.

The story starts out in a most ordinary way: “At the end of September 1970, shortly before I took up my position in Norwich, I drove out to Hingham with Clara in search of somewhere to live.” The narrator and his wife come upon a house in the country which, although in a state of falling-down neglect, has a strange appeal. They find the owner, Dr. Selwyn, lying prone in the orchard, engaged in counting blades of grass.

The couple take rooms in the house. At one point, Dr. Selwyn has a guest for dinner, and he invite his tenants to join the party. Later in the evening, the talk turns to Switzerland. (Dr. Selwyn’s wife Elli is Swiss; they are estranged.) The doctor tells of his sojourn in that country many years ago as a young man, shortly before the outbreak of World War One. While there, he became an ardent mountain climber. He was aided in his pursuit of this passion by an alpine guide named Johannes Naegeli.

I don’t want to tell any more of the story. I do want to say, though, that something amazing happens at the end; the reader receives a revelation that is like the sun breaking through a heavy cloud cover.

The penultimate sentence, to which I alluded earlier, is this: “And so they are ever returning to us, the dead.”

On the matter of Sebald’s fiction, E.L. Doctorow observes:

“The memories that are evoked are so specific and detailed and thickly textured that they are humanly impossible: they are memories beyond the capacity of actual nonliterary memory. Time and time again we are given reminiscences of the loveliness of ordinary living before the sweep of the scythe: life that is exquisitely modest, preciously unassuming, family oriented, charmingly eccentric, and above all rooted, deeply rooted, in the presumption of European civilization, and so, doomed to be betrayed.” [from the book Creationists]

In December of 2001, W.G. Sebald died in an automobile accident near his home in East Anglia. He was 57 years old.

Before I began blogging, I used to send what I called “Bookletters” to various people who regularly asked me for reading recommendations. Looking back through some of these, I thought I’d pass along some of the titles I was urging on people a couple of years ago. Hence, the title of this post. Yes I know - they’re not new or hot at the moment, but think of it this way: They’re probably not still on reserve at the library, and if they are, you can almost certainly get them in paperback!

So, in that spirit, here goes:

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I especially enjoy novels set in academia. Old School by Tobias Wolff is an excellent example of this fiction subgenre. It’s a rueful look back at the rarefied, heady atmosphere at an insular New England prep school, just before American culture succumbed to that strangely potent combination of flower power and civic rage that characterized the 1960’s. (Oh, how well I remember it …) Every year, the school invites a famous author to deliver a lecture and to judge a writing competition. In the course of the novel, the school hosts Robert Frost and then Ayn Rand. (Wolff has great fun describing Rand’s visit in particular.) But the writer who’s up next, who really has the boys in a swoon, is Ernest Hemingway. “Big- Two-Hearted River” himself! In person - coming to their school to confer his greatness upon them as a group and to anoint one of them the literary superstar of the next generation! These competitions are ferocious, and on this occasion, one boy decides that he is going to win by any means necessary…

Short story collections had an exceptionally good year in 2004. E.L. Doctorow’s Sweet Land Stories was pure delight. I laughed out loud at the exploits of the alternately hapless and scheming characters he creates; I had forgotten what a great sense of humor this author has.

Alice Munro was stellar, as usual, in Runaway. Her prose is so unadorned, her sentence structure so plain and straightforward, that you are never prepared for that punched-in-the-gut moment of truth she invariably delivers. [Update: Munro came out with another collection last year, The View from Castle Rock. If anything, it was even better than Runaway. I particularly liked the first story, “No Advantages,” in which Munro draws on her personal history as she describes a family’s arduous emigration from Scotland to Canada.]

A.S. Byatt’s style contrasts markedly with Munro’s. The stories in the slyly titled Little Black Book of Stories are each radically different from the other; all are effective and memorable; some contain elements of the fantastic. For my money, the standout was “The Stone Woman,” a truly remarkable tale of transformation, one could almost say, transfiguration.

Finally, there is William Trevor’s A Bit on the Side, a book widely hailed as once of 2004’s finest fiction offerings. Trevor’s style is somewhat similar to Munro’s - simple and direct. Most of the stories are set in the author’s native Ireland. There are some genuinely superb pieces in this collection; I especially recommend “Justina’s Priest” and the title story, which I found extremely moving, more for its restraint than from its overt power of expression. I wasn’t quite as swept away by this book as I expected to be. I think my problem was that I had John McGahern’s luminous depiction of country life in Ireland, By the Lake, in the back of my mind the whole time I was reading the Trevor stories.

[Update: I am currently looking forward to reading Trevor’s first collection since A Bit on the Side, which is the wonderfully titled Cheating at Canasta. Shortly after his memoir All Will Be Well was published in the U.S. last year, John McGahern, also considered a master storyteller, passed away at the age of 71.]

Here are my favorite mysteries from 2004, with updates on the authors mentioned. As you can see, I was on an international “kick” that year:

Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum. Exceptionally good writing (and translating) and great atmospherics characterize this Norwegian author’s crime fiction. I went on to read three more titles by Fossum: He Who Fears the Wolf, The Indian Bride (also published as Calling Out For You!), and When the Devil Holds the Candle. The first two of these were outstanding; Devil was good but I didn’t like it quite as much as the others.

Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell. Set in the sparsely populated north of Sweden, this novel does not feature Mankell’s series protagonist Kurt Wallander. But it is a police procedural and very similar in tone and structure to the Wallander novels, which I love.

Bill Ott of Booklist Magazine sums up eloquently what Dancing Master is about and why it’s so good: “As always, Mankell tells somber, deeply pessimistic stories about widespread hatred lurking below the multicultural surface, but at the same time, he never fails to find a rich vein of humanity deep within the perpetually furrowed brows of his troubled cops.”

Southwesterly Wind by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza . This one has it all: great setting - Rio de Janeiro - ingenious plotting, terrific characters. A psychic tells a young man that before his next birthday, he will commit murder. With less than two months until the fateful date and feeling panicky because of the dire prediction, he lays out the terms of his plight to Inspector Espinosa and asks for his help. Unfortunately, as he has no idea who the intended victim might be. Espinosa is understandably baffled - at least, to begin with…

It is the opinion of one Kirkus reviewer that “Garcia-Roza… writes like nobody else in the world.” This author is an emeritus professor of psychology and philosophy at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. When you have individuals with this kind of education and intellect taking up the challenge of writing crime fiction, it is easy to see why so much that is produced in the genre is so artfully structured and beautifully written.

Garcia-Roza makes some provocative observations in this interview about the creative process in general and the writing of crime fiction in particular. For instance, in discussing the difference between writing crime fiction and academic nonfiction, he offers the opinion that “…mystery novels, like mythological thought or ancient Greek poetry, bring to the center of a fictional narrative the most intense and fundamental questions of the human being: death and sexuality.”

(Note: If a mystery has been translated into English, both the original publication date and the date of the translation are provided on the Stop! You’re Killing Me! site. This information can sometimes explain why mysteries written in a foreign language aren’t necessarily published here in series order. This was a big problem when Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander novels first appeared in the U.S.)

Ghost in the Machine by Caroline Graham. I’d known of this series for a long time but never read any of the novels. Graham is the creator of Inspector Barnaby, who has become familiar to many mystery fans though the Midsomer Murder films. Now I enjoy those programs greatly, but they have always seemed to me to be “Mystery Lite.” So I assumed that the books would be the same. Boy, was I wrong! I was completely caught by surprise - and a very pleasant surprise it was! - by this book. The writing is wonderful and laced liberally with wit; as for the characters, I was totally unprepared for the psychological acuity with which they were portrayed. Ghost in the Machine is a page-turner, yet it is anything but shallow. Graham breathes new life into a venerable subgenre (one that I fervently adore), the English village mystery. She’s a sort of cross between Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell. That’s high praise, I know, but deserved in Graham’s case. I went back and read the series opener, The Killings at Badger’s Drift, and enjoyed it as well, though it doesn’t quite possess the depth of Ghost in the Machine.

Two nonfiction recommendations:

The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz.
Anyone interested in the history of the novel of espionage and international intrigue should hasten to obtain this fascinating book. All the “usual suspects” can be found here. Characters and scenarios created by the giants in the field, from Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Eric Ambler, and Graham Greene, to John LeCarre and Tom Clancy, are set alongside some of their real life - and stranger than fiction! - counterparts.

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need To Know Now, by Gordon Livingston, M.D.
I’m not much for self-help tomes; they’ve always seemed to me to specialize in the dispensing of platitudes and the regurgitating of shopworn bromides. Livingston is that rarity: a deep thinker who is nevertheless in touch with the common man and woman. He even has a sense of humor, an amazing quality in a man whose life has been marked by tragedy.

I got this book from the library and read it in just about one gulp. It’s a tiny little thing, 168 pages, but packed with hard-won wisdom. I have since bought it, so I can read it again, underline, and write notes to myself in the margins - like “Listen to him and stop being an idiot!!”

The book consists of a series of short essays. Herewith, some of the chapter headings:

“It is difficult to remove by logic an idea not placed there by logic in the first place”

“The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas”

“There is nothing more pointless, or common, than doing the same things and expecting different results”

“Happiness is the ultimate risk”

I’d like to close with Livingston’s suggestion for a definition of love: “We love someone when the importance of his or her needs and desires rises to the level of our own.” He then adds: “In the best cases, of course, our concern for the welfare of another exceeds, or becomes indistinguishable from, what we want for ourselves.”

Note (two notes, actually): Gordon Livingston lives and practices psychiatry right here in Columbia (MD). The foreword to his book is written by Elizabeth Edwards.

This article by Dr. Livingston recently appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

“Toga Party” is the second story in the latest edition of The Best American Short Stories. Begun in 1915, and published by Houghton Mifflin since 1978, this annual collection has a series editor - Heidi Pitlor at present - and a different guest editor each year. The editor for year 2007 is Stephen King.

“Toga Party” at first seems to be yet another tale of silliness in the suburbs, but there’s an undercurrent of anxiety from the outset. Prompted by what? The fear and dejection felt by Dick Felton at the prospect of illness and old age. Felton and his wife Sue, now both retired, live on Maryland’s Eastern Shore (a place my husband and I love). He’s 75; she’s in her late 60’s. A strong bond of companionable love has been forged in the course of their forty-plus years of marriage. Lately, they have been working on their wills, a task that almost inevitably evokes feelings of sadness and foreboding. This has been especially true for Dick .

As the story opens, the Feltons have just received an invitation to a toga party from the Hardisons, a couple who have just built a lavish house in their gated community, Heron Bay Estates. Perhaps this rather outlandish celebration will be the tonic they need to help them ward off melancholy. They make preparations to attend; Sue even researches costumes on the internet.

The party is at the outset a great success. As they arrive, guests are supposed to supply Latin aphorisms as passwords in order to gain entry: phrases such as “ad infinitum” and “ars longa vita brevis est” ring out merrily and float over the partygoers. At one point, someone compares the festivities to Trimalchio’s Feast. This is a scene from a fragmentary work that probably dates from some time during the reign of the Emperor Nero (54 - 68 A.D.): “Satyricon” by Petronius. I was forcibly struck by this reference, as I had only recently learned about Trimalchio’s Feast a few days ago while listening to The Teaching Company’s Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition. It is a description of a dinner party thrown by a newly freed slave Trimalchio, an occasion that descends rapidly into vulgarity and debauchery.

The Hardisons’ party does not degenerate into a Trimalchio-style orgy, although guests are encouraged at one point to participate in some rather tasteless, juvenile games. As the evening wears on, Dick Felton’s anxiety reasserts itself and seems to spread throughout the company (or, was it just my feeling that this was happening?). I was reminded of Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”I began to get the sense that something dreadful lay in wait. I was right. The phrase “timor mortis conturbat me,” while never given explicit voice in this story, kept ringing in my head. It can be roughly translated as “fear of death confounds me” and is frequently encountered in medieval literature, specifically in the prayer called The Office of the Dead. I first encountered “timor mortis” some years ago in a short story by Joyce Carol Oates. (Wouldn’t you know it…)

I don’t want to be misleading as to the cause of Dick Felton’s unease. He is not so much afraid of death as he is of old age and its concomitant decrepitude. And more than his own death, he dreads losing Sue and fears likewise for her should he die first. He cannot help imagining the “raw and overwhelming” grief implicit in the loss of one’s life partner. So, as a reflection of the prevailing zeitgeist, “timor mortis conturbat me” seems more than a little apt…

Like Paul Theroux, whose Elephanta Suite I reviewed recently, John Barth is a writer more people should know about. In 1960, he published a raucous, sprawling historical novel called The Sot-Weed Factor, a real masterpiece of the genre that, in tone and spirit, hearkens back to the novels of Henry Fielding. Barth was born in 1930 in Cambridge, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and taught from 1973 to 1995 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Admittedly, this story had a special resonance for me because of the setting, the ages of the protagonists (more or less the same as mine), and the allusions to the classics. Still, I think it is terrific, worthwhile reading for anyone interest in the art of the short story. Every once in a while, I come across one of these gems that, despite its brevity, seems to encompass a world of feeling in the way our great novels do. “The Music School” by John Updike is one such; “Toga Party” by John Barth is another.

“Feral” appears in Joyce Carol Oates’s new collection of stories, The Museum of Dr. Moses. In its power to disturb, it is on a par with “Hi! How Ya Doin’! from the same book. Kate and Stephen Knight have a six-year-old son named Derek. After suffering several miscarriages, Kate had finally given birth to Derek while in her late thirties. He is an intensely cherished child, a sweet, docile boy somewhat big for his age.

Then the unthinkable happens - or, nearly happens. Kate and some of her friends and their children are at the community pool when the daughter of one of them swallows rather too much water after a dive. For a few minutes, everyone’s attention, including Kate’s, is focused on this girl, who is in some distress but no real danger. Then Kate returns her gaze to the shallow end where Derek had been playing and sees that he is floating, inert, face down in the water.

Naturally, the reader thinks, Oh my God, every mother’s worst nightmare! And so it turns out to be, but not at all for the reason you think. Joyce Carol Oates has written a story that is exquisitely painful to read. I haven’t encountered fiction on the subject of parenting this unnerving since Rosemary’s Baby. In fact, now that I think about it, this tale is in some ways reminiscent of that notorious novel (and even more notorious - and terrifying - film). Many authors of horror and suspense strive so deliberately for a particular effect that their stories fall flat. This one is just the opposite: it is a small masterwork of horror and dread.

How could anything be worse than a child’s death by drowning? Read “Feral” and find out…

Yikes! a story by Joyce Carol Oates, six pages of nonstop manic motion, propulsive and relentless, spent in the chaotic company of numerous runners, oblivious to one another, except for one, all hurtling toward some unknown fate, not to be avoided, greatly to be dreaded, a lifetime encapsulated in one unending sentence, you will feel as though you have indeed been sentenced, by this master mesmerizer!

Okay - we know Joyce Carol Oates, and I’m no Joyce Carol Oates. Still, I needed to write - I couldn’t help thinking - in stream-of-consciousness after reading “Hi! How Ya Doin!” for the second time. I woke up this morning with the joggers’ feet still pounding in my brain. I’ll probably read the story yet again, but not just now - I need time to breathe!

“Hi! How ya Doin!” is the first in a new anthology of stories by Oates, entitled The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense. I’ve read only that first tale. Any more shocks to my system like that one and they’ll have to carry me out!

You can read the first three pages only of this story online, courtesy of Amazon.com’s “Search inside the book” feature. - click on “excerpt.” Go ahead - if you dare. (Or maybe it was just me - I do feel calmer now, at any rate…)

As year 2000 got under away, a number of “Best of the Century” lists began to appear. Happily for the mystery genre, numerous fans and cognoscenti jumped on this bandwagon.

One result was the Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, edited by Tony Hillerman and that supreme guru (and advocate) of the crime fiction genre, Otto Penzler. This is an interesting, if quirky, collection, containing stories that vary in quality. For one thing, many stories by great mainstream American writers are included, authors whom one doesn’t normally associate with crime writing. Some examples: Willa Cather, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon. On the other hand, stories by the acknowledged “greats” in the field make their appearance: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, John D. MacDonald and Ross MacDonald. One especially pleasant surprise to be found in this anthology is “Naboth’s Vineyard” by Melville Davison Post (1871-1930). Post was a prolific writer of short mystery fiction. His Uncle Abner stories, set in Virginia (what is now West Virginia) in the early 1800’s, are extremely evocative and readable. Although they have now pretty much dropped out of the canon, in their day they were considered small masterpieces. No less an expert on the genre than Howard Haycraft, author of the classic work of history and criticism Murder for Pleasure: the Life and Times of the Detective Story (1941), said this of Post’s tales of Uncle Abner: “No reader can call himself a connoisseur who does not know Uncle Abner forward and backward. His four-square pioneer ruggedness looms as a veritable monument in the literature. Posterity may well name him, after Dupin, the greatest American contribution to the form.”

Two relatively lighthearted entries in Best American Mystery Stories were quite enjoyable: “The Homesick Buick” by John D. MacDonald (pictured above, left), and the Edgar-winning - and truly hilarious - “Too Many Crooks” by Donald Westlake (above, right). “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather is a marvel of powerful writing, but I thought it was a stretch to include it in this anthology. I highly recommend the film version of this story, though, starring Eric Roberts. It is part of a series called The American Short Story. These films were made in the early 1980’s under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities. They are outstanding, the embodiment of what government sponsorship of the arts can achieve when a project is informed by true expertise and discernment. Other performers you will encounter in these films are Fritz Weaver (”The Jolly Corner” by Henry James), Tommy Lee Jones (”Barn Burning” by William Faulkner) and Ron Howard (”I’m a Fool” by Sherwood Anderson).

Back to the stories themselves: “Ransom” by Pearl Buck had me shaking my head in amazement. Such clunky, graceless writing by a Nobel Prize laureate! In stark contrast, there is Raymond Chandler’s masterful “Red Wind,” with its oft-quoted opening lines:

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.”

One story that was for me a real revelation was “The Baby in the Icebox” by James. M Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice. This story is a real noir gem. [Raymond Chandler is pictured above left; James M. Cain, to the right]. Finally, there is Susan Glaspell’s much-anthologized “A Jury of her Peers,” still a must-read, as compelling and disturbing now as when she wrote it in 1917.

I believe that a more accurate, inclusive title for this book would have been “The Best American Crime Writing of the Century.”

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Crum Creek Press is The Little Press That Can - and Does!

In 2000, it published 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century. The titles included in this tiny but mighty little book were selected by members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. It’s a great little source book for readers wanting to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of the history of crime fiction. Following hard on its heels was They Died in Vain, subtitled “Overlooked, Underappreciated and Forgotten Mystery Novels” (2002). The premise of this quirky, fascinating little of volume of undeservedly forgotten writers and writing is stated on the back cover: “If characters die in a mystery novel, and no one reads their story, have they died in vain?” As in the previous book, the accompanying annotations are meticulous and thought-provoking. There is a third book in this series called Mystery Muses; it’s enjoyable, but not, in my view, as essential or as entertaining as the previous two. (Crum Creek used to put out a wonderful little periodical that featured truly incisive reviews and essays on trends in crime fiction. It was called The Drood Review of Mystery. Although it ceased publication several years ago, “the Drood” is still remembered and missed by its loyal - and wistful! - readers.) The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association has on its site an excellent feature called Killer Books. This is yet another of the primary places I go to for reading recommendations.

Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books was written by H.R.F. Keating and published in 1987. Keating is a veteran author of mysteries as well as a highly respected commentator and reviewer. His essays are full of insight and beautifully written. Mixed in with the (justly) famous are authors and titles you’ve likely never heard of (including the aforementioned Uncle Abner stories by Melville Davisson Post). At any rate - as with the above reference works: highly recommended.

And before I close: Baltimore’s own Mystery Loves Company Bookstore has a Best Mysteries of the Century list posted on its website.