Thanks that are long overdue

Kids take a lot of things for granted.  It's part of being a kid, to accept the world and its people as part of how life should be.   That's a terrible thing for kids who live with pain or deprivation but for a lot of us that meant a childhood where we took bicycles, birthday parties, vacations and our family's love and devotion as part of our just due. We rarely said thank you.  For example, I never thanked my folks for showing me why some stories are classics.  Still, I haven't forgotten our time with Treasure Island.

I don't know if Treasure Island is still one of the required books of childhood.  There are so many other stories now and Disney has such an imprimatur on the pirate world these days that Robert Louis Stevenson's classic may get lost in the shuffle.  My folks had both grown up with the tale and I suspect they were a bit excited about sharing "their" story with me when I turned ten.  Perhaps I was a bit young, but I already had my nose in a book all the time so why not give me one they loved?  None of us expected I couldn't get "into" it.

But I couldn't, not past Section I, as I told my mom three months later when she caught me re-reading The Borrowers.  Mom didn't fuss at me (as I feared) or remind me that I shouldn't ignore an expensive present.   She walked away and the next evening told me that she and Dad had a new project: they would read Treasure Island out loud over the next several nights, one chapter per parent per evening.  All I had to do was sit and listen.  

How well I remember those evenings, Dad lying on the couch and mom in a chair while I perched in the rocker, listening.  Dad read with enthusiasm, enjoying the author's writing style but my Mom touched greatness as a reader.  She had all the talent of an actress and a gift for mimicry so I recognized each character by their voice tone and accent whenever she read.  Squire Trelawney's remarks had the drawl of aristocracy and Dr. Livesey used the Estuary English accent of an educated but self-made man.  The pirates, of course, all used cockney or West Country accents and Jim's voice had the higher tone of a boy.  It was a wonderful performance.

My parents read every night, sailing through the dry area narrative where I'd stopped and into the sea-voyage, my excitement growing with each reading.  I asked mom to return the book to me so I could "read ahead" but my wise mother said no and hid the volume, knowing the wait would increase my desire for the story.  I took to wearing my winter boots for each reading, because they were the closest things in my closet to pirate garb and begged for extra chapters when we stopped at a cliff-hanger.  I hated it when the book ended.

I think we all enjoyed that wonderful experiment although we never repeated it.  My interest in reading rarely flagged after that and, though readers, my folks seldom liked the same books.  But when a loved one says some classic tale isn't keeping their interest, I'll volunteer to read it aloud.   My parents are gone now and it's the only way I can thank them for those evenings of pirates and treasure. 


And now my month of steady blogging is done.  Have you liked it? What books did I miss that you like, which brought back memories for you, which books followed you home?   Having a blog is rather like throwing bottled messages into the sea and I'm curious to know where (or if) my letters wash ashore.  For everyone who has fished out a bottle by reading this blog, thank you.  I appreciate your trips to the beach.

If you don't know Cannery Row, you don't know Steinbeck.

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

So says John Steinbeck, the twentieth century novelist teachers forced you to read  high school and professors mocked in college.   Steinbeck who preaches in The Grapes of Wrath and makes you weep in Of Mice and Men, did you know he could be funny?   That man, so serious and biblical in  East of Eden (except for the scenes with the car), also knew how to relax.   You wouldn't guess it but Steinbeck was a versatile writer who loved life.  Of all things, Steinbeck cared about people and that shows up in Cannery Row.

Cannery Row was and is a waterfront street in the town of Monterey and for a while was the hangout of Steinbeck.  Then, it was a rundown place full of abandoned buildings and homeless  people who sheltered there.  Other impoverished people such as artists, prostitutes and rejects from society lived on the row but, most remarkably, Steinbeck's best friend, a self-taught naturalist named Ed Ricketts lived and worked there finding sea animals for university labs and zoos. All of these people made it into the novel Cannery Row.

In the novel, Ed Ricketts becomes Doc, the owner and operator of Pacific Biologicals, a marine lab and one of the few profitable businesses in Cannery Row.  The other primary businesses are Lee Chong's Heavenly Flower Grocery (where any marketable item can usually be found because Lee Chong does not give up on merchandise just because it isn't selling) and the Bear Flag Restaurant, a brothel whose madam funds or performs most of the civic projects in the area.  Wandering in between these establishments are a group of fellows known collectively as "Mack and the boys".   These are men who Steinbeck says have "in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment."  This group of well-intentioned hobos get the idea they would like to thank Doc for all of his kindness by throwing a party for him.  A surprise party.   The ensuing adventure surprises a farmer, Lee Chong,  Doc, everyone on the Row, the police and more than a thousand frogs.  One of the funniest sections of this very funny book concerns the acquisition of those frogs and since I don't have the rights to republish this and I don't want to get sued for copyright infringement, I'll add a link here to someone who has published the prose (A Frog's tale)  If that page doesn't make you smile, forget it.

But I can't forget it, anymore than I can forget Lee Chong, Doc's beer milk-shake or the woman who wants to hang curtains inside a boiler.  It's a sweet place, Cannery Row, and I expect to find it one day in some place far away from ambition and close to the sea.  If you find it first, call me and get a six-pack of beer from Lee Chong's.   It will be time to kick back and breathe..

A Pattern for Learning: Johnny Tremain

Every kid who is lucky gets one or two teachers in their childhood who seem to understand them, teachers they respond to.   All of my grade-school teachers were nice people and a few actually seems to care about me but my sixth grade teacher gave me the extra guidance I needed at that uncertain age.  She had an intuitive understanding of all the "outsider" kids in her room and found activities that made us valued members of the class.  During discussions, she treated us like we were reasonable adults and we responded in kind.  And she brought a great book into our lives, reading it aloud after lunch.  I will always be grateful for her introduction to Johnny Tremain.

Johnny is the story of a developing nation but more than that, it's the story of a developing man, Jonathan Lyte Tremain.  In the beginning, Johnny is an apprentice in pre-revolutionary Boston, Massachusetts, a silversmith in training and one of those talented people you want to slap.   Yes, he is gifted and smart, probably the mainstay of his employer's business but he's also sarcastic, arrogant and an intellectual bully.  Some of this behavior comes from an over-inflated ego but part of it is a coverup for this isolation he feels as an orphan who has never made friends easily.  Two things cause Johnny to revise his character: first, a life-altering injury ruins his career and sense of identity; he's cast away from the community that once valued his abilities.  Then, he finds that teacher we all need; the mentor who, by example, teaches us to value character more than talent and the worth of others as well as well one's self.  This teacher gives Johnny the opportunity to overcome his injury and a front-row seat to history: the first blows of the American Revolution.

Johnny Tremain's author, Esther Forbes, was a historian who researched the lives of American colonists and she included real people as supporting characters in this book.  Well known figures such as Paul Revere,  Sam Adams and  John Hancock. and lesser known ones like Joseph Warren and James Otis walk across the pages as well as the fictional characters and the patriots bring Johnny into the Revolutionary War. Johnny's struggle to develop his new life and identity parallels Boston's and the colonies' fight to reinvent themselves as parts of an independent country.    Both Johnny and the community face hardship and sacrifice in the battle for self-determination and it's that battle that gives Johnny the purpose and community he's needs to continue, not as the star apprentice in a small shop but as an American in a group of fellow Americans.  It's an incredibly powerful lesson.

Teachers give lessons and homework and tests to get ideas and information into their students until the students begin to teach themselves.   A good teacher, like a good book, can take you into yourself but the best ones take you into the world.  At the beginning of this holiday season, let me wish you a lifetime of great teachers and great books.  Books like Johnny Tremain.

When you can't pick a favorite: Dick Francis & Decider

I love the crime thrillers of the last century and one of my favorite authors in the genre was Dick Francis.  The man lived an incredible life (RAF pilot, champion jockey, best-selling writer, just look at his Wikipedia bio!) and if his novels run to a formula, each mixed a new field of information into an abiding love for horses and a solid block of principles.  I've read all of them at least once, I give most of them house room and I can't pick a favorite.   So, I'll give the first shot to one of his later books, Decider

In Decider, Lee Morris salvages ruins.  In today's vernacular, he's a flipper, one of those guys who buys distressed or damaged buildings and turns it into a marketable property.  Lee's an architect and he specializes in reclaiming "listed buildings," those structures the British government protects from bulldozing and developers because they have historic or architectural interest.  Lee's business is to turn these often dilapidated buildings into marketable residences without destroying the characteristics that make the structure "listed".  Lee's learned how to work with a variety of people in order to do his job and right now he needs these skills to help a family that's not quite his.  You see, Lee has inherited a few shares of a racecourse that's primarily owned by the Stratton family and the Strattons can't decide what to do with the property.  As a matter of fact, a lot of the family members' energy (and some of the family weath) is devoted to infighting and or foiling the schemes of more outrageous relatives.  Against his better judgment,  Lee's pulled into the Stratton disputes and by the end, he has to expose the Stratton secrets to keep his own family safe.

While this looks like just another Dick Francis mystery with chase scenes and horses, it's a really a story about the stresses and structures that exist in both buildings and families.  The hero watches the Stratton power struggles and compares the destructive members to his troupe of growing boys, trying to anticipate the stresses his sons will face and reinforcing their characters.  Without saying so, the author draws a parallel between the damaged but salvageable buildings Lee rehabs for his livelihood and the damaged relationships he sees both in the Stratton family and his own.  While some derelict places or relationships can be revived,  Decider implies that salvage can be a dangerous game and restoration is achievable only to a degree.  Some breaks are beyond repair.

There are some delightful architectural asides thrown in such as the argument to using peach canvas when you need a fabric shade.  Light shines through the canvas onto the faces below and the peach tint is more complimentary than say, yellow.  Peach makes old faces look younger and healthier and since the older customers are usually the ones with real money to spend, choose materials that make them feel happier.  Another observation is that the smells in a pub are supremely important.   You can buy a pub with a great location, wonderful parking and a great wait staff but if the place smells like ammonia cleaner, you've wasted your money.   Get the smells right and your customers will come. Those observations are the kind of things that I love in a novel, the sense of getting insight from an expert.   Dick Francis did this in almost every book, researching subjects so his tales gave the reader insight on some new profession or industry.  They are fascinating as well as enjoyable.

Only you can say if you want to know more and whether you'll pick up this book.  If you aren't sure, make your list of pros and cons but listen to your instincts and heed what appeals to your heart.   Like Lee Morris, let that be your Decider.

The Spoils of Poynton or Why My English Teacher was right about Henry James

My English teacher said some writers often go in and out of fashion. A few, like some clothes, hardly ever go out of style.  You can like them forever and know they'll always be available for discussion and the worst opinion you'll hear is, "Well, of course, you like___, who doesn't?"   For example, if Shakespeare was fashion, he'd be a great pair of leather loafers or a white, short-sleeved shirt.  Good for practically everything.  Oscar Wilde might be a burgundy velvet vest: (waistcoat for citizens of the U. K.)  dramatic, a bit sensual, fairly versatile but not the go-to choice in every situation.  Shame, because I really like burgundy velvet vests.  But the writer who seems a bit neglected these days is Henry James. Except for Halloween revivals of The Turn of the Screw and the occasional big-budget costume picture, his work is largely ignored and that's a shame. He appreciated the complexity of human character and culture and he used it to create wonderful, memorable stories.   My favourite is The Spoils of Poynton.

Poynton is the story of four individuals who keep pairing off into irreconcilable teams.  Team One might be the Gareth, widowed mother and grown son, in trouble due to British probate laws.   Mrs Gareth and her late husband spent an incredible amount of time, effort and money to furnish their home, Poynton, with the greatest possible taste.   When the son (Owen) decides to marry, the house and everything in it become his property.  Legally, Mama doesn't own anything. That's hard on Mrs G, especially since she knows Owen didn't inherit his parents' taste or intelligence and she wants to make sure that his bride will be a better custodian.

Enter Team Two, the two main candidates, for Owen's hand in marriage. Fleda Vetch, has wonderful taste but no money and Mona Bridgstock who has terrible taste but Owen's interest.   Actually, Owen's interest seems to vacillate between the two girls because (are you taking notes, children?) Owen and Fleda are basically nice people who try to think of others and the ethical thing to do while Mona and Mrs G. both focus on how to get their own way(s).  

Okay, now we've seen the Gareths v. the would-be brides and the nice ones v. the naughties and I've hinted at the third set of teams (the aesthetes v. the barbarians or the tasteful v. tasteless, if you prefer) and the plot wheel begins to spin.   Owen proposes to Mona who says she'll wed when she gets the keys to Poynton and every stick of furniture inside it.  (Granted, Mona can't tell Spode from a spade but she's not about to let Owen's mum run off with the silver and soft furnishings.  As far as Mona is concerned, Poynton and its fixtures are Owen's dowry.)  Mrs G has developed a real friendship with Fleda Vetch and whenever Owen shows up wanting to talk about the wedding and mum's eviction, Mrs Gareth sends Fleda to the meeting.  Now for the cherry on the Sundae: Fleda's got a secret, world-sized crush on the son, Owen. She can't tell Owen how she feels (he's engaged!) and she doesn't dare tell Mrs Gareth who would try to manipulate her. Fleda feels bad that Owen's predicament and worse about her own role in this mess but she's under strict instruction never to accept or turn down his suggestions about "What to do About Poynton." 

Henry James

Now a couple of interesting side bits.  The plot of Poynton is partially based on legal case that Mr. James had seen in the news.  The dowager widow of an English estate didn't want to turn over the house and land to her son when he came of age.  The son sued to get his inheritance and mum testified he wasn't entitled to it because (wait for it!) her husband wasn't the boy's father.  When you consider how adultery was viewed in that culture, you'll understand how desperate the mother must have been to come up with that defense!  The other thing you'll notice if/when you read the book is that beyond one item, nothing in Poynton's collection is described or documented.   The house is supposed to be an assembled work of art, a cohesive collection that brings out the best in each piece and every room but we really don't know what it looks like.   Mrs Gareth continually refers to the contents of her home as "the things" (As in, "Has she any sort of feeling for the nice old things?"). The author originally wanted to call the novel "The Old Things" but he deliberately left most of the specifics of the collection off.   This allows each reader to conjure up a vision of what Poynton must look like to be worth this much trouble.

If you've been reading about these precious, immovable objects and teams of irresistible forces, chances are you've thought, "Something's gotta give" and yes, it does.  Well, a lot of things do but not all at once and not the way you'd expect.  The Spoils of Poynton has a hum-dinging twist of an ending.  So pick up the book, brew yourself a good pot of tea and do not skip ahead to the ending.  This tale is wound up tight and you won't appreciate the ride if you miss hitting most of the curves.   It's the work of a master so appreciate it for what it is.   Intricate, archaic, wound up and beautifully designed, this work is the literary equivalent of a Victorian pocket watch.  And so is Henry James.  I hope he comes back into style.

When home is a place where you've never been: Cross Creek

William Shakespeare, that quotable fellow, said "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."   That's how I feel about home.  Many people I know are raised with a real sense of identity, knowing who they are and where they belong long before they learn how to read.  That place of origin, for good or for ill, is home, undeniable as DNA.  Others have to make a place for themselves in this world and a few of us enter a strange site and realize with amazement that this place centers us like no other.  It's a shock, like first falling in love, and it changes the folks who experience it.  That realization of finding home is central to Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's book Cross Creek  because it's not just about the first heady days of romance.  Cross Creek is the love affair between a discoverer and place.

The two were an unlikely match.  Mrs. Rawlings was a thirty-two year old journalist whose career and human marriage were both showing wear but not many signs of success.  She was educated, politically liberal and although she could write, she had not found her "voice", that prerequisite of transcendent writers.  Cross Creek was an undisturbed pocket of the Old South populated by black and white families who eked out an living on the land, through farming or sharecropping, hunting, trading or fishing.  Probably no one believed she would stay.   The greatest trait both parties shared was stubbornness.

Well that, and a love of the place.  It must have held beauty beyond measure because Marjorie stuck there without friends, without encouragement and soon, without her husband (who couldn't tolerate the isolation) or her dog (who hated the heat.)   Marjorie tolerated it all, including the bugs and the outhouse, adapted, repaired and plugged away at fiction that wasn't getting published.  She was also writing to an editor about her neighbors.   Those letters mark the beginning of her voice.

A key part of the success of Cross Creek is Marjorie's opinion of her neighbors.  She recognizes their residential seniority and values each individual for the merits in his or her own character.  She also recognizes her own fallibility and admits to her many mistakes.  That humility told the neighbors she might be be worth teaching.

From these new friends and the things they taught her, Marjorie gleaned the material for her best known work, The Yearling  (when her editor suggest she write a boy's story set in the Florida scrub, she replied to his suggestion, saying, "How calmly you sit in your office and tell me to write a classic!"  Irony, thy name is Marjorie.)  Cross Creek was the follow-up, a love song to the area she loved.

As in so many romances, the one between Marjorie and Cross Creek did not make it to the finish line.  First, she remarried and living with her second husband meant living some seventy miles away.  Far sadder is the fall out that came from this book.  One of the people Marjorie wrote of with affection and respect took offense over the description and sued for libel.  The case went on for years, dividing the community and draining the parties.  Marjorie stayed away after that.

In the end, Frost described it best: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  When Marjorie died, she was buried in a cemetery less than five miles from the place she'd recognized as home.  Other Creek residents are spending their eternity there including the woman who sued her.  Thus far, the residents seem to be keeping their peace.

Marjorie wrote she was not the real owner at Cross Creek noting, "Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time." Instead, she belonged to this place that defined her, defied her and nourished her soul.  For good or for ill, Cross Creek became part of her, like DNA.  Call that what you like, I think it means "home".

The past through a prism: A look at David Copperfield.

"I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child.  And his name is David Copperfield."  That's what Charles Dickens said in the preface of his famous novel and I believe he meant it.  History didn't record how his wife or his ten human children reacted to the statement (that would have been a Jerry Springer show in the making!) but, as sad as the remark probably made them, I doubt if they were surprised.  A large amount of fiction comes from the writer's re-imagination of his or her own past and much of the novel David Copperfield can be traced to the life of Charles Dickens.  The transfiguration of those experiences in David Copperfield redeemed a lot of the author's own childhood. It also made a much-loved book.

Every fan of fiction knows Charles Dickens had an unsettled childhood.  His father was always in debt and the family moved continually, trying to avoid Dad's creditors.  That ended when his father was thrown into debtor's prison and all of the family (except 12 year old Charles and his slightly older sister) were incarcerated there for a time.  His sister managed to stay in her school but his parents forced Charles to leave his studies and go to work in a shoe polish factory to support himself.  Charles Dickens never got over the humiliation of those experiences or the anger at his mother for trying to keep him in the factory after the family got financial relief and freedom.  After his father tried to capitalize on the adult son's fame (borrowing from his son's friends and publishers) Charles banished his parents to the country.

Those experiences found their way into David Copperfield. Dickens's  father becomes two characters, the terrible Mr. Murdstone who forces his orphaned step-son, David into child labor and the likeable, irresponsible spend-thrift, Micawber with his financial advice and unfounded optimism that "something will turn up."  By splitting the sin from the sinner, Dickens managed to write of his father with some remaining affection. (Since the Micawber ends up becoming one of the unlikely heroes of the story, a suspicious reader might infer a lot of fatherly affection remained with the author, despite his father's profligate ways.)

Reality seeps through the fiction in other ways.  Dickens examines his own experience as an impoverished child laborer in the book and the unrelenting shame he felt about that episode.  Like his creator, David is embarrassed about his familiarity with pawnbrokers, rats and extreme poverty and once firmly past it, he keeps it a secret from his new friends but fear of poverty fuels the ambition in both hero and author.  Reality also makes David Copperfield a more identifiable protagonist than some of the author's earlier heroes like Nicholas Nickelby or Martin Chuzzlewit.  David makes mistakes the earlier protagonists avoid, like drinking too much in the chapter, "My First Dissipation (The line, "'Agnes!' I said. "'I'mafraidyou'renorwell.'" is terribly funny) and falling for all the wrong people but that's because David Copperfield, like Charles Dickens is human.  The novel's weakest spot is that the David's "right people" are still too impossibly good to be believable but Mr. Dickens was still developing as a writer at this point.  If you want a Dickens heroine that isn't a saint, you'll have to pick up Great Expectations.  That's further down the line.

Yes, David Copperfield's an old-fashioned novel.  It has a million characters with silly names and everything works out for the best.  But that's part of the art of story, creating redemption through imagination and giving everyone a "good enough" ending. It's a way to resolve some old issues and keep alive those that we miss.  There's the life that we had and the life we wish we had and fiction connects the two.  Blessed be the fiction that binds. 

A little-known tale of Disaster: Under a Flaming Sky

My husband collects disaster stories.   I think it goes back to his childhood when he read A Night to Remember.  The account of Titanic's sole voyage was so researched, so well-written and evocative, he's been chasing disaster accounts ever since.   Me, I like these books for the slice-of-life history that comes with each account, the context of how people lived in some different time and era and who they were.  For whatever reason, we both love disaster accounts and this summer I found a good one.  Under a Flaming Sky (by Daniel James Brown) is one of those books that flies under the radar until the author gets a hit later on.  Here's hoping the author's good luck with his current release will give this story a deserved second look.

UAFS is the story of Hinkley, Minnesota, a town on the edge of the prairie near the end of the Guilded Age.  Hinkley had done well as a town, booming along with the twin streams of business and labor.  Lumber was the town's biggest business and a steady stream of immigrants kept it moving from forests through the sawmills to the trains.  Everyone was in a hurry to get up, get moving and make the product that brought a paycheck and that was fine, except there was rarely time to clean up. As the trunks of the trees went to the mills to be planed and sectioned, the extra got left behind.   Leaves, branches, pine needles and the wood shavings that come from lumbering were left in the fields with the stumps to dry in the air and sun.  A lot of debris had dried by September of 1894; less than two inches of rain had fallen since May. A fire was probably inevitable but Hinckley got an inferno.

Two wild fires started, one south, one southwest of town, each generating high convection winds and low-hanging smoke.  These winds (and the ground debris) fed the fires until they met and the combined flames beat up through the smoke into the cool air above.   It was like adding gasoline.  The wildfires became a gigantic firestorm, a moving wall of flame between four and five miles high.   The thermal winds produced blazing whirlwinds that broke away from the firewall and caught new things alight.  The heat on the ground melted barrels of nails and train rails and people.  In less than four hours,  480 square miles of Minnesota - almost a quarter of a million acres - were consumed.

No one knows how many died in the fire; officials weren't counting the Native Americans back then and many folks just disappeared.  But hundreds of people survived because a couple of trains drove through the conflagration, picking up fleeing settlers along the way.   Every bridge they crossed had to be checked for safety because the rails were softening under the hideous heat and that meant letting the fire catch up behind you while the brakeman tested the tracks.  A few other people survived by jumping into water, either the river or the standing water in the town's gravel pit.  But hundreds had no chance at all.

One nine year old boy survived the conflagration and moved to California, eventually becoming a family man and executive but he never really escaped from the fire.  Night after night, while his daughter was studying, the man dreamed of his Minnesota boyhood and woke up screaming.  His daughter couldn't forget his screams.  Her son created this book.

Under a Flaming Sky, is, in the end, not the story of a disaster but the people who faced it, both those that survived and died.  And that's why these stories are important.  The survivors inspire us to overcome our own low points and the lost are not forgotten.  We take all of them with us when we close the book and they continue because we remember.  And remember's a fine thing to do.

My sister, the Boss and The Willoughbys

I have a very bossy younger sister.  She is the greatest sibling  alive and her "take charge" attitude is fairly reasonable, considering she got it from both sides of the family and her teaching requires an air of command.   I just didn't know she'd want to boss me.  It all started out with a phone call.

"There's a children's book that's really good," she said, "You should read it." 

"Sure" I replied, thinking of the score of books I had praised and sent to her, still lying unread, on her shelves.  "Tell me the name and I'll look for it."  

"No, you should read it now." she replied. "I'll bring the book when I see you tomorrow.  You can read while we visit."

Then she hung up and I was out maneuvered.  I read The Willoughbys, per instruction.  Then I read it again, for fun.  Perhaps, I should mention it's good.

No one with a background in kid's lit will be surprised that The Willoughbys is good.  After all, it was written by Lois Lowry, that two-time winner of the Newbery Medal for The Giver and Number the Stars.  What might surprise you is how funny the book is.  The Willoughby children (eldest, Tim; youngest Jane and the twins, Barnaby A & B) have read so many 19th century children's books that they expect their lives will copy those tales of resourceful children who succeed, despite tyrannical authority figures.  Once they realize orphans have the lion's share of success in these stories, they decide to become orphans by sending their foolish, ill-natured parents on a succession of dangerous vacations.  Before you sympathize with the parents, understand two things: 1) the idiots go and 2) they leave the kids behind, putting their home up for sale. 
 
The narration shares much of the dry, tongue-in-cheek voice of Lemony Snicket.   How else could you explain a mother who will knit a sweater for the family cat but insists her twin sons share a garment (and a name) , saying, "“A, you wear it [the sweater] on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. B, you have Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. On Sunday you can fight over it.”  The sheer silliness of the idea will keep younger readers giggling.

Another treat is the glossary Ms. Lowry added to The Willoughbys.  It defines some of the "bigger" words for younger readers but in ways that will amuse any overseeing adults.   Consider these:

NEFARIOUS means utterly, completely wicked. The character in The Wizard of Oz could have been called the Nefarious Witch of the West but authors like to use the same beginning consonant, often. Perhaps L. Frank Baum crossed out nefarious after wicked came to his mind. Thank goodness, because Nefarious would be a terrible name for a musical.

CRYPTIC means seeming to have a hidden meaning. If your mother says, “Consider yourself grounded, mister!” it is not at all cryptic . But if she says in a certain voice, “We need to talk,” she is being cryptic. And you are about to be grounded.

See what I mean?  Funny!  There's a bibliography of books the Willoughbys mention with the same type of descriptions. I can't read Huck Finn's without snickering.

Yes, the book is a parody but like many parodies, it's clever.  The sub-plots come together as the reader fits disjointed pieces of information in the story, not unlike Louis Sachar's Holes.  But if you think you are going to guess the name of the famous candy tied to the story, forget it.  No one can anticipate that.

So, if you are forced to read to children this holiday season, listen to what they have to say.   Look over what they want to read.   Then adopt my sister's most autocratic tone and say, "Here's the book for us," and  bring out your copy of The Willoughbys.  Settle down and put a back finger on the glossary page, for easy flipping.  Then start to read aloud.  The children will listen and have a good time.   They'll admire your taste in literature.   But they'll never forget that you're bossy.

Maus

I'll admit it, I'm a snob when it comes to comic books.  Early in my reading career it became apparent that an inverse relationship existed between the number of illustrations in the book and the expected IQ of the reader.  (i.e., more pictures meant lower IQ).   As soon as I figured that out, I headed for chapter books at high speed.  Oh, I still enjoyed a great illustration once in a while but I knew better than to focus on them.  And I couldn't grasp why so many males in my generation continued to buy, read and discuss comic books after they reached legal maturity.   It was like being trapped in a life-long, joke-less episode of "Big Bang Theory".    People could call the publications graphic novels or comics, I didn't care.  They were still just "funny books" for dorks.

So I didn't see Maus coming.  Maus, if you haven't seen it, is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the Holocaust.   And it's animated, because Mr. Spiegelman is an illustrator.   And, to put the icing on the cake, Mr. Spiegelman drew the characters in his work as animals.  It sounds crazy but, believe me, it's a work of genius.

The story works this way: the adult mouse, Art, is trying to rebuild a relationship with his father, Vladek, also a mouse.  This is not easy because Vladek is a difficult old stinker with nightmares for memories and Artie is is no poster child for mental health either. Art finally gets the old mouse to start talking about his life.  After some prodding, we hear about (and see through Art's imagination) Vladek's early life in Poland when he married Art's mother and settled down in a job in manufacturing.  Then Hitler knocked at the door.

Since the Jews are mice, it only follows that the Germans are cats (not nice kitties, either - all cat lovers here, beware) because cats hunt and exterminate mice.   Art's father, Vladek and his wife, Anja, try to avoid the Nazi juggernaut overrunning Europe but are unable to escape, are split up for a time and eventually taken to Auschwitz.   They survive, but their first born son does not.  And the story makes it clear that while the active Holocaust ended with Germany's surrender, the damage from that experience flows on for years.  Art's mother made it through the camps but mental illness and PTSD probably induced her suicide in 1968.  Art's father can never transcend his terrible experiences and Art himself needs therapy to adjust to life.  Maus's existence is proof that art is created in spite of trauma, not because of it.  It's also a brilliant fusion of ideas.

The animal metaphor doesn't end with cats and mice.  The non-Jewish Poles are swine, particularly those that end up fellow prisoners but still dangerous to the captured Jews.  And the American soldiers, black and white, are the species most likely to scare cats: dogs.  But the anthropomorphized illustrations allow Art to recount  his parents' story so the readers understand the horrors of the Holocaust without facing the terrible(forgive the pun) graphic images that remain.  It's a brilliant way to teach children about tragic events without creating more trauma.  Come to think of it, that's what illustrations have been doing for a very long time.  I believe I've been wrong about comics.

Maus won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, the first graphic novel to attain this high honor and since then, the field has exploded.  Some great graphic novels include Barefoot Gen, Neil Gaiman's Sandman series and the brilliant Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.   But these artists, great as they are, stand on the shoulders of Art Spiegelman and his terrifying, brilliant book, Maus.  Once there was a wall between graphic novels and literature.  Spiegelman kicked the damn thing down.

The Book in the Corner of my Soul: John Chancellor Makes Me Cry

I am not Southern by birth.  I was born in north Texas and raised in the west, in spaces known for harsh winds, wide horizons, and voices loud enough to get through the first and reach the second.  Because of this I was a stranger in a strange land when I moved to the South and  I worried I would always be an outsider.  Over several  years, I read a barrel load of books on how nuanced, complex and wonderful life here can be here, but no book taught me more or made me feel more at home  than Anne Rivers Siddons's collection of essays, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.


Mrs. Siddons was raised in a small Georgia town and graduated from Auburn before beginning a career in Atlanta, first in advertising and then as a novelist. Between those two jobs came the essay collection in this book.  It is a heartfelt account of adjusting to adult life after the raw newness (and gleam) of one's twenties has disappeared but before the confidence that comes with seniority has set in.  In Passages, Gail Sheehy wrote of this as the age when 30-somethings double down on the mortgage/kids/picket fence paradigm and Ms. Siddons had her home off Peachtree Street and a collection of cats but she she also had the perspective of an outsider in a well-settled neighborhood.  As the educated observer, she became a guide I needed to understand modern Southern protocol.  From her, I learned to recognize the blue-haired doyennes and their good old boy husbands that still wield power in my city.  (The South is the only place I know where cut-throat businessmen and landed millionaires are known as Junior and Bubba).  I learned someone's accent could not always predict their education, net worth or opinions.  I also learned that feeling unsure, frightened and unprepared is par for the course but it's not enough reason to quit.

Anne's essays detail facing troubles most of us confront sooner or later: fearsome weather, bad fights with the spouse, a lost job, the death of a family member. She also writes of the stresses that come of being a step-mother and second wife, a role I was learning to fill back then.  Each of these are explored with respect, sensitivity and gentle humor. There are also the odes to the good and everyday things in life such as the seasons, vacations, traffic,  the joys of work (her essay on advertising is hilarious) and the comfort of long friendships.  Her voice is intelligent, comfortable, and well-inflected with humor.  It's impossible not to imagine her as a friend.

In the years since the publication of JCMMC, Mrs. Siddons has written many novels and they have sold well, as they should, although calling her the "the thinking-woman's novelist" is still kind of left-handed compliment. Better is another reviewer's observation, "One doesn't read Anne Rivers Siddons's books, one dwells in them."  I've been dwelling in her fiction for a few decades now but JCMMC is different.  That's the book that dwells in me.

The Wizard of Weirdness: Hunter S. Thompson and the The Great Shark Hunt

I'm proud to say that a writer once cost me a job.  At one time, the U. S. Air Force  thought of making me a journalist so I could write for base newspapers.  I had passed all the tests easily and was interviewing with an editor of one of the largest papers in the command, a young Sargent in love with uniform creases and rules.  We were talking about veterans of various branches who became successful writers and I mentioned liking the work of an Air Force veteran named Hunter S. Thompson.  Steam poured out of the editor's ears.  "Thompson?" he squeaked, "Thompson!   My college invited him to our Controversial Speakers forum and he showed up stoned!!"   Internally I had two thoughts: 1) Well, yeah, everyone knows Hunter hates doing those speaker gigs, he's going to show up wrecked and 2) I believe I just blew this  interview.   The next day, the Air Force decided I would be a better Supply Clerk than Reporter and ended my adventures in Journalism.  I didn't care.  To be rejected because of liking Hunter Thompson's writing is a badge of honor for me, and I've missed his wild, unpredictable forays since his death in 2005.

Hunter is best remembered today as the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but if you want a collection of his work that stands on its own, read The Great Shark Hunt. It includes excerpts from some of HST's longer works (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, The Hell's Angels, etc.) and reprints of some of his incredible essays. Each piece shows Thompson's patented Gonzo journalism (where the author gets involved with the story and reports on the story, his involvement and the crazy things that happen) and his view of the world: a combination of moral outrage, amazement, eloquence,sardonic humor and integrity made each essay a treasure.

It seems strange to associate the word integrity with Hunter S. Thompson, considering his well-earned reputation for chaos, but Thompson always wrote about life exactly as he saw it, from seeking and revealing the worst of humanity in "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" and "Strange Rumblings in Azatlan" to a hilarious account of following Jimmy Carter and his Secret Service agents through a Law Day function in Athens, Georgia.  The title essay captures the paranoia, fear, hilarity and exhaustion of drug-addled writer trying to cover a fishing tournament. and the genuinely mournful "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat." recounts the chaotic life and strange disappearance of his friend, Oscar Acosta.  Hunter never shies away from his friend's faults because Hunter made it a policy never to shy away from anything when he wrote. He went for the extremes, grabbed for high, bright edges of reality in every experience and ignored all the margins. It was his way of articulating the truth, as he saw it. No word was off-limits, no person beyond reproach, if that was part of the story. Consequently, his writing offended almost all of the right people; the rest were offended by his existence.

If the world holds less potential since Thompson's passing, it is only because his writing enriched it so much during his life. The Great Shark Hunt is a mother-lode of words from one of the most outraged and original voices of the last century.  That Air Force editor can choke on his uniform creases. You enjoy the book.

A whole new way of seeing: My Name is Asher Lev

Picking up a new book is like setting off on an unknown road: you never know where it will take you.  In the late 1970's, I was reading every non-fiction book I could find about Judaism.  The religion fascinated me, a lot of my college friends were Jewish and I was deciding if I should convert.  Of course, I would not leave the delights of fiction, no matter what faith I followed, so I added several novels by Jewish authors thinking this would add dimension to my non-fiction studies.  One novel proved I have literary ADD; after I read My Name is Asher Lev, I put books on Judaism aside and became obsessed with art.

Even now I envy the reader who has not yet picked up Asher Lev because they haven't heard his mesmerizing voice spilling through that opening sentence:

My name is Asher Lev, the Asher Lev, about whom you have read in newspapers and magazines, about whom you talk so much at your dinner affairs and cocktail parties, the notorious and legendary Lev of the Brooklyn Crucifixion.

That beginning  has all of the power and immediacy of the opening paragraphs in  All the Kings Men or Rebecca.   You hear the man's insistent voice pouring out what will be a long confession of confusion, frustration, realization and art.  Because Asher is, first and foremost, an artist.

What follows is a Catch-22 of duty, responsibility and need.   First, Asher is a member of a Hasidic Jewish community, that branch of Orthodox Judaism where the men keep the locks of hair in front of their ears very long and wear very conservative, dark clothing.  These are very modest, pious people and because so much of art leans toward graven images, nudity and non-Jewish images , Asher's community avoids the field altogether.  This is a problem because Asher is compelled to create art.  I mean driven.  If this kid were locked in a room without any other way to make pictures, he'd open a vein and paint blood on the walls.  Asher can't deny his artistic impulses any more than he can deny his parents or the Rabbi.  Now Asher's creative drive causes great dissension and pain, first within his family and later, his community.  He knows the only way he can justify this pain is to create greater art.   Unfortunately, the greater the art is, the greater the pain.    Out of this conflict comes a great story.

This book has so many revolutionary ideas.  In one paragraph a fellow artist comments, "In all the history of art, there are only two ways of painting the world.  One is the way of Greece and Africa that sees the world as a geometric design.  The other is the way of Persia and India and China, which sees the world as a flower."   Do me a favor will you?  Next time you look at a painting, really look at it and you'll see the speaker is right.   The brush strokes and design will remind you either of geometrical shapes or flowers.

Ideas like that can blow the mind of a young reader, even one whose art appreciation began and ended with the board game, Masterpiece.  I ate up this book, picking up information about Hopper's sunlight and Picasso's Guernica instead of Hebraic culture and beliefs and started looking at the world in terms of line, light, color and tension.  When I told a Jewish friend I had fallen in love with My Name is Asher Lev, she cleared her throat and said that probably wasn't the ideal novel to study for Judaism.  I didn't have the heart to tell her my focus had shifted from Kabbalah to Kandinsky.

I still go back to Asher Lev every few years and I read the sequel but nothing beats that first breathless realization of getting lost in a compelling story.  Nevertheless, I owe Asher Lev and his author (Chaim Potok) a debt of thanks.  Other books gave me new ideas to believe; Asher Lev taught me to see.

Inferno and I finally admit I like some SF/Fantasy

Science Fiction and Fantasy  weren't respected literary genres when I was little.  That's hard to believe in the age of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games but the fiction welcomed on the best-seller lists and the book award nominations tended to fall in the "could-be-true-but-isn't" category.  These were heavy tomes with heavy ideas by heavy hitters in the writing game: Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Bill Styron.  (In those days, it was good to be a Southern Writer).  Liking SF and Fantasy were almost considered the hallmark of an immature intellect.  By the mid 1970's the stigma was starting to lift but it was still heavy enough to obscure a brilliant novel.  If you are looking for an intelligent, fascinating, often humorous trip through hell, I suggest you find a copy of Inferno by Niven and Pournelle.

Inferno is dedicated to Dante Alighieri and is an homage to the first part of his Divine Comedy but the authors updated the structure.  Instead of Dante himself, the hero of Inferno is Alan Carpentier, a minor SF writer who managed to fall from an eight story window while showing off at a Science Fiction convention.  He returns to consciousness trapped in a bottle, lying beyond the Vestibule of Hell.  Once he screams out the only open-sesame that will work in this paradigm (Why does it take so long for some characters to say, "Help me, God!"?   Don't they notice that's the only way some movie characters survive?) he meets a guide named Benny who says the only way out is to walk down through the center of Hell.   Carpentier has to go to the bottom to get to the top.

Carpentier and his guide traverse the levels of Underworld laid out by Dante.  However, there are some modern updates to exact punishments on contemporary professions. (When Minos, Judge of the Underworld gets an argument from Carpentier's guide, he replies, "Lawyers.  I have problems with lawyers.  There are so many places appropriate to the breed.")  For example, Real estate developers and tree huggers wage never-ending war against each other and the punishment for advertising men is so bad, the cast of Mad Men will start wearing sackcloth and ashes to avoid being mistaken for their characters in the next life.   (Trust me, you don't want to know!)

In each case, the condemned face a punishment that is appropriate to their actions but ludicrously out of proportion.  My favorite is Himuralibima, the first bureaucrat (a candidate for suffering, surely!)  who will be allowed to retire once he submits the proper application forms in his accustomed format, cuneiform.   That means he's writing out his application on mud tablets which dry out in Perdition's heat long before he can finish them.   Some four thousand years after his death, he's carved out a bay-sized (as in San Francisco Bay) amount of mud from one side of the Wall of Dis and his discarded, baked-too-soon efforts have become a ford over another river but his application's not done yet. Another soul, who bought irreplaceable books but refused to spend the necessary bucks to take care of his library, is caught in the DMZ between the Hoarders and Wasters as they roll Cadillac-sized diamonds at each other in another eternal battle for moral superiority.

Without letting go of the humor, Inferno asks the reasonable question, "What is the purpose of Hell?"  Because the suffering is eternal, the punishment of the condemned always ends up being far worse than the crimes they committed to enter this place.  The authors, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, get the credit for coming up with a reasonable answer.   But I'm not going to tell you what it is.  Read the book and find out for yourself.  It's the only way someone should  voluntarily go to hell.

The Mystery that Breaks all the Rules: The Daughter of Time

My mom could not be predicted.  When I was in my early 20's, she called up long distance (an expensive activity) and ordered me to read a certain book.  Now.  She heard about it from Gladys who got the recommendation from Jill and now that Mom had read it, I had to.  This made no sense.  Mom knew one or two women named Jill but neither of them usually recommended books and there was no Gladys I could think of. Mom explained to me she had received a letter from one of her favorite writers, Gladys Taber, where Ms. Taber had verified her friend, Jill, revered a book called The Daughter of Time.  Based on that letter, mom borrowed the novel from the library and read it.   Now, she ordered me to do the same.

This story might have ended there because I had developed the habit of ignoring Mom by then but my roommate, Stephanie was working at the college library so I asked her to pick up a copy of the book while she was on shift.  When Stephanie got back that night, the book was in her hand.   She looked up at me and said, "I'm on page 47.  You can have it when I'm finished."

Jill, Gladys, my mom and Stephanie were all right.  The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey is a wonderful book, partly because it's a story that breaks all the rules.  It's a detective story without any of the usual detective methods.  And as for the mystery, well it is one and it isn't.  It's hard to explain.

The detective is Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard and the poor man is caught in hospital.   (This is England, so there's no "the" in front of hospital).   He's stuck in a bed with a broken bone and is slowly going nuts because there's nothing new to think about.  He knows how many cracks there are in his ceiling, he knows how his nurses will react to everything he says and worse yet, he knows the plots of all the unread books on his table because their authors aren't coming up with new ideas.   I love this observation on pop literature so much, I'm going to have to quote it:

"Did no one, any more, no one in all this wide world, change their record now and then?
Was everyone nowadays thrilled to a formula? Authors today wrote so much
to a pattern that their public expected it. The public talked about 'a
new Silas Weekley' or 'a new Lavinia Fitch' exactly as they talked about
'a new brick' or 'a new hairbrush'. They never said 'a new book by'
whoever it might be. Their interest was not in the book but in its
newness. They knew quite well what the book would be like."

If you are like me and tend to follow certain authors, you'll agree there's truth in that statement, but that's all the more reason to try The Daughter of Time.  There's really no other book like it.  Instead of going after a recent murderer, Inspector Grant studies the last years of the Plantagenet reign and the War of the Roses by looking at Richard III.  Thanks to Thomas More's history of Richard and the Shakespearean play based on the history, King Richard's reputation is only slightly nicer than Hitler's or Stalin's.    The mystery is not when Richard murdered his nephews but if he is guilty at all.  And while this novel doesn't cover every point in the debate, it certainly brings up evidence to suggest a miscarriage of justice has been ongoing for more than 500 years.

For a small novel that came out sixty odd years ago, it has caused some big ripples.  There are societies in England and America about Richard inspired in part by this book and other writers such as Sharon Kay Penman and Elizabeth George have expanded on the ideas in Ms. Tey's novel in building their own works.  These societies were instrumental in locating the late king's body last year and they've been part of the force ensuring his remains are now treated with respect.  (Treatment his body didn't get after the Battle of Bosworth)

The book has some humorous bits in it and the characters are wonderful but its longevity is based on an important point.  If history is written by the winners, as Churchill said, how often can we believe history's assessment of a fallen leader?   Can an opponent ruin a lifetime of work and fair dealing with propaganda?  Perhaps but Ms. Tey thought otherwise, given the title.  You see, truth is The Daughter of Time.

All My Patients are Under the Bed & After All They're Only Cats

I love some books for their wonderful writing.  I love some books for their wonderful characters.  I even love a few for their couldn't-guess-that plots.   But All My Patients are Under the Bed and After All They're Only Cats keep their place on my bookshelf because of their subject.  They're about the pets we make part of their lives.  In this case they're both about cats.

Dr. Louis Camuti was a veterinarian that practiced in New York during the 20th century and  specialized in treating cats.   This is unexpected because a) he wasn't really a "cat person. having no cats of his own and b) he was allergic to felines. Consequently, he really had under no illusions about the species.   He saw they could be good companions and he liked their assertive personalities but he knew they could be sneaky, naughty creatures as well.  So All My Patients are Under the Bed is a collection of professional anecdotes Dr. Camuti collected during his years of practice.  Some are well worth remembering.

There were the times when he treated the cats in Tallulah Bankhead's house (to make him completely unique, Dr. Camuti made housecalls!) and learned that however badly the actress treated herself and other human beings, she was a very kind person to cats.  Camuti had to pick his way around fallen guests who didn't survive the previous night's party and various bric-a-brac to find his client and the owner but the cat was well attended to.   And if the cat needed an injection, Camuti used the contents of the liquor cabinet as handy andiseptic!

He tells of other celebrity (and non-celebrity) related cats always emphasizing how a fair number of the cat injuries result from pairing the cat's nature with a lifetime of indoor living with humans.   My favorite is when he's summoned by an owner, convinced the cat has a prolapsed colon (a nasty condition where the inside body part gets pushed to the outside).  Camuti examines the animal and learns the extending piece is a curtain tie-back the poor animal managed to consume.  Camuti stands the cat on the grand piano, firmly grasps the exposed part of the tie-back and swats the animal so it jumps off the piano.  The cat went flying, the tie-back came out and the maid (who thought this was some barberic type of surgery) fainted.  Someday that scene needs to go into a motion picture.

If Louis Camuti was a non-cat person who treated people, then the late Patricia Moyes wrote from the perspective of someone who became a cat person.  She was a mystery writer, married to a non-cat person when he begrudgingly agreed they might manage to share their home with one kitten provided the cat kept away from him.  Of course the Siamese kitten they interviewed chose her husband (Jim) to be her person and Moyes pointed out one of the cat-truths I've watched ever since: cats automatically gravitate toward the one person who doesn't fawn over them.   Stick a cat in a room full of people and the feline will ignore every crooning voice to jump into the lap of the sole cat hater.  The Siamese, Belinda, did it in the book, my Kansas cats did this when my late grandfather came to visit and when I was going through my anti-cat phase, Charlie-Belle did this to me.  Cats like a challenge; it's part of their nature.

Another part of their nature, Patricia Moyes pointed out was their abhorrence of printed material.  If anyone lives with cats and books, you can bear me out on this.   Put the book down and the cat will ignore you.   Pick the book up and the cat has to get between you and the pages, laying on the open book if possible.  Cats are all members of the anti-book league and it only gets worse when you are trying to write.  Belinda developed the Papoose Effect, which involved jumping onto her writer's back, digging her front claws into the human's shoulders and dangling suspended like so much  dead weight down' the human's.  Instinctively, Ms. Moyes would fling her own arms under the cat's hind quarters to ease the weight digging into her body. The cat now had her pinned.  The writer's hands were off the typewriter and kitty curled up against the small  her back, purring with joy.  It's a wonder Ms. Moyes managed to write at all after that.

But, write she did for another twenty years as have others who live with felines have done.  The writer is a self-centered sort of person (has to be, really) and a cat can be an ideal companion, independent, a bit aloof and unimpressed with their human's accomplishments.  To the cat, best-seller status, and literary admiration mean nothing.  Win the Caldecott award one morning, the Pulitzer that afternoon and scoop the Nobel prize that night but the feline won't be impressed.  The cat still demands to be scratched, petted and fed a tasty dinner because in the end, it's not about the human, it's all about the cat.  And that is as it should be.

The after effects of In Cold Blood

Fifty-five years ago this week, a Kansas farmer, his wife and two youngest children were murdered by a pair of ex-convicts.  The cons didn't get away with much (other than the lives of their victims) and they didn't get away for long because they were under arrest within six weeks, under sentence of within six months and under the ground within six years, executed for the crimes they'd committed.   In today's 24/7 news cycle, that story would have been buried as quickly as the principals.  Instead, a fairly large group of people continue to mark this sad anniversary because Truman Capote wrote a book about the crime that set a new style and standard for writers and readers.  You could say the book, In Cold Blood, was a literary event in the '60's that stayed popular for a number of years.  For the generation who lived or grew up in Kansas in the aftermath of that book, the repercussions continued much longer

My family moved first to Kansas and then to Garden City (the county seat where the defendants were tried) shortly after Hollywood released a film adaptation of Mr. Capote's book.  Because of the popularity of the book and film, In Cold Blood rested on the shelves of many Kansas homes and many of the kids I knew had either read it or pretended they had.  Of course my friends weren't interested in the strong narrative or character development: it was a sensational story set a well-known area and they were looking for gore.  To our parents, these were characters at all but a retelling of one of their worst memories.  What we  allgot was a great book about a terrible crime.  The actions of the murderers terrified a small group of Kansans but  I suspect Mr. Capote's storytelling skills fed the nightmares of many more people lucky enough not to have first hand knowledge of the crime.

For years I stayed in a quandry over this book because I wanted to read Capote's masterpiece but the subject scared me to pieces.  The victims were very real to me: the farmer had been a deacon at our Garden City church and my dad drove over roads near the victims' house on his way to work.  The material was all too near, I suppose and I never managed to finish the book until decades after I'd left the Kansas plains.  I finally picked it up in 2005, shortly after my father died.

In retrospect, I can see how those events were tied together.  As a kid, the thing that scared me the most was losing my family (later I feared I'd never get away from them) and the book was about how a family all lost each other one terrible night.  Even as I grew, a seed of little-kid fear remained until the event I dreaded actually happened and one of my parents died.  As much as Dad's passing hurt, the years of dread I endured fearing his death were far more frightening than the actual event.   When I realized that, I picked up the book and found much in the work that is good.

Everyone talks about the crime, and it is the central event of the story, but In Cold Blood does a good job of capturing the type of mid-westerners I grew up around.  They're capable folks with enough sense of self to avoid any semblance of bragging.  They believe in hard work more than brilliance and most of their humor is dry.  (some of the counties were too back then).  With a seasoning of detail and dialogue, Mr.Capote brings the residents of Garden City and Holcomb to vivid life and he doesn't condescend to them.  These are not quaint or rural types.  They are caring kids and tough adults who have to face the unthinkable and then get past it.

Capote's story is also well-paced, with the just enough foreshadowing to keep up the tension. It isn't easy keeping tension in a story with a known outcome but Mr. Capote does this by giving the reader side glimpses of graphic details while holding the central account, the confessions, until the climax of the book. He even managed to put a little hope into the ending.

In Cold Blood may not be my favorite book but it is one I respect and one I've gone back to since 2005.  The murders and the book cast a long shadow on many lives but I believe we're moving into the light.

Je Reviens or a lifelong obsession with Rebecca

I remember the summer I met her.  I was in junior high, to old for kid's books and too young (and snobbish) for the historical romances my mother favored.  When I whined that I wanted something new to read, Mom looked at me thoughtfully and handed me a library book with a drawing of the English countryside on the cover. "Try this" she said."It's surprising."  I glanced at the title, turned to the first paragraph and was hooked with the first line,"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."   Some forty years later and I'm still hooked, returning as often as possible to the house in Cornwall called Manderly.  You see, I'm obsessed with Rebecca.

For Rebecca is a novel about obsession.  The book began while the author, Daphne du Maurier, was living Egypt with her husband, Lt. Col. Tommy Browning and it grew out of two secret obsessions of her own: her intense homesickness for England and a packet of letters she found.  The letters were from an unstable, beautiful woman Tommy had been engaged to for a short time, long before he met Daphne.  Daphne and Tommy had not been married all that long when she found the letters and although the former fiance couldn't threaten their relationship (she was already dead) Daphne felt haunted by the specter of her husband's earlier love affair. These feelings are at the heart of Rebecca.

The shyest, most awkward girl in the world becomes the second wife of Maxim de Winter, Englishman and owner of the country estate, Manderly.   Becoming lady of the manor would be difficult enough for this child under any conditions; it becomes almost impossible after she learns how Max's gorgeous first wife, Rebecca, accomplished the job beautifully.   The second wife imagines everyone is comparing her to the first wife and found wanting.  This is certainly true with Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, Rebecca's former nanny and one of the scariest women in English Literature.  Seriously, Maleficent, Medea and Lady Macbeth combined couldn't best Mrs. Danvers in a stare-down contest.  She is one sinister, terrifying lady and she haunts Manderly the way Rebecca DeWinter is supposed to.  By the way, Je Reviens is the name of Rebecca's boat.  It means I return and believe me, in some ways, she does.

But the first wife isn't the only character with obsessions and I'm not going to spill any more of the story in case there is someone left on the planet who doesn't know the plot backwards and forwards.   Ms. Du Maurier makes it clear such fixations never bring a positive result but the book is not about moralizing; it's about about mood, atmosphere and tension, three things her writing captures so well that reading Rebecca  is like diving below the surface of a pool.  While you are in the book, the world above seems far away and unreal.  Everything below is quiet and enveloping but at Manderly, everything is also under stress..

For those who love Rebecca, I did find something fascinating in my latest copy of the book.  While drafting her famous novel, Daphne du Maurier came up with a  Rebecca epilogue she eventually cut up and use parts of in the intro.   It gives a few details missed getting into the finished book (did you know Maxim was originally going to be named Henry?) and there's a little dose of that mood that made the novel famous and it suggests that the now resort, Manderly, like Stephen King's Overlook Hotel retains impressions of its previous inhabitants.

"If you are stouthearted and not overburdened with imagination you can walk anywhere in Manderly with impunity, but if London life has put a strain upon your nerves there are one or two places I should avoid.  The deep woods, for instance, after dark, and the little woodman's cottage.  Here, there may linger a certain atmosphere of stress.  That corner in the drive too, where the stomp of a tree encroaches upon the gravel, it is not a spot in which to pause...."

I don't know about you but I always feel overburdend with imagination when I read Rebecca.  I can be as sensible and wholesome as fresh milk most of the time but not when I'm reading Rebecca.  Then I believe in ghosts.

A place to call home: Howards End

Early on in "Educating Rita" the heroine characterizes Howards End as "one crap book."   When I heard that line, I mentally crossed Howards End off my books-to-read list.    Rita is a funny and engaging character so if she said the book was crap, then crap it must be.  Ten years later, I saw the Merchant-Ivory film and realized I might have been hasty.  More than twenty years have lapsed since then and I am still rereading Howards End, both on paper and as an e-book.  It's a best friend of a book and I can't believe I nearly missed it.

Howards End is about many things but mainly its about the connections we have, the connections we make and how they affect our lives.  To begin with, two English sisters named Helen and Margaret Schlegel bump into an English family named Wilcox when they're all on holiday in Germany.   If these two upper-middle class families had stayed in England, they probably would have stayed strangers since, beyond nationality, they haven't much in common.  The Schlegels live in London and spend their time supporting progressive causes and the arts, (In American terms they would probably be called liberal elites) because they inherited most of their income.   The Wilcoxes live in the country, are very conservative and are still building their wealth from their own business ventures.  But meet they do and conflicts begin to spark.  Then Helen Wilcox accidentally walks off with the umbrella of a poor clerk named Mr. Bast and he follows her home to get it back.   The third element falls into place and all of their lives will change.

There are other connections in the book (such as Mrs. Wilcox's emotional bond to her home, the house named Howards End) but when people talk about this novel, they mean something else when they use the  phrase "Only Connect".   It's Margaret Schlegel's plea for everyone to recognize we are all human with good and bad traits. That's hard to do when we classify people by their backgrounds, their income or their political beliefs.  I'd like to quote the book here:

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. 

 

Seen from Margaret's point of view, it seems to me we tend to live fragmented lives.  The lawyers tend to hang out with lawyers, teachers with teachers, etc., and while that's reasonable (they have a lot in common) it can also be isolating.  Taken past a certain point and we can forget the "other fellow" has a reasonable point.  Take it even further and groups of people are designated "less than human" and genocide begins.

  But Howards End is not a sermon or a philosophical discussion, it a story with wonderful characters.  There is gentle humor here (every family has their own version of sweet but clueless Aunt Juley or a bossy Mr. Wilcox) and love for the English countryside because the author, E. M Forster loved the Hertfordshire country he lived in as a child.  I understand the fictional house, Howards End, is based on private home named Rooks Nest House.  What lucky people live there now!

  For Howards End is about a home, not just another house.  A home that protects and nurtures those that live in its walls and seems almost to take a hand in determining who will own and care for it.  It's a home that transcends time touching ancient history in the ancient wych-elm beside the house and accommodating the future with the newer improvements.  In other words, it's a home for everyone.  Where everyone can connect.

The best and worst of times: Larry McMurtry's Texasville

Larry McMurtry became famous writing sad stories about Texas.  His early stories were sad because they focused on ways of life that were dying or on lonely, anxious adolescents who were continually told "This is the best time of your life" by the adults in their world. The adolescents continued on, lonely and anxious, afraid the adults were telling the truth.  You wouldn't have blamed any of them for blowing town or blowing their brains out at the end of The Last Picture Show. In the the sequel, Texasville, you want them to stay there forever.


Because Texasville is funny, one of the funniest novels I've ever read, and it shouldn't be.  If you are familiar with the original set of characters, Duane Moore stayed in Thalia, got rich as an oil-man during the gas embargo days of the '70s but is about to go bust in the 80's.   He's millions of dollars in debt, his kids are out of control, (the first born son sells drugs and seduces married women; the nineteen year old daughter is on her third divorce and the twins are pure hell), his house is too big for comfort, his marriage is on shaky ground and he doesn't really like his girlfriend.  Granted, Duane's troubles are nothing compared to bank president Lester Marlow (also broke and facing jail time) and most of his friends are in the same boat but all in all, Duane is stressed out. He's still happier than when he was young.  Most of the characters are.

First off, a strange mix of pragmatic lunacy and optimism seems to emanate from many of the characters.  These folks have hung on through through dry wells, mean weather, sudden death, humiliation and scandal; now, they have no reason to think they can't survive this oil glut, as well.  One oilman believes bombing OPEC will fix the falling oil prices until he learns OPEC has no fixed location.  Another convinces half the county that the convenience store's owner has been kidnapped by Libyans when the owner missed part of his work shift .  Of course the idea is ludicrous (why would Libyans be interested in Sonny Crawford, the only non-oil man in town?) but the point is every character is looking for a solution, however mad the suggestion is.  The attitude has changed from "Why Me?" to "How can I Fix This?"

McMurty matches hyperbolic North Texas speech with this hard-headed perspective to comic effect.  When Karla says to an inebriated intruder, "Put the gun down, Billie Anne.  Little Barbette might have a trauma for life if you shot someone here by the hot tub." it's not because she fears an incipient murder. Instead, the drunken, gun-toting girl is just one more element in Karla's evening with her family, one more conversation she must negotiate before they can go out and order a steak. 

Unfounded optimism, comic timing and small town absurdities combine for a finale too strange to be predicted or described but I will say I have never read this part of the book silently.  I try, but once I pass a certain point, I start to snort or snicker.  Then giggles leak from me, like air from a tire, and finally I have to put down the book and laugh.  Texasville makes me laugh out loud every time. 

That's not bad for a book about people who should be feeling depressed.  Try Texasville if you want to smile.  Just don't expect you can read it quietly.

At the Other End of the Timeline: Tensy Farlow & the Home for Mislaid Children

I like literary archetypes.   To me, they're the puzzle pieces a person can assemble to understand the canon of Western Literature.   Anti-heroes, tricksters, mentors and shadows are all wonderful but my favorite is the orphan-hero.   His search is for home, his judgments are his own and like all archetypes he/she morphs to reflect the values of whatever era he's created in.**  If yesterday's Oliver Twist lives at one end of the Hero/Orphan timeline, then Tensy Farlow in Tensy Farlow & the Home for Mislaid Children resides at the other.

As I said yesterday, Oliver is a sweet kid and everyone's victim.  Graceful and sympathetic beyond his circumstances, his victory is in surviving long enough to be rescued by kind adults.   Well, that's fair, given Victorian Times.  Unprotected kids were nature's victims and the best any of them could hope for is a reasonable adoption.   But that's not very heroic.

Orphan heroes in today's take charge of their own fates and everyone else's.   They're brave, caring individuals who stand up to tyrants, tall and small, and they often rescue the adults.  I realized this a few years ago when I was working on a long research paper tracing the evolution of Orphan/Heroes.   I noticed these orphans advanced from being victims to adventurers, then promising proto-citizens to redeemers and  usually the male characters advance a bit in front of the girls.   As I got to the end of my search, I found lots of orphan boy heroes rescuing the world with bravery, super powers, and what-not, but I couldn't find any recent corresponding girls.  There were supporting girl characters but not a center heroine that fit the bill.  Then I found Tensy Farlow, a heroine for the contemporary fantasy age.

When Albie Gribble finds the abandoned Tensy in a pile of laundry, all he sees is an abandoned  baby girl.  He doesn't know Tensy is being looked for, which is all to the good.  You see, each  human in Tensy's world has a guardian angel to keep as much evil at bay as possible..  Unfortunately, some angels do their job better than others.  Some angels are forgetful or forgotten and some angels become demons, opening the world for wickedness.   And, although Tensy Farlow can see guardian angels, no spirit looks after her.  Tensy has no angel at all.


Tensy Farlow & the Home for Mislaid Children is a children's novel in the same literary vein as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Graveyard Book.   In other words, the setting is a bit gothic, most of the characters have odd English-sounding names (like Howard Humberstone and Matron Pluckrose) and very improbable things happen.  Like many fantasy books, it has the eternal struggle between good and evil but the the hope of redemption is not a ring-bearing hobbit or a wand-waving wizard.  Instead, the fate of the universe comes to rest on the bony shoulders of a  orphan girl with flyaway red. curly hair, especially good eyesight and a mind of her own.  Trust me, she's somebody special.


For anyone who thought Children's fantasy stopped with J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket or Neil Gaiman, take a look at this book from Australia.   It's worth the look.  You could end up believing in angels.



** If I tend to use male pronouns in talking about universal types, that's how I was taught during a less-enlightened century.  I hope I make it clear that as far as archetypes go, I believe neither gender has a monopoly, nor should they.  Fiction, in my opinion, should be the last place to accept limitations.

The Villans of Oliver Twist

Full disclosure:  I love the novel Oliver Twist but I can't say I love the title character.  He cries far to easily for my taste and he's altogether too sweet for words.   Dickens wanted to show Oliver's basic gentle nature couldn't be corrupted by the environment he lived in but basically his protagonist is a Casper Milquetoast.  When people are kind to him, he laps it up and soaks them with tears of joy.   When they are unkind, he leaves and cries on himself.  A very soggy kid, needing someone to rescue and rehydrate him.  Occasionally, Oliver will stand up to a bully but on someone else's behalf, like his dead mother. In this book it's a lot easier to like the bad guys.

They have all the best lines in this book.  No one has ever developed supporting characters as thoroughly and lovingly as Charles Dickens and the villains in Oliver Twist are either strong and bad (like scary Bill Sikes) or weak and bad.  You know who the fun ones are, right?

Of course there's Fagin.  A fence and corrupter of children, Fagin sees himself as the ultimate pragmatist.  People do have a habit of buying things that burglars are likely to steal but that's not Fagin's fault.   All he does is take the stolen goods off the burglars' hands and send them back into the economy to be purchased again.   And he doesn't put the stray children into London's streets, does he?  Of course not.  Fagin will tell you, he's providing a service getting those children shelter (in abandoned, unsafe buildings) and teaching them trades.   All right, he trains them to become petty criminals, but Fagin didn't criminalize their behavior.  That was the work of Parliament.   That's our Fagin, the man with a reason for everything.

 Then there is the wonderful Beadle Bumble (you can tell what a bumbling, bumptious oaf he's going to be with that name) who takes careful inventory of Mrs. Corney's possessions before he proposes marriage to her.   He's so pompous and mean to everyone else, you can't help but cheer when the coy Mrs. Corney becomes his tyrant after marriage.  English majors, feminists and law students all cheer when, apprised that the law assumes a man is in charge of his wife's behavior, Bumble responds, " If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

The weakest of the bad boys is Noah Claypole, a sniveler if  there ever was one.  He'll bully half-starved orphans because he's better fed and knows the names of his parents (That's all the genealogy Noah knows but it's enough) but turns up his nose at snatching handbags because old ladies tend to fight back.  Big, bad Noah Claypole has to take 'the kinchin lay,' when he becomes a full-time criminal.  That is he steels the errand and pocket money from children who still have their moms.   His zenith is achieved when he becomes a stool-pigeon.

One of the characters that rarely makes it into an adaptation is Charley Bates, a friend of the Artful Dodger and fellow pickpocket.  Charley stands out against the rest of the bad guys because he's cheerful.  Unlike the saturnine Dodger and Sykes, Charley  spends most of his time laughing.  He's just as much a pickpocket as the Dodger but Charley can't help seeing the funny side of life.   When he witnesses the violent side of crime, Charley rethinks his options and becomes an honest man.  


 And then there's the Artful.   Jack Dawkins, ladies and gents, immortalized forever as The Artful Dodger.   Although he's not as adorable as Jack Wild portrayed him in the 1960's musical adaptation (where huge hunks of the story were chopped off) The Dodger steals every possible scene in Oliver's life story and has to be transported to Australia to keep from absconding with the ending.  He's cunning, naughty, impudent, deceitful and a wonderful counterpoint to the perpetual victim, Oliver.  

In the end, Twist is a serious story about the effects of poverty and I am glad that the book helped some real people and that the fictional Oliver eventually obtained enough security to stop dripping tears at the drop of a hat.  He deserved a happy ending, as did the poor of Victorian England.   But if Mr. Dickens had written sequels, as so many writers do these days, I wish he had told of Jack's life in Australia.   The Dodger Down Under would have sold!

Lest we forget: Taylor Caldwell's The Balance Wheel

Veteran's Day is coming up and I can't help thinking about a poem called "Ode of Remembrance" by Laurence Binyon.   It reads (in part)

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Those verses and this holiday were to memorialize the veterans of the first World War, the war that was supposed to end all the others.  Well, we know what happened after that.  Despite the enormous cost, wars continued to flourish, large and small, and although no one publicly prefers sending soldiers into battle, the soldiers keep being sent.  Taylor Caldwell explores the reasons and pressures that lead in to war in her book, The Balance Wheel.   It's an old-fashioned novel in many ways but some of its themes are contemporary.

As the balance wheel among four adult brothers, Charles Wittmann is a very busy man.  Most of his time and energy are consumed either managing the tool factory his father created or his siblings, the materialistic Joe, Wilhelm, the aesthete and Fred, a rabble-rousing, proto-Marxist.   What extra time Charles has is devoted to his teen-aged son, Jimmy. When a government representative visits and talks of imminent global conflict, Charles has to broaden his concerns  to protect his family, his business and his town.  

After that, Charles Wittmann caries the burden of Cassandra, able to see his country's future but unable to change it.  The reader watches the approach of war through his eyes, knowing his efforts for peace will be swept aside in the end as his family gets swept into history

The novel suggests that families and communities are microcosms of the nations they occupy and that war occurs when intelligent, well-meaning governments and leaders don't actively work (like Charles) to keep peace or resist evil.  That may or may not be true.  What cannot be disputed is that when governments fail in these tasks, it is the citizens who pay.   Treaties can be negotiated or border-lines redrawn, but no agreement can revive sacrificed soldiers.  No general can bring back the dead.

The only ways to honor their sacrifice are to remember the dead and work to keep others from joining their ranks.   (Or, to quote Mother Jones, "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.")   The Balance Wheel tries to do both.   It's not a soldier's novel like A Farewell to Arms  or All Quiet on the Western Front although the soldiers are in it.  It's about how everyone loses in wars. It's one way to remember the Armistice.

Growing up with a Gem: The Domestic Novels of Shirley Jackson

Readers love a seldom-read story or an under-praised author.  To appreciate a less-known work or author is the a mark of a book connoisseur and readers delight in being seen as connoisseurs.    Without knowing it, my sister and I trained to be gourmet readers when we grew reading  the work of an under-appreciated writer.  You may  or may not have heard of Shirley Jackson but do you know about  her books Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons?

When Ms. Jackson's work is recalled (which isn't often enough) she is remembered for disturbing tales such as The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived at the Castle and the short story, "The Lottery".   These are artful, unsettling, well-constructed narratives that leave the reader with the impression they would not want to meet Ms. Jackson in a dark alley.  The titles Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons may sound like more "tales of terror" but these are something different.  These stories would be called domestic humor.

Now domestic humor has never enjoyed a great reputation.  The same critics that sneered over the pulp paper tales of crime and science fiction in the 1940's ignored the later stories about raising kids in the suburbs, largely because of it's female target audience.. And though the detectives and space explorers have finally achieved a certain level of respect from the cognoscenti, domestic humor is still literature's the unwelcome step-child.  So, like Rodney Dangerfield, this work "gets no respect." But the snob who derides these books because of their catagory is a fool.

Yes, these are family stories, but they are told without sentiment or saccharine.  If anything, Ms. Jackson's humor is tart, like a dry summer wine. The children are depicted as fully developed characters with individual voices and opinions.  Also, there's a faint air of disturbance in these tales.  Blankets disappear at will, imaginary playmates send very real presents and a toddler changes names without notice (I sympathize with the child, now a man, who was Barry, B, Mr. B., Mr. Beekman and finally, Beekman to his family and all the world all before he entered first grade.)  There's an air of logical lunacy in these stories that is familiar to anyone with children, bureaucracies  or a sense of the absurd.  And the prose is as clean as a whistle.

Like I said, my sister and I were raised on these stories.  At first, our Mom read them aloud, then we read them to ourselves at lunch or to each other for pleasure.  When I left for college, I tried to pack Mom's collection of Shirley Jackson.  My sis tried the same thing years later but each time Mom stole them back out of our luggage.  That says something, considering Mom would lend us shoes, hose or money.  Her Shirley Jackson's books were off limits. We had to find our own copies.  We did.  I hope, so will you.