How to Sum up the Year: Just an Ordinary Day

I've thought a lot about this entry because it falls on a calendar date of some significance.  Of course, calendar holidays aren't usually the ones that make big dents in our memories (unless we're talking about bicycle gifts for holidays or a wedding celebrated on Valentines).   The days you hold on to, good and bad, aren't marked on someone else's calendar.  And of all of the marked days, New Year's Eve isn't anticipated by loads of people outside of the liquor business.  Still, it has significance and so does the book, Just an Ordinary Day despite it's title, because its author was no ordinary writer.

Just an Ordinary Day is a selection of stories written by Shirley Jackson.   Some of these are previously unpublished stories that seem to go back to her college years and the final one was published three years after she died.  She created a lot of material between those two events that fall into several different genres.  There are the psychologically disturbing stories that made her famous, the domestic ones that made her loved and several tales that resist categorization of any type.  As a guess, I suspect Ms. Jackson would like that.  Her stories tended to show the dichotomies of life.

For example, take the title story of the volume, "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts."  The central figure, a Mr. Johnson spends his day doing good deeds everywhere.   He smiles at people, looks after children and shares his peanuts and money.  He turns strangers into friends, helps the poor and directs the lost.  No apparent reason, no motivation.  He's just a very kind, generous man.  At the end of the day he sees his wife, a smiling comfortable woman who reports on her day.  She accused an innocent person of shoplifting, sent three dogs to the pound and probably got a bus driver fired.  Is Mr. Johnson angry at his wife's behavior?  Here's what follows:

"Fine said Mr. Johnson. "But you do look tired.  Want to change tomorrow?"

"I would like to," she said.  "I could do with a change."

 In other words neither one of them is, by nature, good or bad.  Good and evil are behavior choices people make and the results of those choices make up the yin and yang of our lives.  Life isn't one thing or another, it's a bunch of things all mixed up together and so are most people.  Just like no ordinary day is really ordinary.

Think about it.  What was your yesterday like?  Was it good?  Bad?   Let's say it was an ordinary day for you.   But yesterday (odds are) someone fell in love and somebody got married.   Other people fell out of love and someone got divorced.  A baby was born that was wanted.  Another unwanted one was too and we can only hope those parents change their minds.   Someone old died.  Someone young died.   Someone took their first step.  Someone probably took their last one.  It all happened yesterday, during your ordinary day.  A day that wasn't ordinary at all.

That's a bit far afield from Shirley Jackson except her stories make a person comfortable with profound thoughts.  Those stories had the habit of standing some ordinary convention on its head so the reader could look at it in a different way.  If the reader didn't like what he or she saw,  well, maybe the convention needed rethinking or the reader could shut the book.  What he couldn't do again was accept the convention at face value.

So think about your last year with all of its calendared holidays and non-holidays with singular memories.  If you want, read some Shirley Jackson stories and remember life is varied and convention is seldom as it seems.  Share your peanuts or don't but remember if you get tired of who and what you are, you are free to change tomorrow.

A favorite son and one loud-mouthed little girl: Addie Pray

Birmingham, Alabama has a favorite son and I'll bet they've forgotten his name.  He was an editor and minister's son, a foreign correspondence that parachuted into Normandy during World War II and a novelist.   Of all things, Joe David Brown was a very good novelist who invented a great loud-mouthed little girl.  Her name was Addie Pray.

Does that child's name ring a bell?  Probably not if you're less an 45 and that is your misfortune,  Miss Addie Pray is a pragmatic girl with a will of her own.  Book critics have called her a cross between Huck Finn and Scout Finch and they're just scratching the surface.  Add that she shares the indomitable will of True Grit's Mattie Ross and the picture becomes clearer.  Of course she can steal your heart but that's to be expected.   Addie Pray is a trickster, a confidence kid and the heroine of Paper Moon.

Let me backtrack a minute.  During the Depression (before he parachuted into Normandy and won a chestful of medals) Joe David Brown was a reporter for the Birmingham News.  A police reporter, specifically.   Part of his beat took him down among those guests of the county who were awaiting arraignment or trial.   And he learned about confidence games.

A good confidence game rarely separates the victim from all of his money, just enough to keep the confidence man in business and the victim a little more watchful in the future.   Joe David Brown learned how con men audited the obituary columns and then showed up at the doors of bereaved widows, brandishing a cheap bible and a story about how the deceased had ordered it for her.  The widow is transported to hear of her late husband's thoughtfulness and insists on paying a handsome fee for it.  The con man gets away with a bulky profit.

Or the con artist could make a killing selling fictitious crops to a dealer with a handful of the dealer's tags and some "samples" he found blowing down the street.  (Anyone who has ever been in a cotton town during harvest will tell you small bolls escape from the truckloads of picked cotton and lay in the gutter looking like handfuls of dirty snow.  Clean up some of that gutter cotton up, blow off the dust and put it in a paper cone and you have yourself some decent samples.)  Joe David Brown heard all of the stories of obtaining unearned wages and he remembered them.  After winning his medals and serving as a foreign correspondence he decided to write one more book about Alabama.  The result was Addie Pray.

Addie is the daughter of Essie May Loggins, the wildest girl in Marengo County.  When Essie dies unexpectedly, Addie's informally  adopted by "Long Boy" (Moses) Pray, a friend of her mom who finally realizes how the presence of "a little daughter" can help whenever he's trying to look innocent in front of a mark or a judge.  Between "doing business" (their term from running a con game) and staying ahead of the authorities, they do pretty well traveling around Alabama  during the Depression.  You could say they kept the money in circulation.

This tale might sound a bit familiar.  Two years after Mr. Brown published Addie Pray, a film director named Peter Bogdonavitch turned it into a movie called "Paper Moon" that did a fair amount of business, enough to get Mr. Brown to republish his book with the new title.  Mr. Brown died shortly afterwards so there were no further adventures of Addie Pray. It's a shame; you knew that young lady had more tales to tell.

The book is a delight, especially if you live in Alabama.  There are enough local spots mentioned that you can map out the adventures of Addie and Long Boy without any problems.  But Addie appeals to more than local pride.  She is a scallawag, a survivor, a fan of Franklin Roosevelt and a good heart who can pick out a mark at 30 paces. She's one of a kind and I want to be just like her when I grow up.

A spell-binding voice of uncertain truth: Lillian Hellman

I'm a big believer in role models.  While we are growing up, we emulate the behavior of those we admire, hoping we'll be admirable too.  Eventually we sort our our own priorities and personalities but until then, it helps to have someone to follow.  Given all that, I probably could have picked a better person to imitate than Lillian Hellman.  For one thing, Lillian Hellman was a professional dramatist and I don't like her plays.  As dramatic vehicles they are "theatrical" pieces where characters quiver, thunder or plot but rarely come to any realizations and the plays are aging as well as my old Earth Shoes.  In other words, not.  So Lillian's plays are out.  Her integrity was attacked often and well, most notably when Mary McCarthy said, "Every word she writes is a lie—including 'and' and 'the.'"  Those who tracked down the details suggest there's some exaggeration in Miss Mary's statement but not enough to acquit Miss Lillian.  So she wasn't a good example there either. Nevertheless, I was looking for a unique voice and shimmering images of words when I found Lillian Hellman's An Unfinished Woman.  One role model, made to order.

An Unfinished Woman was popular around the time I started looking for complex characters.  Like many adolescents, I believed that  unhappiness and ambiguity suggested a more developed, subtle mind and I wanted to become a complex, challenging woman.  I found my heroine in Miss Hellman, a woman who rarely suffered fools and never took the easy way out of a difficult situation.  I overlooked the extra pain she brought to herself and her friends because of the brave way she sailed into each disaster.

If we stick to verifiable facts, it is clear that Lillian was "a difficult child who grew into a difficult woman."  Smart, insecure and argumentative, she recognized the virtues and failings of her charming, faithless father, his shy, dominated wife from Alabama and the segregated South she was raised in.  Observant and merciless, Lillian could also be a gigantic pain but there's something interesting about a person who never chooses the comfortable, easy roads in life and on that scale Lillian Hellman is interesting.  She rejected the triple play of  childhood-to-marriage-to-motherhood that most American women of her generation repeated.  She carved out a place for herself in a notoriously difficult industry.  She also found politics and unerringly sided with whoever antagonized the most people in power.  If the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee didn't trust her judgment, at least two friends did.  Both Dashiell Hammett and Dorothy Parker trusted this woman's angry judgment enough to make her their literary executor. If she made mistakes discharging those duties, (and there are those who suggest she made many) the errors were made in favor of guarding the privacy of her dead friends not enriching herself.   In those ways she could be seen as  trustworthy.

Eventually I read An Unfinished Woman as a memoir instead of a manifesto or guidebook and I've never developed Ms. Hellman's tension or work ethic.  To tell you the truth, I don't want to be that angry. I still admire her uncompromising battle with life and I appreciate her illuminating prose.  I just choose which battles I fight.  Which, come to think of it, is exactly what she did.

When a book turns your world around

I still remember the first day I saw it, upright in a metal paperback stand in my English teacher's class.  Because I recognized the author's name, it took me a week or two before I asked about the paperback; I was already a dweeb to the other students and I didn't need that image underscored by carrying around this book.  The teacher probably guessed I was interested but he played it cool saying the books in the rack were for borrowing as long as we wanted to keep them and didn't say a word about the author.  That's all it took.  One reading lead to another and another until I had to replace the disintegrating paperback.  I've read a lot of books that achieved a new point in literature but few things have amazed me as much as Woody' Guthrie's Bound for Glory.

Before I picked up this autobiography, my thoughts of Mr. Guthrie were tagged to grade-school sing-alongs of "Roll On Columbia" or "This Land is Your Land."   I appreciated the simple lyrics and catchy melodies but I really didn't know anything about the man other than he was from Oklahoma, like my dad's family.  His autobiography was a revelation.

First, there was his writing style. Woody's formal education ended before high school and although he read everything he could find, public libraries weren't as common or stocked as they are now.  You would expect his prose style would either be hideously limited or an imitation of what he read in "important" books.  It's neither.  Although Woody keeps the optimistic low-key vernacular found in his song lyrics, his sentences have an immediacy and drive that put the reader dead center in every scene. There are a lot of professional writers who can't write this well or this way.  Woody tells the story of his life as if each scene is happening in front of his eyes and that's how you see it too, partly because he doesn't pull any punches about what he sees.

The second thing is his emotional honesty.  Woody writes like his priority is to tell the truth, no matter how much it hurts.  As an adolescent, he watched his mother's mental and physical deterioration from what would later be diagnosed as Huntington's Chorea (the disease that eventually killed him.)  He describes her slide into insanity in these unforgettable lines:

'She would be alright for awhile, and treat us kids as good as any mother, and all at once it would start in something bad and awful something would start coming over her, and it would come by slow degrees. Her face would twitch and her lips would snarl and her teeth would show. Spit would run out of her mouth and she would start out in a low grumbling voice and gradually get to talking as loud as her throat could stand it; and her arms would draw up at her sides, then behind her back and swing in all kinds of curves. Her stomach would draw up into a hard ball, and she would double over Into a terrible-looking hunch and turn into another person, it looked like, standing right there before Roy and me.

I hate a hundred times more to describe my own mother in any such words as these.  You hate to read about a mother described in any such words as these.  I know. I understand you.  I hope you can understand me, for it must be broke down and said.

Woody doesn't spare words in Bound for Glory, on himself or anyone else.  This is his life, the way he saw it.  That level of integrity, despite the pain, moves me.  It makes me want to tell the truth.

When other people sing the phrase "Bound for Glory" their emphasis is on the last word, as if they're saying, "I'm going to be star."  I would say becoming a star was the last thing on  Woody Guthrie's mind.  He walked out on auditions, played for no money and always managed to irritate the right people.  Instead, Woody's emphasis was on the first word in his title not the last.  He was headed in the right direction, on his way and the journey was more important than the destination.  As long as the train was still moving, Woody Guthrie was on it and searching for a better place.  In the meantime, he left us behind, sadder for his absence but more articulate because of his words.

So Long, it's been Good to Know You

So Long, it's been Good to Know You

So Long, it's been Good to Know You

It's a long time since I've been home

And I've got to be drifting along.

The place where they take you in and the courage to endure

My mother loved historical romance novels.   These tales were the "chick-lit" of her day, usually set in an era of voluminous skirts and low, square necklines (which looked good on the cover) and centered around headstrong, resourceful heroines who caused scandals and made mistakes until circumstances or the right man came into alignment and the heroine became a part of history.  Mom's favorite writers were Norah Lofts and Anya Seton, two authors who made a point of researching the background of each book for accuracy.  I know because I read every book in her collection.  (This was before before YA books really came onto the scene and I will read the back of bug repellant bottles if nothing else is available.)   My favorite was an Anya Seton story set in 19th century Massachusetts and it's a little bit different from the rest.  It was called, The Hearth and Eagle.

The Hearth and Eagle is (in the story) a historic tavern in Marblehead and the daughter of the tavern owner isn't interested in history.  Hesper Honeywood's dad may be fascinated by genealogy and poetry but his daughter prefers ready bought goods to home-made and the company of a young fisherman to tales of her ancestors.  Most of Hester's life is spent trying to escape her family and the business/home that is her birthright; later, she uses the house and the balance of her energy  to help others find the wisdom and the courage to endure through their own setbacks and disappointments.  Hesper's great gift is realizing that while generations arrive and depart, the home that shelters them all is a constant if cared for well.  The inn, like the pre-revolutionary 17th century andirons it shelters, is the symbol of home, everlasting.

A few years before she died, my mother sent me a package of books to add to the library I was assembling.   In the package was The Hearth and the Eagle.  "I remember you always liked this one," Mom wrote on an enclosed note.  I was irritated at the time because I had definite ideas about which books should be on my shelves and I seldom agreed with Mom's literary taste.  The fact is, we often argued and there were times I would have been irritated if she'd found a cure for cancer.  But The Hearth and Eagle stayed on my shelves and on nights like this one, I re-read it.  I like to think the book is like the strong and eternal house in it's pages.   It's abiding message of courage meant something to my mother and now it comforts me.  Future generations will probably overlook it but as long as there are omnivorous readers and copy of the book exists somewhere, someone else will probably find help in this story.  The Hearth and Eagle will endure.

Sweetly at Home

I've called this column "The Books that Follow you Home" and for these first two months I've focused on the books but during "this festive season of the year" to quote my hero, Dickens, I must admit I'm thinking about the other noun in the title, Home.  Home is, of course, a big part of the culture of  Christmas but it means different things to different people.  To some, home at Christmas is a decorated house, the bigger the better, that is bursting at the seams with family, friends and presents to mark the occasion.  To others, it's a small place, where they live very quietly and alone.  Home can be an apartment, a ship, a trailer or even just a box but it's as sacred and wonderful as Windsor Castle or The Breakers because it belongs to you.  In a scary, changing world, home is the place where you can be yourself without apology and there's no reason to be  afraid because you are protected when you are between these walls.  When home is a good place the very walls seem to warm and comfort you like a comfortable sweater.  It's when architecture becomes a friend.

All of this is the background in "Dulce Domum", the Christmas chapter of The Wind in the Willows.  I should admit that this book meant a great deal to me when I was young and it was one of the first "kid books" I purchased for my library when I was old enough to start assembling one.  Of all the characters, Mole is my favorite and the story of Dulce Domum belongs to him.  It is Mole's home the animals unexpectedly approach during a hike in late December and the memory of the place disarms him.  Until that point, Mole has been away, pursuing adventures with his friends, but the sense memory of his own home pulls him during the hike, reminding him of this one spot of earth that is his, this shelter he has cared for for so long that it now seems to return his affection.  With the generous help of his best friend and some caroling field mice, Mole is able to return to his home for the night and renew his connection to the place and possessions he loves so well.  Before drifting off to sleep, he realize why this is  spot is so important. 

"He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple how narrow, even it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence."

 To any and everyone who reads these words, I hope you experience a loving and generous holiday season and that you find your way back to the anchorage in your existence.    May you always find a welcome at home.

 

The Greatest (unknown) First Line in the History of Literature

People interested in books are fascinated by first lines.  Their favorites usually include the evocative "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly"  and Orwell's line about the clocks striking 13 and of course, "Happy families are all alike."  These are great first lines.  Whether they fill less than an line ("Call me Ishmael") or take the entire paragraph,  first sentences grab the reader's attention and set the tone of the book all at once and they make the next line seem inevitable.  My favorite first line comes from a book few people know or love but for a rip-snorting, gut-grabbing sentence, it's one of the best I've ever seen.   Let me clear my throat, I'll share it with you....

"Mister Deck, are you my stinkin' Daddy?"

That, ladies and gentleman was the voice of T. R., the heroine of Larry McMurtry's novel, Some Can Whistle.  (You could tell the young lady was from Texas, right?)   This furious young voice is directed at Danny Deck, a failed novelist, and retired sitcom writer who is spending his middle years retreating from the active life that made him rich and unhappy.  Part of this retreat is fueled by overexposure to the Entertainment Industry but another part comes from Danny's sad ablity to irritate women, any woman he's known longer than a minute.  So he answers the demand with true Danny Deck caution: "I don't think I stink..."   And the game is on.

T. R.  is Tyler Rose, the enchanting, demanding, daughter Danny's ex-wife carried away at birth  and Mr. Deck's second chance at real life.  Instead of spouting monologues to his former girlfriends' answering machines and marinating by the pool in a kaftan, Danny has to run to keep up with Tyler Rose, her children, and the entourage of friends and lovers that follow her every self-confident step.  These two, who seem to have nothing in common but DNA, each need what the other can give.   While T.R. puts her father in a traveling maelstrom of crises, it is the shock he needs to begin living again.  And T.R. needs Danny's help to broaden the life that has boiled down to waitressing at a Mr. Burger, raising two children by herself and avoiding the ex-boyfriend that's threatening to kill her.

That's just part of the book, Some Can Whistle.  With the crises and the jokes come pop culture commentary and a novelist's love song to the City of Houston.  Like his creator, Danny Deck finished college at Rice University and there's something that sounds like autobiography in those sentences of devotion.  

"I had come to it at the right time, as a young man sometimes comes to his ideal city.  In Houston I began to write, formed my first young sentences.  Its energies awakened mine; the ramshackle laziness of some of its forgotten neighborhoods delighted me.  I walked happily in it for years, smelling it's lowland smells.  It was my Paris, my Rome, my Alexandria - a generous city."

Kind of makes you want to visit doesn't it?

You know, the internet has given many of us the chance to emulate Danny Deck.  With its electronic layer of detachment we can reconnect with friends while keeping them at arm's length and visit anyplace on Google Earth without knowing what it's really like to be there.  That's life once removed and while it's better than nothing, it isn't real, it isn't true, it isn't T. R.  While you can, follow the brash young tunes that Some Can Whistle and be a part of real life.  Those are memories I don't think you'll  regret.

 

Not Your Typical Christmas Play

We all know the plays I'm talking about, right?  The characters are usually family or very close friends and they enter the play facing hardship or strife.  Conflicts may be aired but the True Meaning of Christmas finally gets through and everyone remembers the Reason for the Season and makes up in time to unwrap presents.  Cue the Figgy Pudding and Curtain, we're finished. 

Well, those don't do it for me.  I watched "Father Knows Best" episodes when I was a kid and those happy families on the stage only added to my confusion and neurosis.  I'll take the dysfunctional Plantagenet family in "The Lion in Winter" for Christmas instead.  They show me I'm not  insane.

James Goldman's"The Lion in Winter" is a fictional take on the real life Plantagenet family and their problems in 1183.  The patriarch, Henry had been King of England nearly thirty years by then and time was catching up to him.  It was time to reflect on his accomplishments, (he reigns over England and controls a good bit of France) think about retirement and (to quote Lear) " shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths."   At least that's what his sons want him to do.

Henry's three living sons, Richard (yes, the Lionheart) Geoffrey and John have gathered with their parents this Christmas to hear which of them will inherit Daddy's title and real estate.  The original Heir Apparent has died and any of them could be named as next in line for the goodies. Naughty boys: they don't want to share.   Add that Philip, the King of France, is also here to force Henry to complete a long-made agreement and you can see that there's too much testosterone in the room.

Now this might make Henry prefer the company of his women-folk but not in this instance.  Henry's wife is the incredible Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of power and looks who has been Queen of England and France in her time and holder of some of that prime French Real Estate her husband has covered with troops.  Eleanor has no qualms about disinheriting two of her boys; in her mind everything, including her holdings, should go to Richard.  Her source of irritation is her wayward husband who chased every skirt in Western Europe and caught far too many of them.  The latest skirt is Alais, Philip's sister and Richard's designated bride by treaty.  With Alais goes another section of French property, the Vexin.  As Henry points out, leaving everything to Richard is a guarantee England will be at war as soon as he dies:

HENRY: Once I'm dead, who's to be king?  I could draw papers till my scribes drop or the ink runs out and once I died, unless I've left behind me three contented sons, my lands will split three ways in civil war.  You see my problem?

 The play is one giant chess game where any member of the family seeks to use the others as pawns to get their own way.  Henry is brilliant, tossing out tactic after tactic to keep everyone else off balance and make the ending come out his way but his match is Eleanor.  She's outrageous, manipulative, witty, regal and of all the characters the saddest because her central motivation is the simplest: she wants her husband's attention.  When it wanders, she acts out and by this time she's behaved so badly that Henry has to keep her in prison, except for holidays; the last time she got loose, she manipulated the boys into rebelling against him.  Still these two grand rulers have great affection for each other that shows up when they're not fighting.  They put the fun back in dysfunctional.

The play is a dream to read or to act; these are the parts thespians chew the curtains for.  (Incidentally, the play did not fare well until the 1968 film came out; since then it's been a regular draw in stock and amateur productions.)  I'll direct you to a list of quotes from the screenplay but I will say my favorite comes when Eleanor has seen all of her plans crash into ruin.  She stares at the mess life and Christmas have become and says, "Well, what family doesn't have its ups and downs?"  To someone who saw their share of Christmas dramas, that question unraveled a world of meaning.

Now my family didn't play for regal stakes and we never approached this level of anger (neither of my parents attempted a coup d'état or imprisoned the other for the effort) but it was enough for the play to show me that people who loved each other could also inflict great harm.  We didn't have to be the Cleavers and if we were a bit abnormal, so what?  Every family has its ups and downs.

To Walk Awhile in the Dark...

Years ago, when my sister and I were first getting acquainted as adults (a process quite different than growing up together) we discussed a book called Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.   Barb and I agreed it was very good but my sister added, "It doesn't compare to the author's first book, The Silver Crown."  I had missed that kid's book and couldn't imagine how anything could approach the charm of NIMH.  "Try The Silver Crown and see" Barb said.  "You'll like it, it's scary as all get out."   As usual, my sister was right.

The Silver Crown is, I suppose, a modern fairy-tale.  A young girl, Ellen Carroll, wakes on her birthday to find a crown made of dense silver material beside her bed.  She takes the crown outdoors to enjoy some solitude and returns to find her home afire and her family gone.  As the day goes on it becomes very clear that the fire was the first step in someone's campaign to capture Ellen and her crown.  Ellen has to run and stay one step ahead of her enemies in order to survive.  It isn't easy.

The thing is, while The Silver Crown has some very disturbing elements, it's told in a matter-of-fact manner that minimizes the traumatic implications.  Ellen sees someone murdered but the the incident is described impressionistically.  Someone wearing a green hood fires a gun at a man, the man's face goes red and he falls.  Ellen  realizes what's happened but because she doesn't dwell on the violent aspects, the trauma doesn't damage her (or the reader).  Far more fear is generated when Ellen sees the green hood in the glove compartment of another man who gives her lift down the highway.

That air of acceptance permeates this kid's novel and allows the reader to accept a lot of statements at face value and get on with the story.  When Ellen first puts on her silver crown, it fits her head as if it was made for her and she accepts this because Ellen is convinced that in some reality, she is a queen.  Because Ellen accepts it, eventually the reader does as well.  Ellen is a queen and this crown suits her because it is her crown.  The crown has a power of its own, like Frodo's ring, and Ellen must learn to wield it.  It helps that Ellen is one of the most self-possessed girls in juvenile literature since Sara Crewe or Alice in Wonderland.  Her character strength is the central appeal in The Silver Crown and what makes the book a good choice for childen to read.  By facing fear, Ellen shows her readers how to cope with it.

The book has been the subject of some controversy and when it was originally published in the U. S., a different, more conventional ending was added.  I prefer the British one.  It's stronger, and more believable, if a bit sadder.  I believe it pays greater respect to the reader's imagination, even if the reader is young.

After all, no matter what parents do, childhood holds no small amount of terror.   Children have no control over their lives and they face the unknown with each new experience, whether it's a whole new environment such as a new school or home or it's a new element in that environment, like a classmate or a stranger.  Books like The Silver Crown say it's all right to be scared and that some fears are not groundless; even a queen must be careful when venturing out into the wide world.  The book also says that good sense and basic confidence can help a scared child and the world holds good people as well as bad.  So, despite the disturbing elements, child readers can identify with the heroine and use her example to face more pedestrian fears.   For that reason alone, I think The Silver Crown is worthwhile reading.  Yes, I'd prefer that all children know nothing but the joy and peace of spring and the sun, but they don't.  And I believe no one can truly appreciate the sun until they've walked for a while in the dark.

Shutting Down the National Dream

I'm not an aeronautic groupie or a science nerd.  As a kid, I resented the moon-shot flights of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo for preempting my Saturday Morning Cartoons and although I appreciate their accomplishments, I still prefer reruns of Underdog.  Engineering advancements just aren't my thing.  Nevertheless, I get hot under the collar every time I re-read Greig Stewart's Shutting Down the National Dream: A. V. Roe and the Tragedy of the Avro Arrow and I'm not even Canadian.    It's a little known story that should be memorized by everyone in the fields of science, business and government and kept in a folder marked, "Don't Let this Happen to You."  The Avro Arrow is a tragedy of waste.

It's post World War II and most of Canada is getting used to the idea of the Cold War and their unenviable image as USA's dull neighbor to the north.  A few Canadians don't agree.  The most important of these is C. D. Howe, an engineer and businessman who became Canada's "Minister of Everything" during World War II.  (Look up his biography in Wikipedia, the man was amazing.)  He talked Crawford Gordon Jr. into becoming the general manager of Avro Canada, the company that was supposed to manufacture airplanes and everything else.  These two men wanted the engineering minds at Avro to design a world-class supersonic jet.  Gordon and Howe lined up the manufacturing and money necessary to make their engineers' design real.

The result was a plane for the future.   The engineers, headed up by Jim Chamberlin came up with a design even I can appreciate.   Go ahead, Google the CF-105 Arrow and look at the images, I'll wait.  See, how sleek and modern the lines of it were?   They came up with that design when the rest of the world's airplanes still looked like survivors of WWII.   That delta wing isn't just good looking, it kept the plane stable during incredibly high speeds and provided the space needed for the fuel tanks.  The inside of the plane matched the outside, with state-of the art instruments and controls and the test results suggested Canada might have created the fastest jet at the time.  To me, the Arrow was an of the examples of when "form follows function".  What didn't follow was the future.

Between the inception of the 105 Arrow and the time it went into testing, the government changed and C. D. Howe was thrown out of his job.  The new prime minister didn't like Howe, hated Crawford and he saw the Avro as "government spending" instead of an investment in defense and avionics.  He closed down the entire Avro program including the Avro hover cars that were in the design and testing stages.  (The next time I hear one of my friends say, "I was promised flying cars by the 21st century.  Where are my flying cars?" I'm going to reply, "In Prime Minister Diefenbaker's trash can.") Diefenbaker's order crippled the third largest business in Canada and put over thirty thousand people out of work.   Economic disaster.  The best and the brightest of those ex-employees (including Jim Chamberlin) found work in the USA, moving on to NASA, McDonnell-Douglas and the Concorde.  That action was called Canada's "brain-drain" and it's probably why the Arrow's appearance is so similar of the Concorde's.  Those engineers took the look of the Arrow with them when they left Canada forever.

They weren't allowed to take anything else.  For reasons that still don't make sense to me, the Canadian government ordered that all property of Avro Aircraft would be destroyed.  The government didn't want the finished planes and couldn't be bothered to recoup some of their money by selling or leasing them to anyone else.  Parts were demolished, plans were burnt and the expensive finished planes were cut up for scrap.  It wasn't enough to kill the Arrow, someone decided.  They had to obliterate any sign it had ever existed.

There's a lovely legend at the end of this tragic tale.   It's whispered that once the order went out to destroy the completed Arrows, one pilot decided to rebel.  He took one of the eleven completed planes from the hangar, taxied it down the runway and flew it to an unknown place where it stays under wraps, protected from politicians and idiots.   The story's probably not true but it's lovely to imagine otherwise. 

And that's where Avro Arrow stays now, in the imagination and memory of a few visionary people.  Unlike Apollo 1 or the Titanic disasters, the Arrow's demise wasn't caused by "failure of imagination".  It came from a lack of vision, a failure of faith in the imagination.  And Canada has carried the burden of that failure ever since. 

And the Melodrama goes on...

Now many books take on a life of their own.  Any reader of note can cite a half a dozen books that catch the heart and imagination of the public (Make that fifty books. Harry Potter turned the reading world on its ear more times than I can count on one hand) and a play or a film will sometimes add up to more than the sum of its parts.  We're all glad when these moments occur.   It isn't often, though that the production of a play makes that big a stir.  If a play is memorable it's revived often, people start putting new interpretations on it and pretty soon the initial production is a faint and lovely memory.  It's late and my brain may not be working but I can only think of one time where the book, the play and the production of the play all became moments that people discuss later.  And the all three are named The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

I talked about the book yesterday and mentioned how Dickens indulged his love of the theatre by incorporating a sub-plot about an acting troupe.  Well the theatre has always returned the author's affections and this novel has been brought for the stage or screen at least seven times.  The problem is, the book is such a hard property to adapt.  It has a huge case of parts and so much happens in the book that most adapters hacked off hunks of the story and the author's commentary on the social issues of Victorian England in order to get the running time down to a reasonable length.   The result was something like ordering a Dagwood sandwich and getting one without the lettuce, tomatos, onions, pickles, dressing, conditments or cheeses.  The remaining meat and bread are fine but it can't compare to the Dagwood.

Enter David Edgar and the Royal Shakespearean Company, circa 1977.  The company is on the edge of bankruptcy and the artistic director has a Brilliant Idea.   They should adapt some epic Dickens novel and do an all-out production that will either save their bacon or kill them.  Seasoned playwright, David Edgar, is brought in.   His evaluation of the material: you've got way more than 2 hours here.  Edgar adapted it to the stage and by dint of cutting what he could, reduced it to a "mere" eight-and-one-half hours.  More than ten hours if you count potty breaks. 

For this Edgar kept in all the subplots and the best of the commentary and the actors went to work researching the source material.  For example, one actress read up on the health care of Victorian England and learned why Fanny Squeers admired the hero's "very straight legs."   Times and nutrition being what they were, straight legs were less common than rickets.  The rest divided up the novel amongst themselves and figured out how to keep the picturesque language while the Director tried to figure out how to cast 40 people into a hundred parts and stage a ten hour play that takes place all over England.

How did I learn about all this?  Nicholas Nickleby became the project that wouldn't die and the interest it generated in the UK and the US was phenomenal.  First it swept all the theatrical awards in Great Britain and two years later, the company came to American and walked off with all of the Tony awards.  People stood on line to see a nightly 4 hour performance (they broke the play in half meaning you had to buy tickets twice if you wanted to see the whole show once) where 40-50 actors tumbled on and off a bare stage playing different parts and good collided with evil out front, in the aisles and sometimes ran through the audience.   It was thrilling theatre and the RSC made more money than the accountants could hide.

The play is sound and has been revived once or twice but when anyone talks about seeing the stage version of Nickleby, they mean the RSC production of the early 1980's.  Luckily those performances did get filmed and they're re shown periodically.  It's one of the few times when an adaptation is remarkably faithful to the book.

If you are interested, the play "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" is by David Edgar and Leon Rubin, the RSC director that brought Edgar's play to life wrote a book about that legendary production, The Nicholas Nickelby Story.  (Well, what else would you call it?)  For those who love all three versions (like me: I have the novel, the play, the book on the production and the blessed production on DVD) the Rubin book gives incredible back-story on the development of that theatrical history and it is well worth the read. And if you still can't get enough, I know of some similar material that might interest you.   You see, there's other books by this bloke, Charles Dickens...

Melodrama by a master

It's almost winter again and I keep thinking the books of Dickens.  For many of us, Dickens is an immutable part of this season although I don't think he reached that place just because of his famous Christmas tale. Winter is a melodramatic mix of beauty, fear and hope, just like his stories and the first one that comes to mind is The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

  Nickleby is Dickens's third novel and by that time he had his formula down pat.  There's the hero, young  Nicholas, impetuously ready to take up arms against every unjust cause he meets; there's his impossibly good and patient sister Kate who is just a little too close to her brother for twenty-first century sensibilities and their addle-pated mother.  There's a rogue's gallary of baddies to threaten them including the sneering, high-born, louse, Sir Mulberry Hawk (whose picture should be in the dictionary by the term "sexual predator.")  For those who favor the emotionally crippled-bad guy, Uncle Ralph Nickleby spends his life and reason plotting for money and vengeance on our hero since people like Nicholas but they don't like him!  (Seriously, this guy needed therapy!)   There are other not-so-nice guys but for sheer nerve, the Yorkshire schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers is the best of the baddies.   He looks hideous (Dickens says "He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two") and he's cheap, malevolent and  none too bright.  Just the guy you'd want in a schoolmaster.

The school background was another piece of the Dickens formula; where the novel targets social reform.  Yorkshire schools weren't really schools at that time, they were storage places for unwanted boys.   Illegitimate boys, boys from a previous marriage or brats who wouldn't behave were often shipped to some place in Yorkshire with the word "school" or "academy" in its name and they rarely came home again.  (God knows what happened to the girls, probably places like Lowood School in Jane Eyre!).  The fees weren't that expensive and the "schoolmasters" made a profit by spending even less on their "students"  than they got.  Dickens found out about the systematic child neglect and turned a big, white spotlight on it in Nickleby.  Committees were formed, investigations started and Yorkshire schools went out of fashion.  I've always wondered what happened to the survivors.

Dickens knew how melodramatic this story is (and it is, with amazing coincidences, heart-rending renunciations and retribution galore) and to enhance its theatricality, he added a sub-plot involving a not-so-talented theatrical troupe.  Here, overacting is taken to splendid heights and the manager's daughter is continually referred to as "The Infant Phenomena".  Not Ninetta (her name) or Miss Crummles (a title she's old enough to use) but "The Infant Phenomena".  In one way Miss Crummles suffers maltreatment like a Yorkshire schoolboy as her parents purposely kept her sleepless and drunk in order to keep her short but this episode is strictly for laughs.  The Infant is the spoiled darling who gets the best scenes in every production and her parents' treatment is seen as misguided vocational training instead of neglect.  So Nickleby has relieving sequences of comedy as well as drama and since this is Dickens, almost everything works out for the best.

Yes, December is a mix of the highs and the lows: bitter weather, warm celebrations, pageantry, anxiety and hope.  It's a perfect season for holidays with their attendant melodrama.  That makes it a perfect setting  for Nicholas Nickleby as well.  I hope you enjoy it all.

Some thoughts on an American Myth: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Mythology is a fascinating subject.  The elders of every culture create stories that explains their view of the world to themselves.  They pass those views and stories on to their descendents and the children incorporate or revise those stories to suit their own world view.  An observant human can trace the changes of a civilization by reviewing the variations in a myth.  As cultures go, the American one is still fairly young and versatile but there are a few stories that have lodged in our national psyche and show signs of becoming a cultural touchstone.  One of the strongest is the children's classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Wonderful Wizard is about 114 years old now and has attained a level of popularity that Harry Potter only dreams about.  Between the author and his publishers, more than 40 sequels of the original story were published and another fifty or so accompanying and revisionist novels or comic books have been added to that list.  There are a dozen and a half movie adaptations, about two dozen stage productions and enough material referencing Dorothy Gale's adventures to sink the Emerald City.  Every generation since its birth has reviewed, amended, attacked and paid homage to L. Frank Baum's tale.  What is it about this story that gets to us?

First, I think is the character of Dorothy herself.  Although she travels to marvelous places and enjoys the company of fabulous and fascinating creatures, the heroine never sees herself as anything more or less than Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the niece of Henry and Em.  When the Munchkins assume Dorothy is a sorceress, she corrects them and her biggest complaint about the Wizard is his lack of honesty.  Dorothy is not born for great destiny nor does she attain unusual powers as other heroes do.  Dorothy is simply Dorothy and except for the shoes and her cap, she succeeds because of the virtues and sense she got from her prairie home.  Dorothy is the commoner that walks with kings while retaining her populist sense, a virtue America has always cherished.

Of course Kansas is no match for Oz when it comes to beauty.  Baum makes it clear that a pioneering life is hard, hard enough to steal any beauty or joy from Dorothy's aunt and uncle.  Nevertheless, Kansas is home and Dorothy will meet every challenge to get back there.  The sentiment Baum put in his tale is fervently echoed in the 1939 film.   No matter what Oz has, "there's no place like home."   Not, "There's no place lovelier" or "There's no place better."  It is  just that home is unique and there are no substitutes.

Finally, it's important to note the heroes in The Wonderful Wizard (and its adaptations) all feel they lack something sorely needed.  The scarecrow wants brains, the tin man a heart, the lion wants courage and Dorothy, the way home.   If you look at the parallel novel, Wicked, Elphaba also wants something, the acceptance of family and friends.   Of course Dorothy's companions already have their resources; they simply can't recognize these assets without the aid of the wizard's deception.   Dorothy also has the means to achieve what she wants although she doesn't learn this until the last.  The silver shoes (or ruby slippers, if you prefer MGM) that carry her feet through Oz can fly her home to Kansas.   Elphaba cannot receive what her family cannot give but her strength develops as she gives herself  the acceptance and approval she sought in them.  Taken in total, these stories suggest that each individual has the needed resources to achieve his or her own goals.  Success depends on whether on that person is willing to put those resources to work.  This is central to the American emphasis on the individual and the belief in a self-controlled destiny.  Beneath the lion's medal and the ruby slippers you can see the credo of America's pioneers.

Of course, the successes and failures of future generations will revise and add to our beliefs.  It will be entertaining to see these changes in future returns to Oz, since our interest in the fable shows no signs of waning.  It's so close to our sub-conscious now, I wonder if we'll recite it, like poetry.  Sometime in a later age, when students chant the words of this nation, is this how the chorus will run?

Once upon a midnight dreary,
Four score and seven years ago,
Dorothy lived on the great Kansas prairie-
This land was made for you and me.

In Praise of Southern Mamas: All Over But the Shoutin

There is something special about a Southern Mama.  I used to explain it by saying I moved to Alabama because, "I married a Southern Boy.  And Southern Boys don't get too far away from their mamas."  That usually got a laugh because, on one level, it's true.  Southern mothers are strong women and their children respond to that strength.  These women have raised generations of kids who know Mama is stronger than anyone except Grandma or God Almighty.  Dads are dads and everyone should have a good one but no one's more certain than Mom.  That standard was true of my southern mother-in-law and it is certainly true about Rick Bragg's mother.  In All Over But the Shoutin',  his mom is the heroine of the story and the center of his life.

To hear Rick tell it, life should have been nicer to Margaret Marie Bundrum.  Although she was born into a large family in one of the poorer areas of the United States, the country was beautiful, her family was loving and her father provided for them all by building houses and making moonshine.  It was a reasonable childhood for that area and at seventeen, Margaret Marie had the looks southern girls use to change their luck.   Instead she married a man who made her life twice as hard.

All Over But the Shoutin' is the account of how Rick's mama came back from that marriage and how her sons grew up in the shadow of their strong, loving mother.  Margaret Bragg didn't have the vocational skills or education to make her life or her sons' lives easy but she worked hard so they could go further in the world.   Margaret took every hard-labor job and government program available to keep her boys healthy and fed and they took their own roads in time.  Sam, the eldest, followed his mother into a lifetime of physical labor but Rick, through a combination of talent and luck, became a reporter, studied at Harvard and earned a Pulitzer Prize.  The reporter made mistakes and was hypersensitive about his antecedents but he was a good boy to his mama: she was there when he got the Pulitzer and, with the prize money, he bought her a house.

A house is something extra special to folks like Rick, his mom and my mother-in-law.   After years of rented trailers and space heaters a legitimate, solid home that you own "free-and-clear" is saying goodbye to an ache.  My mother-in-law did it, through entrepreneurship (she'd fuss at me for using such a ridiculous word) and thrift and Rick's family did it with talent and drive.  I sit comfortably in my own home now and marvel at their work.   Whatever I accomplish in this world comes from those who did much more.

There's a book about Alabama sharecroppers called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men .  The title is ironic since most sharecroppers aren't well known.  But that book and All Over But the Shoutin' make one thing abundantly clear.   These are the people that should be celebrated, especially the Southern Mamas.

Replaying Human History in Space: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Writers steal, that's a fact.  You can call it an homage, revisionism or Fried Wild Peacock, but the fact is the roots of almost every popular written work can be traced to some other writer's creation or an event the writer experienced.  What makes the work interesting is what happens to the source material once the writer pushes it through the filter of his or her imagination.   That's when you get parodies, like Bored of the Rings or revisions like Wicked or Wide Sargasso Sea.   With Robert Heilein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, you get a recounting of what the American Revolution could have been like, if America had been in outer space.

It goes like this: after creating a life-sustaining habitat on the moon, mankind initially developed the sphere as a planetary sized Alcatraz for its criminals and political malcontents.  No guards or monitoring are needed since the prisoners cannot escape and Earthlings enjoy a serene existence with their agitators gone.   Decades after transportation been halted, the descendents of the original settlers (Lunar colonists or "Loonies") now supply Earth's population with food.  Of course a lot of technology is used to run the colony and one of those descendants, Manny O'Kelly-Davis is the technician to the moon's largest computer, the HOLMES IV.

Think of the HOLMES IV as an enormous server that looks after all of the transactions needed to exist on the moon.  (Now remember this book was written before the age of servers, networks and cloud computing).   Given the computer's capabilities and sedentary nature, Manny  renamed his charge Mycroft after Sherlock's smarter brother then shortens it to Mike.  By programming it, testing it and tinkering with the computer, Manny has learned something about Mike that no one else knows: the computer's self-aware.

It's Mike's abilities that twist this traditional story.   Mike performs the calculations that demonstrate the lunar colonists must break away from their earth-bound governors to avoid starving themselves to death.  Mike is also instrumental in developing the revolutionary organization necessary to overthrow earth's sovereign government and the tactics necessary for winning a revolutionary war.  To Mike, this is a fun intellectual exercise that lets him interface with more people (he's a friendly computer) but to Manny and the Lunar colonists, Mike is their secret weapon and their strongest chance to achieve freedom.  The book is good enough that when the battle begins, you'll care what happens to the computer.

Heinlein introduced many pet ideas into this novel, like sentient machines and line marriage but the essential story is repeated time and again in history.  When one group exploits the resources of another and gives little or no return, the victimized group will eventually declares a need for self-governance and revolt.  It's happened before and it will happen again.  Heinlein just imagined how it will happen once we move out into the stars.

On reflection, this book may not be stolen material.  Perhaps, as Willa Cather wrote, there are only two or three human stories and we go on repeating them as if we were the first.  If so, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the story of each culture's need for self-governance.  Heinlein just set it in a culture we haven't created yet.

The perfect place to stay in France: The Hotel Pastis

Some books are like a vacation.   Open the covers, look at the first paragraph and you're on your way to some exotic location, away from the everyday grind. You can go hunting with Hemingway, rafting with Twain or sailing with Thor Heyerdahl.  Those vacations are wonderful, but come along with me to the South of France.  You won't have to pack a bag or learn the language but you must bring along your sense of humor.   It's required when you check in to The Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle made enough wealth and fame in advertising to retire early to a farmhouse in France.  Then he became internationally rich and famous writing about his retired life.   The Hotel Pastis is a novel but there's enough about advertising and the South of France there to suggest it's a thinly disguised memoir with just enough fiction in it to keep people from suing.   Truth or libel, the book is a treat.

The hero, Simon Shaw, is a man in need of an interest.  His work life doesn't fascinate him any more: the ad agency he helped build is so successful that all he does is butter up clients, cash the checks and argue with his partners.  His personal life is equally boring: the second ex-wife just left taking her wardrobe, her mean mind and a lawyer's ransom of money but leaving a blah, empty home.  Under orders to cheer up, Simon takes a driving holiday through the South of France. Then a car accident strands him in one of those sunny villages that tourists dream about: a place away from the world; a place where the day can be savored with the food and wine; a place to start life over again.

There is a sub-plot involving bicycles and a bank heist but the best parts of The Hotel Pastis are the people in Simon's world.  There's Jordan, Simon's dyed-in-tweed British partner who lives to fulfill every cliche of English Life, and Zeigler, Jordan's American counterpart. There's Ernest, Simon's  majordomo in England and a surprising aide-de-camp in France.   Luckily for Simon, there's also Nicole Bouvier, the blonde who captures his interest and gives him the idea for a project: the Hotel Pastis.

No, this isn't great literature but that's not why I go back to this book.  "Great literature" doesn't always seem that great when it's dark and cold outside.  Instead, I'll pick up The Hotel Pastis and watch sunlight bounce off of the cover.  The heat of Provence will radiate from the pages and take the chill out of this room.  A soft breeze will flow with the chapter and I'll hear the irresistible chink of ice in a pitcher and the click of balls on a boules court.  I can smell the fields of lavender already.  Y'all enjoy your cold, hard December.  I'm taking the next book to France.

Introducing Scottish Noir

There are a lot of genres in crime fiction.  There are cozy mysteries and hard-boiled detective tales, capers and whodunits.  There are police procedurals, legal thrillers, psychological suspense books and we'll have some more genres next Tuesday.  In the meantime, one of my current favorite writers is Val McDermid, the journalist who created what she calls "Scottish Noir".    This means her characters have the uncompromising, tough and amoral personalities the frequented Dashiell Hammett's novels but McDermid's stories are settled in the cold, bleak areas of Scotland.    Add to this mix a set of villains so strange that Thomas Harris could have invented them and you've got Scottish Noir.  These books aren't for everyone but, boy, are they good.  McDermid is best known for her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series but if you want an introduction to her work, I'd start off with the thriller, A Place of Execution.

A Place of Execution is about the twin investigations into the disappearance of Alison Carter, an adolescent that disappeared one night in December of 1963.  Allison's home was Scardale, a one-road village where half a dozen families have lived since the world began.  The young Detective Inspector, George Bennett, has to figure out what happened to Allison, no easy task since he's a stranger and the locals of Scardale don't trust him.  Two other children recently disappeared in the next larger town and Detective Bennett fears the missing Allison is a third victim.  Add that George Bennett is a decent chap at the beginning of his career and marriage and you have a policeman who suffers when a child vanishes on his watch.  And Alison does, right into the cold, night air of Scotland.  Though the police find her dog and evidence of a crime, they never find her body or bones.

Thirty-five years later, Catharine Heathcote is primed to write a book about the Alison Carter case.  A journalist who was the same age as Alison, she remembers the girl's disappearance and the effect it had on her young life.  Now she has the chance to review the evidence and maybe draw out a few ghosts.  Catharine also runs the risk of re-opening wounds.  George Bennett is still haunted by the girl he could never bring home.  And although it seems modern, much of Scardale hasn't changed since 1963.  Like its habit of keeping secrets.

A Place of Execution has much to recommend it, including pace, tension and some very interesting characters.  Still, it is not for the faint of heart.  Terrible things happen in the world, according to Val McDermid, and the only chance for justice is when the good guys are as tough as the bad ones.  If you can accept that fact, you'll survive it seems, in these stories of Scottish Noir.  If you can't, do yourself a favor and don't walk out alone.

Reference Books you can Love

It's easy to fall in love with fiction.  If the writer's done his/her job, a reader can sit back with a well-formed story, a balanced plot and distinctive characters with unforgettable lines.   Everything should work out in fiction.   Non-fiction's not quite so easy.  Perhaps the hero didn't have a memorable speech or the author missed meeting that all-important member of the cast.  That author can either tell the truth or stretch it, both of which create their own downsides but, if a talented writer finds an interesting subject and is willing to do the research, some non-fiction books are terrific.   But reference books are the Rodney Dangerfields in a printed world: they rarely get any respect, so nobody wants to write them.  Without plot or characters, the tomes seldom get attention.  I know of three exceptions to the rule.  You can read them for reference or for pleasure but either way, you'll never be bored.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. 

 This book is history, itself.  An English publisher named Beeton talked his wife into assembling this household bible in the 1850's and for decades it reigned in the homes of British middle and upper class citizens while Victoria reigned on the throne.  Ninety percent of the book is recipes (Wikipedia tells me the Downton Abbey team uses it for source material) but the remaining material is the treasure; this section gives the lady of the house the knowledge she needs for her life.   Which domestic should be hired first, what they should be paid and what are each of their duties?  Beeton tells this and then outlines how each job should be performed so a young wife could check behind the maid.  There's a section on childhood diseases and compounding simple medicines.  Medical and legal concepts are explained here as well as etiquette, economy, how to set up an efficient kitchen and profitably spend a day.   This book is an insight into British life itself during the years of Victoria and it's fascinating to read.  I don't cook and I'm hopeless at entertaining but I'll keep my copy of Beeton's.   With her, I think I could out-do Martha Stewart.

An Incomplete Education

Can you tell what a life my copy's led?   I got it in the early 1990's, when I was self-conscious about my unfinished college degree.  I thought the dear book could help me appear less unlettered in conversation with graduates.  Since then I've read untold numbers of books, picked up my sheepskin and talked with enough intellectual drop-outs and ignorant alumni to sink a small island but I keep going back to this book because An Incomplete Education's not just informative, it's fun.

Every section is well-laced with humor (well, every section I go back to - I usually skip the science) and has titles like, "American Intellectual History and Stop That Snickering."  If you've gone through the novels of Jane Austen and are lost in the shrubbery, this book explains the difference between the style, the weir and the haha.  (Yes, that's right, a haha.)  And it's full of bits that stick in the memory like differentiating between Shelley and Keats. (Between the two, Keats was more stable, emotionally.  He's the one you could play handball with.)   Does it substitute for a college education?  Of course not.  Is it more fun to read than your senior project?   Gee, what do you think?

The Elements of Style

This may be the most neglected book on the planet.  Every writer, every educator and many administrators I know swear by the book and beg others to follow it.  I understand that newly-minted Alabama attorneys receive copies from the appellate court with instructions to follow its dicta when writing.  Entire websites are devoted to it.   But does anyone read it?  I don't think so, except me and a word-struck cousin.  Many of the paperbacks I find look unopened and covered with dust. That's a shame.  Between these unassuming covers lie the keys to the kingdom.

Some background: Professor Strunk came up with some basic composition rules for his students at Cornell and he distributed these in small, brown, bound books .  Many of the students kept their books including one E. B. White, who later wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little.  Like many of his classmates, he remembered the book with affection.  When it was finally published, he added the section, "An Approach to Style."

Professor Strunk's rules are a guide to producing clean, serviceable prose, the meat-and-potatoes of literature.  These cover anything from where to put the apostrophe (Charles's books!) to making the meaning clear ("Omit Needless Words!).  This part can seem pedantic and some critics insist the authors violate their own instructions on occasion but this guide is still referred to because it works.  Following these rules helps you create reasonable, unpretentious prose.

Now my secret: I read E. B. White's section on style for pleasure.  As a writer, Mr. White used simple, clear language to express ideas and impressions.   His narratives develop so seamlessly that each paragraph seems like the inevitable result of the last.  He makes writing look easy.  In "An Approach to Style" White talks about how a writer is revealed by his or her choices and how using a simple narrative style keeps the story flowing.  His suggestions don't have the stentorian mandate of "Omit needless words" but they are persuasive, partly because they're expressed so well.  Since all writing is an attempt at communication, Mr. White's suggestions clear out any language that obscures the message.  This essay is a remarkable work.

Of course, these are not run of the mill reference books.  Many reference tomes are as dense and dull as you'd expect so I'm campaigning for these.   In a field where dull books fill shelves like lumps of lead, Beeton's, Incomplete and The Elements are pure gold.

"I announce with trembling pleasure the appearance of a great story..."

I'll never forget reading that blurb.  It was on the back of a beige book my mother had brought from the library and when I read it, I said, "Well, that's a bit much.  I flipped the book over and looked at the pen-and-ink cover drawing and the red and black type underneath. It still didn't look very promising.   I looked askance at my mother who shrugged her shoulders.  "Read it or don't" she said. "I thought you might like it, you liked animal stories when you were little."  She looked at the cover and added.  "It has rabbits in it."  That's how I met Watership Down.

I didn't know it at the time but I was merely the latest in a long line of people to underestimate this story, starting with its author.  Richard Adams entertained his daughters during rides to school with stories of what they saw along the way: country roads and rabbits.  It wasn't until the girls demanded a written account that he started to shape the tale.  Then, four publishers and three agents turned down the manuscript saying "Adults won't read an animal story and it's far too scary for kids."  The publisher who printed the first edition couldn't afford to make many books but he did make a point of getting those copies into the hands of influential critics.  The praise was heard in America and the rest, as they say, is history.  The world fell in love with Watership Down.

For the book isn't just a story of anthropomorphized hares.  If that's what you want (which is fine!) other stories have bunnies that wear clothes and have cunning homes with furniture.   Watership Down is an epic where rag-tag wanderers venture into the Great Unknown when their home is threatened with extinction.  They face terror and danger from unexpected sources and they learn to trust each other for survival.  There's humor and pathos, courage and unexpected luck like there should be in any adventure story and there's even a bit of information about rabbits.  Mr. Adams consulted the best rabbit expert he could find when he wrote Watership Down and tried to incorporate the man's knowledge.  In other words, its an adventure story where the heroes happen to be rabbits.

There's also love for the land in this tale and nothing pleased me more than to learn Watership Down really exists.  The country is in Hampshire, between the village of Kingsclere and Highclere Castle, site of the popular series "Downton Abbey".  At least two web sites have been created to give visitors a virtual tour of the sites in the novel (Bits and Bobstones and Journey to the Real Watership Down) and it seems the locals are used to findng fans of the novel wandering around the Beech Tree.  I have my own reasons for wanting to visit that country (there's a huge historic horse stable there) but I'd count myself lucky to stand near the summit and echo Blackberry in saying, "Come and look, you can see the whole world."

So yes, I still love this story of rabbits which is and is not true.  As long as courage is needed and friends are true and evil must be resisted, there's a need for Watership Down.   And bless the critic that wrote, "I announce with trembling pleasure the appearance of a great story..."   That person spoke the truth.

King Arthur when he was The Wart.

Is it true that children no longer read The Sword in the Stone?  A friend of mine with kids says so.  Between dystopias, vampires, diseases and monsters, kids are skipping the fantasy that stood the  Arthurian legend on its head and that makes me sad.  Almost two generations of readers have come of age with no idea of White beyond a Disney movie or a Broadway show their grandparents talked about.  Forgive them, Merlin, they don't know what they've missed.

For one thing, they skip on a wonderful story with a  delicious sense of humor.  Malory  wrote about Arthur's birth in Le Morte D'Arthur but we never get to see the young prince grow up; he goes from infant to sword-puller in less than a thousand words and there's no guessing what happened in between.  T. H. White invented all that by mixing modern sensibilities with chivalric legends and he did it with a sense of humor.

One good example (a disgusting one but good) is the subject of fewmets, something the roaming King Pellinore knows a good deal about.  His sole object in life is to chase after the Questing Beast and a required part of the hunt is to collect fewmets, droppings of the beast pursued, so the hunter can track it.  This is an honest-to-God Medieval English term, but as Pellinore says, it's an unsanitary habit.  Between his hunting dog's tendency to wander and the mess he has to make scooping fewmets, the poor king becomes quite discouraged and would rather the Questing Beast chased itself.   Well, you can see the poor man's point.  Only T. H. White could find an ancient hunting practice, turn it into a bathroom joke and use that to develop a character.  Another joke at the end of the book is that once the new King has proven his heritage by pulling the Sword from the Stone, he's covered up with requests to help unstick doors, open bottles and fix other domestic emergencies. I love imagining the letters (Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but you must be fair strong, having pulled that pig-sticker from the Rock.  Could you open a jam jar for me?)  There's a lot of laughter in this book.

There's also a lot of natural history.  T. H. White had a keen interest in the natural world  and he  shows it off in The Sword in the Stone by having the young Arthur (known to everyone as Wart) temporarily transformed into various animals by his tutor, Merlyn.  It's a marvelous education.  The Wart learns about the corruption of power from the strongest fish in the moat, the effect of regimentation from ants, democracy from geese and the significance of mankind from a badger.  They're wonderful lessons and a good reminder that mankind, for all of our smarts and power, is just one of many species on this earth.  That's a lesson we often forget.

Well, T. H. White's books may be gathering dust right now but his influence is certainly felt.  A lot of the Wart's open, honest character and his unseen destiny can be traced to Neil Gaiman's Timothy Hunter and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter.  And some books return, like the seasons.  Watch and be patient and someone will rediscover the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, Archimedes, Robin Wood and the Wart.  Someone else will mention The Questing Beast and we'll all be off again, laughing about fewmets, talking about T. H. White and rereading The Once and Future King.  And I'll be sitting in a corner with Archimedes the Owl, nodding and saying, "I thought so."

My Favorite Outsider: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady

I'm a fool for those that make me laugh.  If you want me to endorse a candidate, follow a flag, babysit kids or be nice to your Mama, make me giggle.  That's been true for a long time and that's why I champion Florence King.  I've never met the lady, don't expect to meet her and I don't endorse many of her positions but she has my undying devotion (and I read whatever she writes) because she tells a story well and her stories can make me laugh.   

Florence is the ultimate outsider,  She comes by it genetically, according to her memoir, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady.   Her mother, Louise, was the anti-Southern Belle who cursed, competed with men and avoided flirting like it was the plague.  Her father was a self-educated cockney musician who didn't follow any of the practices associated with a Gentleman of the South. These two oddballs got along by accepting each other's differences and their only child was Florence.  That girl puts them both in the shade.

Imagine, if you will, a beautiful child who goes off to school wearing pinafore dresses and Mary Janes.  Her favorite beverage is black coffee, she already reads, writes and knows more about British history than the teacher and, oh yes, she doesn't like other children.  Can't stand the immature, drippy little sots.  (For some reason, they don't care for her either.)  Little Florence said she honestly surprised to be classed in with these proto-human beings.  Until first grade, she never realized she was a child.  She just assumed she was short.

Luckily children eventually mature and you'd think she'd be happier in adolescence.  Nope, Florence discovers she's gay.  Remember this is the 1950's when everyone is expected to conform.  It was the Era of The Closet and Florence is expected to like boys.  Well, boys aren't bad but it's a girl that really speaks to her soul and Florence is still outside mainstream culture and watching the rest of the world.  At least she's getting used to being uncomfortable.

Move to the 1960's and 70's when things are getting a little more tolerant, at least if you are left wing.  Did I mention Florence is politically conservative?   This may go back to her dislike of groups (It's hard to find any groupier group than the Kym-By-Ya-Yahs of that period) but either way, she's out in the cold.  The GOP can't tolerate her private life.   The Daughters of Sappho can't stand her public views.  (Last I heard, she was lambasting the Tea Party as a bunch of publicity seeking, spoiled TV brats - that's our Florence, dissing anyone who behaves badly. Reality TV must leave her exhausted)

Because Florence is, in the end, a Southern Lady, even when she fails the course.  She may not gush over people or serve in the Junior League but she does believe in treating others with respect; the same respect she'd like to receive.    I think I can manage that, if I watch my grammar and avoid her presence.   May she live as long as she wants to and enjoy her life as an outsider.  And if it's possible, I hope she writes some more.  I don't have to agree with her when she makes me laugh.

The Halifax Explosion

Everyone has obsessions:  mine are centered around entertainment and art but my husband is obsessed with disasters.   There's history in these tales and often the tragedy of hubris and the indelible courage of the fallen and the survivors.  Disaster stories are all about humanity at our best, how we recover from the worst and I think that's why my husband likes them.  Consequently, I'm always on the lookout for a disaster story he may not know.  A few years ago, I learned of the Halifax Explosion and found the book Shattered City.   If disaster tales are your cup of tea, this is a book for you.

It was December 6, 1917, ninety-seven years ago last Saturday, and two ships were both in a hurry.  The Imo, a French ship was late leaving Halifax's harbor with relief supplies for Belgium while the SS Mont Blanc was trying to get into port with a full load of explosives.  They collided and spilled fuel on the Mont Blanc set that ship on fire.  The crew abandoned ship and the Mont Blanc drifted, unmanned, toward the town.

In those days, the fanciest houses were set close to the water and they got a view of the burning Mont Blanc.  It was early morning and as the explosives on board started to burn, sparks shot into the air, making the Mont Blanc look like a floating 4th of July display.   Crowds gathered at the wharf and the town's only fire engine showed up, expecting to protect the wharf-side buildings.  Then, at 8:45 the ship exploded.

Sixteen hundred people died immediately and every building within a mile and a half radius was wiped out or horribly damaged.  The water was momentarily blown out of the harbor and the rush back created a tsunami.  The force blew the injured Imo to the opposite shore and Mont Blanc's anchor two miles inland through the air.  Until the atomic bombs, this was the biggest explosion on record.

The Halifax survivors must have thought they'd been sent straight to hell. Remember it was December and all the houses had stoves and furnaces going to keep out the cold.  The blast knocked over all of those stoves and the collapsed houses began to burn. Because the entire fire company had died at the edge of the wharf (with their fire engine) no one could put out the fires.  All the window glass blew out, blinding and maimng people who thought they were watching from a safe distance.  Then, in a final insult to injury, Halifax got hit with a blizzard.

The book Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery  covers all this and more, from the little girl who survived fire and cold because an ash-bucket landed on top of her to the rumors of a German attack that filled the city after the disaster.  (Remember, WWI was still going on then and Halifax knew they might be a target)  The fallen are remembered as well as the group of people who did everything they could to heal the survivors and the town.  It's a really good story.

It's good to remember why things go wrong as well as when things go right.  It's the least we can do for the victims and it can teach us where we need to take care.  Shattered City is a book well worth reading on these cold December nights.  It's pays respect to the lost souls of Halifax.

An alternate reality for book nuts: The Eyre Affair

I used to listen to the Book Radio Channel.  This as a 24/7, 365 internet channel where books and radio serials were read aloud to the subscribers and I liked it.   Instead of the same 250 songs in rotation, I got stories.  Some were familiar and loved but often they were something new and either way, I was entertained.  Imagine, a channel whose programming targeted my special interest!  Evidently that interest was too specialized to be profitable because they closed the channel down but not before I found another book worth keeping.   Trust Book Radio Channel to read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair out loud.   This fantasy is a bibliophile's dream.

The Eyre Affair is one of those alternate-universe stories but one where Readers are the Cool Guys on Campus.   Seriously.   Writers are treated like rock stars.  The populace likes watching Shakespearean plays (In one place, "Richard III" is watched and performed nightly by a group of  Rocky-Horror type devotees) and the Baconites go around witnessing like Mormons.  There are other, less-startling ideas like a time-traveling guard and a Crimean war that lasts longer than a century but nothing compares to a public that cherishes books. The security force for all this bibliophila is the agency LiteraTec.   And LiteraTec's top agent and narrator here is the incredible Thursday Next.

In many ways, Thursday is a standard fictional detective.  She has tragedy in her past, (PTSD from her own service in Crimea as well the sorrow of a lost brother and injured fiance) she has to fight her superiors in the service almost as much as the bad guys and (oh yeah) she's as resourceful and cool as James Bond.   She doesn't see this, but we do.   And she's the only one who can save great published literature from the arch-villain, Acheron Hades.

"How can anyone hurt a published novel?" I hear you cry.   Well in this universe, an author literally creates another reality when writing fiction and someone with an original manuscript and the right skills or technology  can breach the novel's reality and change the story.  When the original manuscript is changed, all of the subsequent printings change to match it.  (Now imagine if this was true. They'd have to lock up the Harry Potter manuscripts to keep people from leaping into Hogwarts.)  Acheron Hades acquires this technology and murders an incidental character in Martin Chuzzlewit.  Great Britain goes nuts.  Then, he's threatens Jane Eyre.

How Thursday goes after the bad guy and solves a few other problems is the rest of the story and I can promise Jane Eyre fans a delightful twist but I won't reveal the rest.   Give The Eyre Affair a try if you like fantasy or books in general and if you like it, there are more in this series.  At least you'll see a world where literacy is Cool.   A place where Book Radio is King.

Our cozy southern sister in crime

I miss Anne George.  During the early 1990's, when I was settling into life as an adult, Anne was one of the literary lights in Birmingham, Alabama.  She was a local girl who taught for years and wrote poetry and short stories on the side.  After retiring from education, her literary career swung into high gear and she made readers and booksellers happy until that day in 2001 when she died, most unexpectedly, during heart surgery.   Her passing broke a lot of hearts, including my friend J.'s, who appreciated her as a friend as well as an author.  Anne's poetry was good but what I miss most are her Southern Sisters mysteries.  Anne turned Birmingham into the setting for her Southern cozies.

Cozies are that sub-set of mysteries that are uncomplicated fun.   Any violence is usually off-stage, the detective is normally an amateur and there's a minimum of grit or grime.  Jessica Fletcher is a good example of a cozy's detective, although the first must have been Miss Jane Marple.  Normally, I like mayhem in my mysteries and angst running through all of the characters (hurray for Val McDermid!) but I love Anne George's Southern Sisters mysteries because she wrote about the world I live in.  And she wrote about it well.

For example, let's take my favorite in the series, Murder Makes Waves.  The central characters, Mary Alice and Patricia Anne, are known to the world as Sister and Mouse.  (Six feet tall and 250 pounds means Mary Alice is a presence in any room.  At five foot one and 105 lbs., Patricia Anne can get overlooked).   These sisters are driving down to Destin with an adult daughter when they stop to see the sights along the way.   Every place in that road trip exists, from the Peach Butt water tower of Chilton County  and Priester's Pecans to the House of Turkey and the Hank Williams museum.   Stopping at each of these does turn a four hour trip into eight, as Anne observes, but it's part of a trip to the coast.   Not stopping would make a vacation feel incomplete.

Anne George wrote about the sweet foibles of life here, from the perennial battle to cover the Vulcan Statue's behind (he stands there on top of Red Mountain wearing nothing but an apron and mooning the city of Homewood) to our addictions to college football and barbeque.  This is trivial compared to the rest of Birmingham's history but it's nice that someone noticed the small things, the fun and silly things that also add to our lives.  Anne enriched as well as documented our world with her poetry and cozy mysteries.  Birmingham owes her a debt of thanks.

The Soul-Tugging Need for the Prairies: O Pioneers!

Siblings always surprise you.   When you are young, siblings are your competition for the limited resources known as Mom and Dad.  They are part of the family woodwork and it's hard to see them outside of their family roles, at least while you're sharing a bathroom.  I'm not sure when I first saw my sister as a grown individual but it probably started when she told me she loved Willa Cather's, O Pioneers!  I noticed this because I had been avoiding Cather's work for years.

Cather is, of course, the novelist of the Great Plains and since we grew up in that area, I had avoided her just to be contrary.  There are other prairie writers but Cather usually leads the pack with her stories about the European settlers that came to the Plains and remade their lives on that alien land.  The feeling the settlers develop for this land is central in Cather's O Pioneers! and my sister acknowledged as much when she discussed it.  "I read it," she said, "when I'm homesick."  I decided to give the story a chance.  Now it's a "read-every year" book for me.

On the simplest level, O Pioneers! is the story of Alexandra Bergson and her family.  In the beginning, Alexandra's father has begun the work of a sod buster but he is not successful.   The land is hard to cultivate, the weather is harsh and his own life is ending.  A perceptive father, he instructs his sons to defer to Alexandra in business decisions because she has the shrewdest brain in the family and tells the children to work toward keeping the family together.  Years later, the family thrives financially as the prairies change to tillable farmland but harsh words and innuendo force the siblings apart.  Alexandra loses people she loves dearly before her future becomes clear.

The book also looks lovingly at the first wave of immigrants that broke ground on the Plains while it points out the pomposity of the next generation.   There's poor Ivar who weaves wonderful hammocks and treat livestock as knowledgeably as any vet.  Nevertheless, the younger adults threaten him with the insane asylum because he prefers to go barefoot.  (His reasoning is a little odd on this subject but there's no harm in the man).  Then there is old Mrs. Lee who has to sneak around her grown children if she wants to wash in a little tub or wear a nightcap to bed.  She's a sweet soul with three teeth, a Swedish accent and happy attitude.  While the younger adults worry about appearances and gossip, these two and Alexandra focus on enjoying life and being kind to others.

Of course the book has its love stories but the great beloved here is the land.  There's the shaggy, untamed winter land that inspires feelings of freedom and loneliness.  There's the tilled land of summer that gives itself in full measure to crops.  The Earth is always there for Alexandra, through division and heartbreak, and it is her great comfort when someone dies.  For others, the land is a source of wealth and power.  For Alexandra, it's love and life itself.  To her, the land is home.

A bit of that feeling comes to folks who grow up on the Plains and it doesn't goes away if you leave.  My sister and I both live in states far away and we've both put down roots where we live.  But I suspect some part of both of us is tied to the grass and endless sky and it waits for the day we come home.  Like Cather, neither one of us still live on the prairie but the prairie lives on in us and O Pioneers is an express ticket back.