Lord Peter and the Unknown Corpse (Whose Body?, 1923)

Dorothy Sayers. Whose Body? (1923) A re-read. I'm embarking on a Sayers binge, and will read the books in sequence.

The first published Wimsey case. Mr Thipps, an inoffensive architect who lives with his mother, finds a corpse in the bathtub. A well known financier has disappeared,. The body isn’t his, although someone has gone to a deal of trouble to create a superficial resemblance. That’s the setup, and a nicely devised, if psychologically barely plausible, murder mystery ensues.

Detective Inspector Charles Parker functions as Wimsey’s Watson and gofer. Freddie Arbuthnot, friend and stockbroker, provides essential information. A medical school figures in the solution. Bunter is a topnotch photographer with the darkroom skills needed to develop the relevant clues. The secondary characters are given their turns on the stage – making them more than walking, talking scenery is one of Sayers’ strengths. A minor flaw: I think Wimsey should have twigged to the substitution of one body for another sooner.

I always enjoy Sayers novels, partly because much of the England of 1920s and 30s survived the 2nd World War, and so feels familiar to me. Some things I noticed this time: Sayers primarily uses dialogue to advance the story. She uses setting for ambiance, and likes to digress into mild social satire. She is very aware of current fads, philosophical and other debates, and the latest science. These help explain motivations that a hundred years later might seem inadequate. Her novels have become historical fiction by default, and a corrective to today’s attempts to recreate the past.

I rate this **½. 

English as she is misspoke and miswrote (Eats, Shites and Leaves, 2003)

A. Parody. Eats, Shites & Leaves. (2004) Piggy-backing on Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots, and Leaves (2003), this is a mildly amusing compilation of “crap English”. The compiler makes a few minor mistakes, mostly because of the widely-shared confusion between grammar and usage, and much of the material can be found elsewhere. Some of it merely illustrates the quirks of English spelling, especially of homonyms. He includes proverbs, I suppose because most of them have become cliches.

The best bits are the inadvertent weirdness caused by errors in diction (I am a person who recognises the fallacy of humans), the clash of cliches (If you stand still, there’s only one way to go, and that’s backwards), the difference between spoken and written syntax (I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith), simple carelessness (The patient has no past history of suicides), and so on. I bought my copy from a guy at the Timber Village Market. He was toting used books around in van, and looked hopeful when I approached. Probably overpaid, which makes it a keeper – too valuable to give away. ***

The Dismal Pseudoscience (Economyths, 2017)

David Orrell. Economyths: 11 Ways Economics Gets It Wrong. (2017) Orrell is a mathematician who’s made his living applying his skills to miscellaneous real world problems. Here he dissects 11 economyths, showing how they fail to match real world data.

Modern economics began with Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. In the mid-1800s Jeremy Bentham and others attempted to mathematise Smith’s insights, and, within the limits of their mathematics, they succeeded. By the mid-20th century, economics had become a thoroughly mathematised social science. Unfortunately, economists didn’t bother testing their models by comparing their predictions against actual data. If the predictions didn’t work out, that was not a fault of the models, but of people’s misunderstanding of the economy, which led them to make the wrong choices. Choices that falsified the predictions must be the wrong choices, you see, because if people had made the right choices, the predictions would been correct. Economics has become a pseudoscience, a cargo cult using mystical algebra.

Milton Friedman went the final step of proclaiming that economic theory proved that free-market, profit-focussed capitalism was the only viable and democratic system. Hence the inability of economists to predict the 2008 collapse of the real estate bubble and the ensuing financial crisis.

That’s a rough paraphrase of Orrell’s thesis. The 2008 crisis occasioned the first edition of this book. This one (2017) includes quotes of criticisms of the first edition and Orrell’s responses. It adds a chapter on money, which proposes that money is quantum-like. Interesting, but IMO at best a first draft of a proper theory of money. Such a theory is difficult because money has many functions, all of which depend on our beliefs about it.

Orrell stresses that the economy is a complex dynamic system, which includes the agents, and so agents’ perceptions and beliefs play a major (and confounding) role. He doubts that economic prediction will ever be better than weather forecasting. He also emphasises that neo-liberal economic theory as propounded by the Chicago school (Milton Friedman et al) has led to economic behaviour whose ecological effects threaten to make the planet at least extremely uncomfortable for human beings. I think he’s right.

I will reread this book. It’s dense with data, history, and anecdote. Here and there I felt almost sorry for the economists that fulminated against the first edition. But their smug ignorance of the limits of applied mathematics, of ecology, of anthropology, of psychology, and of history prevented pity.

Recommended. ****

Lord Peter Wimsey in Short Takes (Lord Peter, 1972)

Dorothy Sayers. Lord Peter {The collected short stories} (1972) Compiled by James Sandoe.

It’s always a pleasure to read about Lord Peter. His first appearance was as a Wooster-like ninny, but later appearances indicate this was a pose. Here he helps an anxious twin discover his hitherto unknown criminal brother; rescues the victim of horrendous domestic abuse; solves assorted other crimes; and turns out to be a fair-minded and affectionate father in the previously unpublished “Tallboys”, which is also a nicely done satire on “enlightened” child rearing methods as expounded by people with no understanding of children.

The editor provides a good chronological overview of Sayers’ crime fiction, and includes a wonderfully erudite and affectionate critique of Sayers’ fiction by Carolyn Heilbrun (aka “Amanda Cross”, but that’s not mentioned), and a well done parody, “Greedy Night”.

All in all, a treat for both the Sayers fan and the crime fiction addict. ****

Quebec Railway Light & Power Company (Grumley, 2006)

 J R Thomas Grumley. Quebec Railway Light and Power Company: Montmorency Division. (2006) A Bytown Railway Society book. Lots of pictures, a good potted history of the line, the Montmorency Falls, and the St Anne de Beaupre shrine that provided most of the tourist traffic. The line started as a steam railway in 1898, and was electrified in 1900. Most of the book deals with the locomotives and rolling stock.

Like many such books, this is aimed at the railfan. There’s a bibliography, the halftone printing is excellent, but there’s no map. Hence only *** of four stars.

J is For Judgment (Grafton, 1993)

Sue Grafton. J Is For Judgment (1993) A supposedly dead person is seen by an insurance agent who’s on holiday in Mexico. Since the insurers have paid his widow, they’re miffed. They send Kinsey to verify the sighting. The supposed deceased supposedly suicided by stepping off his sailboat, after the revelation that he was a swindler and a cheat. Several of his victims are also after his hide, his widow wants nothing to do with him, his erstwhile partner has his own reasons for pursuing him,, and so on.. A nicely done puzzle, with timeouts for Kinsey’s family to connect with her. Kinsey isn’t too happy about that, so we’ll find out more in later novels.

The trail ends with a satisfying solution and a goodly dollop of poetic justice. I enjoyed the book. Since Grafton’ death, 2nd-and copies of her books are becoming rare. This copy was a first edition, with dustcover. ***

Movie review: Away from Her (2007)

Away from Her (2007. D: Sarah Polley. Gordon Pinsent, Julie Christie, Olympia Dukakis)

Fiona's developing Alzheimer's results in her going into a long term care home. Grant has a very difficult time adjusting to this. At the home, Fiona starts a relationship with Aubrey, a fellow patient. His wife Marian takes him out of the home because she can't afford to keep him there without selling her house. Fiona becomes depressed. Grant comes to ask Marian to bring Aubrey back for a visit. She refuses. Later, Grant and Marian have sex. Marian sells her house, and brings Aubrey back to the home. When Grant is about to bring him to Fiona, Fiona has a lucid spell, as predicted by the nurse, and recalls that recently Grant was reading her Auden's Letters from Iceland. Grant is ecstatic that she remembers him. Fadeout. And that's the plot, based on an Alice Munro story.

Sarah Polley's adaptation of Munro's story, with its multiple layers and constant moving back and forth in time, is brilliant. The film mimics the unexpected and confusing rememberings that Alzheimer's patients are said to experience. The editing helps, with repetitive establishing shots and subtle shifts in colour, sound, and editing. The three leads are very good. The characters are all vulnerable, and it's that vulnerability that I think makes the film convincing.

Christie's performance as Fiona is wonderful. She changes from knowing that she is deteriorating, to repeating increasingly inappropriate social phrases, to being barely aware of where she is. Pinsent as Grant has captured the essence of a man used to having the supports of career, social rank, and a satisfying marriage, who realises that he can barely survive on his own, and must accept a diminished role in his own life. He doesn't realise that he has been defined by his surroundings and relationships all his life; he has believed that he was somehow self-defined. When Fiona loses her self to Alzheimer's, Grant loses his self too. He says he could not ever bear to be away from her, that's why he married her. In fact, he couldn't be himself without her; and now he must learn how do that. Dukakis as the no-nonsense wife-caregiver, who copes by pretending she is self-sufficient, knows she too needs comfort, even if only the illusion of a brief connection in bed. In the end, we have only ourselves. Those we love, and who love us, no matter how close we are, will always be apart from us.

Yet the movie isn't quite satisfying. It's a depressing story, and has its strongest moments at the beginning, when Fiona charts her own descent into non-self, and decides, while she still can, that it's time for her to go. It's Grant who can't accept the loss, who hopes that the stay in the home will be a short one, who wants to believe that Fiona is just being her quirky self, that therapy will bring her back. Towards the end, as he comes to accept that Fiona must move to the second floor (where the end stage patients are housed), we see that he will somehow survive in his new role as mere visitor. When at the end Fiona has one of those lucid times that the nurse has told Grant she will have, he accepts her embrace, blissed out by her mere presence. Is this a note of hope or of resignation? A recognition that we must accept small mercies gratefully, or the delusion that things will return to normal? Or a setup for even greater heartbreak? The ambiguities arise from the vagueness of Grant's character. The movie doesn't give us the answers, nor should it, but it should give us a clearer sense of how Grant has changed. ***