Death (Lapham's Quarterly 06-4, 2013)

  Lapham’s Quarterly 06-4: Death (2013) The many ways people have died and been done to death, musings about death, religious warnings and promises about life after death, the decay of the body and the waning of memories, the consolations and pain of grief.... Death is a large subject.
     Much of what we do is an attempt to either thwart death or to ignore it. A few minutes ago, I read an article reporting that cancer deaths in Canada are down overall while some cancers are increasing. More screening is one reason. The tone of the report suggests that somehow the defeat of cancer will prevent death. But of course it won’t. The odds of dying from cancer are about 1 in 7 or 14%, but the odds of dying from any one of the myriad causes are 1 in 1, or 100%.
     Meanwhile, we plan our lives as if they will continue at least until the next scheduled event. Life must go on.
     An excellent collection, as usual. ***

Fake News (Lapham's Quarterly special issue, 2018)

Lapham’s Quarterly: A History of Fake News (2018) As far back as we have writing, there’s been fake news. I suspect there was fake news well before any was recorded in writing. There’s also been pushback. Much of ancient fake news was merely exaggeration of the sponsor’s importance. Near eastern relics show that as often as not the new regime defaced their predecessor’s fake news and replaced it with their own.  Some of has this leaked into sacred texts: Ancient Israel was not as significant politically or economically as the Old Testament suggests.
     Quite early on, fake news has been both deliberate, and a mere side effect of more important objectives, such as attracting readers and advertisers in order to increase cash flow. The Hearst chain was notorious for starting the Spanish-American War for just this purpose. Electronic media have merely magnified these tendencies, as they have magnified all communications and accelerated their effects. This collection gives us mostly insider reports on how fake news was generated, with occasional confessions of unease or shame. It’s both entertaining and appalling. Like the news itself. ****

Stamboul Train (Graham Greene, 1932)

 Graham Greene. Stamboul Train. (1932). Green called this novel an “entertainment”, and it’s certainly that. A mix of characters travel from Oostende to Stamboul on the Orient Express. Carleton Myatt’s purpose is to complete a business deal in Stamboul. The other characters all somehow cross his path. A chorus girl, a political idealist, a murderous thief, an English shop-keeper couple on holiday, and so on.
Green’s invention is prodigious, enough for several novels. The story edges close to farce here and there, but human weaknesses always jerk it back into reality. Or maybe life is a farce, and Greene adds a dash of high realism.
     There is no poetic justice here, despite Greene;s claim that it’s merely an entertainment. Greene is a ruthless observer of the failures of  human nature and the systems we’ve invented to control it. Love and betrayal, greed and generosity, political paranoia and ignorance, meanness and naivete – it’s a rich stew of humanity. Green’s deprecation of his work may been a ploy to forestall criticism. It may also have prevented recognition that it is one of those apparently second-rate books that rise to the level of art.
     I thoroughly enjoyed the book. There were two film adaptations. I think a 4- or 6-part video series might do it justice. ***

Fred Pohl's Best (The Best of Frederik Pohl, 1975)

Frederik Pohl. The Best of Frederik Pohl (1975) Pohl wrote his first SF stories while still in high school. After a few stints as editor, he withdrew, but re-emerged some years later. The range and weirdness of his invention reminds me of Philip K. Dick, but his tone is lighter, and his satire milder than Dick’s. Pohl is interested in the effects of technological and social changes. He’s also interested in projecting current trends into the future and developing them to absurdity. He’s especially annoyed by advertising, by the relentless push to produce and consume more and more. He knows the tricks of manipulation using language, and his best stories demonstrate their effectiveness rather too well.
     Like many SF writers of the time, he tends to ignore of ecology, usually because ecology would complicate the story. “The Midas Touch” for example supposes a system of over-production and hence over-consumption. As satire on the consumer society, on the unquestioning assumption that ever-increasing production is the purpose of the economy, it’s well done. But the system would have collapsed from ecological exhaustion long before it reached the absurd levels of consumption portrayed. So Pohl ignores the ecological implications of over-consumption because he wants to make another point: That we are trapped in boxes of our own making, and so we persist in solving problems that would simply disappear if we changed our assumptions.
     The motif of unsuspected invasion by hostile aliens figures in several of the tales. Some critics have suggested this is an expression of the Cold War fear of Communist subversion. But the stories work just as well, and perhaps better, read simply as warnings that the Universe is likely a very hostile place. I enjoyed (re)-reading these stories Recommended. *** to ****

Easy read (Find Me A Villain, Yorke 1983)

Margaret Yorke. Find Me A Villain (1983) Nina, blind-sided by her husband’s demand for a divorce after 20 years of what seemed like a solid marriage, accepts a house sitting job in a much too bucolic village. The complications involve the gardener, who may be a serial killer; a shell-shocked ex-Navy man and his fussing protective wife; the vicar (of course); Nina’s children (who detest their father); and so on. The blurb indicates the there is “high tension” and terror, but I found neither. In fact, it took me three tries to get far enough into the story that I wanted to see how the author disentangled the knots she had crafted. So there’s that. The style is functional, best when the author strives for ambience. The characters are barely 2.0D, even Nina, who is the narrative centre of most of the book. I’m writing this about ten days after I finished the book, and had to skim a few pages to remind myself of what it was about.
      Yorke had a successful career as a writer. If this book is typical, one can see why: It’s a mildly engaging entertainment, the kind that people used to buy to while away a train journey. The occasional waspish remarks about the Other Woman and the psychological costs of marriage suggest that Yorke was writing from experience.**

Natural Light Photography (Ansel Adams)

 Ansel Adams. Natural Light Photography (1952) Adams was one of the greatest photographers of all time. He understood the technical problems of the medium thoroughly. In his quest for photographs that reproduced what the viewer of the scene perceived and felt he manipulated exposure, development, and printing shamelessly. Nowadays, the algorithms built into our digital cameras perform calculations and judgements similar to his. The result is that we can make technically nearly flawless images. The onus is now on selection of subject and composition, which is, not at all paradoxically, a more difficult and intuitive an art than technical perfection.
     This book, #4 in a series of six on Basic Photography, is a valuable reference for anyone making photographs with film, especially if one has the filters listed by Adams. His Zone system of determining exposure is essential. Our digital cameras, which use multi-point exposure and algorithms, perform the Zone system calculations for us. His discussion of how to compensate for the different light sensitivities of different films remind us that the sensors in our digital cameras suffer from the same inconsistencies, and the algorithms can’t always compensate. As with film, we may have to wait for changes in the light, or manipulate it.
     Even for digital photography, Adams’s insistence on paying attention to the light is his most valuable contribution. It’s the light that creates the impression we want to see in the final print. Whatever technology the photographer uses, they must know and understand how their devices capture the light. The flat light from an overcast sky or open shade, the brilliant light from a clear sky or direct sun, the reflected light from nearby walls, trees, snow etc, all these affect how the final image will look. Adams knew from long experience and careful note taking how to use his “instruments” to make his pictures.
     Despite the obsolescence of many of the technical specifications, this is still an s essential book. Skip the tech data, and concentrate on what Adams says about light and its effects.
     The printing technology used is basic letter press and halftone images. These cannot reproduce the subtle range of greys of the photographic prints. Even so, study of the pictures will help anyone wanting to make better images. Recommended. ****

How It Is Made (Hawks, 1946)

 Ellison Hawks. How It Is Made. (1946) Internal evidence in text and images shows the book was originally published ca. 1930. An online search revealed that this edition was published in 1946.
     As an introduction to the technology of the time, it’s excellent. It’s also a historical record, not only of the technology, but also the attitudes towards science and industry. Hawks expresses, and expects his readers to share, a generally admiring and prideful stance towards the triumphs of human ingenuity. There is not a hint of environmental awareness: it’s all about making things that will serve human needs and desires. Hawks is also firmly patriotic: England is still the Workshop of the World, although some references suggest Hawks knew that the USA was supplanting Great Britain as the industrial leader.
     An interesting compendium. Allowing for surprisingly minor advances in most technologies, still a good introduction to the engineering that we all rely on. The most significant differences between then and now are the use of plastics, the development of solid-state electronics, and the spread of computers into every nook and cranny of our daily lives. Recommended if you can find a copy. ***
     More about Ellison: https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2009/01/ellison-hawks.html

 

Corruption and Past Crimes: Blue City (Ross MacDonald)

 Ross MacDonald. Blue City (1947) Another pre-Lew Archer novel, but it has all the motifs and themes that characterise MacDonald’s novels. Johnny Weather, recently discharged from the US Army, goes home hoping to reconcile with his estranged father. Instead, he finds his father’s widow in partnership with a gangster, his father’s murder unsolved, and his father’s erstwhile partner and rival running the town as his personal fiefdom. Small people with big dreams, psychopaths, corrupt police and politicians, people tempted into crime by the nobility of their goals, people striving for the protective amour of respectability, it’s the American Dream turned nightmare.
     McDonald’s style and plotting is still evolving; this book is no page-turner. But it works as a crime novel. A good entertainment for any fan of mid-20th century American crime fiction, and a must for any fan/student of MacDonald. **½