My Heart is Broken (Gallant, 1957)

Mavis Gallant. My Heart Is Broken. (1957) Gallant’s second collection, not published in Canada until 1964. 

The settings of her stories vary geographically, but socially they are small. Like Austen, her subject is human nature. A ruthless observer, she presents characters who lack self-knowledge, or who deliberately dissemble. They may edge towards a revelation, but rarely achieve it.  Gallant shows that lack of self-knowledge is the obverse of lack of awareness of others. The result is misunderstanding, pain, social disgrace, lives descending into an uneasy equilibrium of failure.

This may sound like Gallant’s stories are dreary, but they’re not. The almost offhand insertion of the telling detail that reveals the complexities of human nature drew me in. I ended up understanding her characters more than I understand most of the people I know. Her method shows us not only how to create character in fiction but how to observe character in real life. The  result is to understand, and with understanding comes the ability to accept.

Not a page turner, but I kept returning to it. Recommended. ***

High Plains Drifter (1973)

  High Plains Drifter. (1973) [D: Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill]

A stranger rides into Lago, site of an illegal mine. He gets rid of three thugs who were hired by the town to keep the peace, but turned nasty. Three convicts, who are owed loadsadough by the town for having eliminated an inconvenient person, are coming for their pay. The town hires the Stranger to prepare for them. That’s the set-up. What unfolds is a moody tale of morally challenged people, the ambiguities of justice, the imperfection of human nature, the self-delusion that sustains respectability, and so on.

A great movie, with some brutal rough spots that will turn off many viewers.

The last scene: The town clown is marking a headstone as the Stranger leaves. “I still don’t know your name,” he says to the Stranger. “Yes, you do,” the Stranger replies. We do, too: His name is Nemesis.

Recommended. **** (9/10 for IMDB)

Wycliffe x 3: How to Kill a Cat (1970); the Scapegoat (1978); Four Jacks (1985).

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat (1970) A victim deliberately disfigured to prevent or delay identification. Wycliffe is on holiday; he has mixed feelings about having to investigate. The girl has a mixed past, her life intersecting with people who value respectability, families who thrive on power games, and of course witnesses and suspects who omit or misrepresent the truth. A satisfactory early member if the series. Burley obviously loves Cornwall; some of the best passages gave me vivid impressions of the harbour, the tourists, the mix of locally necessary and tourist-trap businesses, the cramped streets and houses, and the weather. **½ 

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat (1978) At Hallowe’en, a Wheel with a life-sizedeffigy is lit and rolled blazing down a hill and over a cliff into the sea. Jonathan Riddle, a hard-hearted, money-focussed business man, has disappeared, and the awful thought that he may have been inside the effigy first raises the possibility of murder and then distracts Wycliffe and his team into red-herring strewn byways which both extend the tale and allow Burley to do what I think he really likes best: comment on the darkness and absurdity of the human heart’s longings.

Riddle is an unpleasant man for whom business is as much a means of exerting power as for making money. Hence many suspects, most with the common motive of vengeance. One of the better Wycliffe novels. ***

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks. (1985) A successful writer receives four Jacks of Diamonds in the mail, reminding him of an ancient guilt. He’s killed, and his body’s burned in the tent that serves as the workshop for an archeological dig on his land. Wycliffe, on holiday once again, must lead the investigation. The motive is vengeance for an ancient wrong. The murderer is cunning and careful, placing clues to implicate first one innocent then another. He overdoes it, which gives Wycliffe the insight he needs to rearrange the evidence and construct the true account of the crime. One of Burley’s best. ****

Leacock Times Three (A Treasury of Stephen Leacock, 1999)

Stephen Leacock. A Treasury of Stephen Leacock (1999)

Literary Lapses. (1910) Including “My Financial Career” (made into an animated short by the National Film Board); “The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones”; “Hoodoo McFiggin’s Christmas”; and other classics. The general tone is that of a genial raconteur, but here and there the mask slips, and Leacock the irate satirist shows through.

Sunshine Sketches of A Little Town (1912) This book made Leacock’s reputation as the humourous uncle that everyone loves to listen to. The chapters on the “Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe” and the “Great Election of Missinaba County” and the “Candidacy of Mr Smith” have a dark undertone that seems to have escaped most of the early critics of Leacock’s satire. For satire it is, however genial and sentimental it may appear. Leacock’s theme is the unwarranted self-regard of the human animal. We want status, we want to think well of ourselves, and so we yield to the temptation of misrepresenting our deeds and motives, and valuing respectability above morality. This is often funny, but some of the illusions we agree to foster in each other may lead to real evils. Thorpe falls for a con and loses the money he made trading silver mine stocks. There’s more than a hint of ballot stuffing in the Election, but when Smith wins, everyone agrees not only that his party was the best after all, but that everyone has always known it.

Some of the best passages are Leacock’s wistful recall of the time when the world was kind and beautiful and filled with innocent joy, before career and adult responsibilities led him away from the small town of Mariposa to the cruel, ugly, joyless city. Those of us who had a happy childhood will recognise the nostalgia. It’s one of many reasons why I enjoyed rereading Sunshine Sketches.

Winnowed Wisdom (1926) A more explicitly satirical collection of comments on the follies of humankind. Pretty well all of them still apply.

Recommended. **½ to ****

Three by Simenon (First Omnibus, 1970)

 Georges Simenon. First Omnibus. (1970)

The Neighbours (1967). Started reading this one, didn’t get past the first half dozen pages.

Maigret & the Nahour Case. (1967) Early Maigret. They get better as Simenon develops his terse, dialogue-heavy style. The Maigrets’ friend Dr Pardon calls late at night with a strange tale of treating a gunshot wound. Complications include a missing gun, people claiming false identities, dysfunctional families, and so on. A right mess. Reading it was fun while it lasted, but I had to skim a few paragraphs to remind myself what it was all about.

 Monsieur Monde Vanishes. (1952) Mr Monde, late 40s, prosperous, respected, owner of a successful business, married to a woman who values only his money, one morning walks out of his office leaving no word about his plans. He takes most of his bank account with him, but it’s stolen less than a day later in a seedy hotel. He finds a job, has an intermittent affair with a small-time actress, eventually makes his way back to his old life and wife, released from illusions about the necessity of respectability etc. Worth a reread.

Simenon fans may want to read all three novels. **½

The Brain is not a Digital Computer (The Muse In The Machine, Gelernter 1994)

David Gelernter. The Muse in the Machine. (1994) A strange book, which makes a number of major points or claims.

First, Gelernter posits a spectrum of attention, from the barely conscious, half-recalled dream state to the rational, hyper-focussed attention and linear thinking that we’ve learned to accept as the best kind. However, says Gelernter, creativity is highest when attention is low and the mind “wanders.” Hyper-focussed attention is on the contrary not very creative. Its main (and perhaps only) value is to bring order to the usually chaotic structures of the insights created when our attention is low.

There’s some truth to this. In fact, it’s become a pop-psych cliche. Every now and then some analogy tripped over when the mind wanders triggers an insight.  But in my experience those events are not guaranteed. In fact, they are rare enough to make them memorable. I think that pretty well everybody has worried a problem until a solution “presented itself” unexpectedly. But we know that it’s a process that we can’t control. About all we can infer is there is a lot of thinking well below the level of conscious attention, some of it surfaces, and occasionally the product is useful. We can allow this process to work by letting go of a problem and chilling. But there’s no guarantees.

A Wandering Mind?

Second, the mind is not software. I agree, in part for the reason Gelernter puts forward, which is that the analogy of  “mind” with “virtual machine” breaks down. A virtual machine is one that’s implemented in software running on another machine. Abstract the concept of “machine” to an entity that performs some task in response to some input, then any program is a virtual machine. E.g., the wordprocessor I’m using takes data from the keyboard, and transforms that into a block of data in memory. It sends copies of the data to the graphics processor, which translates them into a display on the monitor. When I hit Print, it sends data to the printer, which in turn lays microscopic dots of ink onto a sheet of paper. To my eye, it’s the text I composed.

This is not how the brain works.

The analogy is that “mind” is a massive data-processing program running on the brain. Or a mess of such programs running in parallel. Hence a virtual machine. Write the program(s) in a suitable language, and the “mind” can run on any capable “substrate.” Such is the fantasy supporting the desire to “upload” the self and live forever. Gelernter is no biologist, but he argues that his concept of an attention spectrum requires a body. IOW, a mind cannot exist apart from a body. I agree, but my reason is I think somewhat simpler. The brain’s primary function is to operate the body. Most of its energy is expended in doing just that.

(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/)

 “Thinking”, such as it is, takes up a very small part of the brain’s energy budget. Being “me” is what thinking is mostly about, and it’s really just an afterthought.

The last part of the book is a nicely done symbolic reading of  The Song of Solomon. Gelernter is a believing Orthodox Jew. He posits that the hyper-focussed attention that we nowadays equate with thinking is a recent development. (Schooling is intended to train us to think this way.) An unfortunate effect of high-attention rational thought is a misreading of ancient texts, which are, he says, the products or records of low-attention thinking, hence their nonlinear narratives, symbolism and metaphor, and reliance on analogy to make both narrative and thematic sense. I think this is the most valuable part of the book. But it doesn’t prove that the concept of an attention spectrum explains creativity.

A curious book, with many interesting and useful insights. Worth a read. **½

S Is For Silence (Grafton, 2005)

Sue Grafton.  S Is For Silence. (2005) Violet Sullivan disappeared on a July 4th evening. Her daughter Daisy wants her found, because she feels abandoned. Kinsey winkles out the truth. Her investigation upsets a lot of apple carts, as usual. Grafton includes flashbacks to narrate Violet’s story up to the time of her disappearance. These also give us glimpses of the suspects and bystanders, as well as clues that Kinsey (and later the police) do not have. Even so, it takes the reader (me) a while to suss who killed Violet.

Grafton’s interested in character, and in how mistaken ideas of morality, the yearning for respectability, and the rigidity of socially defined roles deform relationships and prevent happiness. That some people bring psychopathic evil into the mix just makes the world more dangerous. Still, in the end, a sort of justice prevails, and people achieve acceptance of what they can’t change. Grafton indulges in a few bits of poetic justice, thus satisfying our all-too-human thirst for revenge.

One of Grafton’s best, not least because the interleaving of past and present. ****

Conspiracies: Foucault's Pendulum (Eco, 1989)

Umberto Eco. Foucault’s Pendulum. (1989) It took me about a month to read this book. Not a page-turner, but it drew me in, and I kept returning to it. A rich mess of reality, conspiracy theories, human gullibility, back stories, esoteric lore, epigrammatic observations on anything relevant to narrative moment, paranormal (or maybe not) events, computer science, code breaking, the mysterious history of the Templars –  all this and more just kept me reading. And of course Foucault's Pendulum, swinging through its arc every 16.5 seconds.

The central conceit is that three editors, who work for a publishing house, decide to invent a new version of the Templar story, which has occupied too much of the attention of the hapless authors who are seduced into paying to publish their discoveries of the secret of the Templars, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and the other secret societies believed to run the machinery that we are pleased to call real life.

A rich and satisfying book. Read it. ****

Art – random thoughts.

Art, like money, is what we think it is. That’s why money is, apparently, the only measure of art. If it’s free, it’s not art. Or so it seems.

Painters were once prized as picture makers. Cameras have devalued the craft of making pictures by hand. That has shifted the focus to making pictures worth looking at. Composition now matters in ways it did not matter before. Hence abstract art, which is pure composition. Impressionism, which refuses to provide the optical illusion of reality. Expressionism, which claims to show emotions and meanings directly. Pop art, which detaches the image from its context. And so on.

Even photographers now attempt to do something other than make a naïve representation of reality. The subjects are staged, disparate objects are brought together in front of the camera, the photographer moves around to get the best angle of view, digital technologies enable manipulation well beyond the capabilities of the darkroom. 

Old and new image-making technologies are attempts at exploring and redefining picture-making in order to make images worth looking at.

All the while, the ease of making images has discouraged looking. Too many images – very few worth a 2nd look – how do we know that worth? By their nagging presence in memory? By the content? By the palette? The composition?

Any or all of these will make an image stick. The unpredictable part is individual preference or taste. And that perhaps even more elusive entity, meaning. All images signify, but what they signify depends on how the viewer decodes what they see. That includes the image maker, whose perception of meaning is no better or more valid than any other. The image maker’s intention cannot overcome the inherent ambiguities in the image. This inability to determine the significance of the work is common to all forms and modes of expression. Including this one, which is certain to be misunderstood, to be interpreted in ways I do not intend and cannot prevent. This lack of control explains the futility of censorship.

Curling with the Devil (Mitchell, The Black Bonspiel of Willie McCrimmon)

 W. O. Mitchell. The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon. (1993) Mitchell’s version of a folk-tale trope: the defeat of the Devil. “Mr Cloutie”, on one of his regular visits to Shelby, Alberta, needs his curling boots repaired. Willie MacCrimmon obliges, one thing leads to another, and he’s pledged his soul if he loses a match against Mr Cloutie and his hellish rink, but gets a guaranteed slot at the Brier if he wins. Mrs Brown, wife of one of MacCrimmon’s rink, opposes curling on Sunday, and has guilted Mr Pringle, the United Church minister, into announcing the prohibition from his pulpit. That and several other obstacles must be overcome, but of course MacCrimmon’s rink wins, and they advance to the Brier. All’s well that ends well, as in any well-made fable it should.

Mitchell’s ability to puncture hypocrisy, show up the confusion of respectability with morality, and other sins makes this more than a mere entertainment. It also affirms, rightly, that curling is the true Canadian game. This edition has nicely apposite illustrations by Wesley W. Bates.

Recommended, if you can find a copy (I’m keeping mine). ****

The Pegnitz Junction (Gallant, 1982)

Mavis Gallant. The Pegnitz Junction. (1982) The title novella plus five short stories, all about post-war Germany. They have the ring of truth; Gallant knows herself, and so knows the human heart and mind. She notes the small gestures, the shifts in voice and posture that express emotions and hint at thoughts, the conventional speech that hides true feelings. She is a writer “on whom nothing is lost”. She has a subtle and ruthless moral sensibility, presenting us with characters who condemn themselves with their words and actions.

Post-war Germany was unmoored, aware of but unwilling to face its past, unable to do more than reconstruct a material prosperity that served as a shield against unpleasant thoughts and memories. Austria also was mired in this moral vagueness and ambiguity. That’s likely why I found these stories strangely familiar and unsurprising.

An early collection, before Gallant’s skill and artistry were widely recognised. Recommended. ****

The Defiant Agents (Norton, 1962)

Andre Norton. The Defiant Agents. (1962) From the back-cover blurb: “Travis Fox, once the unwilling captive of the run-away spaceship Galactic Derelict, has volunteered - eagerly - for the mission to colonize Topaz....” Some kind of mind-alteration reverts the colonists to their Apache ancestry. A similar technique has reverted a rival group of Russians to their Mongol ancestry, and so we have a conflict. The Russians are also subject to vicious mind-control which makes them robot-like slaves to their (unchanged) Russian masters. The assumption that far future space travel would be dominated by the rival USA and USSR demonstrates the common argument that5 SF is about the present. The mind-altering  element recalls the Cold War fear of "brain washing".

There are also mysterious ruins left behind by previous occupants of the planet. This subplot is scanted, I think because pulp publishers wanted short books.

Norton has worked out most of the glitches in this set-up, and provides a typical mid-century pulp entertainment, weak on character and ambience, but strong on plot. It reads like a magazine serial. A pleasant entertainment for SF fans, this is an early work. Norton became one of the masters. **

Q is for Quarry (Grafton 2002)

 Sue Grafton. Q is for Quarry. (2002) Two retired detectives ask Kinsey to help them solve a cold case. They can flash their badges, and call in favours from old colleagues and have new evidence processed, but Kinsey can get unforced and therefore likely more truthful evidence from the people who may be involved.

About twenty years earlier, an unidentified girl’s body was found at the edge of a quarry. The task seems simple: find out who she was, and the murderer should be easy to find.

The quarry happens to be on land belonging to Kinsey’s family; the subplot of her still unwilling response to her relatives’ fence-mending attempts isn’t needed to make a good story, but Grafton’s fans want to know more about Kinsey, and Grafton (and her publisher) are happy to oblige.

A well done puzzle. The basic facts are real: there really was an unknown girl found near Santa Barbara. Grafton’s solution is ingenious, plausible, and entirely fictional. Wikipedia has the current status of the still unsolved cold case.

Recommended. ***