When Things Go Bad (Saramago, The Live Of Things, 2012)

 Jose Saramago. The Lives of Things (2012) Saramago is a Nobel P:riz winner. I have mixed feelings about the Nobel Prize for Literature. By its very nature it tends to reward translatable literature,  which usually means literature that’s heavy on theme and thesis and light on language and style. Saramago wrote during the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. His stories are fantasies; their ambiance and tone is claustrophobic, stifling. There’s a sense of a fate that can be neither evaded nor comprehended, only endured. The “things” are both actual objects that turn on their owners, and people that have become objects, lacking the autonomy that would make them free agents..

An oddly unengaging read for the most part. I don’t know if that’s the effect of translation. I suspect that in Portuguese there are allusions, puns, verbal effects etc that add nuance, scope, and satirical point, but which would be difficult to render in English. Another book that drew me in despite its flaws, which testifies to the power of theme. ***

Barrel Fever (Sedaris, 1994)

  David Sedaris.  Barrel Fever. (1994) A very mixed bag. In some of the stories, Sedaris comes across as the little boy that tries to shock his elders. But the elders are not shocked. Merely irritated by having a good story spoiled by affected naughtiness. Or if in a more kindly mood, perhaps amused that Sedaris feels that naughtiness is necessary to make his stories worth reading.

Many of the stories read like fictionalised memoirs. Staying true to background reality makes them involving in a personal way; Sedaris comes across as someone with a deep and charitable interest in his fellow human beings, but also with a sardonic awareness of their (our) self-delusions, and of the ways in which they (we) strive to keep our amour propre intact. That justifies the cover blurb describing him as “shrewd, wickedly funny...” despite its exaggeration.

His essays are better, I think. He is both outsider and insider, which adds flavour and spice to his observations about what are after all fairly ordinary slices of a fairly ordinary life. His ability to see what’s odd about the ordinary makes his writing both funny and valuable. It also reassures us that our own fairly ordinary lives are worth living after all. *** 

Kinsey And Me (Grafton, 2013)

Sue Grafton. Kinsey and Me. (2013) A re-read. I enjoyed the stories perhaps more this time, since I knew them well enough to suss the solution, and so could enjoy watching Grafton drop the clues and lead up to the final twist.

The second half of the book is tough reading. It’s  a series of short stories and sketches that amount to a (fictionalised) memoir of Grafton’s mother (“Vanessa”) and her relationship with her daughter (“Kit”). They inflicted pain on each other, unintentionally, but effectively. Each needed the love of the other, each tried and failed to do it well. Vanessa’s alcoholism barred the path to the easy companionship they both wanted. Grafton herself says she “learned the secrets of the human heart” from her mother. One secret is that we fear we do not deserve each other’s love. But love is not about deserving.

Recommended. ** to ****

The Sentinel (A. C. Clarke, 1983)

 Arthur C. Clarke. The Sentinel. (1983) Collection of short stories, including the one that sparked 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke provides an intro to each piece, telling about the circumstances of composition and publication. These are interesting in a tabloidy way, but add nothing to the stories. Clarke is very good at imagining technical problems and their effects. He’s careful to keep extrapolation as close to known science as possible. His characters tend to be 2.5D or flatter. Like pretty well everybody at the time, he assumes the geopolitical realities of the Cold War would continue into the relatively far future.

But his tight focus on the tale keeps us reading. He’s good at advancing plot with dialogue. His early work was published in the SciFi pulps, whose editors wanted a high narrative-to-words ratio. The resulting conciseness hides flaws that longer works would have revealed.

A good collection. Essential for the fan, and likely a pleasant diversion for anyone else.

** to ***

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 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. ****

Starlight (Bester, 1976): Classics from the Sci-Fi Golden Age.

 Alfred Bester. Starlight (1976) A combination of two previous anthologies. Bester is IMO an under-rated sci-fi author. He was a competent genre writer, and several of his sci-fi stories are classics. For example They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To, which tells of a man and a woman marooned in a city after an unexplained catastrophe that removed all other humans. She’s careful to tot up all her “purchases” at the stores. He’s anxious to find a TV repairman so that he can watch his favourite shows. Read it to find out what happens. The twist at the end is typical of Bester’s stories. He wrote for a market and did it well. I enjoyed re-reading this collection. ** to ****.

The Door To Anywhere (Pohl, 1967)

Frederik Pohl. Door To Anywhere (1967) Retitled reprint of The Tenth Galaxy Reader. Pohl’s selections are all worth reading; several have become classics of short science fiction. The 60s saw a shift from techno space opera to fictions speculating about the social and psychological effects of technical progress. Or rather, innovation; the stories generally clarify that innovation and progress are not synonyms.

Two samples: The Tunnel Under the World, in which miniature androids living in a miniature world harbour the minds and memories of real people, thus making them ideal test subjects for adverting campaigns.

An Elephant for the Prinkip, in which a spacer contracts to deliver an elephant to a collector of beasts. It’s a joke tale, but fun. The narrator ends up with are responsibility he didn’t count on. He should’ve read every word of the contract.

A good record of what sold in the 1960s sci-fi market. Recommended for any sci-fi fan. *** 

165 years ago (Essays From The Times, 1860)

(The Times), Essays From the Times. (1860) I received this collection many decades ago while researching Swift’s literary reputation as part of my work on his satiric poems. Like most critics of his verse, the anonymous essayist reprinted in this collection fails to notice that Swift used impersonation in his verse as well as in his prose. Very few readers have believed that the supposed author of A Modest Proposal is Swift himself. The suggestion that the poor should raise their children to be tasty dishes for the rich is ascribed to the supposed author, a practical man of business suggesting a solution to poverty. But the uncritically accepted Romantic notion that a poet expresses his most authentic self in his verse prevented Victorian and later critics from realising that Swift used the same method in many of his satiric verses. The speakers of Swift's satires are not Swift, but various personages. Some are people of sense, others quite the opposite.

The Romantic poets were disingenuous in their claims. The speaker of a Wordsworth poem is an idealised version of himself. The Romantics would have you believe that this idealised version is the real thing. I don’t think so. In fact, I think all writing is a kind of impersonation.

This time round, I read all the essays. What struck me most was the writers’ blithe confidence in the correctness of their judgements and censures, especially of their subject’s morality. People of every age tend to believe that their judgements on their forebears are correct. But it seems that the Victorians were the first in many centuries to believe that their judgments were final. As such, they are a cautionary example: The current wave of belief that we have reached a pinnacle of moral and ethical righteousness is as misplaced as those of every earlier age. If anything, we repeat the errors of our ancestors, technologically enhanced. Human progress is a circle dance.

These essays are essential reading for any student of the 19th century. The essay on Swift’s life and works found its place in the bibliography of my thesis. ***

Guns, Guns, Guns: A History of Gun Violence (Lapham's Quarterly, 2018)

  Lapham’s Quarterly, A History of Gun Violence. (2018) A depressing read, with enough data to show that humans have generally expended more effort and skill on making effective weapons than any other tool. War has always been as much about the combatants’ ability to manufacture effective weaponry as about their mastery of strategy and tactics.

The perfection of the hand gun by Colt, Smith & Wesson and others has made gun violence almost as normal as bread. It has also made killing so easy that murder has become the default ingredient of many crimes that would be successful without it. The US Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution has encouraged a sense of personal entitlement that has spread into all other aspects of communal life, so that conflict is for many people now the prime mode of relating to others.

As usual, an excellent overview of the subject, consisting mostly of firsthand accounts and analyses based on knowledge of the history. But a melancholy read. The cover is an interpretation of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Recommended. ****

Alligators in the Sewer (and other Folk Tales)

Thomas J. Craughwell. Alligators in the Sewer (1999) Folk tales, or real stories that happened to a friend of a friend, or FOAF. The compiler serves up relevant research into older versions of the tales. The plot generally remains the same, only details of technology and lifestyle change with the times. A first class potato-chip book, which I will dip into repeatedly as time and occasion offer. 

Recommended, if you can find a copy.

BTW, there are no alligators in the sewers of New York or any other city.

****

Fin de siècle fiction: Daughters of Decadence (Showalter 1993)

Elaine Showalter. Daughters of Decadence (1993) Showalter has selected a representative sample of short fiction written by women around 1890. These stories were published in women’s magazines and literary journals. The writers were at least semi-professional. Like their male counterparts, they wrote to satisfy the market, which at the time wanted moody pieces that suggested sensuality and luxurious indulgence in emotions, or melodramatic examinations of moral failure and just punishment.

The pieces that Showalter chose have an edge of defiance and rebellion. These writers knew their skills were equal to those of their male competitors, and naturally they did not like the lower pay and lack of recognition. They were  part of the second wave of feminism, which among other things gained the vote.

Given the heavy political freight these stories carry, are they worth reading? Yes, but like all fin-de-siècle art, they are as interesting for what they tell us of our ancestors’ taste and sentiments as for their artistic merit. As stories, they are well constructed. They cover a wide range of genres, from naturalistic fiction to romance to fantasy. I like the satire and social critique that most bring with them. They’re generally set in the upper middle and upper classes. The dialogue is artificial, but oddly enough it gives an impression of truth. I suspect that’s because men and women of those classes were always on their guard. They could not assume the language of intimacy among equals without also suggesting a sexual intimacy that could damage their reputations.

The stories are about personal and social relationships. Most tell of the emotional costs of presenting oneself as available, or withholding oneself because of some unsuitability. Women must play their roles, and so must men. It’s all very civilised in tone and style, but often viciously mean in substance. Many of the male characters display their prejudices and misogyny unwittingly. It’s no wonder that the critics objected, especially to the stories that suggested or showed that personal happiness requires the freedom to make moral choices for oneself.

The anthology apparently was assembled for use in a course on feminist literature, but the stories don’t need academic justification for reading them. If you like short stories, I think you will like these. If you also want to know something about the taste of your ancestors, I think they are good data. If you see popular literature as the mirror of the moral and ethical concerns of its times, these stories are essential reading.

Recommended. ***

A ramble through Stuart MacLean's Mind (The Vinyl Café Notebooks, 2010)

Stuart MacLean. The Vinyl Café Notebooks (2010) Just what it says. McLean sorted them according to themes. The tone is a mix of Welcome Home and the Vinyl Café stories.

An enjoyable read, even, I think, for people who aren’t fans. As in the stories, McLean sometimes pounds home the themes, which to me feels like he doesn’t trust his readers. Then I see an online post of some supposedly true-life story whose lessons are explained at (usually sentimental) length. And I recall the student who had trouble understanding anything more than the literal content of the stories. Which means, among many other things, that we tend to think that’s what’s easy for us must be easy for everybody. And so we come to so-called common sense, which is neither, most of the time. It’s just the notions that seem obvious to us, limited by our experience, and our brain’s depressing tendency to take a single example as proof of a generalisation.

OK, looks like I’ve committed Mclean-like ramble of thoughts.

Recommended. ***

Vinyl Café Classics: Extreme Vinyl Café (2009)

Stuart McLean Extreme Vinyl Café (2009) Some of McLean’s classics, the ones we want to hear again and again. Such as Petit Lac Noir, when Dave and Morley stop at the wrong cottage, and do the renovations and repairs their friend asked them to do as rent. Or A Trip to Quebec, where Sam misses the bus because Murphy answers "Present" for him. And then meets a girl with a skateboard and has the first love of his life.

There’s one more book of stories to go. I’m enjoying this wallow in McLean’s brand of not-quite-sentimental nostalgia. Well, I suppose other people will see sentimentality where I see bitter-sweet acceptance of the fragility of life, the fragility that makes it precious.

****

Secrets From the Vinyl Cafe (2006):

Stuart McLean. Secrets From the Vinyl Café (2006) The common motif in these stories is misunderstood information kept secret to avoid embarrassment or worse.

Usually the person who misunderstands keeps it secret, as Sam does when he misinterprets some words of Morley’s when she takes Arthur the dog to the vet. Sam believes that Dave is dying too. Dave keeps his confusions secret to avoid the embarrassment of looking foolish or incompetent.

And while these stories often veer towards tragedy, their structure is generally the same: each complication develops perfectly naturally from the current state of misunderstanding or misinformation.

Someone has said that tragedy and farce are two sides of the same page. McLean manages to put them on the same page, and the result is a satisfying mix of reality and the nostalgia that reminds us of what makes life worth living.

****

Two More From The Vinyl Cafe (Vinyl Cafe Unplugged, Vinyl Cafe Diaries)

Stuart McLean. Vinyl Café Unplugged (2000) #3. It begins with a story about Arthur the dog, who figures out how to insinuate himself into Dave and Morley’s bedroom and onto the bed. It includes the story of Eugene and the fig tree, and how Sam helps Eugene bury the and later resurrect the tree.

McLean’s stories are classified as humour or light reading, differentiated from more serious fare. “More serious” usually means “more gloomy” when applied to literature and the other arts. When I see “realistic” in some blurb or review, I know that there will be blood, if not on the saddle (1) then elsewhere. I think there’s  a misclassification, aka “category error”, in these descriptions. Yes, McLean’s stories are humorous. They are also profoundly serious. Dave’s errors of judgement could lead to catastrophe. That they don’t comes down to kindness, love, forgiveness, extended to him by Morley, his children, and his neighbours. And Arthur the dog.

To affirm that these virtues exist, and that without them we would lead Hobbesian nasty, brutish, and short lives, is a serious matter. The cynic will raise his eyebrows, the pessimist will roll her eyes, the moralist will frown and prepare a sharp rebuke. But they’re all wrong. Life isn’t perfect, humans are flawed, and that will cause pain and sometimes worse. But life is a gift, family and friends are treasures, and joys large and small enrich our lives. That’s what McLean’s stories affirm.

Read any of the Vinyl Café collections. Read them all. ****

1) Blood on the saddle
blood on the ground,
great big gobs of blood all around.
Pity the cowboy
lying in the gore,
he ain’t gonna ride the range no more.

Stuart McLean.  Vinyl Café Diaries (2003)These stories fill in the back story of Dave and

Morley and their family. I’m still bingeing, haven’t yet tired of McLean’s bitter-sweet humour, more certain than ever that he’s a major writer.

Humour may be a matter of temperament, but writing humour takes great skill. Getting the timing right is essential, and that’s hard enough live, and  much more difficult in writing. McLean is a master of the momentarily distracting detail, the aside that pauses the narrative just long enough, the word that triggers the insight that makes us laugh. Merely as examples of skill, his stories are masterpieces. In their apparently artless evocations of everyday life, they raise deep questions about what makes life worth living. He occasionally suggests answers, but these at best merely hint at the meanings of his tales. ****

Vinyl Cafe, 1st collection (Stories from the Vinyl Cafe, 1995)

 Stuart McLean. Stories From The Vinyl Café. (1995) The first collection, and it sets the high standard that all the other collections met. Dave and Morley aren’t yet the focus of the history that McLean relates in the rest of his stories. But they are already what they will be: very much ordinary flawed people who try their best to do their best, and fail and succeed as we all do.

McLean’s gift is his ability to stir nostalgia, regret, joy, contentment, and grief without descending into sentimentality. His style is journalistic without being reportorial. We get a mostly neutral narrator who tells us what’s happening, and occasionally allows himself a comment on what he thinks it all means. And what does it all mean? That love makes life worth living.

I’m on a Vinyl Café binge, and I find it hard to stop reading. ****

Dave Cooks the turkey and other mishaps (Home From the Vinyl Café, 1998)

Stuart McLean. Home from the Vinyl Café. (1998) The second collection. It begins with Dave Cooks The Turkey, which has become a fixture on CBC's  As It Happens during the week leading up to Christmas Eve, when they play Alan Maitland reading The Shepherd. It’s as funny on the page as in the audio. The rest of the stories are the same quality. They have the ring of truth, no matter how bizarrely the situation develops. As in Laurel and Hardy movies each consequence follows logically from the previous one, driven by circumstances and character, and ends in bizarre catastrophe. The stories are also elegies for a way of life that’s past, a way of life that never existed, except in the rosy-dark memories of our childhoods and youth. Nostalgia is the common leavening of these tales. They evoke wry smiles and bitter-sweet memories.

Recommended. ****

Travels Across Canada: Stuart McLean's Welcome Home (1992)

Stuart McLean. Welcome Home. (1992) McLean took a few trips across the country, and stayed in several small towns. Then he wrote this elegy for what was already rapidly disappearing 30+ years ago. It’s pretty well gone.

Relevant anecdote: In 2023, we had a family reunion in Donalda, Alberta. The town no longer has a grocery store. It does have a hotel with a bar and a restaurant that serves meals on weekends. When I first went there in the 1950s, the town had a bank, a couple of service stations, a dairy, a grocery store, a school, a railroad line that served the grain elevators, and so on. Most of the businesses are gone or have been converted into homes. The town is now a suburb for Camrose, about 3/4 hour away, a typical commute these days. They have a community hall, where the local caterers served us several excellent meals. We had a good time.

McLean has the gift of the telling detail that concentrates the meanings of his story in one memorable moment. The people in these towns know that their way of life is ending, but they refuse to capitulate. Community is strong, and as long as you have family and friends, life is worth living. It's over thirty years since McLean's tour of Canada. It would be a gift for another one, but I don't know of anyone who could do it.

Highly recommended. ****