Hitchens essays: And Yet (2015)

     And Yet... (2015) Posthumous collection of essays, mostly from periodicals such as Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, etc. His book reviews are thorough and sometimes occasions for polemics. His polemics are always interesting. He was a libertarian who detested totalitarianism, including religion. He became an American citizen late in life, and immediately began digging into the history that is glossed over by the myths. He tried to be honest and rational; one of his heroes was Orwell, because Orwell tried to be as truthful as humanly possible.
     Picking any one essay as an example won’t do Hitchens justice, but here goes: Bah, Humbug attacks Christmas, not because it’s religious but because the relentless urging to buy gifts promotes hypocrisy. The holiday instills guilt: if you don’t lavish gifts upon your nearest and dearest, you obviously don’t love them. Along the way Hitchens reminds us that, as soon as Cromwell’s victories gave them the power, the Puritans banned Christmas in England. It was a pagan feast, not a Christian one. Thus those who wish to “keep the Christ in Christmas” betray both their historical and theological ignorance. In any case, what we now think of as time-honoured Christmas traditions were invented wholesale by the Victorians. Prince Albert and Dickens have a lot to answer for.
     Beware: if you start reading, you will want to read the next essay and the next and the next, and before you know it, you’ve spent a hour or so immersed in this book. ***

P. D. James. Talking About Detective Fiction (2009)

     P. D. James. Talking About Detective Fiction (2009) The blurb refers to a :perfect marriage of author and subject”, which is hyping this nicely produced book a bit too much. But it was a pleasant read nevertheless. P. D. James breaks no new ground, I’d be surprised if she did. She clearly loves detective fiction more than other crime fiction, and she drops a few useful hints about how she does her own work. It begins with a setting, progresses to the characters, and (we infer) only then do the victim, the perpetrator, and the method emerge from her imaginings.
    James writes a clear and elegant style. What we may have suspected from her fiction, that she’s a cool and sometimes ruthless observer human evil, is here confirmed. Like Poirot, she has a bourgeois attitude to murder: she disapproves of it. She admires Christie’s puzzle-setting plots, but like most readers notes that Christie is weak on psychology and character. I first realised this when I noticed that Christie’s  characters all talk the same bland upper middle class English. James prefers Sayers, Allingham, and Marsh, in that order. I’d put Allingham last, but James’s comments have persuaded me to read more of her work.
All in all, a very pleasant read. ***

Kingsley Amis What Became of Jane Austen? (1970)

Kingsley Amis What Became of Jane Austen? (1970) Amis wrote occasional pieces, mostly book reviews it seems, and 30-odd are gathered in this collection. The overwhelming impression is that of a man with a clear sense of his own taste, and a rarely disguised contempt for those who disagree with him. Amis is also given to gratuitous insult of people he doesn’t like, such a sociologists. Much of this rudeness adds nothing to his argument or explication, but appears in the form of well-turned epigrams or similes, which must have cost him some effort to produce, hence his inability to leave them out. That being said, the essays are entertaining enough, and I do happen to agree with his (late) recognition of the pernicious influence of the Leavises. The title essay attacks Austen on the grounds that Mansfield Park fails in its moral judgments. Not having read that book, I can’t comment; but his throw-away comments on Pride and Prejudice indicate that Amis prides himself on enjoying a contrarian taste.
     The couple of personal pieces that round out the collection, especially his memoir of his father, make him appear somewhat more amiable, which suggests that his curmudgeonliness was largely a pose, a judgment that he would no doubt strenuously deny. An entertaining collection, which makes me think that I should read a couple of his novels. * to ***

Dashiell Hammett. A Man Called Spade (1944)

Front and back of original paperback version.

  Dashiell Hammett. A Man Called Spade (1944) Reprint as trade paperback, with Introduction by Ellery Queen, who informs us that there are only four Sam Spade stories: The Maltese Falcon, and three short stories, which are included in this book. Two other Hammett stories add to the bulk, and make the book worth printing and publishing. The stories are reprinted in chronological order, and one can see Hammett’s skill improving, especially his skill at characterisation, and the last story, told in the first person by a boxer, is as much a character study as a crime story.
     Queen claims that this is what sets Hammett apart from other writers, especially the “effete, namby-pamby” English ones. Symons echoes Queen’s claim in his Bloody Murder. On the strength of the stories in this book that’s nonsense. Like other crime fiction authors, Hammett provides just enough characterisation to carry the plot. Like other escapist fiction writers, his aim is to sketch the outline of a character that the reader can fill in with his favourite traits: his own. As puzzles, these stories are weak, too; the solution provided by Spade is not deduced so much as invented. Queen is right to stress the “realism” of Sam Spade, by which he means his ordinariness and his taste for violence, but whether these make the character more realistic is debatable. I think the equation of realism with the dark side of human nature is just as romantic as its opposite.
     I also don’t see why Hammett is considered such a great stylist. The writing in the Spade stories is flat and tedious. The only interest is the plot, such as it is, and I for one don’t feel any urge to reread, not even “His Brother’s Keeper,” the only piece in which a character is realised fully, as fully as can be done a few thousand words, that is. Those who followed Hammett’s innovations took the style several steps further, and Symons claim that Ross MacDonald, for example, overwrites misses the mark. * (2003)

    Update 2020-10-22: Original paperback cover images added.

Julian Symons. Bloody Murder. (1974)

     Julian Symons. Bloody Murder. From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History (1972. Rev. 1974) On the whole, Symons gets it right. His tracing of the development from the precursors (Poe, Godwin, Collins) to the masters at various periods, and the changes brought about by dissatisfaction with formulas, is first rate. There is a great deal of excellent information here, and his guesses at future developments have in general been borne out. He did not foresee the reinvention of the police-procedural as the forensic procedural (because he finds technical details tedious), neither did he foresee that the police procedural as such could develop a good deal further in the direction of social comedy and criticism. Nor did he foresee the development of the crime novel into historical romance. But his guesses are wrong more in degree than in kind: he expected the crime novel’s future to be essentially more of the same. The book predates P D James, Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter, Ellis Peters, and other recent masters of the form.
     It’s his lingering debt to F R Leavis that grates. He definitely rates crime fiction as less valuable than the Serious Novel. Yet his invocation of “art” as a criterion does not convince me. His real criterion is moral improvement. Because crime fiction is intended to entertain rather than improve the reader, it cannot be as good as the real thing, whatever that is.
     The same Leavisite narrowness also causes him to savage Sayers, whom he accuses of snobbery and worse. Yet his own preferences reveal a similar snobbery, especially when he expresses his distaste for the Mickey Spillane school of sadism, or his thinly veiled contempt for the “semi-literate reader” of these novels, in whom he assumes a taste for sadistic sensationalism merely because they presumably don’t want to read Milton. And the books he does reveal as being among his favourites are all (based on the ones I’ve read) marked by a refined version of that same sadomasochism that he attacks in Spillane and company.
     Never mind. The history is valuable, and most of the criticism reveals a genuine taste for the genre. For the most part I agree with his assessments, and he mentions a number of authors whose books I intend to find. **½ (2003)

Paul Fussell. BAD: Or, The Dumbing of America. (1991)

     Paul Fussell. BAD: Or, The Dumbing of America. (1991) A collection of rants of varying quality. The style is often oddly flat and ponderous. It seems as if Fussell had written a few of these pieces, and then someone suggested he make a book, which pushed him into forced humour, soggy satire, and jejune jokes. Well, not entirely: many of the points he makes are valid enough.
     However, much of what he discusses is really matter of taste or fashion, both of which are impervious to skewering, and are rendered silly by time alone. Some of his targets are too easy, such as ads aimed at the semi-literate and semi-cultured, offering them “exclusive heirloom” collectibles, manufactured by the tens of thousands, to store in a cheap glass fronted case for future generations to ooh and aah over.
     Fussell’s rage at the dumbing down of academic studies is worth reading, but I doubt many university presidents these day are even capable of understanding his critiques, and none I would think would want to act on them. Provincial premiers (and State governors) might stare suspiciously at anyone offering these critiques, aware that they are missing something, but uncertain just what it might be. That’s perhaps the saddest conclusion to take away from his book, that much of what Fussell has to say can’t be understood by those who might profit from it, but merely provides reasons for a mean-spirited sense of superiority for many of those who can understand. At his best, Fussell laughs at follies we might otherwise weep over; at his worst, he sounds merely peevish. I suppose that’s the risk a curmudgeon takes. ** (2002)

E. J. West Shaw on Theatre (1958)

     E. J. West Shaw on Theatre (1958) Collection of essays, and public and private letters, therefore somewhat repetitive. The last few pieces, written when Shaw had outlived everybody who ever mattered to him, could have been left out, but in fact are the best summaries of his views and knowledge, and should be first reading for any student of GBS. His claim that he went back to earlier modes of drama is one I can’t check, but from what I know of Shakespeare and the Greeks, I think it’s exaggerated. His claim that the declamatory style of acting is the main tradition, and that he wrote for it, is easier to check: one simply goes to a modern production. And guess what: his plays work just as well done in the low-key naturalistic style that is now once again in vogue. Which means that his scripts are largely director- and actor-proof, just as Shakespeare’s are.
     GBS's contempt for what he calls police magazine stories and petty adulteries as the stuff of theatre gets shriller as he ages. From what we now know about his sex life, it appears he protests too much. As some other cynic said, as sexual capability and interest diminish with age, sexual disgust increases. I read this book as much for the style as for the information. Pretty good, and quotable. *** (2002)

The Anti-Book List (Redhead & MacLeish)

     Brian Redhead and Kenneth McLeish, eds. The Anti-Booklist. (1981) A collection of short essays attacking the reputations of certain books (and their authors.) Witty and well read. Most of the criticisms of the classic, well-known, or merely popular books rest on moral grounds and/or simply bad writing. This book reminds us not so much that even good writers write bad books, but that we often value books for the wrong reasons. The other point this book makes, albeit unintentionally: it demonstrates that much of what we think of as literary judgement, positive or negative, consists of little more than following the current fashions. Many of  this book's targets no longer loom large enough in the literary world to merit this much attention (eg, Evelyn Waugh.) Nothing fades as fast as a best-seller’s popularity. A quick read, but once is enough. **½ (2001)

Present tense (John Moss)

      John Moss Present Tense (NC Press, 1985). A collection of essays on authors such as Timothy Findley who achieved prominence from the 1960s onward. Also included: Jack Hodgins, Mavis Gallant, Michael Ondaatje, Norman Levine, Carol Shields, David Helwig, Hugh Hood, Matt Cohen, Marian Engel, Audrey Thomas, George Bowering, and Robert Kroetsch. The list illustrates how the reputation of the moment does not predict the future. Hodgins, Helwig and Kroetsch are now of merely academic interest (ie, only academics read them, not necessarily seriously), while Ondaatje achieved pop star status with The English Patient. This book is part IV of a series, and authors you might expect to be treated here appeared in earlier books. The essays themselves are on the whole not well written. Many read as if written for an undergraduate course; perhaps that is their provenance, since most of the writers discussed were at the time too new to have established an oeuvre. The photographs of the authors show them in their 30s, very young-seeming in light of their later work.
      I did not read all the essays in this book. I found the common "reader’s response" point of view tedious – a critical work should attempt to describe the objective aspects of a book, not merely the reader’s feelings. Also, several writers used the past tense to summarise a book’s story, a modern habit I find very irritating. There was also a general sense of limited experience and knowledge, hard to pin-point, and perhaps more an effect of the style and of omissions than of explicit errors. What the essayists lacked most, however, was delight in their subject. A good critic conveys not only that his subject matters enough to write about, but also that the book was a pleasure to read. That particular "reader’s response" appeared only in George Woodcock’s essay on Findley, and almost made me want to attempt again to read that tedious trickster. * (2001)