Rudy Wiebe. The Angel of the Tar Sands and Other Stories (1982)

     Rudy Wiebe. The Angel of the Tar Sands and Other Stories (1982) Just what the title says. I didn’t read the title story, I didn’t read any story all the way through. Wiebe writes what once passed for realism; I thought of it as such, too, once. But now, it’s clearly just another style of writing fantasies, of rewriting the past so that one cuts a much better figure in it than one ever did in reality. Set in the prairies, or in the urban or academic middle classes, or in the time of armed conflicts with our aboriginal peoples, the stories present themselves as authentic accounts of what really happened. They belong to a period, the middle decades of the 20th century, when many people still took fiction seriously, when they expected fiction to be unrelentingly tough and uncompromisingly truthful. Too often, such fiction turns out to be merely gloomy and depressing. * (2005)

Stanley Ellin. The Blessington Method (1966)

     Stanley Ellin. The Blessington Method (1966) Ellin made a small splash in the late 50s and early 60s as composer of macabre confections with a twist. The title story has been anthologised several times: Blessington invented a way of getting rid of inconvenient people (usually relatives) in ways that appear utterly natural or normal, if occasionally somewhat tragic. Other tales have similar twists. Hitchcock did much of this better on his half-hour TV show, but in both cases, the shtick stales rather quickly. That’s because the characters exist entirely to carry the joke. I completed no other story in this collection, although I started most of them. (2005) *

Kingsley Amis. Difficulties with Girls (1988)

Kingsley Amis. Difficulties with Girls (1988) UP sent me this for Christmas in 1989, and I didn’t read it then. I tried to read it recently, and found I couldn’t be bothered. Amis is one of those writers whose works reflect a few apparently essential features of life as it is lived when the book was wrote, and so gains a reputation as an insightful critic of the soap opera we call society. But a few years later, these works become almost unreadable. They refer to and take seriously transient attitudes and values, the kind that engage the editorialists and pontificators for a season, and seem quaint almost as soon as they are dissected and discussed. So I didn’t finish this book. I suppose in a decade or so some hapless graduate student will read all of Amis’s works and come to the unwarranted conclusion that he affords more than a superficial impression of English life in the second half of the 20th century. (2005)

Margery Allingham. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)

     Margery Allingham. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938) The title is too cute for the tale, which deals with murders done not by Georgia, the apparent beneficiary, but by Ferdi Paul, who depends on the income she affords him as leading actress in his company. Campion’s sister Val (I didn’t know he had a sister) is caught up in the mess, and Campion fails to prevent a death. In the end, he uncovers the murderer, at no little risk to himself.
     So much for the mcguffin. Allingham delivers herself of a number of comments on what we now call feminism which sound strange to current readers. Val ends as the wife of Alan Dell, in his sense of the word: that he will provide for her and protect her and expects her to devote herself totally to him. Val accepts this; yet she has been a very successful business woman as designer of high fashion (whence the pointless allusion in the title.) It seems as if Allingham wanted to write a social comedy with serious under- (over?) tones, and had to match her ambitions to the constraints of a detective story. Sayers (who comes close to giving Harriet a similar subservient role in her marriage to Wimsey) does the ‘tec story as novel much better. But one wonders whether Allingham might not have done more interesting work if she hadn’t had to keep herself in groceries by writing these slight but intriguing entertainments. Perhaps her hostility to the independent woman was at bottom a complaint about having to make her own way without a companion. I’ll have to find out more about her. ** (2005)
     Wiki's entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Allingham
     It appears she was happily married, but had no children.

William B. Ober M. D. Boswell’s Clap & Other Essays (1979)

     William B. Ober M. D. Boswell’s Clap & Other Essays (1979) Ober fancies himself an astute judge of literature, but his actual strength is diagnosis, especially of physical ailments. His psychological diagnoses are IMO less reliable, as he takes Freudianism’s claim to scientific rigour and validity for granted, which results in somewhat absurd certainties about the presence and effects of castration anxieties, etc. His essays are mildly interesting, and most are too long. The medical details don’t add much, and in several cases (including the title essay) nothing at all, to one’s understanding or appreciation of the author’s work.
     Ober’s purely literary remarks are helpful insofar as they show his thorough reading of the texts, and reminded me of what I’d read (or not read) and liked or not liked about them. But with the exception of his remarks on Chekhov, none of the essays persuaded me to take another (or first) look at the works themselves. I liked his essay about Socrates death best. He contrasts the facts of hemlock poisoning with what’s reported by Plato, and he concludes that Plato was inventing a myth. That so many readers have taken Plato’s tale for a factual report should remind us that ignorance causes a lot of misreading. **

John Mortimer. Rumpole a la Carte (1990)

     John Mortimer. Rumpole a la Carte (1990) Another delicious serving of Rumpole. These stories attract because they give one hope that justice, despite all attempts by the machinery of the law to frustrate the purpose, will be done. The neat puzzles and nicely done satires of hypocritical respectability don’t hurt. The tales may be farce, but they are gentle farce. Rumpole knows we’re all sinners, and he knows further that sin is the natural state of man- and womankind. Only our capacity to forgive each other redeems us. *** (2005)

M. Allingham. Cargo of Eagles (1968)

     M. Allingham. Cargo of Eagles (1968) Vintage Allingham, right down to her habit of revealing essential facts in the denouement. She’s learned something of real police procedure, so she cannily puts the cops in the background, positions Campion as an astute observer rather than investigator, and places the reader in the middle of a dysfunctional village and next to a couple who don’t quite court each other yet end up in each other’s arms. The release of a lifer triggers a number of searches for hidden loot. Campion of course finds it, but not before an unsavoury solicitor is shot and a couple other people turn up dead (one twenty years after his supposed demise). An amusing read, but with a lame puzzle whose solution depends on hidden knowledge. ** (2005)

Seth. It’s a Good Life if you Don’t Weaken (2004)

     Seth. It’s a Good Life if you Don’t Weaken (2004) Seth thinks in images, so that a good deal of his narrative is conveyed entirely through his drawings. The text and the pictures play against each other, so that the story told through the protagonist’s thoughts and his dialogue with others is enriched, more, is given its meaning, through the graphics. IOW, this is truly a graphic novella, and not merely an illustrated text. The hero “Seth” searches for clues about Kalo, an obscure cartoonist who sold a single panel to the New Yorker in 1951. Eventually, Seth tracks down his quarry, who left cartooning and became a successful realtor in Strathroy, a town that Seth and his family lived in for a few years.
     The tone of the story is melancholy, suffused with a yearning for the past, which is of course that of Seth’s childhood, before he had to face the realities of adult life. His drawings, not quite realistic, yet accurate enough that one can recognise landmark buildings in Toronto, for example, express Seth’s loneliness and alienation; whether in a crowd or in a forbidding winter landscape with trees like the bars of a jail cell, Seth is alone.
     His best friend Chet occasionally listens to him, and has a more sanguine outlook on life. Seth meets a girl and has a brief relationship with her; but then simply doesn’t call her again. He’s afraid, it seems, of the intimacy an adult relationship requires, an intimacy not needed for mere sex. The title quotes Seth’s mother, a dour and cool woman, who looks after Seth’s younger, gormless brother. But it isn’t a good life, despite the successful research and the pleasures of revisiting and remembering childhood places. A quibble: some of the items in the panels are generic cartoons, not observed from life, but I doubt that most readers would notice. *** (2005)

Robert Barnard. Death of a Literary Widow (1979)

     Robert Barnard. Death of a Literary Widow (1979) A mildly amusing, inoffensive whodunit with a satisfying puzzle, nicely done, but with comic-book style characters, and the occasional satirical jab, especially at American academics. Walter Machine, a working-class writer has been rediscovered, so his two widows, Hilda and Viola, have a feud about his reputation and their role in his life. An American PhD, desperate for tenure, is writing a bio etc about the man; and Viola’s ex-husband (cuckolded by Walter many years ago) lurks in the background. Hilda’s death is labelled an accident by the police, but Greg, who has befriended both women, believes otherwise, and eventually not only discovers the murderer, but also a literary hoax. The murderer will be dealt justice, though it will take some time, which oddly enough will increase his punishment, since he knows that the unmasking will come, but not when. Good entertainment, but not a great mystery novel. ** (2005)

John Mortimer. Rumpole and the Angel of Death (1995)

    John  Mortimer. Rumpole and the Angel of Death (1995) Rumpole delights no matter how many times one has read or seen him. Leo McKern defined the character for us in the TV series so well we can’t imagine him any other way; the cover painting of this book displays McKern as Rumpole. This collection ends on a dark and terrifying note, with Rumpole used by some terrorist types to get one of their own set free on a human rights argument. Rumpole finds out too late how he (and his Head of Chambers, Sam Ballard) have been manipulated. But most of the stories show Mortimer’s indulgent view of human weakness and his satirist’s eye for the hypocrisy of the respectable classes. *** (2005)

Julian Symons. The Great Detectives (1981)

     Julian Symons. The Great Detectives (1981) Illustrated by Tom Adams. Symons, a pretty good maker of detective puzzles himself, has taken on the task of assembling “biographies” of seven of the most popular fictions: Holmes, Miss Marple, Ellery Queen, Maigret, Poirot, Nero Wolfe, and Philip Marlowe. He does a lovely job, utilising various genres, and mischievously and ingeniously suggesting possible links between the sleuths. Very well done pastiches, with excellent period illustrations by Adams, who took great care to match the pictures to the books. End notes supply the sources for the information included in the bios, but Symons doesn’t hesitate to add his inventions where the canon leaves gaps. I bought this book as remaindered copy some years ago, but didn’t read it until now. I liked it. *** (2005)

Eberhard Freiherr von Kuenssberg, ed. Der Sachsenspiegel (nd, but ca 1935)

     Eberhard Freiherr von Kuenssberg, ed. Der Sachsenspiegel (nd, but ca 1935). Another book from the Insel Verlag series, this one reproducing selected illustrations of a medieval law book, originally compiled and written by what we would call a sheriff. A medieval sheriff was more than a cop, though, his duties were primarily those of a magistrate. The introduction by Kuenssberg is historically accurate as far as I can tell. There’s no doubt that the Sachsenspiegel (Mirror of the Saxons) was a major document in the development of law and jurisprudence as we understand it, since it codified existing practice and so provided precedents. The effect of Nazi ideology is much weaker in this work than the book about the Minnesinger, but it does show up in references to German “Volkstum” and other such vague, romanticised notions of blood and soil. ** (2005)