Helen Reilly. Compartment K (1955)

     Helen Reilly. Compartment K (1955) I bought this book to add to my collection of stories with a railway setting or motif. I’ve tried reading it three times now, and I’ve given up every time. A man is murdered, the heroine’s old flame (now a married man) is mixed up in it somehow, and shelters in her compartment from the prying eyes of the detectives. The police procedure is sloppy in the extreme; not even the fact that this is a romance rather than a crime novel excuses it. Of course the heroine’s reputation is thoroughly compromised, her fiancé dumps her, and the old lover’s wife dumps him. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten, and it’s been heavy slogging, so I’ve given up. I may finish the book some time, but not now. (2004)

Edmund Hamilton. City at World’s End (1951)

     Edmund Hamilton. City at World’s End (1951) A tale from the so-called golden era of SciFi, and it shows. The plot is simple: an atomic “super bomb” rips the fabric of space-time and projects Middletown, a city of some 50,000, millions of years into the future. The Sun has cooled to a red dwarf, the Earth’s core has cooled, too, and the planet is almost devoid of life. The scientists find a domed city, all 50K citizens move to it, an attempt to contact other people brings starships to Earth. The galactic government (run by humans, of course) wants to evacuate Middletown to a better place, but the people resist. A process to start a heavy-atom fusion-fission cycle in the earth’s core works, and lo and behold, grass starts growing, etc. But John Kenniston, the protagonist, decides to go with the star-folk, among whom he has found a possible future mate.
     There are several questions that nag a modern reader (me) of this book. One is sociological: what will the citizens of Middletown do? The mills have shut down to conserve energy, so there’s no work. Lack of work means lack of purpose, yet when the earth is warmed up, people happily return to Middletown. To do what, exactly? Another is biological: without green plants, where is the oxygen on this ancient Earth coming from? A third is cultural: were people in the 50s really so blind to the fact that women are less likely than men to wax hysterical in a crisis? Or that a uniform is no protection against the kind of panic and hysteria that is ascribed to the ordinary people of the city? Or that older folk are more likely to adapt to new situations than younger ones? And so on.
     Of course there’s no sex, just a chaste kiss now and then, and vague references to future plans and such. There is also the assumption that scientific people are not prone to hysteria, panic, fear, depression, or any of the other effects of the kind of shock that the citizens of Middletown undergo. In other words, this is an essentially adolescent fantasy, displaying the lack of awareness typical of that age. The aliens are generally friendly, and not really alien. The government is shown simplistically as bureaucratic. Hamilton gives us future humans who, after millions of years, are essentially the same as modern humans, who are said to be primitive and emotional. IOW, Hamilton seems to be unaware of what he is writing. No doubt the constraints of paperback publishing at the time (“not more than 50,000 words, please”) and the limitations of the demographic for which he wrote account for some of these flaws, but not when one considers that Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, etc were writing around the same time. The book is a neat example of the popular culture of the late 40s, early 50s, but doesn’t have much interest beyond that, at least for me. * (2004)

Martha Grimes. The Anodyne Necklace (1983)

     Martha Grimes. The Anodyne Necklace (1983) Seems like Grimes names her books after pubs. This one is the locus of a D&D style game that eventually provides the clue needed to recover an emerald necklace and solve a couple of murders. Well done, but Jury, the ‘tec, is oddly bland and empty. The other characters tend to be rather more 2D than most, so that the books fails to satisfy. As a police procedural, it doesn’t quite convince, either. A beach or airport read, not more. A few very irritating typos. *½ (2004)

J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969)

     J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969) Modern is the operative word here: these stories are modern in that curiously restricted sense that never meant contemporary. Current stories aren’t ‘modern,’ they are just stories being written now. There is a deliberate bleakness of vision, an attempt at depicting “real life”, that feels false in these stories. Or maybe it’s the earnestness with which the writers present their ideas, as if no one had ever understood that people are fearful, petty, hypocritical, and very, very confused about life.
     No doubt a generation or two from now people will find some value in these stories; now, I find them of “historical interest” only. That is, they are reminders of a time when writers and other artists very self-consciously set themselves up in opposition to bourgeois tastes (itself a misnomer, since it’s really just common taste, and is shared by all classes at all times). They were heirs of Shaw and Ibsen, but by the time they wrote, the iconoclastic rebellion of Late Victorian and Edwardian times had become the received wisdom. Or rather, it had become merely fashionable. But then fashion relies on the appearance of revolt and change, it must constantly generate the illusion of being in the forefront, while following a safe couple of steps behind.
     The writers (William Sansom, Jean Rhys, David Plante and Bernard Malamud) already seem dated, and their talents seem to me to have been wasted. In other words, it was the fashion to appear to be out of fashion, and that never works. But it takes a while to realise that, and a writer’s life may be done by the time he discovers that he must write what matters to him, not what appears to matter to the taste-mongers. By the time these ‘modern’ stories were collected, Updike and Munro (for example) were already writing, and they made no attempt to be ‘modern.’
     I didn’t read all the stories, skimming most of them. I don’t know if there was ever a #2 in this series; probably not, for by the late 60s a different style of epater les bourgeois had displaced the ‘modern’ one. Not a keeper. * (2004)

Steve Paikin. The Dark Side (2004)

     Steve Paikin. The Dark Side (2004) Paikin, host of TVO’s Studio 2 and Diplomatic Immunity, and a political junkie by his own admission, wrote this follow-up to The Life, intending to show the price politicians pay, and succeeds admirably. He also wants to persuade us the we underrate and undervalue politicians, partly because they have badmouthed each other so much that we believe they are all villains (mud does stick to the slinger), and partly because they are an easy target for our frustration with all the things that inevitably won’t go right in our lives. He comes close to succeeding in this second aim, too, but I suspect that most of the people who will read this book will already be half persuaded. But since accepting his thesis entails a good deal of blame for our own stupidity, persuading others will be much harder.
     Paikin’s style is easy to read, he is a journalist after all, and he tells a good story. This book was a prize I won for my phone-in to CBC North about my relationship with Joe Clark, a man whom I still admire, and who in his interviews with Paikin comes across just as I remember him. A book worth reading, once anyway. **½ (2004)

Ruth Dudley. Murder in a Cathedral (1998)

     Ruth Dudley Edward. Murder in a Cathedral (1998) Blurbed as “Ebullient ... stylishly written, funny, and sometimes touching”, this potboiler is anything but. I started it some months ago, laid it aside as boring, took it up again, and finished it. The only draw was the plot: who would be killed, and why? As it turns out, the first corpse is a suicide, the rest are murder victims. The murderers are a couple of sex-obsessed, fundamentalist, wannabe televangelists, but they don’t get much on-time, so that the solution is more than a bit of a cheat. Not a keeper. (2004)

A. Hewins, ed. The Dillen: Memories of a Man of Stratford (1982)

     A. Hewins, ed. The Dillen: Memories of a Man of Stratford (1982) Angela Hewins edited and arranged the stories told by her husband’s grandfather, George Hewins (1878-1977), in the last three years of his life. They constitute a wonderful portrait of the town and of the man himself. Born to a very poor girl, probably out of wedlock (but this and his true paternity are never established), he was raised by his maternal aunt, a tough and shrewd business woman, who took pity on the small baby, the runt or ‘dillen’, and looked after him until he was able to fend for himself.
     That fending for himself was not easy in a country and at a time when there was no unemployment insurance, when what welfare there was handed out grudgingly, carefully and meanly matched to the recipient’s degree of respectability. George ran into the edges of the law, but never was a thief. He married young; his Emma was the love of his life, and they made the best of their hard circumstances, managing to raise eight children to young adulthood, and six of them beyond. George took what work he could get (he was a bricklayer by trade), and was called up in WW1 because he had enlisted in the reserve some years earlier. He came back injured, incapable of steady work, and surviving on an army pension. The story ends shortly after that return, and we hear nothing about the second half of his life. But it’s clear that his resourcefulness, good humour and resilience were inherited by his children and grandchildren. The fact that his oral autobiography was recorded, edited and published bespeaks solid middle class success by his grandson Brian.
     The book was given to Mother by Aunt Rosemary (n.d.), and Mother made marginal notes about some of the people. These show a connection with the Morgans via the Theatre, as both George and Emma had work there, and George did some maintenance and garden work for the librarian, who was Uncle Peter’s first boss and mentor. A thoroughly enjoyable book, but one that breaks your heart. ****  (2004)

C. Hager and P. Wegenstein P. Steyrtalbahn (1998)

     C. Hager and P. Wegenstein P. Steyrtalbahn (1998) A history of the STB, with colour and black- and-white pictures, maps, some drawings. Description of the line, roster, a couple of personal accounts of bike trips along the remaining right of way, station track plans, etc. Unfortunately, insufficient information and no drawings of the rolling stock, nor drawings of the stations. Also, the map shows the line only, lacking topographical and other information which would set the line in its larger context. Otherwise, an excellent resource for the modeller, the fan, and a pleasure to read, since it’s written in a clear and readable style (perhaps explained by the fact that neither author has an academic title). **½ (2004)

Maeve Binchy The Return Journey (1998)

 

    Maeve Binchy The Return Journey (1998) Binchy writes “women’s’ fiction”, the kind of story in which the plot revolves around some relationship, often complicated by people’s attempts to resolve conflicting emotions. These stories are often very short, and require great skill in sketching a whole life so that the current dilemma makes enough sense to engage the reader. Binchy’s eye is a little sharper than Rosamund Pilcher’s, and so her themes are somewhat darker, but on the whole her formulas are the same: women are the protagonists, the characters are often engaged in glamorous professions, and they never, never suffer a tragic fate (although the sometimes painful compromises they must make come close), and so on.
     All the stories in this book use the motif of a journey, which is an apt metaphor for change, and changes (making them, accepting them, discovering them) form the plots. Binchy’s style is plain and unassuming; I can’t remember anything about it except its pleasant blandness. Her characterisation depends heavily on backstory (she has superb skill at compressing a life into a couple of paragraphs), and of course she describes clothes carefully: I guess for women clothes express character, while for men they announce a role. Pleasant entertainment, but not memorable. ** (2004)

Matt Ridley. Nature via Nurture (2004)

 

    Matt Ridley. Nature via Nurture (2004) Argues and demonstrates that the dichotomy of Nature vs Nurture is not merely wrong, it’s profoundly misleading. The genes can operate only in response to nature (here broadly defined as the environment in general, including anything outside the cell itself, that is, including the rest of the body). And nurture can’t have its effects if there are no genes to respond to it. Much interesting bleeding-edge research supports this thesis, and there is perhaps more repetition of the thesis than strictly necessary. However, Ridley’s point is well-taken. On philosophic or logical grounds alone, the “nature versus nurture” argument is silly, since it’s obvious that any organism must be equipped to survive, which means that it must develop the requisite organs and behaviours. In other words, it must respond properly to it environment, hence nurture plays a role. But it can respond properly only if it has the proper genetic endowment, hence nature plays a role. The only puzzle is how nature and nurture interact to produce a viable organism.
     Ridley reviews what’s now known about this interaction, and in doing so suggests a fundamental shift in perspective. He stresses the role of genes in the development of an organism (and corrects the genome-as-blue-print metaphor as he does so). The most important single point I think is that the environment switches genes on and off in a fixed sequence during development, and that once a gene’s work is done, it usually cannot be reactivated. Moreover, it’s the timing of gene activity, i.e., how long it persists, what other genes are activated or not at the same time, etc, that determine the adult’s phenotype. These two factors, timing and sequencing, have lifelong effects, almost always irreversible. Yet each stage of development depends on environmental cues, both external to the organism, and internal (in the form of proteins etc produced by other genes’ actions).
     I think that it’s the rigidity of developmental response to the environment that encourages people to think that nature is all. For if nurture could have unlimited effects, it could change the organism at any time. This latter notion is said to be the dogma of radical behaviourism, and certainly Skinner was rash enough to make such claims in language that make them sound silly. No amount of Skinnerian conditioning can make a Newton; but given a Newton, an environment that suited him was essential to enable the kind of discoveries he made (including the ones histories of science ignore). In pushing his point of view, Skinner rarely made his underlying assumption explicit, that an organism’s behaviour can be shaped by the environment, but cannot be created by the environment. An organism must “emit” a behaviour, in the quaint jargon of the behaviourists; only then can behaviourist techniques shape it. Just where the emitted behaviour comes from is not a behaviourist concern, apart from denying that some non-material mind or soul causes it.
     Ironically, the neurologists’ methods and stance are thoroughly behaviourist. They investigate behaviour in terms of responses at the neural and even molecular level. Their results show that even at these levels, the environment shapes behaviour. The organism develops and exists as a pattern of interaction with its environment. Yeats said, Who can tell the dancer from the dance? Flip Wilson said, What you see is what you get. Marshall McLuhan says We construct the truth about the environment by building the environment with which we interact.  I say The self exists as the interface between inner and outer. These are I think different ways of saying that nature and nurture act together to make us what we are.
     Ridley makes other points along the way. One is that the one-gene-one-protein concept is thoroughly wrong. Proteins may be built (are usually built in fact) by several genes acting together. A single gene can be (usually is, in fact) implicated in the building of several different proteins. A gene may be (often is, in fact) partially activated, so the same gene can build different proteins at different times, even when acting alone. Moreover, a protein’s effects depend on the existence of other proteins, so that genes affect each other’s expression. Finally, since the expression of a gene is not a simple straight-line chain of cause and effect, but a complex web of interwoven strands and feedback loops, genes’ effects both cancel and complement each other, so that a single mutation rarely has a serious effect, or even a visible one. It’s no accident that so few diseases have been traced to the mutation of single genes.
     These facts explain why genetic engineering has been so unsuccessful thus far. One would think that, with hundreds of millions spent on R&D, by this time we would have hundreds of varieties of GE plants, but it seems that most of the time the efforts fail, a fact that is curiously not widely publicised. Or perhaps not so curiously: Neither the promoters nor the opponents of GE want the public to know the high failure rate, for opposite but thoroughly complementary reasons. Each side exaggerates the success of GE, one to generate enthusiasm, the other fear. However, those who advise caution have a good case: we don’t really know what the insertion of a foreign gene will do in an organism, since there are too many ways in which a gene’s expression will be controlled or affected by the other genes.
     Good book. **** (2004)

See also https://kirkwood40.blogspot.com/2013/08/matt-ridley-nature-via-nurture-2003.html for a shorter review.

Edward R, Paramore. The Ballad of Yukon Jake (1921)

     Edward R, Paramore. The Ballad of Yukon Jake (1921) A satire on R W Service’s poetry, using his limericky verse form to tell a sad tale. Yukon Jake is a bad boy, seducing pure virgins every chance he gets, and running off to the Yukon to escape his just punishment (which presumably would be marriage to Ruth, The Girl He Betrayed.) Ruth goes to the Yukon to bring the word of repentance, but she’s shipwrecked, lands in Jake’s bed again, and ends the poem as a colleague of the Lady that’s known as Lou (who isn’t mentioned as such, and her friend Megrew’s name is carefully spelled to prevent charges of plagiarism.) A mildly amusing bagatelle, which may have given some of its readers an agreeable frisson of vicarious sin when it first appeared. This was a second reading of the verse; just as enjoyable as the first. ** (2004)

Beryl Cook The Bumper Edition (2001)

     Beryl Cook The Bumper Edition (2001) Ed. J. W. Blundell. A compilation of the first eight books of Beryl Cook’s wonderful paintings, arranged by theme, with a memoir by the editor and extensive captions by the artist. Beryl Cook is one of those self-taught artists that the art establishment often labels naif or folk artists, implying that their lack of art education or membership in a school or group makes their work less serious. But Cook is a very serious artist, as her captions indicate: she talks often about the difficulties of composition, of how one or another element (usually a figure) takes over the painting, or of her liking for colours and objects. She constantly makes ”notes”, that is sketches and words about people or items that catch her eye. She talks about how she chooses people and objects to fit into her pictures – she evidently wants her pictures to please the eye and the mind, and be more than mere literal records.
     In other words, she knows what she’s doing, and the inclusion of some of her earliest works also shows an early mastery of medium and technique, and the development of a very self-conscious style. She claims influence from Stanley Spencer, an influence that I think is not merely one of visual effects but also of the joy in and relishing of the earthly and earthy life. Her paintings of animals show that she could, if she wanted to, paint her people with academic precision, but the style she has chosen expresses her delight in the variety of human existence and the many innocent (and some not so innocent) pleasures we humans are capable of. She loves to show people having fun, enjoying themselves, wearing their best, being in company. She has a non-judgmental eye, and a healthy relish for the flesh.
     I first encountered her work in a news group dedicated to scans of miscellaneous art, most of which was more or less sentimental kitsch. Cook’s work was a welcome antidote. Official website here. **** (2004)

Martin Luther. Luther’s Table Talk (1889)

     Martin Luther. Luther’s Table Talk (1889) A selection made on the occasion of Luther’s 4th birth-centenary from a translation made in 1646. Mother bought this book in 1934. Marginal notes in shorthand are probably not by her, however. The translation occasionally hobbles (eg, “fremd” translated as “strange” rather than “foreign), but only context indicates this. I don’t have any German original, so I don’t know how well Luther’s tone and style is captured here. I suppose when it was published it made a difference. The introduction certainly suggests this, with its references to Luther’s boldness and earthiness; but most of the book seems innocuous. * (2004)