Louis L. L’Amour Utah Blaine (1954)

     Louis L. L’Amour Utah Blaine (1954) Originally published under the pseudonym of Jim Mayo, this story is a workmanlike tale of a man who decides to take up the cause of rightful owner of range rights. The usual cast of gunslingers, weak bankers, greedy psychopaths, and similar riffraff lines up against Utah and his sidekick. A couple of beautiful women (their roles aren’t fully developed), and some loyal retainers round out the cast. Utah takes a hell of a lot of punishment, which makes this story (like all L’Amour’s stories) more realistic than most adventure romances, but in the end the hero wins and gets his woman, as required. L’Amour describes fistfights in some detail, an effect of his training as a prize fighter, no doubt. ** (2004)

Louis L. L’Amour Bowdrie (1983)

     Louis L. L’Amour Bowdrie (1983) Bowdrie is a Texas Ranger, recruited when he was on the verge of sliding to the wrong side of the law. The tales are straightforward and follow a formula: Bowdrie, on the trail of some crook, arrives in town at a critical time, usually involving some old time pirate of a rancher and the new mixed-farming settlers. Bowdrie’s role as ranger protects him from immediate assassination, and his skill with guns ensures he’s the winner, albeit after taking some punishment. There’s always a girl, someone else’s girl, and the usual cast of characters: the old drunk, the evil gunslinger, etc. The stories were written to be published in the pulps, so they are light on character and skip over iffy plot points, but they move, and serve to pass a pleasant few hours. **½ (2004)

Harlan Ellison. Earthman, Go Home! (1962) & The Time of the Eye (1974)

     Harlan Ellison. Earthman, Go Home! (1962) A collection Ellison’s early stories, and vintage SF it is. It even has author’s notes introducing each story, a standard feature of anthologies of the time. Ellison has a sharp intelligence and a fertile imagination, and no mean skill in pacing his stories, These betray their pulp origins, he did make a living as a writer, after all, and vary in quality. Many are little more than shaggy dog stories, a genre that was popular in the more hip SF circles of the 1950s and 60s. Humans are either the butt of the joke, or the jokesters. Fun to read, but not particularly memorable, and the claims of significant themes notwithstanding, essentially pleasant fluff. ** (2004)
     Harlan Ellison. The Time of the Eye (1974) Another Ellison collection, some of them recycled from earlier ones. The tone of this one is darker, and Ellison’s introduction expresses if anything more grandiose claims of thematic relevance, but at bottom these are horror stories, and quite well done, too. ** (2004)

W. Gordon Smith, ed. Fallen Angels: Paintings by Jack Vettriano. (1994)

    W. Gordon Smith, ed. Fallen Angels: Paintings by Jack Vettriano. (1994) Smith, a great admirer of Vettriano, collected stories, poems, and fragments to juxtapose with the paintings. Smith’s choices have the same sort of eerie effect as Vettriano’s paintings: a cross between Edward Hopper and film noir, with a more than a whiff of a deep, almost despairing sadness. Yet despite the darkness in Vettriano’s paintings, a darkness emphasised by his handling of chiaroscuro, there is an odd air of innocence surrounding these sinners. Or perhaps it’s more an atmosphere of making the best sense of a world that doesn’t make sense. The effect is a gaiety that undercuts the sadness; I suspect that Vettriano is playing a joke on us, mocking our taking his paintings so seriously. The allusions to pulp fiction support this guess at Vettriano’s intentions. Not that it matters much: the paintings have their own attraction and power. One doesn’t need to second-guess their maker. In any case, I would like to have a Vettriano, but since they now sell in the 5 figures and up, I doesn’t look like I will. *** (2004)

Louis L’Amour. Monument Rock (1999)

     Louis L’Amour. Monument Rock (1999) A posthumous collection of stories by the master of the Western. These look like early efforts, or ones L’Amour didn’t have time to work over. The editor’s notes provide no dating, so I can’t confirm my guesses. At any rate, the plotting is clumsy, with shifting points of view and a here and there some string left dangling. The style is inconsistent: L’Amour can usually put you into the landscape more skilfully than he does here. All the same, I enjoyed the stories. ** (2004)

Maeve Binchy. The Lilac Bus (1984)

     Maeve Binchy. The Lilac Bus (1984) Seven people plus a driver ride a bus from Dublin to Randooth every weekend. Eight stories tell us what happens to them one weekend. The interconnections between the stories occur only as one might expect from a group of people who have little in common besides their bus ride and the village itself. The stories are women’s fiction with a bit of an edge. Binchy is almost as ruthless as Munro, but she softens the effect of her clear gaze by adding dollops of sentiment. Still, she has the power to imagine well rounded characters and to delineate the always problematical relationships between people who can hurt each other. **½ (2004)

Rex Stout. Black Orchids (1941/42)

     Rex Stout. Black Orchids (1941/42) Two novellas with the motif of black orchids common to both. In the first a sleaze-ball is murdered at a flower show via a rig that pulls the trigger on a concealed gun. In the second, a hostess famed for her inventively staged parties is killed via iodine that isn’t, but a solution of argyrol laced with tetanus. Wolfe figures things out as usual. Archie is in top form as narrator, and the whole thing is a pleasant romp. The date tells us it’s early Wolfe, before Stout got a swelled head from his fame and financial success, and tried to imbue his novels with seriousness and meaning. *** (2004)

Beth Harvor. Women & Children (1973)

     Beth Harvor. Women & Children (1973) An oddly dated collection of stories. They are earnest tales, lacking any sense of the absurdity of life, which is strange, since the situations Harvor describes are examples of the absurdity of life. Not a keeper. * (2004)

Marcia Muller. There’s Something in a Sunday (1989)

     Marcia Muller. There’s Something in a Sunday (1989) Sharon McCone is one of the first chick PIs among an ever expanding group. She’s a first person narrator, so we get her thoughts and reactions first hand, and occasionally they don’t ring true: she has to tell us stuff that we should be able to infer from her actions. And she should tell us more of her thinking about the case itself. It’s a complex one, starting with a murder that the cops want to pin on a homeless man. But Sharon knows there’s more to it than that, and eventually unravels it. A second man dies, and it’s this death that presumably gives Sharon the insight she needs. But since we don’t share in her thinking, we are left to guess and gasp with surprise when the murderer (the second victim’s wife) is revealed. *-½ (2004)

Ross Macdonald. The Way Some People Die (1951)

     Ross Macdonald. The Way Some People Die (1951) This seems to be the first, or one of the first, Lew Archer novels. The author’s name is shown as John Ross Macdonald. Archer is hired to find a missing girl, and runs into mobsters, drug-runners, prostitutes, and other lowlife. The crooks double-cross each other muchly, and Archer almost gets done in the crossfire. The solution is OK (the missing girl is the murderer), but Macdonald hasn’t yet learned to place legitimate clues among the red herrings. Not up to his later work in quality of writing or plotting, but the character of Lew Archer is firmly established in this story, and his mix of virtue and vice gets more complicated (and interesting) later on. ** (2004)

E. Schikaneder. Die Zauberfloete. (Ed. W Zentner 1962)

     E. Schikaneder. Die Zauberfloete. (Ed. W Zentner 1962) The complete libretto in German, with a couple of scenes from Goethe’s projected Part 2. The story of this opera is sillier than usual, partly because it appears to have been radically restructured in the writing, so that the plot points adumbrated in the first few scenes are contradicted or simply dropped later on. This I did not know before reading the introduction. The story is relatively simple: Tamino finds himself in a strange place dominated by the Queen of Night, whose daughter Pamina is held by Sostrato. He has to undergo a series of trials, which appear to consist mostly of not talking, in order to become an initiate. Later, Pamina also becomes an initiate, they marry and live happily ever after. Along the way, Tamino picks up Papageno, a commedia-style clown, who provides comic relief (and the only realistic character).
      The script is presented in typical continental format, with scenes changing with the entrances and exits of characters, not with changes in location. I found this format peculiar and irritating even before I encountered the English one, because some “scenes” are only one or two speeches long. I suppose it has its roots in rehearsal styles and schedules or some such; or else it’s another one of those unreasonable rationalities the French are so fond of and have foisted on their imitators.
     The verse is for the most part numbingly banal and sometimes silly, with sadly rare signs of wit. The higher philosophy expressed by Sostrato and his priests consists of New Age guff.
      If it weren’t for Mozart’s music, this opera would long ago have been forgotten. Salieri-like, I wonder how such silly stuff could have been joined to such sublime music. As it is, probably far more people have heard the music than have heard the opera. I heard it when I was around 11 in Graz, and all I remember was Papageno, who was costumed like a giant green parrot, very impressive. He also had the funny songs, but it’s the music I recall, not the words. Opera lovers claim that the music is what matters in opera, but my taste is for good strong stories that depend on and are enhanced and nuanced by the music. A Wagnerian idea, I know, and I do not like Wagner at all! Auden claims that the sound of the verse must be adapted to the music, hence what we look for in poetry we should not expect to find in a libretto. I can accept that, but the verse should tell a clearly plotted story, and preferably one with some sense. * (2004)

Reginald Hill. Exit Lines (1984)

     Reginald Hill. Exit Lines (1984) Saw this on TV first, with some plot simplifications. A police procedural with a difference: the cops are a mixed lot, just like real people. But the writing is merely workmanlike, Pascoe’s private life has no organic relation to the rest of the tale (one could argue it’s there to expand the theme of old age), and a good deal of the “realism” seems forced and gratuitous. A pleasant entertainment, but not an engaging one; I feel no urge to find more Dalziel & Pascoe stories, but I won’t turn them down if they turn up. Three old men die on the same night, one in a road accident that involves Dalziel, one killed in the course of a robbery, and one seems to be an accident until Pascoe’s nosing around reveals it’s really a murder, but not one whose solution gives much joy. ** (2004)

John Gribble and Jeremy Cherfau. The First Chimpanzee (2001)

     John Gribble and Jeremy Cherfau. The First Chimpanzee (2001) The authors contend that humans evolved before chimps, i.e., that chimps are more recent derivatives of the common ancestor. They outline their case in the first couple of chapters, and that’s really all they need: I’m convinced. At least I’m convinced that it’s a tenable theory. I can’t judge its validity, but the rest of the book seems to me to be mostly padding, so I haven’t read it. The style is workmanlike, which means it doesn’t engage, and almost all the information is old news, some of it so old that it’s no longer useful. For example, the authors persist in using the blueprint metaphor for the genome, although this metaphor does nothing to help their case and in fact raises questions they haven’t addressed. Maybe they address them later, but the outline of their case gives no hint of this. I’m surprised at the date of the book: by 2001 many of the notions presented by Gribble and Cherfau were outdated. * (2004)