Robert Campbell. Plugged Nickel (1988)

     Robert Campbell. Plugged Nickel (1988) Bought at Value Village because it’s set on a train, and obviously a remaindered copy, never read. Jake Hatch is the P.I., he’s a railroad cop working for the Burlington Northern. A severed body is found on the tracks, but the two parts turn out to be from different bodies. And so what might be a gruesome accident turns out to be murder. The puzzle is competently handled, although the denouement is somewhat perfunctory. The characters and atmosphere are pleasant, and we learn a little bit about gypsies. Not the best such entertainment, and not the worst either. Campbell doesn’t get the railroady bits quite right, which may be the reason this didn’t turn into a series as planned. Or maybe it did. The next book was to be titled Red Cent. I haven’t seen it, but I will look for it. ** (2002)

Barton J. Bernstein. Towards a New Past (1969)

     Barton J. Bernstein. Towards a New Past (1969) A collection of “dissenting essays in American History,” and as such containing interesting points of view based in some cases on new data. Many of these points of view would be considered subversive right now. The trouble is, it’s an academic book, put together for undergraduate history courses. I pity the people who had to read this book for credit. The style for the most part is clotted and obscurantist, often written to an audience that presumably has the same knowledge base as the writer. The most readable essay is Christopher Lasch’s, in which he lambastes the “liberals” that allied themselves with right-wing anti-communist paranoia.
      The date of the book suggests reasons for its publication: the 60s were a brief resurgence of the liberal tradition in American society, a tradition that is once again under attack, since it represents what used to be called conservative attitudes: respect for the individual; the view that the state exists to protect the weak from the powerful (which entails redistribution of wealth); a belief that government should promote the general good and not arbitrate between competing interests (for such arbitration inevitably results in co-option by one or another of those interests); and so on.
     Much of its material is, as the academics say, “valuable,” but the academic tone and attitudes put off the people who most need a corrective to their myths of the American past: the ordinary Jane and Joe who believe what is mostly a rickety structure of lies and conscience-salving myths. The heirs of the dissenting tradition, the ultra-sensitive would-be reformers of racist, sexist, classist attitudes, are themselves as guilty of misreading the past as those whom they attack. Since their misreadings for the most part have no political or economic consequences, they are happily included in current TV and movies. The real issues, which are misunderstanding of money and power, and hence mistaken analysis of how they work in our society, are ignored in favour of attempts to avoid affronting those who feel they have a historical grievance of one kind or another.
     Clearly a book that provokes responses. But, oh, how tedious to read! ** (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)

Norman Thelwell. Penelope Rides Again (1991)

     Norman Thelwell. Penelope Rides Again (1991) Cartoons of Penelope and her friends and their ponies. Bought at a yard sale for possible gift to one of our nieces. Like all cartoon books, hard to take in one gulp. Thelwell’s girl and pony cartoons were first published in Punch and some  British kids’ comics. The Telegraph picked him up as a regular, and this book (and many others, according to the flyleaf list) is the result. Thelwell's fat little ponies and the little girls that bounce around on them have a certain charm, but I suspect it’s a specialised taste. **

Robert Weaver. The Anthology Anthology (1984)

     Robert Weaver. The Anthology Anthology (1984) Collection of stories, poems, etc first broadcast on CBC’s Anthology, which Weaver produced for a long, long time. I vaguely remember hearing it from time to time. Anyhow, I can’t remember where I got this book. Maybe Jon gave it to me, or Cassandra, or maybe I found it on a remainder table. If so, it must have been some years ago, because I there’s no date in the front (I write the month/year in every book I buy now). The pieces vary, of course, but they do share a common tone or cast of mind or colour of the imagination. There’s a kind of melancholy, a kind of acceptance of the inevitable, of the uncontrollable encounters in one’s life, that seems to me peculiarly Canadian. When Americans try the same tone, they write stories of defeat. The Canadian stories don’t feel defeatist.
     For example, in “A Private Place” by Joyce Marshall, Lars, a newly separated Norwegian moves into a recently dead older man’s apartment, and reads the letters from the older man’s Canadian mistress. He doesn’t answer them, and she finally asks to have confirmed what she suspects and dreads, that her lover is dead, and her letters are being tossed out. By this time Lars’s wife is asking Lars to let their daughter spend more time with him, he has met a possible future mate, he knows that soon his wife will file for divorce, and he can form a family again. None of this has come about by any action on his part, he has merely drifted from one situation to another. His inability to write to the dead man’s mistress is just another symptom of his passivity. This inability to act, this drifting, occurs in most of the other stories, too. But one doesn’t feel that the protagonists are losers; one feels instead that they are survivors. Which, according to Peggy Atwood, is the essential mark of Canadian fiction.
     Perhaps instead of essential Canadianness we see merely Robert Weaver’s taste. But more recent work, by people who had barely begun their writing when Weaver published this anthology, continues the strain. Timothy Findley died yesterday (June 20, 2002). I have read very little of his work – I find him a glib trickster rather than a writer – but he, too, catches that Canadian ability to accept whatever life dumps on you. Canadians don’t think of themselves as fighting to stay alive, I guess. Just staying alive is all there is. And while you are alive, things happen. It’s the mark of a true person to accept this, not complain, and not triumph either.  A better book than I expected. *** (2002)

Keith Waterhouse. Billy Liar (1959)

     Keith Waterhouse. Billy Liar (1959) The blurbs claim this is funny, light-hearted, etc. I find it sad. Billy Fisher is the only son of a dysfunctional working class family somewhere in Yorkshire. He fantasises constantly about an alternative family, or a country called Ambrosia. In both, he is skilled, intelligent, successful, universally admired, etc. In real life he acts with only one thought, How To Get Out Of This Mess, and in the end fails to act even on his one major decision, to go to London and seek his fortune as a script writer for a stand-up comic. He has engaged himself to three young women, only one of whom is in any way his match, but she sees through his gormlessness, and decides to dump him. He has failed to mail 200 promotional calendars for his employer, an undertaker, and has been disposing of them surreptitiously at the rate of two or three per day ever since. He does a stand-up routine at a tavern, but does it badly. And so on.
     I’ve read many occasional pieces by Waterhouse in Punch, and this novel somehow seems uncharacteristic. If it’s auto-biographical, as it seems to be, then it was written to purge some demons. I read this book hoping for some redeeming action. The only insight Billy achieves is that he doesn’t have the guts to go to London, but even that is suppressed as soon as he has it. The book had some fame in its day, probably because its scenes of lower-class idiocies encouraged the readers to feel superior to the characters. ** (2002)
     Update 2013: Waterhouse died in 2009. An obituary can be found here: Waterhouse Obituary in the Telegraph

Harry Turtledove. Noninterference (1987)

     Harry Turtledove. Noninterference (1987) The Survey Service is on Bilbeis V. The local Queen is sick of cancer. One of the anthropologists persuades his team mates to give her immunity boosters to destroy the cancer. They leave. 1500 years later, a routine resurvey discovers the Queen is still alive, and revered as a goddess. She has brought her people from early iron age to approximately medieval levels of technology. The report is suppressed for political reasons: factions within the Federacy want to stop all exploration of extra-Federacy planets. All except one of the survey team is murdered in order to keep the report secret, but eventually a second follow-up expedition is dispatched. After much plotting and more or less bloody action, the bad guys get theirs, and the Queen is left musing about star people. She plans to visit them before they come back again.
     Turtledove is good on bureaucratic machinations and on the effects of even slight cultural contacts. The plotting is intricate, and develops from the characters. His characterisation is strong enough that we care about what happens to the protagonists, but it doesn’t of course get in the way of the essence of the book, which is an exploration of cultural evolution. He suggests that it is not merely the institutions that determine how a society evolves, but also the presence or absence or strong personalities at key positions in those institutions. In this, he belongs to the contingency school: general principles govern social (and other evolution), but accidents of one kind or another can and do divert it into unexpected and, more importantly, unpredictable directions. The stream always flows downhill; but if it’s blocked, or a barrier is removed, the stream will change direction, sometimes drastically. A good read, but not a keeper. **½. (2002)
     Update 2013: Turtledove is also known as an alternate history writer. this book really belongs in that genre, despite its SF trappings.