Ursula Bloom. Rosemary for Stratford-on-Avon (1966)

     Ursula Bloom. Rosemary for Stratford-on-Avon (1966) A gossipy memoir of Stratford in the early 1900s, presumably the time the author was a young girl. Most of the story deals with Marie Corelli, who arrived in Stratford and promptly made a damn nuisance of herself. Bloom has no qualms imagining dialogue, thoughts, and feelings; the book reads like an episodic novel. Apparently it’s now rare; Mother sent me this copy for Christmas 1998. She annotated it with brief marginal references to people. Uncle Paul noted that the photograph of the Rev. George Arbuthnot was taken by Uncle Peter. The book covers the beginning of the commercialisation of S-on-A, but Bloom spends so much time on her history of the evil Corelli that we don’t get much sense of how this proceeded. But in general it’s an interesting sidelight on the town, and its references to some of my ancestors makes it important in our family history. No index, and no indication why the selected photographs, rather than others, were included.**½ (2003)

Margery Allingham. Mr Campion and Others (1950)

     Margery Allingham. Mr Campion and Others (1950) Thirteen stories starring Albert Campion, gentleman sleuth, and his old friend Stanislaus Oates, a copper who rises from chief inspector to superintendent in a somewhat haphazard chronology. The stories are charmingly written, all take place in that never-never land of the upper middle class and minor nobility between the two world wars, and none involves murder. Instead we have frauds and thefts of various kinds, feckless youths and maidens, terrifying maiden aunts, avuncular coppers, devious but socially impeccable villains, and so on. Wooster country, in other words, but closer to reality than Wodehouse’s happy fantasies. The stories occasionally strain one's credulity, but no more than those of Christie and Sayers. I like their tone, generally light and amusing, with sly touches of social comedy. The characters are sketched rather than drawn, and engage one’s sympathies enough that one wants more than just a solution to a puzzle. Some of the Campion novels have been adapted for TV, but they haven’t the cheerfulness of these short stories, all of which are delightful confections. ***(2003)

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)

The Self

New Scientist recently published a series of article on the self, available here. The link will work for a short time, so check it now.

     Back when I was teaching literature, the question of the “real person” came up frequently. Many authors write from an omniscient point of view: they tell us what characters think, what they remember, how they feel. This information isn’t available to other characters in the story unless and until it is expressed in speech or (more rarely) in action. It’s remarkably difficult to know exactly what someone else is thinking, or what the world looks and feels like from his or her point of view. We often know a fictional character better than we know the real people in our lives. We also believe that because we know our own experience better than anyone else can, we know our real selves better than anyone else can. In this we are mistaken.
     What is the real self? I don’t think there is one that claim greater authenticity than any other. Our sense of self is the result of massive computation by the brain, which integrates both external and internal sensory inputs (heavily filtered), and emotional responses, to create a model of the world around us. We feel we are at the centre of this model, looking at it from “inside.” The model is just that, an image, a picture, a multi-sensory illusion. Work with optical and other illusions demonstrates how much of that image is computed using rough-and-ready rules about what should be there instead of what’s actually there. We see what we expect to see. Magicians make use of this. A good magic trick sets up expectations that are so powerful that we cannot help seeing what the magician has directed us to see.
     What then is the self as we experience it? It’s the experience of the world which we inhabit. But that world is an illusion: so the self is an illusion, too. What’s the self we ascribe to other people? It’s part of that world; it’s built from expectations which combine both generalised and often hard-wired expectations about what other people’s behaviour means, and our knowledge of their history with us, modified by what we know or can infer about their history with other people. It’s here that our sense of privileged information about our own experience misleads us. We believe that because we know our self from the inside, we have a better knowledge of how that self, “my real self”, will behave in future. That’s simply not true. We know perfectly well that we often have a better insight into a friend’s behaviour than he has; that we are better able to parse the odds of a future behaviour than she can. Why should we believe that our friends have less insight into us than we have into them?
     Part of the illusion of the self is “I”. What is that “I”? I think it’s a point of view. It can be disturbed. The “I” can be located outside the body, it can be split so that it believes the other part(s) are aliens or gods, it can disintegrate to the point that it takes heroic efforts by doctors and family and friends to put it back together again. And drugs, trauma, illness, fatigue, extreme emotion, meditation, and so on can undermine or alter our sense of self so much that we may doubt whether our current self is the real one or not.
     So what metaphor might help us understand what this “self” is? Who or what is “I”? One thing’s for sure: whatever else “I” may be, “I” am a process, a something-that-happens. “I” change constantly, and yet maintain a basic shape, much as a fountain changes constantly, yet maintains a basic shape.
     Or perhaps it would be better to say “I” am one of those fountains that cycles through many shapes, for as long as the water flows. So “I” too cycle through many shapes. “I” behave differently with different people, in different places, at different times, when performing different tasks. Some of those shapes “I” can control: “I” learn manners, language, skills. “I” learn when and when not to express my “inner feelings”, and how to shape that expression. And often “I” am surprised at what “I” do.
     “I” am an interaction with the world around me. “I” am an interface, a mask that shapes the space behind and in front of it. There is nothing else besides that mask. Yet “I” persist in believing that “I” am the reality behind the mask, the real self that the mask hides. Believing this, “I” don’t notice that all “I” know of my self is what the mask looks like from one side, the side “I” believe faces towards the real me.

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Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

     Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) [D: Anatole Litvak. Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster] Stanwyck was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in this film noir terror show. She’s bed-ridden Leona Stevenson, who overhears a phone conversation that suggests a woman is to be murdered, ends up she’s the victim. The story is told though flashbacks and phone conversations. Develops that she is a man stealer, her husband Henry (Burt Lancaster) is her kept man who wants to get out of the stifling marriage and job as VP in a chemical company owned by his father-in-law. He concocts a plan to steal some of the valuable chemicals, and involves gangsters to get rid of the stuff. These are annoyed when he and his co-conspirator decide to go it alone without paying the thugs their fair share. Leona’s life-insurance payout will supposedly pay the debt and free her husband of her and the job.
     The movie is dated as can be. It’s based on a radio play, and transfers well to the screen. All the things we have come to see as cliches of the genre are here: the selfish femme fatale, the suave mob boss, the crude business man, the self-centred handsome young man, the ineffectual good girl, the lonely derelict buildings by the sea shore, and the 2D characters, too obtuse to figure out the stupidity of their plans or the full implications of the revelations.
     I suppose that if I had seen this when first released I would been caught up in Leona’s developing terror, but at this remove the gears and pulleys of the plot are too obvious. The charm of this movie now is that it is such a near-perfect example of its type, a well-crafted entertainment offering a frisson of fear and a dollop of moral righteousness. The pacing is slow enough to suit the audiences of 65 years ago, who didn’t expect the jump cuts and minimal dialogue that we are used to today. The photography is slick and beautifully lit. the acting is very good. The whole movie is informed by a clear vision of its purpose, which is to deliver a thrill. It did that very well back in its day; now it’s an example of a genre that has developed in several different directions. As such, it has great historical interest, but only average entertainment value.**½

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

  J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969) The date says it all: very mid-20th century “serious literature.” I read the first two stories by William Sansom, both rather depressing tales of people finding scraps of self-esteem in the midst of small defeats and smaller victories. The next tales, by Jean Rhys, begin in the same mode and mood, and I haven’t read them yet, and probably never will. David Plante’s stories (which I skimmed) are “experimental” in that self-conscious way that asks you to admire technique above content or insight. Malamud’s story concerns a father-son conflict of some sort (I skimmed it, too), typical again of the mid-20th century, when honest description of the dysfunctions of real families was considered brave.
     I suppose the 1950s and 60s were the last decade in which “educated” people took literature seriously as signs and signposts. This book, the first of a series that as far as I know never had a second, testifies to the belief that words on a page matter. They do, but discussion of their importance almost always misses the mark. In Julian Symons Bloody Murder, which I’m re-reading, I found a reference to F R Leavis; Symons accepts Leavis’s assumption that a story’s moral thesis is the criterion of its value. The stories in this collection all have value in the Leavisite sense, and that’s what makes them almost unreadable now. Leavis was wrong (Symons’ book is one of a number that disassemble Leavis’s heritage for our edification), and these stories demonstrate why. They are well written, the characters are well-observed, the pacing is just right, the insight into life’s little ironies is just so, and so on. But reading them feels like taking medicine. *½ (2003)