Niles Eldredge. The Triumph of Evolution (2000)

     Niles Eldredge. The Triumph of Evolution (2000) A rehash of the tired old arguments by creationists, and their refutations. Eldredge points out that all their modern arguments are more or less updated versions of the ones used in the mid-19th century, when Darwin’s book was attacked by people with the same mindset as those who attack evolution today.
     Eldredge writes well, but his tone is occasionally shrill; I suppose the American Christian Fundamentalist obtuseness on the question must be exasperating. He notes that the real argument is not about science, but about politics, for conservative self-styled Christians want their vision of the truth to prevail. Like all true believers, they lack faith, and cannot tolerate anything that would call their superstition into question. They really do believe that morality is not possible without divine fiat, therefore that if evolution is true, the humans would act like animals. Eldredge doesn’t make the easy point that animals in fact are more rigidly constrained in their behaviour than humans are, and that it might be a better world if humans did act more like animals, instead of doing what they want when they want (and claiming divine approval for their actions, besides).
     At present, the conservative Christian world view dominates US politics and especially their foreign policy. He is correct to focus on the teaching of science as a method of understanding the material world. He claims that the method presupposes nothing about the existence or non-existence of God; and that science by definition cannot investigate the supernatural. He quarrels both with the creationists and those scientists who believe that science entails the assumption that nothing exists beyond the material phenomena that science investigates. There may or may not be something else, but science can never settle that question. Good point; and I find it ironic that many Biblical literalists, believing that the truth of their beliefs depend on the historical accuracy of the Bible, invoke the methods of science to prove the historical truth of the Bible. See, for example, the “scientific” expeditions to find the remains of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat.
     The focus on the American version of this debate may seem to limit the usefulness of its arguments, but the entanglement with politics and hence with schooling is unavoidable, even in Canada. Here, too, we have conservative Christians (many of them pastored by American or US-trained ministers) who want to bring about a theocratic state. Throw fundamentalist Muslims and Hindus into the mix, and the controversies can get ugly; they expand well beyond the evolution versus creation argument. The main appeal of the Alliance Party, after all, is that it promises to do the right thing, and what’s right is not defined by a consensus arrived at by thoughtful debate and discussion, but is known absolutely, from revelation. This is a politics that ignores practical evils, insisting that it’s better to do the right thing and cause certain harm, than to do the usually harmless wrong thing and let someone get away with something.
     What’s interesting here is that no matter what the religious tradition, fundamentalists share the same trait: they are unable to handle uncertainty. Consider the unwillingness to give chance a role in producing order: one of the arguments against evolution is that it operates by “blind chance”. The argument reveals both a profound misunderstanding of what “chance” is, and a need for certainty. The fear of uncertainty drives these people; they lack the faith to handle the doubt that maybe they are wrong, and that God isn’t what they think he is; isn’t at all, perhaps. And worse, that if God isn’t what they think he is, then they can’t be sure what is the right thing to do. I go with Luther on this question; he knew that we can’t be certain. His vision of the faith that justifies is that if we act with the best knowledge and understanding, and with the right motives, God will forgive our inevitable mistakes.
     There are few too many typos. *** (2003)
     This is a repost because the original disappeared.

Colin Dexter The First Inspector Morse Omnibus (1991)

       Colin Dexter The First Inspector Morse Omnibus (1991)
      The Dead of Jericho (1977) Morse meets an interesting woman, Anne Scott, at a party. A few weeks later he’s in the neighbourhood and looks her up, but the house, though unlocked, appears to be empty. Later that same day he discovers she’s dead, an apparent suicide. It takes a while for the police to accept the reality of murder: it’s not until there’s a second victim on the same street that a tentative inference of a connection between the two deaths brings Morse into the case. There follows the usual convoluted path to the truth, with the usual complicated interplay between Morse and Lewis. An early Morse, with the tics showing. Sex, money, and reputation motivate our lives; character flaws convert these into motives for murder. Character is Dexter’s weakness. He’s quite good at setting up character revealing scenes, but nevertheless relies more often on telling rather showing. The video treatment of this book was more convincing because the medium shows character by default. **½
     Service of All the Dead (1979) Murders and apparent suicides in the Parish of St Frideswide lead Morse and Lewis through a labyrinth of sex, embezzlement, brotherly love and hate, and psychopathology. Unusually the chase ends with a thriller-like near-lethal encounter, when Morse is nearly killed after he unwisely tracking the killer to the roof of the church tower. Dexter has a habit of multiple twists which can get somewhat tiresome. The result is too often stereotyped characters; even Morse and Lewis can’t escape from the pattern Dexter has created for them. For readers who like to focus on the puzzles, this is not a serious flaw. For me it is. I want more from a book than from a couple of hours of television. When character and motivation are merely clues to the crime, the puzzle may be plausibly resolved, but we don’t really care about the people whose lives are destroyed by it. Again, the video was better than the book. **
      The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1981) Quinn is a “graduate” at an examination service that certifies educational achievements of students from round the world. He’s profoundly deaf, but has developed very high lip-reading skills. He’s able to observe conversations from across the room; one of these indicates that one of the members of the syndicate is selling exam questions. This knowledge leads to his murder. The puzzle is more convoluted than usual. People try to hide facts for both good and bad reasons, but this not only misleads the police and delays the solution, it also puts them in peril. **½
      This is a repost because of some error that occurred on the page, which somehow inserted a link that consisted on the above text..

Alison Gordon. Prairie Hardball (1997)

     Alison Gordon. Prairie Hardball (1997) Kate Henry, baseball reporter, travels to the Battlefords to celebrate her mother’s induction into the Prairie Baseball Hall of Fame. Her mother was a Racine Belle, playing ball during the 40s and into the early 50s. The occasion is a belated honouring of the women who played baseball back then. The ladies meet and enjoy themselves until a murder spoils it. Kate’s boyfriend, Inspector Andy Munro of Toronto, helps investigate, but it’s Kate who stumbles on the truth, which has its roots in the past, and which reveals a surprise for Kate’s family.
     Modestly written, with enough byplay among the characters that the creakiness of the plot doesn’t bother much. The small town atmosphere and loving but emotionally restrained family atmosphere is nicely done. None of the characters is memorable, not even Kate (who narrates most of the chapters; of necessity some of the story is told in the third person, but the shift does not jar as much as one might expect). The reader will spot the killer before Kate does, but that’s no great loss. A pleasant entertainment. **½ (2003)

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)