John Mortimer. In Character (1983)

     John Mortimer. In Character (1983) The first book of interviews, and reading it one sees why a second collection was published (see above). Mortimer is above all a humane man. Even when he disagrees with his subject’s politics or taste, his disagreement is tempered by his attitude of live and let live. His harshest criticism is directed at a self-righteous chief constable, a truly terrifying man, whose belief in an absolute moral code would be acceptable, just, if he also had a sense of his own sinfulness. He doesn’t. At the end of this man’s profile, Mortimer quotes Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” That’s an injunction I’d have directed at others on Mortimer’s list, too.
     Mortimer arranges his account of his interviews so that they read like passages from a novel. One wants to know how it all turned out. Did the hero learn his lesson? Did his legacy survive, or did his followers betray his vision? In a few cases, Mortimer knows the answer, but in most he shares our ignorance. He also expects his readers to know a good deal of the back story, which makes it harder for North American readers to get all his references. Nevertheless, a pleasure to read. Mortimer clearly believes that public life matters, and hence the people in the public eye matter. *** (2005)

John Mortimer. Character Parts (1984)

    John  Mortimer. Character Parts (1984) A collection of interviews done for The Sunday Times. Mortimer tells the story of the interview, describing his subject’s appearance and reactions as well as their answers to his questions. The general format is the same: parentage, early life, influences, successes, and so on, and a few questions relating to whatever makes the subject newsworthy. The result is that I feel I know the characters more intimately than a mere question and answer format would permit. Most of the interviews were done in the 80s during Thatcher’s interregnum, which now seems more than a generation ago. Fun to read, and thought-provoking. *** (2005)

Rudy Wiebe. The Angel of the Tar Sands and Other Stories (1982)

     Rudy Wiebe. The Angel of the Tar Sands and Other Stories (1982) Just what the title says. I didn’t read the title story, I didn’t read any story all the way through. Wiebe writes what once passed for realism; I thought of it as such, too, once. But now, it’s clearly just another style of writing fantasies, of rewriting the past so that one cuts a much better figure in it than one ever did in reality. Set in the prairies, or in the urban or academic middle classes, or in the time of armed conflicts with our aboriginal peoples, the stories present themselves as authentic accounts of what really happened. They belong to a period, the middle decades of the 20th century, when many people still took fiction seriously, when they expected fiction to be unrelentingly tough and uncompromisingly truthful. Too often, such fiction turns out to be merely gloomy and depressing. * (2005)

Stanley Ellin. The Blessington Method (1966)

     Stanley Ellin. The Blessington Method (1966) Ellin made a small splash in the late 50s and early 60s as composer of macabre confections with a twist. The title story has been anthologised several times: Blessington invented a way of getting rid of inconvenient people (usually relatives) in ways that appear utterly natural or normal, if occasionally somewhat tragic. Other tales have similar twists. Hitchcock did much of this better on his half-hour TV show, but in both cases, the shtick stales rather quickly. That’s because the characters exist entirely to carry the joke. I completed no other story in this collection, although I started most of them. (2005) *

Kingsley Amis. Difficulties with Girls (1988)

Kingsley Amis. Difficulties with Girls (1988) UP sent me this for Christmas in 1989, and I didn’t read it then. I tried to read it recently, and found I couldn’t be bothered. Amis is one of those writers whose works reflect a few apparently essential features of life as it is lived when the book was wrote, and so gains a reputation as an insightful critic of the soap opera we call society. But a few years later, these works become almost unreadable. They refer to and take seriously transient attitudes and values, the kind that engage the editorialists and pontificators for a season, and seem quaint almost as soon as they are dissected and discussed. So I didn’t finish this book. I suppose in a decade or so some hapless graduate student will read all of Amis’s works and come to the unwarranted conclusion that he affords more than a superficial impression of English life in the second half of the 20th century. (2005)

Margery Allingham. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)

     Margery Allingham. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938) The title is too cute for the tale, which deals with murders done not by Georgia, the apparent beneficiary, but by Ferdi Paul, who depends on the income she affords him as leading actress in his company. Campion’s sister Val (I didn’t know he had a sister) is caught up in the mess, and Campion fails to prevent a death. In the end, he uncovers the murderer, at no little risk to himself.
     So much for the mcguffin. Allingham delivers herself of a number of comments on what we now call feminism which sound strange to current readers. Val ends as the wife of Alan Dell, in his sense of the word: that he will provide for her and protect her and expects her to devote herself totally to him. Val accepts this; yet she has been a very successful business woman as designer of high fashion (whence the pointless allusion in the title.) It seems as if Allingham wanted to write a social comedy with serious under- (over?) tones, and had to match her ambitions to the constraints of a detective story. Sayers (who comes close to giving Harriet a similar subservient role in her marriage to Wimsey) does the ‘tec story as novel much better. But one wonders whether Allingham might not have done more interesting work if she hadn’t had to keep herself in groceries by writing these slight but intriguing entertainments. Perhaps her hostility to the independent woman was at bottom a complaint about having to make her own way without a companion. I’ll have to find out more about her. ** (2005)
     Wiki's entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Allingham
     It appears she was happily married, but had no children.

William B. Ober M. D. Boswell’s Clap & Other Essays (1979)

     William B. Ober M. D. Boswell’s Clap & Other Essays (1979) Ober fancies himself an astute judge of literature, but his actual strength is diagnosis, especially of physical ailments. His psychological diagnoses are IMO less reliable, as he takes Freudianism’s claim to scientific rigour and validity for granted, which results in somewhat absurd certainties about the presence and effects of castration anxieties, etc. His essays are mildly interesting, and most are too long. The medical details don’t add much, and in several cases (including the title essay) nothing at all, to one’s understanding or appreciation of the author’s work.
     Ober’s purely literary remarks are helpful insofar as they show his thorough reading of the texts, and reminded me of what I’d read (or not read) and liked or not liked about them. But with the exception of his remarks on Chekhov, none of the essays persuaded me to take another (or first) look at the works themselves. I liked his essay about Socrates death best. He contrasts the facts of hemlock poisoning with what’s reported by Plato, and he concludes that Plato was inventing a myth. That so many readers have taken Plato’s tale for a factual report should remind us that ignorance causes a lot of misreading. **