Louis L’Amour. The Outlaws of Mesquite (1990)

     

Louis L’Amour. The Outlaws of Mesquite (1990) When I was in middle school, I read a lot of Westerns. They were in German, and sold in thin 32-page booklets slightly larger than a regular paperback, with glossy newsprint covers in lurid colour. They were called Schundliteratur, or trash-literature, and our teachers disapproved. That didn’t stop us, of course. The publishers commissioned all the pulp-fiction genres, but I preferred Westerns. The Western was obviously a variation on the chivalric romance, not that I was sophisticated enough to know this. All I knew was that in the American West men were men, women were women, and villains got a very satisfying comeuppance, after which the heroes got the girl. I’ve been a sucker for romance all my life.
     I’ve gone off Westerns since then, and don’t read nearly as many as I used to. Part of the reason is that the movies do a much better job than print. The genre is a quest romance: the hero must negotiate a wilderness populated by monsters and villains. His skills, while above average, are barely a match for the villains. He relies on help from people weaker than himself. He’s not always smart enough to outwit his enemies, luck plays a large role, but in the end he gets the hand of the princess. As often as not, his horse is a loyal friend.
     The genre is extremely flexible: a good story teller can use it for any purpose. But above all, the landscape must feel authentic. That, more than anything else, makes a Western a Western. Louis L’Amour’s main talent is to put the reader into that landscape. In a few sentences, he helps you see and hear and feel and smell the place. That alone makes his stories a pleasure to read. He’s also a page-turning narrator: we always want to know what happens next, even when L’Amour uses well-worn plots. His style is compact and spare: he rarely has a word out of place or words he doesn’t need. He’s good at sketching the details of ranching and farming so that we feel convinced of the reality of what is after all a romantic fantasy.
     Here we have eight love stories. I guess L’Amour’s a sucker for romance, too. The women are all pert and pretty, and very, very smart. They also know what they want: it’s not always clear who is pursuing whom. “Thoroughbred” is the term the objective admirers use for them. The hero is usually a wanderer who hasn’t had much if any time for women, until he sees the One that will focus his life. He’s seen more trouble than he’s wanted to, but he’s never shied from defending his honour, which as often as not entailed protecting the weak and helpless. A true knight in trail-dusted armour.
     I read the whole book at one sitting. Actually, I was in bed, and just didn’t turn out the light until I was done. ***

Robert Holdstock & Christopher. Stars of Albion (1979)

     Robert Holdstock & Christopher. Stars of Albion (1979) A collection of British (hence Albion) science fiction (hence stars). Geddit? The majority of pieces describe dystopias, which makes for a gloomy effect. The couple of exceptions are mildly funny in a sophomoric sort of way. Not a keeper. * to **½ (2008)

Ellis Peters. An Excellent Mystery (1985)

     Ellis Peters. An Excellent Mystery (1985) Humilis, a dying monk (a war wound will not heal) and former Crusader, and Fidelis his caregiver, a novice, arrive at Cadfael’s monastery. A young man, Nicholas, receives permission from Humilis to find and woo the young woman that Humilis had released from their engagement so that he could become a monk and live out his life in contemplation. But she has disappeared. A long and winding path leads to her discovery, but Cadfael must hide her identity (it’s Fidelis) to avoid scandal. The final chapters move swiftly, but love (and marriage) triumph. This is one of Ellis odder contributions to the Cadfael saga, but pleasant enough. Peters was, I think, a frustrated writer of love romances. **½ (2008)

Sheridan Morley, ed. Punch at the Theatre (1980)

     Sheridan Morley, ed. Punch at the Theatre (1980) A lovely compilation of articles, cartoons, squibs and satires and so on, from the 1841 (its first year) to 1979. It’s sad that Punch didn’t survive (it shut down in 1992, was resurrected in 1996, but was closed again in 2002). Often, a compilation is tedious to read in anything other than small sessions, but not this one. If I hadn’t fallen asleep, I would have read it at one go. A goodly dollop of nostalgia energised me. The names of the actors, plays, playwrights, and even theatres triggered memories. Good stuff, all of it. The only pity is that so much of the pleasure of reading it depends on knowledge of the subject. But that’s true of humour in general, and satire in particular. *** (2008)

Ross Macdonald. The Way Some People Die (1951)

     Ross Macdonald. The Way Some People Die (1951) The third Lew Archer novel, and still one of the best. Archer is engaged by a mother to find her missing daughter, who has married a small-time hood. He uncovers an elaborate plot to kill off an undesirable husband and abscond with his ill-gotten money. Mobsters who want their money and their heroin complicate the problem. The girl is the murderer, and like many villains of the period she is a psychopath.
     Leslie Fiedler noted the frequent appearance of evil women in American literature, and put it down to American men and women’s inability to treat each other as mature equals. There is some truth to that; around the same time Betty Friedan’s suburban housewife whinge reignited the feminist movement, whose thesis was that men do not treat women as equals. (Friedan wasn’t really a feminist; she was just annoyed that she couldn’t get the (female) help she wanted so as to be free to pursue a career, and further annoyed that she wasn’t wooed by prospective employers. Where she got such fantastic notions about the working world is anyone’s guess. She seems to have led a very sheltered life).
     But Fiedler ignored the evidence available to him or anyone else capable of observing actual life, which is that men and women in the USA, like men and women everywhere, manage to get along pretty well. They do so by discovering and more or less accepting each other’s foibles and quirks, and by negotiating revisions to their roles in every generation, and above all by treating each other with kindness, most of the time.
     However, literature is another matter. It both reflects and distorts the realities of life. Popular literature tends to present a more or less idealised fantasy of what its readers wish life were like. This idealised world includes its own corrections. The virtuous virgin is contrasted with the slutty bitch, the comforting mother with the cruel witch. The hero pure in word and deed faces the villain impure in everything he does and says. The strong and just father contrasts with the weak and unjust uncle. And so on. The moral vision may be black and white, but it is powerful, and commands the assent of the readers. The same moral vision appears in the tabloids, which differ from pulp fiction only in that the stories are purported to be true.

     Macdonald gives us a villain whose appearance (the virtuous virgin/wife) hides the reality (the sluttish bitch/cruel witch). He plays with the stereotypes and tropes of pulp fiction in a way often imitated. He plays with the moral verities: the universe in which he sets Lew Archer is one of dark greys and dirty whites, where simple moral judgments break up on the reality of human complexity. Lew Archer’s meditative melancholy provides the setting for these themes. He’s a man who’s seen too many mixed motives, too many flawed heroes, and too many villains with a streak of kindness. He knows how often justice is compromised and why: desire for convenience, lack of money and time, devaluing of those who live in and beyond the borders of respectability. The academic critics revere Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the best practitioners of this mode, but I think Macdonald is the better than either of them.

    Recommended. ***½ (2008)

Nicola Davies and Neal Layton. Poop (2004)

   

 Nicola Davies and Neal Layton. Poop (2004) Nicely written and illustrated introduction to the subject, with an emphasis on its ecological importance. Lots of interesting and odd facts, chosen to astonish and amuse the children who are the intended audience. **½ (2008)

Dorothy E. Skinkle. Star Giant (1969)

     Dorothy E. Skinkle. Star Giant (1969) A kind of Harlequin Romance set in an alternate universe in which Earth is used as an exile or prison planet by a race of aliens that look like humans in every respect except that they are 7 to 9ft tall. The style is simple, as is the plotting and characterisation, so that it’s not clear who the intended audience might be: juvenile SF fans, or adult Romance fans? The protagonist is male, but the focus of the story is his relationship with the Earth woman who reminds him of his wife back home, not surprising, considering that she’s his wife’s niece by an earlier exile (their families are politically endangered). The villain is the hero’s rival, who has also been exiled, and who has a pathological lust for both the wife and the earth woman who looks like her twin. Lots of interesting ideas here, none of them well worked out. * (2008)