Ralph Cotton. Gunfight at Cold Devil (2006)

     Ralph Cotton. Gunfight at Cold Devil (2006) Pulp fiction is now published mostly in so-called mass-market paperbacks. The days of pulp fiction magazines are gone, but the appetite for genre literature remains strong. This book’s an example: Two “lawdawgs” come to Cold Devil to arrest a bad person, who happens to be the saloon keeper. The sherif is a convicted murderer, so they have to haul two bad persons away to face a judge
     Unfortunately, the saloon keeper and other bad persons are mixed up in an old gold train robbery the proceeds of which are in the saloon keeper’s keeping. Roma that were run out of town, a corrupt leader of “regulators”, a couple of whores with hearts of gold, and a few other oddments of self-seeking and greedy moderately bad persons round out the cast. As you may have surmised, the plot is complicated and not quite believable, although Cotton is careful to calculate plausible travel times and allowing for the weather (it’s early winter up in the Rockies somewhere), but in the end the lawdawgs get their men, assorted bad persons have killed each other or been killed by the lawmen, and the moderately bad persons have gotten away with whole hides and the intention of setting up housekeeping where it’s warmer. So that’s all right. Fans of Westerns may rate this book higher than I do. *½

Angelo Hornak. Balloon over Britain (19xx)

     Angelo Hornak. Balloon over Britain (19xx) Hornak is a balloonist by avocation and a photographer by profession. The combination produces an appealing album. Because of his location, and because of the combination of landscape and weather that makes ballooning safe constrains where on can fly, the geographical range of the photos is limited, mostly southern and eastern England. But it’s worth looking at them. Hornak was able to photograph objects at much lower levels and shallower angles than an aircraft, so we get a better sense of how houses and castles fit into the landscape. Photos taken from aircraft look much like maps, which have a different appeal. These photos look more like views of models. One of the chief delights of this book is an appreciation of the layouts of the parks surrounding the great houses (most of which were built in the 1700s, with profits from sugar and the slave trade). *** (2008)

Hilaire Belloc. Characters of the Reformation (1936)

 

    Hilaire Belloc. Characters of the Reformation (1936) Belloc was known at Oxford as a skilled debater, at one time chairing OUDS. Like all debaters I’ve ever known, he was more concerned with winning, with making his case, than with the truth. Like many people with superior intellects, he believed that what he thought was right because he thought it, and could concoct an argument to prove its correctness. Here and there allusions to maths and science indicate that he understood neither logic nor mathematics. In particular he didn’t, I think, appreciate the difference between a valid argument and a sound one. Add to this his prejudices, his either-or, black-and-white moralistic mode of thinking and belief, his writing skills, and you get a man whose version of Reformation history is, to put it mildly, more than a little tendentious.
     Belloc was absolutely convinced that Catholicism is the only true religion, and that a true European civilisation must be founded on the Faith (he capitalises all words having to do with the Catholic religion, even Prelate!) Thus, the reformation was a disaster, and all modern European ills were caused by it, or rather, by an indecisive outcome, in which neither Protestantism nor Catholicism won. Thus the Authority of the Church is everywhere disputed (what would he have made of Vatican III?). Belloc clearly wants to be told what to do, and to Obey. And he wants everyone else to obey, too.
     Anyhow, I enjoyed reading this exasperating book, such is Belloc’s skill. As history, it is far too narrow in its views, and makes no pretense at objective narrative. He also reveals a snobbery based on descent; he hates democracy, he calls Parliament the “committees of the rich” (whom he accused of using Protestantism as a cloak for their looting and robbery of Catholic Church lands and wealth, which is more than half-true), he wants Kings to govern as well as rule, and so on. A thoroughgoing fascist, in other words. However, according to the Wiki entry on him, he was horrified at the Nazi treatment of the Jews. In other words, he talked a good talk, but when it came down to cases, his humanitarian instincts took over.
     Nevertheless, the overall impression is that we are in the presence of a first-class crank, albeit a much better read one than most cranks. He did take a First in history at Oxford, after all. His family background may be one factor in his crankiness. His father was French, his mother was English. He spent most of his childhood and most of his adult life in England, and clearly thinks of himself as English. His English patriotism is more intense than most people’s; perhaps as a child he was reminded too many times that he wasn’t truly English.
     His undisguised belief in breeding (family) and “health” as signs of intrinsic superiority, and hence the right to rule, guides his descriptions: the characters he detests are described as diseased, dwarfish, deformed, deficient, etc. The ones he admires suffer ill health, have a good figure, have inherited physical quirks, are simple, etc. His argument is relentlessly ad hominem; in fact, ad hominem is the guiding principle of his argument. He claims that a person’s character is all we need to know in order to judge the results of his actions. And character sometimes seems to mean merely adherence to a creed.
     So Belloc must show that the reformers were evil and/or morally weak. More, he must show that those Catholics who compromised with the Protestants acted from moral weakness. He doesn’t go quite as far as condemning Richelieu in the same terms as he condemns Thomas Cromwell, for Richelieu was after all a Prelate, a Cardinal even. But on the evidence, Richelieu’s focus on making the French monarchy supreme in France was exactly the same as Cromwell’s focus on increasing Henry’s power in England. Belloc accuses Cromwell and the two Cecils of governing England “through” the monarchs they ostensibly served. Yet he says that what Richelieu did was merely a misguided focus on increasing French secular power instead of using France as a center of reestablishing Catholic supremacy. I think he misreads Richelieu; no, I think he deliberately distorts Richelieu’s career to support his thesis.
     Belloc even distorts historical fact: he claims that the Divine Right of Kings was a Protestant theory, devised to legitimise royal supremacy over the Church. But Divine Right predates Protestantism. It was the justification for insisting on absolute obedience to the king, whose legitimate claim to such obedience was affirmed by the Church. The Protestant Revolution attacked royal divine right as much as it attacked the papal supremacy. That’s why the Anglican Church, headed by the monarch, never became fully Protestant, no matter how wide a range of Low Church theology and practice it included. Many Protestant princes in fact had to suppress attacks on Divine Right in order to maintain their rule. Belloc’s distortions of history sound oddly from a man who took a First in history.
     An odd book. ** (2008)

Carol Bennet & D W McCuaig. In Search of the K & P (1981)

     Carol Bennet & D W McCuaig. In Search of the K & P (1981) 2nd edition. Bennet and McCuaig have assembled a great deal of information, documents, photographs, and oral history of the Kingston and Pembroke Railway. The result is a well-done scrapbook history, beginning with the business and construction facts, followed by a station by station survey of the line, and ending with miscellaneous reminiscences. A pleasant book, typical of the local histories written as labours of love for those who are most directly involved in the story. I like these books, despite their shortcomings in scholarship and inevitable errors and misleading implications. They constitute a valuable resource for anyone who wants to write an official or scholarly work. But mainly they give the younger generations a clear impression of what it was like for the people whose stories are told, who lived in the area, who accomplished the enterprises described and celebrated. Nicely done. An index would help. **½ (2008)

Elmer Kelton. Captain’s Rangers (1968)

     Elmer Kelton. Captain’s Rangers (1968) Kelton made a reputation for himself as a writer of historical Westerns. If this one is typical, he likes to mix a love story into his history. Actually, a lot of Westerns mix love and adventure romance. Here, a Captain McNelly is authorised to clean up the Nueces Strip, the tract of land between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers which many Mexicans considered improperly ceded to Texas, and which like all dipsuted border regions became a scene of pillage and rapine. Texans rustled Mexican cattle north, and Mexicans rustled Texan cattle south.
      Langham Neal works for the Dangerfields; returning from a branding session with Zoe and a couple of vaqueros, he discovers the ranch burned and everyone dead. Zoe vows vengeance; Bailey, a neighbouring rancher who wants Zoe and her land, mixes into the situation. When Neal prevents a revenge attack on a neighbouring ranch owned by Mexicans, Zoe fires him. Neal joins the Rangers, hears that Zoe has married Bailey, then that Bailey has beaten her, and goes to fight Bailey. He wins of course, and he and Zoe will work her ranch. Fadeout. Not a bad tale, well enough written to keep my interest and engage my sympathy for the characters, which are however barely more than the standard stereotypes. **  (Book in house we're renting)

Carl Hiaasen. Paradise Screwed (2001)

     Carl Hiaasen. Paradise Screwed (2001) A selection of Miami Herald columns, almost all about politics, and all fiercely “liberal”, as the Republicans understand the term: opposed to the unholy alliance of big business and government, supporting the ideal of the common good, protective of the only true wealth, the environment on which we depend for everything, and so on. Assorted other values still make him right of centre in Canada. I read the first dozen or two columns, then sampled others throughout the book, and decided that its main appeal is to Floridians. Hiaasen writes both Juvenalian and Horatian satire, but without a personal connection to his subjects, even his stylistic skills can’t maintain my interest. Those who know Hiaasen and Florida politics will find this a good source book: most columns include all the relevant facts and figures.. Although the columns are now 15 years old, the issues are if anything even more urgent now. ** (Book found in the house we're renting on S. Padre Island)

Andrew Martindale. The Rise of the Artist (1972)

     Andrew Martindale. The Rise of the Artist (1972) A reissue and revision of part of Flowering of the Middle Ages, a massive coffee-table book. Well done, with sound scholarship, but in a format and style accessible to the non-academic. Martindale clarifies the changing role and status of the artist, a change that began long before the Renascence. While a medieval artist was an artisan, that does not mean he was necessarily anonymous or had no sense of artistic accomplishment and pride. Even in the Renascence, the artist was more of a craftsman than the Romantic view of the artist as “unacknowledged legislator of the world” imagines. What changed was not so much the artist but the critic: classic works provided a vocabulary and models for discussion of artists’ works.
A good book, even though the reproductions suffer from the state of printing prior to the digital revolution. But it also benefits from the absence of spell checker software: I found no typos whatsoever. *** (2008)