Canadian National Treasures (Callwood, 1994)

June Callwood. National Treasures (1994). Vision TV received its licence in 1987, and began broadcasting from its very modest studio a few months later. In 1991, June Callwood discussed an interview show with them. Her guests would be National Treasures, or at any rate people that she thought should be recognised as such. Most of her guests were drawn from her circle of friends and media acquaintances (she was a journalist and social activist). The show was a success, and helped Vision TV grow its audience. It’s now a money-making property owned by ZoomerMedia, with a more secular and marketing approach than the religious and multi-cultural service that its founders had promoted.
     This book consists of edited transcripts of nine of these interviews. They’re interesting as documents of a certain time and sociopolitical ambience that has passed. They trigger nostalgia for what looks like a simpler time, which it wasn’t. The cultural landscape simply felt smaller back then. But the transition to the larger and less easily encompassed  Canada of today was already underway.
     Callwood is a pleasant conversationalist, which makes for easy reading, but I don’t get the sense of personal or other revelations that I’ve had from Eleanor Wachtel (Writers and Company) or Mary Hines (Tapestry) interviews. However, the interview with William Hutt did change my perception of him. The others confirmed or expanded what I already knew (or thought I knew) about them. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the 1990s in Canada. All the interviewees have relevance today. ***

How Money Began... (Whitehead and Baskerville, Money, 1975)

 

     Geoffrey Whitehead & Patricia Baskerville. Money (1975). Subtitled How Money Began and How it Works, which is a nice summary of the book’s intentions. Apparently aimed at the curious middle-schooler, it succeeds. At the time it was written, very little was known about the origins of money, and despite a few lucky finds since then, we still don’t know much. By the time Middle Eastern city states codified law, money was already in use, and the laws designed to promote fair and honest trading were brutal. It seems that the propensity for cheating is somewhat stronger in us than for fair and honest dealing.
     Within its modest aims, the book is a success. I learned a few new details about coinage and paper money. The book is strongest dealing in physical money, and weakest in its explanations of how money works, skimming over the psychology (as economic theories generally do). The authors make a distinction between wealth and money early on, but don’t mention that the money-is-wealth superstition was a factor in the inflation caused by Spain’s importation of huge amounts of gold and silver in the 15/1600s. The Spanish did not grasp that these "precious" metals were only as valuable as what they could buy, which was less and less as the supply of silver and gold increased.
     The authors mention the usual concepts of money as a medium of trade and store of value, and talk about money as measuring prices. The printing is excellent. Recommended if you can find a copy. This one will be donated to the library’s book sale. **½

Death (Lapham's Quarterly 06-4, 2013)

  Lapham’s Quarterly 06-4: Death (2013) The many ways people have died and been done to death, musings about death, religious warnings and promises about life after death, the decay of the body and the waning of memories, the consolations and pain of grief.... Death is a large subject.
     Much of what we do is an attempt to either thwart death or to ignore it. A few minutes ago, I read an article reporting that cancer deaths in Canada are down overall while some cancers are increasing. More screening is one reason. The tone of the report suggests that somehow the defeat of cancer will prevent death. But of course it won’t. The odds of dying from cancer are about 1 in 7 or 14%, but the odds of dying from any one of the myriad causes are 1 in 1, or 100%.
     Meanwhile, we plan our lives as if they will continue at least until the next scheduled event. Life must go on.
     An excellent collection, as usual. ***

Fake News (Lapham's Quarterly special issue, 2018)

Lapham’s Quarterly: A History of Fake News (2018) As far back as we have writing, there’s been fake news. I suspect there was fake news well before any was recorded in writing. There’s also been pushback. Much of ancient fake news was merely exaggeration of the sponsor’s importance. Near eastern relics show that as often as not the new regime defaced their predecessor’s fake news and replaced it with their own.  Some of has this leaked into sacred texts: Ancient Israel was not as significant politically or economically as the Old Testament suggests.
     Quite early on, fake news has been both deliberate, and a mere side effect of more important objectives, such as attracting readers and advertisers in order to increase cash flow. The Hearst chain was notorious for starting the Spanish-American War for just this purpose. Electronic media have merely magnified these tendencies, as they have magnified all communications and accelerated their effects. This collection gives us mostly insider reports on how fake news was generated, with occasional confessions of unease or shame. It’s both entertaining and appalling. Like the news itself. ****

Stamboul Train (Graham Greene, 1932)

 Graham Greene. Stamboul Train. (1932). Green called this novel an “entertainment”, and it’s certainly that. A mix of characters travel from Oostende to Stamboul on the Orient Express. Carleton Myatt’s purpose is to complete a business deal in Stamboul. The other characters all somehow cross his path. A chorus girl, a political idealist, a murderous thief, an English shop-keeper couple on holiday, and so on.
Green’s invention is prodigious, enough for several novels. The story edges close to farce here and there, but human weaknesses always jerk it back into reality. Or maybe life is a farce, and Greene adds a dash of high realism.
     There is no poetic justice here, despite Greene;s claim that it’s merely an entertainment. Greene is a ruthless observer of the failures of  human nature and the systems we’ve invented to control it. Love and betrayal, greed and generosity, political paranoia and ignorance, meanness and naivete – it’s a rich stew of humanity. Green’s deprecation of his work may been a ploy to forestall criticism. It may also have prevented recognition that it is one of those apparently second-rate books that rise to the level of art.
     I thoroughly enjoyed the book. There were two film adaptations. I think a 4- or 6-part video series might do it justice. ***

Fred Pohl's Best (The Best of Frederik Pohl, 1975)

Frederik Pohl. The Best of Frederik Pohl (1975) Pohl wrote his first SF stories while still in high school. After a few stints as editor, he withdrew, but re-emerged some years later. The range and weirdness of his invention reminds me of Philip K. Dick, but his tone is lighter, and his satire milder than Dick’s. Pohl is interested in the effects of technological and social changes. He’s also interested in projecting current trends into the future and developing them to absurdity. He’s especially annoyed by advertising, by the relentless push to produce and consume more and more. He knows the tricks of manipulation using language, and his best stories demonstrate their effectiveness rather too well.
     Like many SF writers of the time, he tends to ignore of ecology, usually because ecology would complicate the story. “The Midas Touch” for example supposes a system of over-production and hence over-consumption. As satire on the consumer society, on the unquestioning assumption that ever-increasing production is the purpose of the economy, it’s well done. But the system would have collapsed from ecological exhaustion long before it reached the absurd levels of consumption portrayed. So Pohl ignores the ecological implications of over-consumption because he wants to make another point: That we are trapped in boxes of our own making, and so we persist in solving problems that would simply disappear if we changed our assumptions.
     The motif of unsuspected invasion by hostile aliens figures in several of the tales. Some critics have suggested this is an expression of the Cold War fear of Communist subversion. But the stories work just as well, and perhaps better, read simply as warnings that the Universe is likely a very hostile place. I enjoyed (re)-reading these stories Recommended. *** to ****

Easy read (Find Me A Villain, Yorke 1983)

Margaret Yorke. Find Me A Villain (1983) Nina, blind-sided by her husband’s demand for a divorce after 20 years of what seemed like a solid marriage, accepts a house sitting job in a much too bucolic village. The complications involve the gardener, who may be a serial killer; a shell-shocked ex-Navy man and his fussing protective wife; the vicar (of course); Nina’s children (who detest their father); and so on. The blurb indicates the there is “high tension” and terror, but I found neither. In fact, it took me three tries to get far enough into the story that I wanted to see how the author disentangled the knots she had crafted. So there’s that. The style is functional, best when the author strives for ambience. The characters are barely 2.0D, even Nina, who is the narrative centre of most of the book. I’m writing this about ten days after I finished the book, and had to skim a few pages to remind myself of what it was about.
      Yorke had a successful career as a writer. If this book is typical, one can see why: It’s a mildly engaging entertainment, the kind that people used to buy to while away a train journey. The occasional waspish remarks about the Other Woman and the psychological costs of marriage suggest that Yorke was writing from experience.**