It's a Good Life... (Seth, 2004)

 Seth (G. Gallant). It’s a Good Life, if you Don’t Weaken. (2004) A collection of stories collected into a novella. The plot is the eventually successful search for information about Kalo, a Canadian New Yorker cartoonist who seems to have disappeared from history.

Seth writes graphic novels. His drawings are essential to his story. Their elegiac ambience supports the hero’s view of life as a series of losses. He likes old things, imagining that life in the Olden Days was simpler and morally easier than now. His search for Kalo is semi-successful. He finds the rest of Kalo’s work, and discovers where and why he retired from cartooning. It’ a humdrum story of having to make a living, but in the context of Seth’s unease about his own purpose in life, humdrum takes on existential significance. The title of the story is one way to express that significance.

I liked this novella, and will likely read it again. (This was a second reading.)****

North Channel, Lake Huron, Blind River ON, 2025-04-29

 

I take a few photos of the North Channel about once a month. This a recent one. Windy, about 5C, looking south. Click on it to see it full-screen.

Fin de siècle fiction: Daughters of Decadence (Showalter 1993)

Elaine Showalter. Daughters of Decadence (1993) Showalter has selected a representative sample of short fiction written by women around 1890. These stories were published in women’s magazines and literary journals. The writers were at least semi-professional. Like their male counterparts, they wrote to satisfy the market, which at the time wanted moody pieces that suggested sensuality and luxurious indulgence in emotions, or melodramatic examinations of moral failure and just punishment.

The pieces that Showalter chose have an edge of defiance and rebellion. These writers knew their skills were equal to those of their male competitors, and naturally they did not like the lower pay and lack of recognition. They were  part of the second wave of feminism, which among other things gained the vote.

Given the heavy political freight these stories carry, are they worth reading? Yes, but like all fin-de-siècle art, they are as interesting for what they tell us of our ancestors’ taste and sentiments as for their artistic merit. As stories, they are well constructed. They cover a wide range of genres, from naturalistic fiction to romance to fantasy. I like the satire and social critique that most bring with them. They’re generally set in the upper middle and upper classes. The dialogue is artificial, but oddly enough it gives an impression of truth. I suspect that’s because men and women of those classes were always on their guard. They could not assume the language of intimacy among equals without also suggesting a sexual intimacy that could damage their reputations.

The stories are about personal and social relationships. Most tell of the emotional costs of presenting oneself as available, or withholding oneself because of some unsuitability. Women must play their roles, and so must men. It’s all very civilised in tone and style, but often viciously mean in substance. Many of the male characters display their prejudices and misogyny unwittingly. It’s no wonder that the critics objected, especially to the stories that suggested or showed that personal happiness requires the freedom to make moral choices for oneself.

The anthology apparently was assembled for use in a course on feminist literature, but the stories don’t need academic justification for reading them. If you like short stories, I think you will like these. If you also want to know something about the taste of your ancestors, I think they are good data. If you see popular literature as the mirror of the moral and ethical concerns of its times, these stories are essential reading.

Recommended. ***

What "100 year flood" really means

How likely is a "Hundred Year Flood" this year? Does the likelihood change when you've just had one?

I have a subscription to an online new source. Many of the stories it publishes are open for comment. One of the reports was about a Turkish geologist, Naci Gorur, who was trying to raise earthquake awareness. I saved the following comment because it makes a crucial point about what the probabilities of "rare" events actually mean. The highlighted sentence sums up the math. Percentage odds are not intuitive. I've added the calculation below Repetto's comment. I used my computer's calculator to do the arithmetic.

[ by R.C. Repetto, Amherst, MA]

People can't deal with probabilities, such as "a hundred-year flood". If there was one ten years ago, they think they're safe for another 90 years. No, they face a one percent probability there will be one next year and more than a ten percent chance* there will be one in the next decade. That misunderstanding and shortsightedness is why people still move into disastrous locales, such as Florida or Phoenix or the mountainous regions of the West. It makes a mockery of the claim that "we" can adapt to climate change. We haven't and won't, until it's too late.

* If the odds of some event is 1 percent (one per hundred) per year, then the odds that it will happen within the next 10 years are (1.01^10*100)-100, or 10.4%

Footnote: If you knew there was a one percent chance of having an accident every time you drove your car, would you drive it?

A ramble through Stuart MacLean's Mind (The Vinyl Café Notebooks, 2010)

Stuart MacLean. The Vinyl Café Notebooks (2010) Just what it says. McLean sorted them according to themes. The tone is a mix of Welcome Home and the Vinyl Café stories.

An enjoyable read, even, I think, for people who aren’t fans. As in the stories, McLean sometimes pounds home the themes, which to me feels like he doesn’t trust his readers. Then I see an online post of some supposedly true-life story whose lessons are explained at (usually sentimental) length. And I recall the student who had trouble understanding anything more than the literal content of the stories. Which means, among many other things, that we tend to think that’s what’s easy for us must be easy for everybody. And so we come to so-called common sense, which is neither, most of the time. It’s just the notions that seem obvious to us, limited by our experience, and our brain’s depressing tendency to take a single example as proof of a generalisation.

OK, looks like I’ve committed Mclean-like ramble of thoughts.

Recommended. ***

A Poker Hand's A Clue (Eric Wright, The Last Hand, 2001)

Eric Wright. The Last Hand (2001) Charlie Salter is approaching retirement, and has been assigned office duties.  An apparently simple murder case turns out not to be. Salter gets the case because one of the people close to the victim wants him to do it. He’s assigned Terry Smith, a brand new constable, an immigrant from Glasgow, to work with him. After a lot of palaver and fact checking, we find out what we probably inferred around the quarter mark: it was a passion-driven murder. A very large pile of misleading information and surmise has to be cleared away, mostly because a lot of it, if true, would implicate a lot of important legal people in corruption and scandal.

A good read, but not a great one. Salter goes off into the sunset of retirement happy that he’s played one last hand. A poker game figures in the solution by providing the clue that unravels the knot.

OK, that’s enough cliches. I enjoyed the book because I like the Salter series. The book could have stood a lot more story about Salter and Smith.  **½

Nasturtium

 

September 2009. This was a test of the close-up capability of my then-new Canon SX-20 digital camera.