The Crime of the Century (Amis, 1975)

 Kingsley Amis. The Crime of the Century (1975) Amis wrote this as a serial for the Sunday Times. Skillful, nicely plotted, with occasional flashes of satire, but not a classic of the genre. Retired Det. Supt Barry is called in on the caser of serial killing. The unknotting of the case is wordy, and while the clues have been fairly planted, there aren’t enough of them to justify the solution.

It’s not exactly a page-turner, but I did want to know how it all turned out. Perhaps its brevity (130 pages in paperback) is the reason for the mild disappointment. There’s large cast of interesting characters, but Amis sticks strictly to procedure. I would have liked to read a more expansive narrative, with back stories and intersecting plots. Oh well, Amis wrote it to order, and he delivered as contracted. I suppose an Amis fan or student should read this. For the mystery fan, it’s passable, just. **

Does Anything Eat Wasps? (New Scientist, 2005)

 New Scientist). Does Anything Eat Wasps (2005) Yes, lots of things eat wasps! Even other wasps eat wasps. You will find long (but incomplete) list on pages 82 to 84 of this wonderful collection of questions asked by readers of New Scientist.

For example, How much does a human head weigh? (About 10 lbs/5kg, which helps explain neck pain, but not the kind triggered by annoying cousins and neighbours). How many species of microbes live on and in the human body? (Nobody knows for sure, and since the question was asked, DNA surveys suggest it’s in the thousands at least. As for population, it’s likely in the trillions.)

Other readers (some of them even experts) provide the answers. An index makes this not only fun but useful. Highly recommended. Only downside: Once you’ve found an answer to a question, you just have to read the next question and its answers. And the next one.... ****

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. ***