Remembrance Day 2021: 100 years of poppies.

 

On Remembrance Day, I'll post this link to a song about war.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the poppy a symbol of remembrance.

Perils on a Nile Cruise: Night Train to Memphis (Peters)

 

Elizabeth Peters. Night Train to Memphis (1994) Vicki Bliss (PH.D.) yields to entreaties to go undercover as an expert on Islamic Art in order to catch a thief. She thinks the thief is her occasional lover and opponent Sir John Smythe (one of his aliases). She’s wrong of course, but it takes a heap of complications, numerous villains, a psychopathic female, misunderstandings, hair’s-breadth escapes, etc, before she discovers and faces the truth, which is that she truly, truly loves him (obvious from the  beginning, so telling you that isn’t a spoiler).
     Fun, a nicely done mix of entertainment and education in Egyptian archaeology. Snappy writing, dialogue that moves the story along at a brisk pace, and of course enough soppy romance to satisfy fans of that genre. The dust cover shows an American diesel engine, not an Egyptian one. The train doesn’t actually figure except as a background means of getting a character to a crucial place and time. Above average of its type. **½

Friends and foes (Lapham's Quarterly VIII-1 and XIV-2)

 

Lapham’s Quarterly VIII-1: Foreigners. (2015) Humans are possibly the most social animals in existence. We nurture each other from cradle to grave. Very few other animals behave similarly, chimpanzees and elephants being both the most well known and almost the only ones. We have strong instincts for bonding with each other. The complement is an equally strong instinct to distrust whoever is not of our group. Hence “foreigners”. Just as all human groups have customs and rules shaping behaviour towards fellow group members, all human groups have customs and rules about how to behave towards outsiders. The fact that these differ in detail doesn’t disguise the fact that the distinction between Us and Them is common to all social animals.
     Unlike other animals, we talk about what matters to us. Lapham and his team have assembled what looks like a representative collection of past and present writings and pictures about the Foreigner. One thing stands out to me: to enable any kind of non-violent interaction with foreigners, they are, at least temporarily, made members of the group. The distinction between Us and Them is not forgotten, but is firmly pushed into second place. A guest is one of us while they are with us. If a foreigner becomes a permanent guest, the some more or less formal ceremony acknowledges that they are now one of us.
     A tangential thought: we humans mark changes in social status. For example, a child becomes an adult. The initiation rites that mark this change are like the rites that mark the change from foreigner to insider.
     Personal note: I have felt like an outsider wherever I have lived.
     A good collection, as always. **** 

 

               
Lapham’s Quarterly XIV-2: Friendship. (2021) C. S. Lewis calls Friendship one of the Four Loves. He sees a common feature: Care and concern for some other person’s welfare. In Friendship, that begins with the awareness that the friend shares come source of joy or delight. The concern is then that the friend may enjoy that common delight as much as one does oneself. Hence a concern that they have the same resources, and hence a willingness to share. That willingness can widen to sharing anything and everything one has, which implies that Charity is next to Friendship. Lewis goes on to discuss Eros and Agape. His book is worth reading more than once.

    This collection doesn’t distinguish between friendship and charity, except perhaps in the sense that friendship may be charity focused on the few people we call our friends. Nevertheless, we read many testimonies to the power of friendship, and how for many people it was more important than family, or social or political alliance. We also read how, when mixed with social or political allowances, it can become corrupted, and an occasion for betrayal. The unkindness of a treacherous friend stings as sharp as the serpent’s tooth.

     Another good collection. ****

Grimes experiments with poetry (Send Bygraves!)

 

 

Martha Grimes. Send Bygraves (1989) A tour de force: a series of poems that tell the story of a murder and the involvement of Bygraves, an elusive detective. Each segment experiments with a different verse form. The result is a series of sketches or set pieces that together provide a handful of way-stations on the road from suspicion to moderate certainty. I started reading this some years ago, and couldn’t get past the first few pages. This time I managed to persevere to the end. What kept me reading wasn’t the story, but curiosity about how Grimes would fit her tale to each set of poetical conventions and restraints. Her experiments are generally successful. I still don’t know exactly what the story was about, or how Bygraves did or did not solve the puzzle. I did suss that Bygraves is called but never answers.            
     A nicely made book, with an illustrated hardcover, interesting illustrations (which may elucidate the tale, but I’d have to re-read to figure out whether and how), and deckle-edged pages of excellent paper. A gift item suitable for Grimes fans, I suppose. Not a keeper. **

Two by L'Amour: A soft-spoken hero, and a tarnished knight.

 

Louis L’Amour. Guns of the Timberlands (1955) Jud Devitt, a man used to getting what he wants, arrives at Tinkerville. He aims to get at the timber upstream of Clay Bell’s ranch. The plot is complicated by a local man with a hidden agenda, Devitt’s fiancee Colleen Riley, and a motley crew of lumberjacks, outlaws, upstanding citizens, cowhands with dubious pasts, and so on. L’Amour allows himself editorial comments on the need for law, order, and fair dealing. Bell is good with his fists as well as his guns. He wins, of course, and gets the girl, too. A good entertainment, made into a movie in 1960. **½

Louis L’Amour. The Quick and the Dead. (1975). Duncan McKaskel and his family are travelling west. A passel of bandits want the loot in McKaskel’s wagon, and his wife Susanna. Con Valian meets up with them, tells them they will need to fight to preserve their lives and their possessions. McKaskel believes in negotiations with reasonable people. He’s wrong, and the story tells of his unwilling acceptance of the facts of life on the lawless frontier. Valian sticks around, despite himself.
     The reluctant knight in tarnished armour is a common figure in L’Amour’s novels, as is the Easterner endangered by his blithe assumptions of safety. L’Amour’s great skill is varying the stories, enough that I’m never bored reading them. This was also made into a movie, starring Sam Elliot. I’ve watched it, see my review elsewhere on this blog. ***

Maurice Sendak: Two for beginning readers

 

Two by Sendak: In the Night Kitchen and Chicken Soup With Rice. Maurice Sendak had the gift of remembering what it’s like to be child, and so to know what kind of story appeals to children – not the ones concocted by authors with M. Ed degrees anxious to teach both reading and suitable life lessons. Sendak also knew how to make his pictures not merely illustrations but integral parts of the story.
     In the Night Kitchen tells a dream, in which Mickey falls into the kitchen under his house, where the bakers are busy baking bread and rolls. The bakers look remarkably like Oliver Hardy, and make a Mickey cake, from which he escapes. Chicken Soup With Rice praises that estimable dish in verses that tell us how it suits each month of the year. Well done, very good for beginning readers. Fantasy, clever rhymes, surprising ideas, what more could one want? ****

 

Political Satire. It's a page-turner! (The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis)

 

Terry Fallis. The Best Laid Plans (2007) Who’da thunk a political novel could be a read-through page-turner? Well, almost, I don’t set aside enough time to read through the whole book in one sitting. I did anticipate the pleasure of taking up where I left off, which was always rewarded.
     Daniel Addison leaves political hack work when he discovers his lover in the House Leader’s office having a non-political encounter. Broken-hearted, he retreats into academe. But one last political job must be done before he can relax and enjoy teaching and research. He must find a Liberal who is willing to stand in a riding certain to be lost to one of the most popular Conservative Finance Ministers ever to wear shiny new shoes on Budget Day. He manages to find one, his landlord Angus McLintock, an engineering prof doomed to teach English For Engineers. Daniel proposes a deal: He’ll teach the course if Angus will stand for the Liberals. Assured that he will lose, Angus is happy to oblige.
     And so begins an engaging story of how McLintock wins (what else did you expect?), Addison heals his broken heart (ditto), and various other characters receive their just poetical desserts. Not quite as funny as I expected from a book winning the Stephen Leacock Award, but slyly satirical, robustly indignant, sappily romantic, unobtrusively informative, with enough witty asides to satisfy my taste for irony. It was also the 2011 winner of Canada Reads, a CBC-sponsored competition in which miscellaneous celebrities argue for their book. I’ll add my recommendation to whoever promoted this one. ****

Glossary: Riding = electoral district. Shiny new shoes = Canadian political tradition, the Finance Minister wears brand new shoes when introducing the Budget. CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.