Tuesday, November 5, 2024

European Reading Challenge #14

I read this for the 2024 European Reading Challenge. 

Ashes and Diamonds - Jerzy Andrzejewski

This novel takes place in a Polish factory town over four days, just before and after the end of WWII.

On 8 May 1945 WWII officially ended, but Polish people didn't feel much like celebrating. They were suffering stress from the violence and brutality of six years of Nazi occupation. They were facing the task of re-building not only in terms of construction but also ruined systems of education, social services, and its armed forces. Various political factions fought inter- and intra-party feuds and individuals settled grudges. People felt their beliefs and relationships in chaos.

Andrzejewski later landed in political hot water because of the lack of clear ideological line in this novel. Besides presenting a panorama of that particular place in that particular time, Andrzejewski also deals with moral conflicts and existential dilemmas post-WWII writers all over Europe were treating.

Andrzejewski was Alpha in The Captive Mind. Far be it from me to get between two Polish intellectuals about anything to do with their country, but I don’t get the feeling that the author was working for any party hacks with ideological purposes here. The reader can find unanswered questions and characters are not presented in the black and white terms of socialist realism.

In fact, the road signs they come up to never offer clearly marked forks. Inevitably, we readers are invited to join that exercise “What would you have done?” Ashes or diamonds? We can never be certain of the role we will play nor can we predict what sacrifices we accept or deeds we shirk that may cause us to be remembered.

After the war, how does one get along with neighbors who you’re sure were the ones that denounced you? After the changes induced by the ordeal of war and imprisonment and torture, is it even possible to like and love people you liked and loved before the war? How do you deal with the disgust and frustration of the worst people in the world running your country as if it were a criminal enterprise run by bosses and their henchmen?

A fine choice for those readers that like historical novels or want a view as to what Poland felt like after WWII.  

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Stoic Week 2024 3

Note for Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues: This week I will apply the Stoic orientation to the irrational beliefs of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966). The first three seasons of the show often feature illustrations of the everyday vices that undermine happiness and tranquility. Just because we don’t use the old-fashioned words like “envy” and “malice” to describe motives doesn’t mean spite is never a motive in our postmodern-a-go-go age.

My Blog Posts: Day 1 Oct 28 Control | Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions | Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues

The Case of the Nine Dolls (Season 4, Episode 9, 1960)  

Linda’s Impressions: Linda was left waiting at the altar when her best friend and cousin Margaret and her fiancĂ©e Clark eloped to Vegas. They had a daughter, Peggy, and they both died young. Linda can’t stand to be in the same room with seven-year-old Peggy because the child is unlucky enough to be the spit and image of her mother. Believing she can’t get over painful memories brought back by the child’s mere appearance, Linda literally hates herself for feeling such intense dislike for the little girl.

Character & Virtues
STOP: Being betrayed by two trusted people must have been a bitter blow. 
TIME-OUT: Take deep breaths, call on the four virtues.
OBSERVE: It’s no wonder Linda felt “crushed.”
IDENTIFY STOIC PERSPECTIVE: Linda can change her character by focusing on what she can change and what she can’t change. Her understanding and employment of the four virtues in daily life are under her control.
CHOOSE HOW TO HANDLE SITUATION: 
Fairness: Margaret and Clark had their reasons – they thought they were doing the right thing for them – reasons that we’ll never know. 
Temperance: So there’s little point dwelling on the unknowable and the pain of past betrayal.
Justice/Fairness:  A helpless, hopeless "I-can't-change" attitude not only hurts Linda, but it isn’t being fair to seven-year-old Peggy either. She can’t help looking like her mother and just wants to love and to feel loved, belonging to a family. 
Wisdom: Linda can't change the past but she can learn from it; e.g. “People - they’ll disappoint you so if you want something good get it from yourself.” 
Courage: Linda can step up to the plate now. Linda is the only family Peggy has left now. Linda could perform cousinly duties of sociality and kinship that might assist in getting over the “I can’t stand it” refrain going through her head and blighting her life. 

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Stoic Week 2024 2

Note for Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions: This is posted in observance of Stoic Week 2024. I observed Stoic Week in 2023. I keep a Stoic journal, but I thought it would be entertaining to examine ordinary problems from one Stoic’s point of view, mine. This week I will apply the Stoic orientation to the crooked thinking of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966).

My Blog Posts: Day 1 Oct 28 Control | Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions | Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues

The Case of the Howling Dog (Season 2, Episode 23, 1959)

Thelma’s Impressions: Thelma thought that Clinton was a “very attractive man,” perhaps assuming that his fine appearance indicated Clinton would be a charming lover she could spend time with. Maybe even forever. So, for Clinton’s sake, Thelma did away with two people. But though he helped her bury the victims, he rejected her. He worried that one day she would be afraid of him for having something on her, that one day she would be so afraid that she would speed him to an early grave. Justifying his worry, Thelma killed Clinton too.

Emotions: Provoked by the sight of a hottie, to paraphrase Epictetus, you had better exert self-restraint. In true noir fashion, infatuation might set off a train of events that gets out of hand. Aside from the risk of momentum due to irresistible attraction to unsuitable hotties, no one needs to be dependent on one specific person for happiness and serenity. Like sensible Elinor said in Sense and Sensibility "And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant—it is not fit—it is not possible that it should be so."

Monday, October 28, 2024

Stoic Week 2024 1

Note for Day 1 Oct 28 Control: This is posted in observance of Stoic Week 2024. This week I will apply the Stoic orientation to the crooked thinking of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966). I’m open to the argument it’s silly to use a Stoic approach to look for life lessons in old genre fiction. My counter-argument is that the motives in the stories such as desire, dislike, foolishness, shamelessness, and the need for power are motives in real life just as strong in our present day as 75 years ago. Or 2000 years ago.

My Blog Posts: Day 1 Oct 28 Control | Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions | Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues

The Case of the Candy Queen (Season 9, Episode 3, 1965)

Wanda’s Impressions: Wanda married at seventeen. Wanda felt jealous and hurt that her grandmother willed Wanda’s cousin Clair the candy recipe that Clair and her business partner Ed used to build a thriving confectionery company. Wanda felt bitter at being relegated to the role of Clair’s assistant. Wanda deplored Clair’s decision to can Wanda's crush Ed and replace him with Clair’s worthless gambler of a boyfriend. In court Wanda, under the influence of gobs of sugar that Perry made her eat on the stand, bursts out that she hates Clair because Clair always got what she wanted while Wanda never got her rightful rewards.

Control: Wanda's frustration and hurt are understandable in the sense that they are typical impressions people feel in response to perceived unfairness. Understandable beliefs but disputable. Maybe the granny did not will the formula to Wanda for a reason usual in the Fifties & Sixties: granny assumed Wanda was financially set for life in the traditional way, supported by a husband. No law requires last wills to be just. Granny did not have to be fair in her testament; it was her estate to disburse as she saw fit.

And Wanda would do well to get over "all or nothing" beliefs that are making her unhappy. No, Clair doesn't always get what she wants because nobody always gets what they want (just look at Clair’s poker zombie of a boyfriend). It's not true that Wanda never gets what she wants because nobody loses all the time.

Wanda had better not dwell on her pain at life allegedly dealing her a bad hand. Make a good marriage. Raise wonderful kids. Play with a golden retriever. Volunteer. A thousand things she can do, meaningful and ordinary, once she stops ruminating about allegedly missing out in the candy business.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Reading Those Classics #18

Children’s Classic. Sometimes it's fun and interesting to learn about writers and their curious lives. But other times we get more information than we bargain for and conclude we had better not know about authors and artists living lives as messy as our own. The author of this novel, E. Nesbit, had a complicated open marriage to a man who found it hard to make any money so she was the breadwinner under constant pressure to support a large family. See the article "E. Nesbit and the Happy Moralist" by Gloria G. Fromm. It’s so shocking it’s funny but one also feels how fraught home life must have been for their children. Nesbit was fictionalized in A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. It’s not a flattering portrait.

The Phoenix and the Carpet - E. Nesbit

The children we met in The Five Children and It set off fireworks inside their house. I can provide first-person testimony that as jolly an activity as this is, count lighting fireworks inside a house as play that causes collateral damage.

So the mother in this novel has to purchase a rug to cover a burned spot on the hardwood floor. Being modest middle-class people that can afford only a cook and maid – it is set at the same time as Ivy Compton-Burnett novels, the early 1900s -  it has to be a used rug.

And after they unroll it, out tumbles an egg, which winds up in the grate where the heat hatches a phoenix. The wondrous bird is verbal, vain and culture-bound to ancient conceptions of hierarchy and traditional rites. He informs the children that the rug will grant them three wishes a day, just like the sand fairy they met in the previous book.

The resulting adventures are not so rousing, but they are told with an irresistible wit and zest. Nesbit goes all intertextual before intertextuality was cool. She alludes to novels by other writers like Arthur Moore (“‘It’s not lying to say she’s a disagreeable pig, and a beastly blue-nosed Bozwoz,’ said Cyril, who had read The Eyes of Light, and intended to talk like Tony as soon as he could teach Robert to talk like Paul."). Referring to the oft-parodied poem Casabianca, sensible Robert says, “No boys on burning decks for me!” Nesbit also recommends other writers ("I am not going to describe the ranee’s palace, because I really have never seen the palace of a ranee, and Mr Kipling has. So you can read about it in his books.")

Nesbit therefore ingratiates herself with us great readers by assuming we have read the same stuff, both good and bad, and thus have developed our own reading tastes:

If you had been stood in Jane’s shoes you would no doubt have run away in them, appealing to the police and neighbours with horrid screams. But Jane knew better. She had read a great many nice stories about burglars, as well as some affecting pieces of poetry, and she knew that no burglar will ever hurt a little girl if he meets her when burgling. Indeed, in all the cases Jane had read of, his burglarishness was almost at once forgotten in the interest he felt in the little girl’s artless prattle. So if Jane hesitated for a moment before addressing the burglar, it was only because she could not at once think of any remark sufficiently prattling and artless to make a beginning with. In the stories and the affecting poetry the child could never speak plainly, though it always looked old enough to in the pictures. And Jane could not make up her mind to lisp and ‘talk baby’, even to a burglar.

It’s incredible, bordering on magical, that Nesbit can connect with her kiddo readers and tune into multiple wavelengths on their ever-sensitive baloney detectors: reading preferences, suspension of belief, familiarity with literary devices and fatigue with stock characters and stereotypical girly-whirly behavior. Not to mention her play with word forms (burglarishness, “artless prattle” to “prattling and artless”) will appeal to a certain kind of lexophilic kid. She assumes kids respond to a mentor if the tuition has a light touch and talks to them just that way. When she is instructive, she winks and never goes on and on.

That the prose is in Edwardian British English is perhaps why the books are still widely read in the UK and read only by the hardest hardcore readers in the USA. Americans like the new and outlandish; the predicaments the English kids land in are rather mundane (though the theater fire at a performance of The Water Babies has its moments). Americans relish the incessant movement on a quest in the Oz books; in this story however the kids go to bed, "tired out and only too thankful that the evening at last was over." And though we Americans see ourselves as friendly and open, we still don’t really understand or connect with the niceness of the English, that ineffable combination of good manners and consideration, spiced with reserve. And the kids in this story are really nice, which may cause eye-rolling and groaning among hard-boiled American kids.

So yes Nesbit is well worth reading, as Gore Vidal observes, “… it is part of Nesbit’s genius that she sees [children] as clearly and unsentimentally as they see themselves, making for that sense of life without which there is no literature at any level.”

Monday, October 21, 2024

Stoic Week 2024 Announcement

 ENROLLMENT IS NOW OPEN FOR STOIC WEEK

Stoicism and Wellbeing

Stoic Week is an annual online event where individuals from around the globe endeavor to live like a Stoic for seven days. This is your chance to participate in a unique experiment.

Register here


Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The Ides of Perry Mason 65

Note: I post something concerning the mystery fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner on the 15th of every month. Recently I was talking to a 30-something - a masters in Library Science - who did not know who Erle Stanley Gardner was, though she did know Perry Mason. No reflection on her knowledge, I think, since culture moves on. There's no reason the past's mega-stars should be remembered. Transience, even for authors who've sold a half a billion novels.

Spill the Jackpot – ESG writing as A.A. Fair

Under one of his many pen-names, Gardner wrote 30 mysteries starring the PI team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. This 1941 entry, the fourth, opens with Bertha checking out of a sanitarium in Nevada. For six months she had been recovering from a combined form of flu and pneumonia. On her journey back to health, she has taken off about 100 pounds. Down to 150 pounds, her new look has attracted, for the first time in years, male attention.

On a plane to LA on a layover in Las Vegas, ad man Arthur Whitewell subjects Bertha to the male stare. Getting into conversation, he finds that his fellow passengers Cool and Lam are private eyes. He hires them to find a young woman, Corla Burke.  She disappeared a day before she was to be married to Whitewell’s son Phillip who’s desperate to find Corla. Whitewell’s family problem does not stop him from chatting up Bertha, exerting the fluent charm of a marketing guy.

As the investigation unfolds in the first hundred pages, as usual, Donald Lam faces a lot of challenges. Short and slim, he packs a punch that Bertha claims wouldn’t shoo flies from a jug of maple syrup. In a casino he is socked into next week by an attendant of slot machines. Accused of tampering with the one-armed bandits, Lam is then roughed up by the cops. Getting a line on Helen Framley, who may help with finding Corla, Lam is thrashed by Helen’s semi-psycho BF, an ex-prizefighter named Pug. Though self-absorbed in being attractive again, even Bertha notices Lam’s clothes are dusty and his face is out of alignment.

Then, after being yanked off a train back to the City of Angels, Lam is suspected of murder by menacing police officials. Mind, all this in just the first hundred pages. It’s non-stop action in Lam’s investigations, like when Patrick O’Brian puts our heroes through battle, failed regime change, flight on mules, pox, blizzard, ice fields, hard sailing in a mere cutter, and a lightning strike all in the one novel The Wine-Dark Sea.

When Gardner wrote as Fair, he gave himself permission to loosen up. He actually develops characters in this novel. Ad agency sharper Arthur Whitewell doffs and dons personas at will. Gardner gives a psychological acuity to Whitewell that is persuasive. Ex-prize fighter Louie Hazen is in fact deeper than his image as slap-happy. And Helen Framley is a persuasive examination of the Gardnerian Heroine: young, urban, independent, strong, active, down-right, and only human. Gardner inserts travel writing by having Lam, Louie and Helen hide in the desert for a time; Gardner loved to describe the feelings desert beauty evokes and the soul-satisfying chuck you eat when camping. On the desert sojourn, Louie proves he is not punch drunk by becoming an excellent camp cook and boxing trainer for Lam.

Gardner deploys quips and comic relief in the Mason novels, but in the Cool and Lam novels Gardner gives his keen sense of comedy more play.  Bertha is a marvelous comic creation, a blend of the canny and smarmy, cynical and hard-boiled, greedy and miserly. In this novel, the interplay between Bertha and Lam is hilarious, especially when Lam tells Bertha he’s quitting the detective business because he has fallen in love. Desperate to retain his smarts for her own selfish ends, Bertha pulls out of her hat practical, financial, and misogynist arguments against playing the fool blind to the wiles of women.

Lam however is inarguably Gardner’s best creation. In the Mason novels, Gardner never tried a first-person narration from Perry, Della, or Paul’s point of view. But here and in other novels, Lam tells the story, though he will withhold information from the cops, suspects, Bertha, their office manager Elsie Brand, and the reader. Lam is never overtly upright or high-minded. Yet the people he interacts with, from hard-bitten prizefighters to tough city girls, can tell he is clean and decent for all his tight-lipped and undemonstrative ways. An ex-lawyer, Lam is no fool about the ways of the world and how human beings are likely to respond to internal and external pressures. He uses his well-hidden moral compass to manipulate Bertha, clients and cops so that the innocent are vindicated, underdogs are rewarded, and the unjust and cowardly are punished. Without prating about ethics, Lam would agree with Jewish mothers who say, “You don’t need a brass band to do a mitzvah (good deed).”

Granted, Louie’s tutorial for Lam on the inner workings of slot machines was out of date by 1945. And I wonder about the retro advice on the road work and massage that goes into becoming a practitioner of the sweet science. The reveal turns on an implausible choice of a character. And Bertha acts uncharacteristically in a scene near the end.

But any concerns I have are trivial. Plot and incident are not really the thing to catch a king or a reader. I highly recommend this vintage mystery for its characterization, especially of the series characters. How often can you say that of a Gardner story?