Ashenden, or The British Agent

Ashenden, or The British Agent - Somerset Maugham

This collection of short stories are based on his experiences as a spy during WWI.

Prospective thrill-seekers are clearly warned off in Maugham’s introduction. He says, "The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole extremely monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless. The material it offers for stories is scrappy and pointless; the author has himself to make it coherent, dramatic and probable."

The stories here have verbal dueling and furious thinking but are without car chases, gun play, or stuff blowing up. The fantastic characters would be familiar to readers who like John "Greenmantle" Buchan, such as the Hairless Mexican, femme fatale Giulia Lazzari, and hardcore Teuton Mrs. Caypor. In contrast to the earnest tone of writers like Buchan and Graham  "The W Plan"  Seton, Maugham writes in his usual amused tone, always tolerant of flawed human nature.

I’ve read a lot of Maugham’s stories and novels and I think, in terms of characterization, dialogue, and Maugham’s favorite themes (like abused love a la Of Human Bondage), these stories rank with his best like Cakes and Ale, The Narrow Corner, and The Razor’s Edge.

Finally, for those into history of genres, with these stories Maugham unwittingly invented the genre of sophisticated espio-fiction, which Eric Ambler and John Le Carre, among many others, later did so well.

The Dirty Thirties in the US

The American Earthquake - Edmund Wilson

This is a collection of nonliterary essays, such as vignettes of life in the Big Apple in the Jazz Age and reviews of concerts, art exhibitions, movies and Ziegfield Follies' productions.

In 1932, the worst year of the Depression, Wilson traveled around the US as a reporter. So this collection is comprised mainly of essays that came out of that journey. Critic Alfred Kazin argued that Wilson "is not a reporter but a literary artist driven by the historical imagination - like Henry Adams and Carlyle."

It is a portrait of a time when "the whole structure of American society seemed actually to be going to pieces."

Who would get into this book: readers interested in the Jazz Age, readers into Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, or those who want to know about the childhoods of members of the Greatest Generation. Wilson's unapologetic and frank style is for people nostalgic for columnists like H.L. Mencken who would bluntly describe regions of the US as "backward." For instance, for people who know Dearborn and FoMoCo, there is a brutal take-down of Henry Ford and his minions like Sorenson.

Back to the Classics #10

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020.

Classic with a Place in the Title:  Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk was first published in French in 1956. Archangel is an old port city in the far north of European Russia.

The Little Man from Archangel – Georges Simenon

In a small provincial town where he sells old books and collects rare stamps, everyone knows Jonas Milk. In his early forties, of Russian-Jewish origin, he has always been a part of the market neighborhood, as he follows his daily routine from his shop to the cafe opposite. Married to the beautiful Gina, nearly twenty years his junior, they form a mismatched couple, but their neighbors wink eloquently, fully knowing her parents pressured the delinquent girl  into  marriage to the 40-year-old virgin so they could get some peace and quiet. Gina herself had warned Jonas off, but, of course, he didn’t listen, giddy with the sense his narrow life was going to change.

Life changes, as it always does, one fine day, out of the blue, when Gina disappears, taking with her several priceless stamps that Jonas knows she can’t sell because all the dealers know Jonas has priceless stamps and would call the cops. The neighborhood, however, notices Gina’s absence and, being the cunning merchant shits they are, become suspicious. Jonas, embarrassed that his tolerance of her serial cheating will become public knowledge, evades questions, claims Gina went to Bourges. Could the plump little man from Archangel, seeming harmless, have killed his wife? Poor Jonas, living in cocoon alive but not living is silently  shunned, accused by mere rumor of a crime he did not commit.

A reader could examine this novel as a typical existential critique of a life cravenly lived. But there’s also Simenon’s close examination of small social circles, in this case a humble neighborhood. Furthermore, we have another example of Simenon’s stock character – the little man, the ordinary guy, socially integrated in a certain milieu, but who, confounded by fate, victim of bad luck, of malice, of ignorance or of his own anxiety and depression, sees himself little by little banished from the only society he knows.

As in his other psychological thrillers, Simenon sets this novelette in a limited number of dreary spots: the dusty smelly bookshop, the cafe, the market. As always with Simenon, there are lots of smells: espresso, vegetables, armpits. The action happens inside the main character, in the darkness of his soul, where the most secret, the most frustrated, the most shameful feelings hide. What is fascinating in this story is that we are witnessing, on the one hand, the intimate drama of Jonas giving his assent to irrational ideas, but also his dismayed resignation the breakdown of communication and shattering of assumptions that cause to snap the wires that connect his brains and his sense of self-preservation.

Granted, it may not be the most cheerful reading in our days of outbreak and ennui. But this is a story rich in an atmosphere, without false twists, moving towards a painful conclusion.

Holy Cow!

Holy Cow! - Sarah Macdonald

This 2005 book is about her adventure in India. For the sake of love, Sarah moves to New Delhi. This, in spite of the fact that she detested the country on a previous trip there.

This book delivers just about everything a reasonable reader can expect from a travel book. As an expatriate memoir, it tells of her struggles with the culture and the ultimate drag, getting really sick in another country. It’s part chick lit because space is devoted to a “problem relationship.”

In the travelogue, she tells about journeys around India and Pakistan and in the confession, she tells about her spiritual journey, a.k.a. finding herself. The book is a primer, too, as a guide to the diversity of religions in India.

On the downside, the writing kinda clumps along in places, a shrill tone sometimes creeps in, and the frank honesty about India could be interpreted as a slap in the face. But these are quibbles alongside her insight and humor about her unique experience in a culture that we general readers ought to know more about.

The Ides of Perry Mason 11

The 15th of every month until I don't know when I will post a review of a Perry Mason mystery. For the hell of it.

The Case of the Gold-digger's Purse - Erie Stanley Gardner

When Perry Mason’s confidential secretary, Della Street, peeks inside a red-headed gold-digger’s purse, she spies a roll of bills big enough to gag a mastiff – and the gun that killed businessman-heel Harrington Faulkner. 

Mason and Della don’t feel it reasonable or seasonable to burden the police with their knowledge of the contents of anybody’s purse. Then – too late – it dawns on them that Della’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon. The police regard the gold-digging ingénue Sally Madison and Mason and Della with the most profound suspicion.

Turns out that in order to raise funds her tubercular boyfriend needs for a sanitarium stay, the 

gorgeous but loyal gold-digger Sally figures on separating the businessman-heel from a little of his dough. She offers the heel her BF’s cure for the heel’s sickly goldfish. Proving nobody is completely bad, the poor fishies with ick are the only creatures for which the heel has any feelings. However, her plan goes ahoo when the fish vanish and Faulkner ends up shot to death still with shaving lather on his face, amidst the shards of a broken fish bowl and the remains of several dead goldfish.

Thus, Mason has to solve multiple disappearances: rare goldfish called Veiltail Moor Telescopes  a.k.a. “the Fish of Death,” a secret formula of an new ick remedy, a vanished bullet, and the real murderer.

In rating this 1956 mystery, the 26th Mason novel, I can give only a qualified thumbs-up. On the positive side, we readers enjoy the retro names (Adele, Genevieve, Elmer, tail-rot for ick) and retro artifacts (straight razors, fountain pens, big cars with finicky chokes). The nemesis Lt. Tragg proves himself the worthy opponent. Gardner gets across points about the fallibility of the police and their unwitting misconstrual of evidence when they think they know who the perp is. In the last scene, Perry and Della do a victory waltz at a dance hall. Letting her guard slip, she calls him “darling.”

On the down side, Gardner spends time on characterization, a literary nicety he usually – wisely - subordinates to plot, a rapid pace, and a surprise solution. The result is a problem: we are given enough information on both victim and gold-digger that we readers detest both of them. The gold-digger – the little minx - gives Perry a mere perfunctory “thank you” for saving her life and the BF’s freedom.  

Gardner also complicates matters to the point where the red herrings start to smell bad. Plus, Gardner doesn't give us readers a fair chance to solve it before Perry reveals all.  A vital clue is given about five pages before the ending. Grrrr.

Back to the Classics #9

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020.

Classic Adaptation. I have had time only for a dip into the 1974 BBC adaptation of the six Palliser novels. It has 26 one-hour episodes, which promises ample room to stretch out and thus be more faithful to the original stories, which is unusual in an adaptation. The sets are beautiful and the costumes striking but lack the textured look ushered in by Merchant-Ivory movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1974 they could certainly not achieve that kitschy HD look movies – Christopher Robin, for instance - are ridden with now. But I still believe in balloons and honey, okay? Especially in plague years.

Can You Forgive Her? – Anthony Trollope

The first book in the Palliser series was published in serial form from 1864 to 1865. Trollope examines the cases of three women who readers may or may not feel to be in need of the forgiveness asked for in the title.

Alice Vavasor gets her headstrong nature from her willful mother who died shortly after giving her birth, leaving her daughter a pile of tin that her well-off relatives wanted to keep from the clutches of John Vavasor. They hated him since they didn’t approve of the marriage which their stubborn daughter dived into. We can’t say motherless Alice was raised by her father John since he always left Alice alone, hanging out at his club or working his silly sinecure of signing papers for 12 hours a week.

At the beginning of this novel, Alice is engaged to an upright man named John Gray. Like his bland name, he is leading what looks to her a colorless life of reading and gardening in bleak Cambridgeshire. She loves him, but she sees her future with him as one of a kind of upper servant in a remote country house. She sees herself as fit for better things and playing a role in the larger plays of life, perhaps with a political husband whose campaigns she can fund with her wealth.

Alice is drawn again to her cousin George Vavasor, who she had turned down once before, for reasons about which Trollope remains mum. We post-moderns are thinking that poor Alice could avoid a lot of trouble by not marrying somebody she shared grandparents with. But Victorians saw things differently from us and where would our novel be if cousin marriage was a no-no? George is excessively ambitious to be a Member of Parliament. Alice’s cousin Kate, George’s sister, without scruples, manipulates Alice’s inclinations and emotions into thinking she could marry and assist the untrustworthy George. Alice jilts the worthy John Gray, but tells George she won’t marry him till a year goes by.

Another woman possibly in need of forgiveness is Lady Glencora Palliser, a good friend of Alice. She married Plantagenet Palliser, a Member of Parliament who has his eye on becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lady Glencora comes from an immensely rich family so she has money of her own which her husband can use, if need be, in his campaigns.

Glencora feels trapped in a loveless marriage and fears she’s letting his people down by not having an heir. Her husband doesn’t value a work/life balance that would provide her with the love and attention which she craves. She carries a torch for the worthless and penniless but shockingly handsome aristo, Burgo Fitzgerald. Alice, a prude, tells Glencora she is being perverse and wicked about Burgo, but the abject example of Planny and Cora’s marriage pushes Alice toward George, making her think risky and warm is better than dull and tepid. Trollope makes a clear point that bad decisions and worse yearnings are contagious.

The third woman that might need forgiveness is Mrs. Greenow, the star of the romantic comic subplot. The aunt of Alice's father John is a theatrical widow, wearing fashionable weeds and tearing up on command. It’s not clear if she really loved her decrepit husband but she clearly enjoys being pursued by two men. Captain Bellfield, a veteran of the army if his stories can be believed, barely keeps body and soul together and faces debt. He doesn’t have in him to be mean, which puts him in contrast with his rival. Rich farmer Mr. Cheeseacre prides himself on his dunghills and can’t stop talking about his money or expecting prerogatives because of his tin.

After the brisk set-up, Trollope has Alice provide George with campaign funds even before their marriage. John Gray cares for Alice to the point where he works behind the scenes to give George the money from his own pocket in order to protect Alice’s fortune. How this plays out makes compelling reading, the kind of story a hardcore reader can focus on, in deep concentration, happily diverted from outbreak and stable geniuses

Alice’s obstinacy borders on perversity and thus tries the reader’s patience once in a while. These moments are balanced by Aunt Greenow’s juggling of swains and Lady Glencora’s breezy selfishness. Cora is too young, beautiful and self-absorbed to understand and love her husband in a mature way, but she has a devilish sense of humor and jaunty irreverence that appeal to me. Trollope’s male characters are often pleasantly blah, but George Vavasor is one of Trollope’s most spectacular villains and John Gray actually grows in the course of the novel.

I highly recommend this novel which  Tony wrote about the time he wrote the masterpieces The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barset.

Stalky & Co.

Stalky & Co. - Rudyard Kipling 


This is probably being read today because J.K. Rowling revived the school story with her Harry Potter books. Read by adults, that is. Hard to imagine minors of either gender getting off on this one and not just because the vocabulary is a mix of French, Latin, Biblical allusions, late Victorian usage,  and antique schoolboy slang ("you frabjous ass"). Only one girl has a part and she’s used by the protagonists to get a boy in dutch. The headmaster is implausible for his frankness with his staff, his Solomon-like wisdom, and his dab hand with the cane (yet another Victorian skill now unfashionable). 

I also had a bit of time with Stalky as he is just the kind of imprudent practical joker that I, as a boy, regarded as not half devious enough (though I did respect their “injured innocence” routine, a must-have ability for troublemakers). Heaven knows, in our kinder gentler age, the punishment doled out to the bullies in The Moral Reformers will be seen as gratuitously cruel and violent. Still, Kipling gets his point across: the brutality of school life had its limits and was a necessary part of training for a career in Imperial Management, in which wearing kid gloves would be laughably inappropriate. 


And Kipling did not gloss over reporting that numbers of Old Boys of the school were indeed killed while serving. Nor does he have patience with jingos who pop off about sacred things like patriotism in tones bullying and presumptuous. 


Kipling was a fine writer. Vulgarian sinner that I am, I liked these cruel short stories. 

Drinking: A Love Story

Drinking: A Love Story - Caroline Knapp

Alcoholism messes up the lives of about 15 million people in the USA. About a third of that huge number are women.

In this drinking memoir  Knapp tells how she started abusing alcohol as a teenager and continuing self-medicating hurt, fear, and sadness by getting drunk when she became a college student and then a young urban professional who was a high-functioning alcoholic.

She points out that alcoholics stop growing when they start drinking because the drinking interferes with their ability to deal with problems and then move on as a more resilient person. She emphasizes the disease aspect and how alcohol teams up with other substances like pot and coke and other addictions like eating disorders and cutting.

It’s slightly repetitious but that is all to the good since if alcoholics are good at one thing it’s denial. I highly recommend this book to anybody that wants to understand alcoholism.

Back to the Classics #8

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020.

Classic by a Person of Color. Dave Chappelle says, “There’s only one thing that’s going to save this country from itself. Same thing that always saves this country from itself. And that is African-Americans. And I know the question a lot of y’all have in your minds is, should we do it? Fuck yeah, we should do it. No matter what they say or how they make you feel, remember, this is your country, too. It is incumbent upon us to save our country. And you know what we have to do. Every able-bodied African-American must register for a legal firearm. That’s the only way they’ll change the law.”

Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House - Elizabeth Keckley

Born in slavery, the author, from at the age of 18, was raped for four years by a white man. She was impregnated by him and bore his son.  She lost this son, who had joined the US Army, when he was killed in his first battle of the Civil War.

Determined and talented with her needle, she worked as a seamstress (custom dressmaking was required before mass production of clothes). She was able to buy her and her son’s freedom.  She built her professional reputation to the point where extremely influential women, such as Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson, recommended her to others. That was how Mary Lincoln came to hire her and dominate virtually all her time.

Mrs. Keckley was the modiste to Mary Lincoln for the entire time that the Lincolns were living in the White House. During that time, she also became Mary Lincoln's closest friend and confidant. This book details account her time spent working in the White House and she wrote about not only what was happening with Mrs. Lincoln, but the entire family too. She had a friendly relationship with Mr. Lincoln as well as with the sons Willie, Tad, and Robert.

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley had a complicated relationship. Mary Lincoln grew up assuming other people would do things for her and make things right when the going got rough. Mrs. Keckley took on that role, out of true liking, pity, and gratitude because Mrs. L.’s husband was the Moses of her people. When Lincoln was assassinated, Mary sent for Mrs. Keckley, though that terrible night Mrs. Keckley was unable to get past the jumpy guards.

Mrs. Keckley was a remarkable woman. She learned to read, write and figure. She owned her own dressmaking business and employed seamstresses.  She founded the Contraband Relief Association in August 1862. Mrs. Keckley said that the CRA was formed “for the purpose, not only of relieving he wants of those destitute people, but also to sympathize with, and advise them.”   

After leaving the White House, Mrs. Lincoln had little money. Keckley wrote this book to help Mrs. Lincoln financially. For her pains, she was roundly criticized by a racist sexist classist society for writing about and judging the white people that employed her. The backlash ended her career and livelihood as a dressmaker.

She left Washington in 1892 to teach home economics at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio, but poor health forced her to return and spend her final years in the Home for Destitute Women and Children, which she had helped to establish. She died of a stroke in 1907.