Back to the Classics 2021 #10

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.

A classic by a POC author. A five-volume translation exists in Penguin, but quailing at the idea of reading 1300 pages, I read the one-volume abridgement from Anchor. Bawk bawk bawk.

Dream of the Red Chamber - Cao Xueqin a.k.a. Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in

This saga describes an aristocratic family in 18th century China as it insensibly declines due to  uncontrolled spending and internal ethical rot. If decadence is the pig-ignorant inability to see the disaster in front of one's snout and the unwillingness to imagine living any differently, the Chia family is decadent to the core.

The novel focuses on a group of teenage girl cousins and their maids with their center the heir, Chia Pao-yu. Pao-yu is intelligent with charm and artistic gifts but he's very young. His strong emotions send him into tantrums and stupefied states. It doesn’t help either that as the object of envy and malice, he is the target of sorcery that makes him sick. Easily moved and brought to tears, he would rather hang out with girls in pursuits like aimless chat, embroidering, reading, poetry clubs, lute strumming, and the never-ending search for cosmotological perfection. They’re teenagers, after all, and so fashion is really important. And spending days in these idle pursuits is much more enjoyable than studying for examinations that will land him a good place in the Confucian bureaucracy.

The author describes daily life in the family compound, as claustrophobic a setting as the palaces of Tale of Genji. With dozens of different personalities and stations and agenda, there’s bound to be a lot of conflict. The author makes us marvel, however, that despite the strict hierarchy of feudal relationships, an austere system of morality, constant surveillance, and a hodge-podge of religious beliefs and ancient superstitions, people are going to do what people do.

That is, get up to hijinks and monkey-shines and shenanigans and felonies. People whose behavior is bound and restricted will go slow, sabotage, smuggle, shirk, lie, play dumb, and abscond. People who must bottle up emotion to save the face of themselves and others will go off like skyrockets when they finally do let out emotion. People will seek as much power as they can, seek the main chance, and make dirty deals. People will pursue revenge, have bully boys beat people up, get in fistfights and beat enemies up in ambushes. People will lend at usurious rates and abet officials in corruption. People will buy relatives cushy jobs in government. People will steal and rape. People will blackmail and murder.

It all happens in the book. And reading it is sheer pleasure.

The novel can be read as the author’s expression of sympathy and respect for women in a culture where not only the female servants such as cooks, maids, and janitors are oppressed in either indentured servitude or out and out chattel slavery. However, not having any freedom either, the girl cousins and the matriarchs have no privacy as we understand it and their behavior is constantly watched and evaluated and thus circumscribed by the fear of gossip. Their behavior is also constrained by strict Confucian morals. It’s strange because the upper class women manage and oversee a large family with hundreds of members and thousands of employees and retainers.

So the girl cousins – smart, beautiful, bored and stifled. And the boys! The future paragons of the patriarchy gaze into space vacantly, carouse mindlessly, fall in love and lust with other schoolboys and female impersonators, all the while not studying for make-or-break exams to get into the civil service. Our teenage boy-hero prefers hanging out with his young female companions, combing their hair and kissing the rouge off their lips. At 16, he still sits in his mother’s lap, which must have been as weird in 1791 as it is in 2021. He says, “Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I'm with girls I feel fresh and clean but when I'm with boys I feel stupid and nasty.”

With rigid pecking orders, ferocious jealousies, and flexible coalitions based on realities from love to 'what's in it for me,' look how the older generation keeps the younger in line. The olds wield like a club the major Confucian teaching that filial piety is the paramount virtue. So parents will think it meet and prudent to lie shamelessly and pull atrocious tricks on their kids for the kids’ own good. And sneaky decisions done for the best of reasons, the author implies, is simply the way it is and must be accepted as immutable. Visit some Confucian temples and get the feeling it’s an ideology that frowns on defying conventions or wasting time lazing, loafing, and goofing, which is practically an art form for the teenagers in this novel.

Having read the abridgement, I am seriously contemplating reading the multi-volume version now. This is an incredible reading experience, especially for those of us hardcore readers who read for sheer pleasure.

Cal's Historical Novel

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’ second historical novel is set in the late eighteenth century during the period of the French Revolution. Originally published in weekly magazine installments in 1859, its four-hundred-fifty pages make up one of Dickens’ shortest novels though it deals with big subjects such as social injustice, revolution, and the various forms of love and hate.

I always approach Dickens with trepidation. Will a tediously angelic female like Esther in Bleak House grate? Yes, Lucie Manette serves, gives, nurses and amuses, “impeccably good and vacant” (Thomas Wolfe, LHA). Will the rough humor irk? Yes, the comic characters of Jerry Cruncher and Miss Pross come off just grotesque. Strangely, Dickens’ humor is little in evidence in this novel and he’s too often merely facetious.  Alcohol use treated unbelievably? Yes, Sydney Carton drinks amounts of booze that would stupefy a bull and still manages to function, never has a hangover, and quits drinking cold turkey. Insufficient motivation? Yes, we never really understand the reason Syd drinks so much nor is the reason Darnay puts himself in grave hazard persuasive. Coincidences? You betcha, in spades.

I also recalled with a shudder Bleak House in which a major character was introduced on, like, page 500. Yes, again Dickens throws into the action a new character, whose role in the story is anything but defined. I could only mutter to myself, Patience, reader, follow the narrative. To compensate for these moments of despair, be confident that all roads will lead, to, well, two cities in this case. Then be grateful.

Gratitude, because I couldn’t stop reading it. To my mind, the faults mentioned above and aspects of it as a political novel take a back seat to the sheer power of Dickens’ ability to set a scene, to make us see. For instance, in the first chapter, a wine barrel is accidentally broken open and its contents flow into the street.  The people of the poor neighborhood in Paris jostle each other to drink the wine out of gutters. Dickens describes Tellson’s Bank and the wine shop of Monsieur and Madame Defarge so that we understand the narrow worlds of stodgy bankers and political extremists. Dickens must have brooded on mob violence, since the scene in which the rioting mob dances the Carmagnole is ghastly and unforgettable. As is the scene when young Cruncher witnesses his father Jerry rob a grave. As is the holding cell stuffed with aristocrats when Darnay is checked into jail.

We post-moderns are apt to gripe that Dickens crammed his novels with too much pathos. A passionate guy with turbulent Hungarian and Slavic genes, I don’t have a problem with narratives charged with melodrama.  The incidents, characters, all the unfolding story all worked on my soul.  Ah, Syd, you may have done stinky things working for that conceited shyster Mr. Stryver, but that doesn’t mean you were a stinker. Holding the hand of the seamstress was a far, far better thing than making Lucie happy.

To my mind, Dickens’ sentimentality, if that must be word, comes out of his fabulous power to speak to our hearts with words. As Jose Chung said, “Still, as a storyteller, I'm fascinated how a person's sense of consciousness can be so transformed by nothing more magical than listening to words... mere words.”

Green Venice of the Périgord

Death Comes to Perigord – John Ferguson

In this 1931 mystery, young Dr. Dunn arrives on the sunlit Channel Island of Guernsey to substitute for a doctor in need of a spot of rest. The doctor is taken with scenery, which reminds him of the Near East:

Why look, for instance, at this very road, so long and narrow, stretching between those high blank walls, with invisible houses and hidden people behind them, I suppose.  And look at those tall palm trees which seem to be peering over the walls as if stretching their necks, watching for something to happen in this deserted alley.  Look at those shadows too, sharply cut as if by a knife in this brilliant white, un-English sunlight; and look at the colour, is that not Eastern?

Later he witnesses in the village square an old peasant woman railing against her rich neighbor de Quettville for stealing her garden statue. When the doc makes a house-call in aid of de Quettville, he finds him a cantankerous impossible patient but not necessarily mentally ill. Miser and usurer de Quettville mysteriously disappears. Dunn and two city officials and work on the case, in which psychiatric forensics plays a part:

The workings of a disordered mind are hard to follow, but it is an error to suppose an insane person cannot conceive, and adhere to a purpose.  There is method in madness; and with homicidal lunatics the doctor frequently becomes an object of intense hatred, the first enemy who must be removed before the original murderous intention can be achieved.

Dunn is driven to ask his asked his friend McNab, a private investigator, to clear up the mystery. The reveal, though predictable, satisfies.

As the passages above indicate, the suggestive setting, smart content, and prose style result in a satisfying mystery from the Golden Age. Unfortunately for the author, many writers were trying their hand at the genre and this book was overlooked by critics and readers and so sunk out of sight until Dover Publications re-released it in the 1980s.

Crafty Odysseus & Company

The Odyssey – Homer, translated by S.H. Lang and A. Butcher, 1879

I’d never read this classic, thinking that every “rosy-fingered dawn” and “crafty Odysseus” and “grey-eyed Athena” and “wine-dark sea” would culminate in driving me back to goatskins of wine.  But then I chided myself for being so prejudiced; after all, epithets and glorified nicknames are part of epic territory.

After the urge to be culturally literate, I jumped into a prose rendition of this fundamental text of the Western culture. This epic is at the heart of our literary tradition, the forebear of myth, fairy tale, ghost story, and fiction. See Look Homeward Angel and lo and behold Wolfe gives us this:

Gant had the passion of the true wanderer, of him who wanders from a fixed point. He needed the order and the dependence of a home— he was intensely a family man: their clustered warmth and strength about him was life.

I enjoyed reading about Odysseus' journey to return to his home, hearth, wife Pen lope, and son Telmachus. Odysseus wriggles by all kinds of challenges and dangers with his formidable character, a mix of big-heartedness, bravery and cruelty. A model of decision-making, he believes in his own abilities. He uses both intelligence and cunning and weaves a web of lies if that seems like the right move. 

Odysseus is about all or nothing.  When he snuffs the obnoxious suitors, he also takes out the good guy Amphinomus. He was the only wooer of Penelope who didn't act like a total dumbshit. He also took the hero’s part when he tried to persuade the dumbass suitors not to kill Odysseus on his return. But good manners and glib persuasion are not enough to keep Odysseus from spearing his ass. Hey, good is good, bad is bad, I appreciate you not being a total shit, but you were a suitor so you gotta die. Odysseus doesn't do nuance. 

Odysseus, being the hero, is the center of the text. But I found the settings wonderful. The sea is our hero’s prime adversary, deadly and unavoidable. Rock-strewn beaches, the dense forests, the mysterious caves of the Cyclops and Calypso, the beautiful dwelling of the sorceress Circe – no wonder the Med draws us.

The themes are timeless. Foster resiliency to weather trials. If you want to receive friendship and loyalty and hospitality and generosity, you have to give them. Distinguish settling for what you get from feeling grateful for what you get. Keep in mind things can always get worse. You've weather worse before, you can weather it again.There’s no place like home.  It’s okay to suspect that hero or not, best efforts or not, we sometimes feel like the mere object of the whims of the unseen forces. Life’s pretty strange when you come to think about it. But it may be better not to think about life so much.

Simply because it fell into my lap (as books tend do), I read Lang and Butcher’s 1879 version. I take the completeness and accuracy of translations on trust, but if the language feels flat, insipid, musty or dry, I drop it. As Joseph Brodsky said of Constance Garnett, "The reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren't reading the prose of either one. They're reading Constance Garnett."

Lang and Butcher’s Odyssey often sounds like the King James Version. Most of the time I found the antiquated language and style grand and stirring but I confess to moodiness. At other time I found the style quaint and schlocky. Near the end, I started to feel, “Persevere, you survived Tom’s elaborate scheme to free Jim, so you can handle Odysseus visiting his pop back on the farm.” This translation is available for tasting at https://www.bartleby.com/22/.

The Ides of Perry Mason 24

On the 15th of every month, we publish a review of Our Fave Lawyer

The Case of the Fabulous Fake – Erle Stanley Gardner (1969)

It is 1969 in Los Angeles. Diana Douglas and her brother Edgar are both employees of the Escobar Import & Export Company of San Francisco. Though controls in the company are cool and casual, auditors have tumbled to the fact that about $10,000 ($72,000 in 2021) is missing from the cash safe. Edgar, a charming do-nothing employed as a favor to his sister, may have embezzled it to settled gambling debts to wise guys.

LA blackmailer, Moray (as in eel) Cassell, has heard a rumor of the missing cash and seems to have contacted Edgar to put the bite on him. Sensitive Edgar got knocked out in an auto accident and is in a coma so sister Diana decides to pay The Eel off. Though she lies and frankly conceals information, Mason agrees to help Diana, mainly because he detests blackmailers. Mason admits he made a mistake when he unwittingly gave Diana enough rope to go and stick her pretty neck into an ugly noose. The inevitable murdered corpse in an apartment results in Diana being charged with Murder One since the murder weapon was a wooden-handled .22 owned by Edgar.

I’ll read late career Gardner because I’m a fan. But critical me has to admit this last Mason mystery, #80, has its problems. It is almost a quarter shorter than usual. There aren't many suspects. The plot depends on an especially contrived coincidence revealed very late in the game.  Gardner doesn’t play fair with the reader when he withholds facts the reader needs to guess the perp. We long-time fans miss Hamilton Burger and his exasperated outbursts; there are no familiar comfy exchanges with Della or Paul Drake. Slightly grating is Gardner’s habit of making adverbs do more than their share of the work as characters glance meaningly, look quizzically, nod solemnly, and say impressively.

On the plus side, Gardner liked to stay abreast of new trends and he respected technology so we feel the atmosphere of 1969 a little when he references computers, credit cards, electric typewriters, car phones, the Miranda decision of 1966, and the ease of taking guns onto airliners. The other plus is that a familiar Gardarian heroine takes the stage yet again. That is, Diana Douglas is headstrong and like many headstrong people, she's afraid of something. Not of losing money, property, or reputation - but she's afraid something bad is going to happen to her brother Edgar. She’s brave, smart, and loyal to her brother. And she’s starry-eyed with gratitude at the end for Perry foiling the System’s savage determination to put her in the gas chamber.

Gardner must have felt a duty to educate the public so often in the mysteries he made a digression to make a teaching point about the criminal justice system. In chapter 3, Mason is defending a young black man accused of robbing a pawn shop. To the jury, Mason argues the eyewitness evidence is weak compared to circumstantial evidence. He says people get a fleeting glimpse of a stranger and all they remember at first is noticeable points - tall black male with a moustache carrying a paper bag.  Then when they cudgel their memories at the insistence of the police, they hypnotize themselves that they remember more than they really do. And when they undergo police-arranged procedures like going over mug shots and identifying people in line-ups, the self-hypnosis and the subtle and not so subtle police priming, prompting, and pressuring make it all but inevitable that the witness will identify the soon-to-be defendant. The stern reality of this social and psychological process is enough to provide the reasonable doubt to acquit.

Showing that Mason does not win all the time, the jury decides “guilty” anyway, but before they deliver the verdict  in open court, a police officer comes in to tell the judge the real perp has been apprehended. The deputy DA thinks telling them the jury the truth would weaken the public trust in eyewitness identification. Oh, the tragedy, that would throw a mighty monkey wrench into the criminal justice machine. Since then, research has shown Gardner had a point about the unreliability of eyewitness evidence. Eyewitness testimony is largely unreliable and one of many reasons why is own-race bias. That is, individuals are generally better at recognizing members of their own race and tend to be highly inaccurate in identifying persons of other races.

I’d give the last Mason mystery, #80, a qualified approval.

Notes: The pandemic killed my part-time job of teaching ESL so my teacherly inclinations and ways have to come out somehow. Following is a glossary of terms used in this novel for people under 50 and non-native speakers of English. Both groups may lack knowledge of 1969 and its idioms and its cultural touchstones and assumptions. Glossing was for my own amusement but done in the larger hope that old-school mysteries won’t become inaccessible simply because their vocabulary becomes quaint, embarrassing or obsolete.

You can’t tell much from a woman’s hands until after she’s turned 30.

When reading old mysteries, allowances must be made to sexist comments and attitudes. Research published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons says most people – male and female - can accurately tell a person's age by viewing only their hands. So if you want to know a person's real age, just look at their hands. Male and female.

Give her a button and she’ll sew a vest.

This comment by Della Street about imaginative Gerties sounds proverbial but I can’t find any other instances of its use. It does not mean the criticism “she makes big deals out of nothing much” (make mountains out molehills). But rather Gertie’s so imaginative and resourceful that she’ll build a whole story out of just a little information.

You’ve reached your thumb by going all the way round your elbow.

This comment by Paul Drake also sounds idiomatic, but I don’t think it is. It means you have reached a conclusion though not following a direct line of thinking. Thinking in a roundabout way.

Be on the horns of a dilemma

When a person is on the horns of a dilemma, they have to choose between two things, both of which are unpleasant or difficult.

Cloak and dagger (story, situation, situation)

Involving mystery, secrecy, conspiracy, or espionage. It’s from the image of spies wearing roomy coats and capes and killing silently with knives.

Live and let live.

This proverb means that we should live our own lives the way we prefer and allow other people to live the way they want to. As the Japanese say juunin toiro 十人十色 literally “ten people, ten views” for “Different strokes for different folks.”

Come out cold turkey

In this novel this idiom means “say clearly and directly.” Nowadays we only say “quit / go cold turkey” to mean quit a bad habit like smoking immediately, not tapering off.

Prices

In a used bookstore, Perry Mason buys some old histories of California for $28.00. This is equivalent to $200.00 today. I enjoy the idea of Our Hero in a used bookstore and paying big bucks to keep them alive. One wonders if back then their proprietors were as mean and grasping as they are now.

Before they proposition you, men may test you by telling a story that’s a little broad.

In this sentence broad means off color, a little indecent, in poor taste, crude, suggestive, rude. Nowadays I doubt if anybody would use broad in this sense; just say dirty stories.

Helen, Joyce, Ella, Stella

Helen and Stella were popular names for girl babies in the 1920s; Stella has come back gangbusters in the last couple of years. Joyce was popular in the 1940s. Ella is an old name that has become much more popular in the last 10 years.

Magnetic personality / person

This expression is still used for very attractive, charming, charismatic. But to me it sounds a little old-fashioned.

You can say that again.

This is a very informal way to say I strongly agree. Don’t use with bosses, supervisors, elderly people or teachers.

Hell’s Bells!

This is an old expression to express anger of annoyance. If you use this expression, people will ask you if your English teacher was 85 years old.

Get the heebie-jeebies

This is 1920s slang for feel anxiety or nervous fear. I think most people know what it means but I don’t hear it often in conversation.

ride herd on (this room, people, employees)

This expression is American English for watch over. This idiom is from cowboy slang when they were driving cattle while riding along with them.

on the square / on the level

This is old slang from carpenters for honest, open, true, truthful.

badger game

This is an extortion technique in which the victim is tricked into a compromising position to make them vulnerable to blackmail. A noir standby is the photographer bursting into a hotel room where the victim is embracing a femme fatale.

bark up the wrong tree

This idiom means that a person completely misunderstands a situation and is acting on wrong assumptions.

It was like rolling off a log

This American idiom means be very easy to do, requiring no skill

a kettle of fish

An awkward, difficult, or bad situation; a fine mess. This informal expression is old but still used.

The taxi driver started to make time.

In this sentence make time mean proceed rapidly, but usually it means to arrange your schedule to find time to do something.

Don’t let yourself go, Diana.

Mason is telling her not to allow her emotions to overcome her ability to think clearly. Nowadays we use this idiom more often to mean to allow yourself to become unhealthy and unattractive: It’s easy to let yourself go during a pandemic by eating too much and never exercising.

Make arrangements

This is a delicate expression for to plan a funeral. In the US, almost all references to death are made in mild, gentle words. In middle-class company, anyway.

You’ve had a hard row to hoe.

This idiom means you are in a difficult position or situation. This is a farmer’s expression from the early 19^th century; row crops are, to name a couple, potato, dry bean, and field pea. If you hear a person say a tough road to hoe you can safely assume she doesn’t think about the words she uses and probably puts gasoline in CVS plastic bags. How the hell do you hoe a damn road? It’s like saying, “That really took the steam out of my sails,” which I swear I heard on – where else? - sports talk radio where language goes to curl up and die.

chunky

In the olden days this meant having a bulky and solid body type, but nowadays it means overweight or fat. There is no situation in the US today in which you can safely use the word fat when you are talking about people.

tortoise-shell glasses

These were out of style for a long time but now they are back in style but in more various colors such as green, orange, and red. The tech to make them from acetate and in bright colors is probably cheaper nowadays.

You’re getting the cart before the horse.

Doing things in the wrong order.

Put two and two together

Draw an obvious conclusion from facts or evidence

Good girl!

Male bosses used to use this expression when praising the female help. If you said this nowadays, you would lose your job.

Miranda decision

In the case of Miranda versus Arizona, in 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that, before questioning by the police, suspects must be informed that they have the right to remain silent and the right to consult an attorney, and that anything they say may be used against them in court.

Fountain pen

Nobody uses in 2021 except those who love writing with one, those who want to make a strong statement about fashion or communication, and those who have made using and taking care of one a hobby.

Pull the wool over one’s eyes

To hide the truth from somebody. This is an extremely old expression: at fairs in the medieval days, thieves would pull down people’s hood over their faces and steal from them.

Shaking hands

Before the 2020 pandemic, it was widely believed that you can tell a lot about a man by his grip when shaking hands. The idea was that by exchanging animal magnetism by touch, one would feel a man was firm and sincere or evasive, oily, manicured, self-conscious, or irritable.

That kind of a girl

This is an old polite way to say a woman is behaving in a sexually promiscuous (loose) or provocative (teasing) manner. It is often used in the negative, “I would never sleep with a guy on the first date; I'm not that kind of girl!”

He was a nut about his women being able to protect themselves.

Be a nut about means extremely strong-minded or firm about something. In this case, poor Edgar badly wanted his sister and girlfriends to be able to handle a gun effectively for personal protection. Among many Americans responsible gun ownership and use is a highly cherished right. As for the phrase “his women” or “their women” etc. it’s a good idea not to use language that implies you think women are objects or possessions of anybody.

Keep a stiff upper lip, Diana.

Repress your emotions for the sake of reasoning clearly. This habit of emotional regulation is associated with British unemotionality, but the phrase in fact originated in the US in the early 19^th century.

The deuce! The deuce you say!

This is an expression of surprise at what someone says. The word 'deuce' is a euphemism for the devil and dates back to late 17th century England.

gadabout

A person who goes here and there for fun

Six months later she was a girl in trouble and she hadn’t seen her boyfriend in a while.

Be in trouble means to be single but pregnant 

Back to the Classics 2021 #9

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.

A classic with an animal in the title. I like reading Aldous Huxley because he’s smart and funny, though Elizabeth Bowen called him "a stupid person's idea of a clever person."  I’ve read not only the dystopia everybody reads Brave New World but also a travel book  Jesting Pilate, a late career novelette  The Genius and the Goddess, the science fiction-like After Many a Summer, and a history The Devils of Loudon. This novel on review here I can’t recommend except to readers really into dystopias. Or Aldous Huxley.

Ape and Essence - Aldous Huxley

Written after WWII, this short novel is dated in its cultural touchstones – everybody has to google Lady Hamilton nowadays - but with our recent rise of fascism and its attendant big lie, it feels disconcertingly current.

Huxley's style begins engagingly satirical, reminiscent of his novels written after the Great War such as Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, and Time Must Have a Stop.  Set in Hollywood in 1948, Hollywood writer and director Bob Briggs and the nameless narrator accidentally find the rejected treatment for a film, Ape and Essence, by a misanthrope named William Tallis.

Briggs saves the script from the incinerator and eternal oblivion. Briggs and the narrator go to the address on the treatment to interview William Tallis. They discover from his landlady that he passed away six months before. However, his work survives.

The second part presents the treatment, commented on by the narrator. It describes a dystopia even darker and more scalding than that shown in Brave New World.

In the year 2108, New Zealand and Equatorial Africa survive as the only populated regions after the nuclear exchanges of World War III have devastated the rest of the planet. Due to the mutations induced by radioactivity, natural selection has made it possible for non-human primates to evolve a higher level of consciousness and cognition. Inevitably, they rule over the human race which has been reduced to slavery.

Amidst the ruins of Los Angeles, there is a remnant of a community that the radiation has transformed into mutant akuma (demons, devils) who worship the triumph of Evil. They live in terror of an ongoing purge by the so-called "healthy" which very much recalls the archetype of an Aryan superman. Dissent and individuality are seen as illnesses, with torture as the preferred therapy to treat people who think differently.

With savage clarity, didactic Huxley presents an alarming future - a horrifying vision where the regime's media and educational systems force the population into a cult, convincing them that the current lifestyle the best of all possible worlds. It’s a vision that revolts normal people. It’s a 4chan fevered dream, for stunted chuds who think a real good bead on things is to be had on FB, for yahoo insurrectionists who pant watching Hitler documentaries.

Existential Ructions

Act of Passion – Georges Simenon, tr. Louise Varese

Simenon’s catalogue is so vast and so varied that it's hard to be categorical, but this novel, published as Lettre à mon juge in 1947, could be one of his deepest, most serious novels. It is definitely one of his most desperate.

From his cell on death row, Charles Alavoine, a doctor who murdered his mistress, writes a letter to the judge who presided at his trial. The perp does not ask for forgiveness, but seeks the understanding of another man who is able to understand the feelings as the motive of his act. I can think of only one other novel where Simenon uses the first-person, In Case of Emergency, in which a lawyer explains his existential rage and defiance of conventions, especially as enforced by fussy mothers and nitpicky wives that take exception to affairs with bad girls half the age of middle-aged husbands.

The letter narrates his descent into hell. His was an alcoholic father who took his own life but Alavoine was saved by a devoted mother who was ambitious for him. Dr. Alavoine later checked the usual boxes: married, two children, widower, remarried, country office, incessant work leading to a slightly upscale lifestyle. Middle-age, however, takes him by the scruff of the neck. Routine, apathy, desire, resentment, misanthropy, lies and liars all come together to make him feel especially distressed one day in Nantes station. And he meets Martine.

Martine is also a child of misfortune. She’s filled with self-loathing due to sexual abuse in childhood. She’s a wild and self-destructive JD (in fact, she’s played by Bridget Bardot in the movie) The last person she needs is a man is so alienated from himself and society that he feels like a robot, just going through the motions of daily life. Events bring their internal and external pressures to the bursting point.

Something has to give.

Rival of Ashenden

The Three Couriers – Compton Mackenzie

I was going to read The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine (1927) in order to overcome my resistance  to mysteries written in the 1920s. I feel reluctant because they are too long. Beyond 200 pages, I find it hard to tolerate Dickensian characters, barely recognizable social situations, and casual prejudices of racist eras. Shades of the self-fulfilling prophecy, by page five of The Greene Murder Case, I was fed up with Van Dine’s 17th century English prose style that brought to mind Raleigh and Browne. I also could not get past the supercilious manner and affected speech of the profoundly irritating series detective. As critic Odgen Nash wrote at the time, “Philo Vance | Needs a kick in the pants.”

Still committed to reading a novel of the Twenties, I was lucky enough to have fall into my lap the 1929 spy mystery The Three Couriers by Compton Mackenzie. A prolific writer before and after his work in the secret world during the Great War, Mackenzie portrayed spying not so much as a noble clandestine fight against the Germans and Turks but as a running contest against His Majesty’s army and navy authorities and embassy and consulate employees that put the “dip” in “diplomat.” Stationed against his will in Greece, our hero, the unfortunate Waterlow, has to put up with endless French machinations and the never-ending nincompooperies of his own agents, both British and Greek. When he finally succeeds in counter-espionage, his masters and betters utterly ignore the vital intercepted message. “This is a Charlie Chaplin war” he mutters as he bravely moves on to the next fiasco.

In The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), Chesterton makes a case for the futility of espionage, an ironic theme Somerset Maugham was to exploit in the Ashenden stories. But it could be that Mackenzie was the first to write a spy story as a black comedy of errors. The Three Couriers does not have much plot. However, the incidents and set pieces are hilarious as the hapless spies move in on the couriers. The characters are Gogolian grotesques. One wonders if he involuntarily stored these outrageous impressions in his head and wrote to get shut of them.

It seems that Mackenzie had written earlier novels based on his Intelligence activities. Extremes Meet, was published in 1928, but as a Wodehousian light comedy, it was out-sold by the release of Somerset Maugham's ground-breaking Ashenden, which came out the same year. Critic Anthony Masters says, “Mackenzie was considerably annoyed at being overshadowed in this way.” So in 1929 Mackenzie published The Three Couriers.  A comedy with more of a satirical bite, it sunk with few traces until this review on this unique blog that you are reading this very minute.