THE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE (Lew Archer #10) by Ross Macdonald
Private Detective Lew Archer is hired by retired Col. Mark Blackwell to investigate the bacTHE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE (Lew Archer #10) by Ross Macdonald
Private Detective Lew Archer is hired by retired Col. Mark Blackwell to investigate the background of a man his daughter is determined to marry, but who Blackwell suspects is a freeloader at best, a criminal at worst. Harriet, the daughter, and Burke Demis, the suspected scoundrel, take off in a huff and Archer is left with a trail of questions. Soon, two murders surface that may be related to the Blackwell family which only complicates Archer’s quest for answers. Archer is sent off his usual Southern California beat to Ajijic, close to Mexico’s Lake Chapala, to track down background information on Harriet and Burke, but most f the action takes place in California and Lake Tahoe.
Ross Macdonald’s California Noir style is at its best in dialogue, and plotting is meticulous as the reader must fasten seatbelt to traverse the curves. As with older books (this one now 61 years old) one finds charming bits of innocence. On page 102, Archer is in Ajijic, Jalisco, and he is interviewing a woman mixing a drink: “For herself she compounded something out of tequila and grenadine, with coarse salt sprinkled around the rim of the glass.” Hmm, could it be,…..a margarita??
A great Summer read and stroll through memory lane in this 1962 thriller. ...more
This book describes two searches. It is a bitter Winter week, fierce winds, bone-chilling snow, utterly miserable. American Peter Richardson is fleeinThis book describes two searches. It is a bitter Winter week, fierce winds, bone-chilling snow, utterly miserable. American Peter Richardson is fleeing from the feeling that he will soon be murdered in a city neighborhood being levelled during an outburst of urban renewal destruction – he is searching for the cause of his extreme discomfort and a means to escape his feared fate. English barrister X Willow is searching for the American descendants of an 18th century London wine merchant named Joseph Tully.
To summarize the book: "Revenge is a dish best served cold". Old Klingon Proverb???...more
Eddie Cochran lies dead in the parking lot of a local Hispanic newspaper, a bullet in his head and lying on the very gun that ended his life. Eddie isEddie Cochran lies dead in the parking lot of a local Hispanic newspaper, a bullet in his head and lying on the very gun that ended his life. Eddie is Catholic, young, ambitious, respected, well-liked – no – well-loved with a wife he adores, with love abundantly reciprocated. This picture does not make sense. Eddie’s father-in-law hires his bartender, ex-cop Dismas Hardy, to look into this dissonant picture. What transpires is a miniature picture of the San Francisco Irish community working its way through a horrible tragedy.
This is the first Dismas Hardy book, followed by almost 20 others, all with ratings above the impressive Goodreads 3.80 of this first. Lescroart here begins painting a picture not only of the San Francisco underworld but also of the Irish community that is very much a part of Hardy’s world. I enjoyed the book, especially the suspense of secrets to the events described.
I read this as one of the books scheduled for the monthly “Books to Die For” club sponsored by the Salt Lake City Library system. Let’s hear it for our valued librarians who are fighting to keep free speech in books alive and the bookstores that stock and sell these books!...more
Hillerman is well-known for his Southwestern US detective stories using Diné (Navajo) policemen as the solvers of mysteries involving Native cultural Hillerman is well-known for his Southwestern US detective stories using Diné (Navajo) policemen as the solvers of mysteries involving Native cultural elements. The two Diné policemen are Joe Leaphorn, featured in this book, and Jim Chee.
A body is found, with cause of death suspicious – a mouthful of sand – and the search for how it was found in such an obvious place. The local People know that the death was caused by an outside enemy agent - a Ute or belecani (Anglo), so a series of ceremonies must be held to destroy the spirit of the killer and cleanse the People.
There are several heroes in the book – Leaphorn or course – but also anthropologist Bergen McKee who is studying the wolf spirit beliefs and Ellen Leon who is in the area searching for her fiancé performing electrical research in the area.
The clever book plot includes anthropological research, Diné ritual, law enforcement practices, a lot of reservation geography, misguided governmental policies, and sinister individuals intent on keeping a secret. It is a good book for a quiet night of exciting reading....more
Harriet Doerr’s husband, Albert Doerr, Jr., inherited from his grandfather a copper mine in the fiction-named town of Ibarra, Aguascalientes in the MeHarriet Doerr’s husband, Albert Doerr, Jr., inherited from his grandfather a copper mine in the fiction-named town of Ibarra, Aguascalientes in the Mexican Highlands. The Doerrs moved there in the 1950’s and remained there rehabilitating and working the mine until her husband’s death some years later. Harriet decided to memorialize the experience as a novel, the Doerr’s becoming Richard and Sara Everton.
I vaguely remember the story being made into a television movie starring Glenn Close (1988) and have often nudged myself to read the book. Several years ago, I read Doerr’s “Consider This, Señora,” a fictionalized version of other stories from her stay in Mexico which brought back a flood of memories of my days as an archaeologist and anthropologist in rural Mexico during the 1960’s and 1970’s. I loved “Señora,” and knew one day I would be reading Doerr’s previous book. Here on a sunny, very cold Winter day I finally began.
As other reviewers have noted, the book is very loosely based on the Doerr story but every chapter relates the many experiences the Doerrs knew first-hand or heard from their Mexican friends. Some reviewers view the chapters as short stories. In reality, they are stand-out experiences of the Doerr’s during their stay in a town of 1000 people, describing all the joy and pathos, brilliant color and crushing sadness of life on this small town and environs, including that experienced by the Doerr’s as Richard Everton lived to keep his grandfather’s mine productive and Sara lived to keep Richard alive. And every one of the 18 chapters has a thoughtful message.
Life was tough and yet good in tiny Mexican villages and this becomes plain in the tales found here. My first week in Mexico taught me that lesson. Five of us drove from Pennsylvania to the Valley of Teotihuacán to excavate several archaeological sites in that valley. On the way the transmission of our old army surplus truck broke and a very generous young Mexican couple in a pickup truck took one of our crew to the nearest city, Matehuala to hire a wrecker. The wrecker eventually arrived and I rode on the back of the truck the 60 or so breezy kilometers into town. It took a week to get the transmission part from a wrecking yard in far-away Monterrey. The “three-on-a-tree” manual transmission was fixed, although the mechanic got second gear in backwards so we could only use low and high the rest of the way to Teotihuacán.
Once at the hacienda where we were put up for the Summer one of my first memories was of a man carrying a small lavender coffin on his head out of his house. His 13-year-old daughter had just died in childbirth after being raped by the hacienda guard. It leaves a horrible feeling in me to this day. And what happened to the guard? Nothing. He was the hacienda guard, the man with the gun and nobody was going to touch him for that.
Yet, in Mexico, life is so close to you, so much in your face. You are alive with feeling, with a sense of the here and now, of the immediacy of where you are and what is before you. And, like life, death is so close to you, too, so do not sleep while you are awake! And Mexicans are so hospitable, so generous and kind, so thoughtful, so gracious. A land of many contrasts that makes you fall in love with it and its people, warts and all. Just like the US. Another book that impairs that feeling is Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” and the movie of the same name even more so!
The stories in Doerr’s book bring similar feelings, that poets, evolutionary scientists and people living on the edge all agree, that there are only 3 important things – love, life and death; everything else is secondary....more
When I was 13 years old our family discovered that my second cousin had married Duke Snider, center fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers and a future HallWhen I was 13 years old our family discovered that my second cousin had married Duke Snider, center fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers and a future Hall of Famer. We then lived in New Jersey just 24 miles west of New York City and we invited the Snider family to dinner twice, once in 1953 and also a Summer later. For a kid it was an indescribable experience, much like the story of young author Nathan Zuckerman who meets the writer who he nearly worships.
Buddlng short-story writer Nathan Zuckerman is invited to visit the fabulously famous and respected short-story writer E. I. Lonoff in his very home, the place where this genius works. Here Zuckerman expects to hear words of literary wisdom including a constructive critique of Zuckerman’s first four published short stories, which Lonoff has already praised. Zuckerman is especially attracted to Lonoff because they share a similar personal background – they are both Jewish and descendants of recent European migrants.
What Zuckerman finds in Lonoff is a personable but a slightly grumpy, no-nonsense human rather than the literary oracle he expected. Zuckerman wants to ask profound professional questions of Lonoff but instead Lonoff quizzes Zuckerman on his early life and background, on ordinary everyday aspects of Nathan’s life including his stint as a orr-to-door magazine salesman. Libidinous Zuckerman also finds Amy Bellette, a beautiful and charming young woman working at Lonoff’s house, as well as Lonoff’s handsome, charming and intelligent wife derived from what appears to be an old New England Gentile family.
But the core of the book is Zuckerman’s struggle with jewishness. He is Jewish, grew up almost completely among Jews, at college had close friends who were Jews. And yet he seems to want to leave his Jewishness behind. He writes about Jews, and that is what gets him into trouble with his family. He writes a short story about what happened to a lateral branch of the family. It dealt with a squabble over money, about an unsavory cousin, about nasty feelings and selfishness. His family is appalled with the thought of how Gentiles will take the story. An important Jewish judge who supported him with a letter of recommendation is stunned t Zuckerman’s audacity in publishing the story. They are chagrined that this story is about Jews – money, unsavory cousin, arguments. Are these stereotypes of Jews? Will they be taken by Gentiles as stereotypic Jewish behavior? Are they being too sensitive? Nathan ignores them and their concerns because he is dedicated to art as an abstraction, not moved by the perceptions both inside and outside the Jewish community. Indeed, if a scandalous story concerned the Reginald Alexander Featheringtonham-Lilywhite family would the perception be of an ordinary English-American family and its universal human foibles or viewed as the degenerate behavior of “those White Anglo-Saxon Protestants?” But if it is about the Kaplan-Epstein Jewish-American family is it perceived to be about Jewishness, rather universal human foibles? Basically, Zuckerman – and Roth – ask: Can a Jewish author write a story of human foibles that just happens in a Jewish family without Jewish or Gentile minds wandering to the pestilent thought of, “well, you know Jews…”
Fundamentally, do Jewish – or any other non-WASP authors – have the luxury to write about human foibles within their own societies without their characters being stereotyped? This is an important moral and practical question for both authors and readers. And it is sad that Roth must consider the matter.
The subsequent chapter deals with the image of Anne Frank in the Jewish mind. Konoff’s guest Amy Bellette, a refugee from the horrors of WW II (maybe?) finds a book that has become popular in Holland – the writings of a thoughtful and brilliant Jewish girl holed up in an attic hiding from the Gestapo with her sister and parents. The Dutch-language book is “Het Achterhuis” and the author is Anne Frank. It has not yet been translated into English and is still unknown outside of Holland. Amy can read Dutch and fantasizes about being the Anne Frank who miraculously survives the Holocaust much like the phantom Anastasia from Russia, then realizes that with Anne Frank alive she is just another girl, but as dead she is an innocent martyr to an unconscionable disaster, so she should stay dead. Interesting thought concerning how people might take the whole tragic Frank story, either as Jew or Gentile. Were there some people who actually thought they might impersonate Anne?
The book ends as it began with Roth depicting the Lonoff family acting out the daily sweetnesses and squabbles that everyone else has as married couples. Reminds one of the beginning of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” concerning successful and unsuccessful marriages and the chapter title specifically brings that to mind, “Married to Tolstoy.”
The Ghost Writer was honored in numerous ways: Nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1970), the National Book Critics Circle Award nominee for Fiction (1979), and the National Book Award Finalist for Hardcover Fiction (1980).
Roth’s writing is a delight to read, filled with humor and pathos while posing serious questions. This is an American – and a universal – classic!...more
Like William Faulkner, Louise Erdrich has created a novel series dealing with a small number of closely-knit families. In this case it is families amoLike William Faulkner, Louise Erdrich has created a novel series dealing with a small number of closely-knit families. In this case it is families among the Anishinaabeg (Ojibway or Chippewa) living on a North Dakota reservation. Erdrich began the series with “Love Medicine” in 1984 followed by ”The Beet Queen“ in 1986. In “Tracks” (1988) she backtracks in time to the beginning of the story, telling us how various characters in her previous and many subsequent novels had their origins. A second purpose is the describe the situations these characters were born into, why they are the way they are, and in some cases how they survived.
What they were born into was a tsunami of foreigners determined to destroy the Anishinaabeg, to acquire their land, filch what little money they had and turn them into poverty-stricken dark-skinned, exploitable Europeans. All done legally, of course. A section on Alexis de Tocquevlle’s “Democracy in America” describes this very process. Unlike most books on the subject, the story is told from the viewpoint of the Anishinaabeg people who are destroyed in the process, beginning with a largely Anishinaabeg experience for the reader, told in the old way, working toward the gradual destruction of their American – Native American – selves with shattered bodies, but some still-whole souls. A willful and premeditated destruction of a people for foreign reasons: personal greed and collective patriotism – Manifest Destiny. The greatest good for the greatest number, especially if it was one’s own number. The victory of America the Great. This is the part of US history that many parents do not wish their children to learn in schools. I am sure only the relative obscurity of this book keeps it off many banned books lists.
For those interested in entering a different world, “Tracks” not only lets the reader experience the Anishinaabe Way in a small, vicarious way, as well as get a peek into How the West was Won, on what it took to create a new nation from shore to shore, to allow some to enter a middle class, all at the expense of poor, powerless people.
Erdrich uses dualistic comparisons to illustrate her points. Felling the ancient trees to create the paper documents that legalized the theft of the land and destruction of the trees – treaties that guaranteed conditions classically “as long as the grass shall grow, and as long as the rivers shall run.” Native Americans soon realized that an unwritten extension of this poetic lie was, “and as long as the ink is wet.” A second duality is Anishinaabe spirituality versus European spirituality, Catholicism in particular and how the differences explain at least Anishinaabe attitudes toward forced europeanization. A last duality is the behavior of tribal members who accepted European Culture as opposed to “Traditionals” who kept the standards of personal cleanliness, faith, language and culture of their ancestors, the latter being viewed as the enemies of the US. I should also mention that traditional Native religion was already illegal to practice by the time of the book (1912-1919), a prohibition that was only lifted in 1979.
Erdrich is a skilled writer, relentless in telling a story that is technically fiction but which was played out hundreds of times throughout American history – real American history, not the ersatz stories told many of our schoolchildren. Read the book. Enjoy. And learn....more
Zora Neale Hurston was born into poverty in Northern Florida and largely grew up there. However, as she matured her horizons opened and she ended up iZora Neale Hurston was born into poverty in Northern Florida and largely grew up there. However, as she matured her horizons opened and she ended up in New York City, spending most time in Harlem, where she met and became one of the Renaissance luminaries, and Columbia University where, as a grad student, she studied anthropology under Franz Boas, father of the discipline. As part of her training she returned to the African-American South, collected recordings of life there and published several scholarly papers, a monograph and several books that grew out of her early life, plus her studies. The most honored of these books remains “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” At the end of her life she was a nameless cleaning woman, her magnificent work forgotten and her remaining personal papers just barely saved from being burned with the trash by an aware Black cop. Only in the past 20 years has her legacy been given the honors she always richly deserved.
This novel follows the life of Janie Wood, a young Southern Black woman as she is attached to several men in the course of her life. Hurston’s aim was to illustrate the life of that woman as she travels with her men through several different environments and situations while staying true to show the travails and joys such women and their men may experience. Segregation and the place of African-Americans in the country were an awful reality – the reality that our cowardly and deceitful politicians are once again trying to hide by literally White-washing our history. It is such a strong and convincing book I am stunned not to find this book on every banned book list in the US.
There have been so many fine reviews of the book I will only add a few observations. One is the recording of the Southern Black language. I am an anal-retentive on spelling for myself and misspellings are like speedbumps for me when reading. I have to recreate the intended meaning of the misspelling before proceeding. “Eyes …” was written phonetically to capture the richness of Southern Black speech. Thus, I had a hard time reading the book, yet this was one of the great features of the book. Having to personally “speak” the dialogue took time and effort, but the book would have been less without it.
Another is the practice of some African-Americans to either create a compound word to describe a situation or use a surprise word not expected to be used by Anglo-Americans. My father experienced this phenomenon numerous times when working with African-Americans. One example was when he was in a steel foundry where they were pouring liquid-hot steel for freight car wheels. Dad was warned, “You be careful Mr. Donald; if you get too close you could get conclusion of the brain.” So much more powerful than the expected “concussion!”
I am old enough to remember segregation. My family always lived in the North but in 1956, the year after the sadistic murder of Emmitt Till, we drove from Pennsylvania to Florida on vacation. We stopped in one Georgia town to walk around the town common. There we saw the two fountains, the two washrooms, the two everythings – so disturbing in the land of “All men are created equal.” My mother was Danish but my father was a quarter Native and looked it. In the South, Native Americans were still classified using the “N” word. While we walked, several locals took notice of this dark man walking with a light-skinned woman. It scared the hell out of me. They finally relaxed, but the experience was frightening, given what they could have done. Life for African-Americans there was just unimaginable, and to be honest, the North was no picnic, either then. So, Hurston’s book brought back nightmarish memories.
I try to read at least two works by African-Americans during Black Heritage Month and feel richly rewarded by doing so, but any time of year is great, too. Hurston’s book just adds to the list of books too easily overlooked or postponed on a “want-to-read” list. Don’t wait! Read it – and other powerful African-American books – NOW!! You will be pleasantly enlightened for doing so....more
We are coming up on Banned Book Week, so I have to read a banned book. That’s where all the good stuff is, of course. And what better book to read thaWe are coming up on Banned Book Week, so I have to read a banned book. That’s where all the good stuff is, of course. And what better book to read than a bitter-sweet, humorous, sort-of-autobiographical one that my grandson read several years ago, so I’m playing catch-up.
The “Diary” was the book that brought Alexie to the attention of the book industry, and what attention it has continued to receive! The original attention was as a prize-winning book for young adults. Now it is considered a young adult book meant for adults and has received the honor of being one of the most frequently banned books in the US. I remember being a 14-year-old boy many years ago. As it is a reasonably accurate description of the lives of many 14-year-old boys, that seems to be too much realism for a few sour apples in our collective barrel, citing naughty words that should never reach the eyes of pure little boys and girls, although they are spoken most days by 14-year-old boys, at least, and maybe girls, too. (Ask your kids or grandkids!) Words such as the colloquial term “boner,” or the technical term “masturbation.” That’s about as naughty as it gets.
The “naughtiness” controversy should not detract from the worth of the book. Kids should be acquainted with what is normal behavior in US YA society. They should not be lied to about real life. Sex is normal for humans. Being skittish and secretive about it is a perversion of our natural biological state. Sexual prudery in our country is largely a dodge, like the torero’s cape, flashed in front of our eyes to distract us from the major issues politicians and others do not want us to think about. It is also a cudgel to hammer women into submission to the egregious prevailing patriarchy. Many Native Americans think Europeans are weird about this mechanism of gossipy control.
The book takes on several dragons, not just sex. Another is race and the deplorable state of reservations. True, these were places that were meant to be death camps, but the Natives did not die, although their language, culture and religion were all diminished as quickly as possible by government authorities and missionaries. Yet, they persist. The book also shows how individuals of both races here can be bigoted, and can be tolerant despite the group stereotypes. It is a book that warns us of problems and still gives us hope. Hope in the form of 14-year-old kids who we pray will make a better world than the one we old farts were able to leave behind....more
This is Steinbeck’s last novel, published in 1961 seven years before he died. Not as universally revered as earlier novels, it still has a real sting This is Steinbeck’s last novel, published in 1961 seven years before he died. Not as universally revered as earlier novels, it still has a real sting and master’s mark on it from page one.
Lamb to the slaughter. The reader can see it coming a mile away. Ethan Allen Hawley is more than an easy mark. He walks around town with a target on his back. At the beginning, glum, embarrassed Ethan walks the halls of despair. A proud but penniless Hawley manages a grocery store that he once owned. But Margie, a friend of his wife and a practiced tarot card reader, informs his wife, Mary, that fortunes will come to the Hawleys, and soon. Now that it is predicted that fortune will smile on Ethan, and from not-so-subtle snipes from Mary and others around him about how tiresome poverty can be, he is a different man, a happier man, a wise man. At least in his own mind. Already saturated with the family history of having been cheated by the smart money, reputable thieves like the town banker, Ethan is an easy mark for an aggressive but subtle campaign to regain the money, and thus town respectability and status.
With the stings of how his family was several times cheated out of its fortune, and thus good community standing, and the prediction of better times, accepting, quiet Ethan begins to adjust his attitude, flex his assertiveness, and plunges into the unknown world of hard-knuckle dealings, maybe even a bit of not so honest stuff. Some of this is kindness of a sort, some is tough bargaining and some is tom-foolery. Steinbeck leads us through many twists and turns to a surprise conclusion to this new Ethan Hawley enterprise. He seems to try a new tack on a New England setting, but still hammers on the question of what is moral? Are we all moral? Are we all moral fakes at heart, able to fool our family, friends and neighbors? Is everyone this way? Are open cheaters the only honest people?
Spiced with many light moments, even tragi-comedic moments, Steinbeck entertains while still smacking us in the face with the basic dishonesty and savage darwinism that underlies our capitalist-American economic system. This is a good time to remind ourselves of and come to terms with who we really are as a people. And who we could be, who we ought to be. ...more
Published in 1982, Walker’s book won both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award the following year and was named one of the BBC’sPublished in 1982, Walker’s book won both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award the following year and was named one of the BBC’s 100 Most Influential Novels. Her depiction of the life of Celie, a rural Southern Black woman in the early 20th Century, is beyond piercing.
Walker wrote her novel as an epistolary; in letters Celie writes to God (who else listens to her problems?), and later to her sister, Nettie who was thrown out of her house when she would not allow their step-father to rape her. Celie has two children by her step-father who gives them away – somewhere unknown. She is then married off against her will to an older widower who also abuses her in several ways – sexual, physical, verbal and by letting her do all the work. This appears to be par for the course in her community, except when her stepson Harpo marries Sofia who is not intimidated by anyone; this gets her into a tussle with the white town mayor leading to a ruthless police beating and a sentence of 12 years in prison.
Celie’s husband is in love with a blues singer, Shug Avery who pops in once in a while to pleasure with Albert, the husband. However, Celie and Shug also become lovers in a kind of female alliance, giving each solace from the abusive men. The complicated plot continues but more here would ruin the story for those who have not yet read this stunning book.
Walker tackles many questions in her complicated tale. There is the question of sex. Not just the many interactions between the sexes, but the act itself. It is anything between two humans rutting and sweet love. How does that work? Then there is race, some interactions between blacks and whites, but within the black community. There is the place of religion and how it varies from person to person, or does it have to be present at all? And religious tolerance, too??
An added and unexpected treat in “Purple” is the question – is colonialism moral? What kinds of colonialism are there? The obvious type is when a rubber company “buys” native land without consulting the natives, bulldozing their homes, their community and the lands they depend upon to eat and protect themselves and telling them to go “somewhere.” More subtly addressed is religious colonialism, missionaries intruding on the lives, beliefs and social customs of natives – that is a kind of colonialism just as vicious, dangerous and disruptive as economic exploitation, not to forget the sinister deviousness of intruded “kindness.”
“Purple” has been “challenged” or “banned” so many times it makes these unwelcome, sanctimonious lists almost every time. Honest depiction of life is just intolerable, it seems. Physical, verbal and sexual abuse are dramatically depicted. The brutal life of Celie from birth onward is unforgettable and Celie’s voice describes her life in absolutely blunt and brutal terms, no holds barred.
I am reading this book to help celebrate Black History Month, February 2022. The events occurred almost a century ago, so are they still pertinent? Will the sun rise in the East tomorrow? So little has changed in the hearts of some people – it is a cancer on our nation. Read the consequences from the receiving side of the exchange if you are not familiar with them. It will help explain our present situation.
Why in hell haven’t I read this book before? My loss! It is unforgettable. ...more
Early in Rockwell Kent’s brilliant career he took his 8-year-old son to Fox Island in Alaska to spend the Winter, sharpen his drawing skills and proviEarly in Rockwell Kent’s brilliant career he took his 8-year-old son to Fox Island in Alaska to spend the Winter, sharpen his drawing skills and provide a different education for his son. A larger book (Wilderness) was the complete description of this wonderful Winter, but a small portion concerning their Christmas festivities was abstracted to form this delightful small book.
Almost each page is illustrated with Kent’s Alaska drawings to accompany his journal memories of this Christmas which was unique for him and his son – and their old Jack London-era Swedish gold-miner landlord and neighbor, Mr. Olson. The book is charming and recalls Thoreau’s Winter days in Walden, Concord. Simply-written and strikingly-illustrated, this is a delightful book and would make a wonderful Christmas present for anyone....more
Joe Allston, a retired literary agent living now in California, is in a mental and physical rut, just grumpily slipping through the ease of a purpose-Joe Allston, a retired literary agent living now in California, is in a mental and physical rut, just grumpily slipping through the ease of a purpose-free, post-work life. Then he receives a postcard from an old Danish friend which causes Allston to return to old notebooks written during a visit to Copenhagen and his mother’s birthplace in Denmark and partially relive this experience as he reads his journal of this trip to his patient and loving wife at night. Excerpts of the Danish trip are interspersed with experiences of the couple as they live through the week of readings with their fellow oldsters.
“Spectator” is several stories. There is the Allston saga of the 1970’s interspersed with the Allstons of twenty years earlier as they traveled for several months in Denmark, attempting to bandage the wound of their devil-make-care surfer son’s drowning. It is a story of old age and attitudes toward aging and life, including thoughts of inevitable and not so distant death. Of how precious life is and how it ought to be revered, enjoyed. This is emphasized by their Dr. friend, their Italian friend and their Danish landlady. Even by themselves when guard is down.
Allston has a special feeling about Denmark because of his mother’s origin. I have a special feeling for this book as my own mother left Denmark in 1926 and migrated to America as per her mother’s plan. Although she was not a peasant – her father was a craftsman who among other things repaired the king’s Medieval tapestries – my mother was definitely a daughter of The Old Country” and Allston’s Danish experiences sound so familiar to me. And when we lived in Madison, New Jersey we became friends with the owner of a small nearby flower farm who was a cousin of King Christian X that left the aristocracy so he could marry his absolutely delightful commoner wife, Juno. I was raised in a very Danish home, by my mother along with my very American father who, ironically for the book, was also in the railroad industry.
Stegner has a real sense of what Danes are – maybe were - like. They are effusively welcoming with great warmth mixed with a strong reverence for propriety – there is a right way to do things and that is the Danish Way. The Øreby Castle in which the action takes place is real but the family in “Spectator” is absolutely fictional. Check a history of the castle out in Wikipedia under “Orebygaard.”
Also from Wikipedia: “It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1977, one of the two most prestigious literary awards in the United States.” This is a short book that touches on many thoughtful questions, some of which I do not mention to avoid spoiler status. Perhaps those not in the oldster category will find the book boring, but for me at 83 years old it made great sense....more
Hey! It’s Samhain! Time to bring the cattle back from the hills and pass them between two fires to assure they are cleansed and blessed. Time to take Hey! It’s Samhain! Time to bring the cattle back from the hills and pass them between two fires to assure they are cleansed and blessed. Time to take the neighbors’ hand tools and hide them near the spring so they can be blessed and throw flour on the windows to ensure the home many children. Time to hide the profane iron away so the gods will visit. And time for a good ghost story. Jackson’s tale is one of the genuine classics.
Now, to the story! Dr. John Montague plans to write a book concerning psychic phenomena but needs more original data to make his work credible. To that end he has found an old, isolated house with a history of quirkiness and unexplained happenings. He invites a series of people who, themselves, have a history of sensitivity to these phenomena who would independently collect data on their experiences while in the house, Hill House. Only Eleanor and Theodora answer the call; Mrs. Sanderson, Hill House owner, insists that a family member must also be present, so add nephew Luke Sanderson to the group. Now there are 4 altogether – John Montague and the three guests. The house is maintained by the faithful family servants Mr. and Mrs. Dudley who live in nearby Hilldale.
The action takes place in less than a week. Yes, a few things happen at first. The house is laid out as a maze and not squarely; that is, the house is not constructed precisely at right angles as most houses are, but just a little bit off so that one’s sense of perception is immediately put off. And as with most old houses, there have been deaths in the house so a few souls still clinging on to the old place are to be expected.
Friendships blossom, attachments are made and a few psychic phenomena are observed at first, but the real show begins when Dr. Montague’s haughty, arrogant, presumptuous, bossy wife and her private-school-principle friend-turned chauffer arrive to drive everyone to distraction with their obnoxious comments and demands.
The book is mercifully short by today’s standards, almost too short; the action just begins when we reach the end. The four principle characters are well-delineated, as were the Dudleys. The late arrivals – Arthur and Mrs. Montague - seemed a bit one-dimensional but in a short book, perhaps necessarily so. Is this a classic? I think so. I also think it would have made a better movie simply because the sensory nature of the paranormal phenomena could be dramatized more successfully with the exceptionally eerie sights and sounds Jackson so skillfully describes. In the end, it is a great October book for Samhain. ...more
Earlier in the year I read and enjoyed Morley’s “Parnassus on Wheels,” the light-reading story of a farm woman who had been a willing appendage of herEarlier in the year I read and enjoyed Morley’s “Parnassus on Wheels,” the light-reading story of a farm woman who had been a willing appendage of her brother for 40 years and found deliverance in a balding, red-bearded traveling book salesman who was looking for a buyer of his horse-drawn bookmobile – “Parnassus on Wheels.” She bought it; he accompanied her for a distance to show her the ropes of the trade and the rest is matrimonial history. Roger Mifflin returned to his Brooklyn home base with his new wife, Helen, and Morley’s Haunted Bookshop was born.
This is an old-fashioned book. Published in 1919, it is a child of its times in so many ways. Morley has key historical events as important pivot points to the story, especially the end of World War I – “The Great War,” and President Woodrow Wilson’s sailing to the fateful peace conference. Morley – in the guise of bookseller Roger Mifflin - hopes that Wilson’s conciliatory philosophy will prevail over the rapacious revenge that France and England insisted on imposing on Germany. It didn’t work, and Germany was severely punished by the Allies, almost guaranteeing another war, or The Great War, part 2, with a fresh crop of cannon fodder to feed into the popular European war machines. But I digress….
This is primarily a book for bibliophiles. Classic bibliophiles to be precise. Bookseller Roger Mifflin’s tastes run pretty much to the older tried and true with a few exceptions. The book is replete with references to “great” books that surely Morley loved in some way, some still remembered today, some not. Indeed, the book may have been more an excuse for Morley to vent his feelings about current “literature” that he considered soppy or dreary and promote his favorites. I’m not sure Morley’s own book didn’t suffer a bit from this soppiness; again, it is a child of its times and reads very much like a Booth Tarkington’s “Seventeen” with a serious mystery aspect added.
I am guessing this is the writing style that Hemingway rebelled against – jolly, humorous, directly, rather than indirectly, opinionated, sweet and sentimental. For those who are offended by the brutality of Hemingway’s writing style (I am not) you may enjoy “The Haunted Bookshop.” I certainly did, especially in this time of plague when lightness and humor are welcome visitors to our homes.
I was lucky enough to obtain a cheap early edition of the book, complete with a beautiful old bookplate, large, clear typefaces and a binding that allowed me to open the book flat, unlike modern, new books, especially the detested paperbacks. I love these 100-year-old relics!...more
This is the first volume in Morley’s two book “Parnassus” series, ending with the equally-charming spy-centered novel, “The Haunted Bookshop.” WrittenThis is the first volume in Morley’s two book “Parnassus” series, ending with the equally-charming spy-centered novel, “The Haunted Bookshop.” Written in 1917, this is a short, straight-forward story of a slightly plump (the book continually emphasizes this – she seems just fine to me) 39 year-old woman living with her brother on a farm, probably in Connecticut. She tires of her many farm chores and baking 6000 loaves of bread over 15 years while her brother travels and writes admired books, so she buys a mobile bookshop from the learned itinerant book missionary and is off and running into her new adventure and profession, accompanied by said missionary.
Parnassus on Wheels is a charming story about a bygone era in a bygone place. It offers a nostalgic look at rural America of over a century or more ago, a life that might still be found in quaint small towns of New England and elsewhere in the US and Canada, but it would be a tough search.
If you feel the need for a sweet feel-good book, try this one. In the midst of this awful pandemic you will find some relief from the God-awful cloud that hangs over everything now. And by “feel-good” I am being serious. Unless you are the Grinch, of course – he won’t like it. ...more
This is a classic and the story basics are well-known, but I will try not to divulge too much of the ending. This is the story of two very different pThis is a classic and the story basics are well-known, but I will try not to divulge too much of the ending. This is the story of two very different people who meet on a train to Texas, and share their dislikes of people close to them. One of the two makes the suggestion that each should kill the other’s despised one, then there would be no logical way to link the killings to the perpetrators. Each one a perfect murder. This basic scenario has been used in other stories since then and may be much older than 1950 when Highsmith published the book.
Guy Haines, architect, is on the train to divorce the unfaithful wife he has not seen in two years. She is pregnant, obviously with another man’s child, not Guy’s, so Guy is pleased to get the divorce for that and other reasons, principally his engagement to another woman. Charles Bruno is on his way to Santa Fe to meet and vacation with his mother. Bruno is exceedingly rich but, because of his father, on an allowance leash meant to curtail his playboy life, primarily his love for alcohol. Like Mary Trump’s book about her famous uncle, Bruno is in the “Too Much, But Never Enough” crowd but without that allowance. Life would be so much better without dad.
Bruno tries to sell the plan to Haines, but does not succeed. However, he carries out his end of the non-deal by murdering Guy’s wife, Miriam, then does his best to force Haines to complete the bargain.
The book is really a classic literary novel although it is generally classified as a crime novel, thus depreciating its real worth, at least in my eyes. Highsmith is a master plotter and reading the book gives you the sick inner feeling you are frog-marched to an execution and there is no escape. The book is gripping and difficult to put down, although I was interrupted a number of times by unrelated events, so it took me almost two weeks to read it.
The book raises a number of issues – loyalty, responsibility, the nature of interpersonal interactions, honesty, friendship, psychopathy, karma. The book does not resolve all of these issues for either major protagonist.
Haines was a believable character, Bruno was bizarre, and beyond wanting his father dead, what were his unfathomable suicidal motivations for maintaining contact with Haines? Was he in love with Haines? Was he jealous because he wanted Haines wife? Did he just crave to be near more balanced people because his life was totally chaotic?
I didn’t like the ending, but it may have been necessary to get the book published in 1950. In sum, this is a must-read book for crime enthusiasts for intrinsic and historical reasons, and just a good, terrifying ride....more
James M. Cain is best known as a pioneer in dark American crime fiction, and reading his books, it is obvious he puts the noir in the roman noir.
DI waJames M. Cain is best known as a pioneer in dark American crime fiction, and reading his books, it is obvious he puts the noir in the roman noir.
DI was written in 1936, two years after Cain’s extremely popular and successful “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” and the story begins in a similar manner. Greedy wife Phyllis Nirdlinger has decided that her husband is no longer needed and wishes to purchase an accident insurance policy on him from her husband’s insurance agent, Walter Huff for $50,000, getting double wins from one action. That would be a real fortune in 1936! But from there it deviates in several different directions.
Like Cain’s earlier book, it is a simple tale of boredom, greed with the addition of a secret worship of the ultimate gambit, death. Cain initially portrays Huff as the tough-as-nails, very successful insurance salesman who has no illusions concerning human frailties, especially those relating to insurance fraud. Nonetheless, he almost immediately succumbs to the charms of Phyllis and shows her how she might play the game of chance in committing fraud by a dastardly act. Despite this toughness and previous adherence to ethical standards, he is so easily drawn into the whirlpool of evil circling the gurgler which for me was not particularly believable. But if one is to play that game you just can’t put your tippy toes into the water to see how hot it is – if you are in for a penny, you are in for a pound. And so he was.
This is one of the eight “books” (or seven books and a play) chosen as the plot base for the recently published “Eight Perfect Murders”. I had already read several of the “perfect murder” books and thought I would squeeze this short one in as well. I am not certain if these were “perfect murders” as the perpetrators do not necessarily get away with their deeds, but I suppose it all hangs on the definition of this accomplishment. Rather than the “perfect” criteria I prefer pondering Thomas de Quincy’s thoughts “On Murder, as One of the Fine Arts” – a somewhat more nuanced consideration of the fine points of the phenomenon in real life, not fiction. For 25 years I worked as a forensic anthropologist and witnessed a fair number of cases in which humans had been seen circling the gurgler before becoming candidates for autopsy, many never realizing their precarious position. Many times the perpetrator did “get away” with the deed; were these “perfect murders” and were they performed as “fine art?”
“Double Indemnity” is a short book and is easily read in one session if the reader so desires.
Just in passing, as the book reminded me - in Western culture “Red” seems to be the color of evil and of death, as seen here and in Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” inter alia. In some Native American cultures red is the symbol of life. How culture affects our reactions! ...more
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