While I was rearranging some books yesterday my eyes fell on George R. Stewart\’s Earth Abides. Initially I was struck by the fact that Earth Abides, published in 1949, could be considered a direct ancestor of (among other) the movie Contagion and Stephen King\’s The Stand. Then I started to wander around my memories of the book (mentally exploring its territory.) After a few moments of reverie a strange sense of \”exclusion\” from the story came over me. What, I wondered, is standing between me total immersion in the created world of the book?

Further thought led to a hypothesis–one which I who had so long enjoyed the book, found uncomfortable. The only way to check it out, I decided, was to sit down and reread Earth Abides carefully looking for the data that would either support or undermine that hypotheis.

Below are the notes I made while rereading:

Warning: Beyond here there lie spoilers.

Trigger Warning: post-apocalyptic imagery, violence against women, dangerous childbearing conditions, misogyny, implied rape, rape culture

Earth Abides begins, the reader can deduce, several weeks after the outbreak of a disease which is air-born and deadly. Before Ish, who is in an isolated location gather data for his research, realizes that anything has happened most of the population of the United States has already died and civilization as he has known it has already disappeared. The book has always been one of my favourites (being a fan as I am of post-apocalyptic novels) because it is told primarily from the \”ordinary person\” point of view. We never learn how/where the epidemic started and we are not given glimpses of what decision-makers were doing. The book is a quiet examination/description of what life would be like for a rather ordinary person in those circumstances.

The book has two narrative points of view: that of Isherwood Williams (Ish) and an omniscient narrative voice that gives us limited information about what is going on elsewhere in the world as well as some background information about ecology.[1] Since the word \”man\” is used frequently in the sense of \”humanity\” it is possible that some person mentioned in the text was actually in the mind\’s eye of the author a woman however the first individual that we can be certain is a woman is not mentioned until page 18 [2]

In Sacramento, a crazed woman had opened the cages of a circus menagerie for fear that the animals might starve to death, and been mauled by a lioness (18-19)

Given the gendered allocation of jobs at the time the book was published it is reasonable to assume that the nurses mentioned later on page 19 were also (or at least primarily) women. We read of dead men. We read of a man hung from the a telephone pole with a poster announcing \”Looter.\” We do not read about women.

The reader is given an insight into what Ish (and the author) sees as the most salient/worthwhile qualities of men and women when Ish finds a survivor, a man who has already nearly drunk himself to death and thinks,

The survivor might have been a beautiful girl, or a fine intelligent man, but it was only this drunkard, too far gone for any help. (32)

Later, driving around the streets across the bay from San Francisco, Ish finally comes across a living woman. She is in the company of a flamboyantly dressed (and Ish soon realizes, armed) man who makes it clear that woman \”belongs\” to him sexually.

He (Ish) wondered what the woman could have been in the old life. Now she looker merely like a well-to-do prostitute. (34)

The man speaks but the women does not. Neither does the teen-age girl who Ish later glimpses as she flees the sight of him. Of the few fellow survivors he meets, only the men speak to him.

Ish later embarks on a trip across what was once the United States. On page 60 he meets a family (that is, a man, woman and boy who have found each other in the aftermath of the epidemic) of, as the book puts it \”Negros.\” Ish speaks to them but the reader learns only of the information he gleans rather than \”hearing\” any of their actual words. The woman, Ish notices, is pregnant.

Ish has driven across the continent and arrived in New York City before the reader \”hears\” the words of a woman:

\”Call me Ann,\” she said. \”And have a drink!–Warm martinis, that\’s all I can offer you! Not a scrap of ice in New York City\” (72)

Ish meets few people for quite a while after this and they are described only in the most general of terms. Most of them are suffering from what we would diagnose today as post traumatic stress disorder. There are few details about these encounters. Ish seems emotionally flat and unreactive–which would makes sense given what has happened to the world he knows. The only being with whom he has opened up and formed an emotional bond is a dog who adopted him.This relative flatness of affect continues until on page 98 Ish hears a women say (of his dog) \”That\’s a beautiful dog!\” and he has met Em (Emma) the woman with whom he will settle down and have children.

Now, I understand why a male writer would write a book with a male protagonist but Stewart\’s skill as a writer makes it easier to miss some key and disturbing aspects of the story. Yes, as many modern day reviewers point out there is much implicit and a fair amount of explicit racism in the book. Yes, as many modern day reviewers point out there is both implicit and explicit classism in the book. Yes, as many modern day reviewers point out there is much implicit and explicit sexism in the book. However, in the opinion of this reviewer, the attitude toward women is actually far more disturbing than mere sexism and moves outside the boundary of misogyny to another, rather terrifying, territory. On rereading the book I am not really sure that women in this book are portrayed as actual human beings.

Early on in the story, long before Ish meets Em, he meets and, as he sometimes characterizes it, is seduced by a dog who he later names Princess. His interactions with Princess play a large part in him handling the immense psychological stresses of the first weeks and months after the epidemic kills off most of humanity. Princess accompanies him on his trek across the United States (for he does not really fully internalize the fall of the civilization until he see that New York City is now an almost empty shell abandoned by all by a handful of survivors.) Princess is instrumental in Ish\’s meeting with Em and the words he hears her speak, \”That\’s a beautiful dog!\” are about Princess.

Em and Ish may have sex the first night they meet but their interactions in this post-apocalyptic work fit into the gender norms of the decade after the Second World War. Em feeds Ish, they have sex (in the discrete way characters do in books written in the 1940s), she makes him breakfast and then:

They moved back, later that day, to the house on San Lupo Drive, chiefly because he seemed to have more possessions–books especially, than she did. It was trouble to move to the books than to move the books to them.(103)

Em changes the way in which she lives to fit into Ish\’s life. Ish continues to live in the home he was living in before he met her. He continues to entertain himself the way he did before he met her. Everything is the same with a few exceptions: now he has someone to cook his meals and share his bed. The reader learns that Em had been married and the mother of two \”small children.\” Presumably husband and children died in the epidemic but the reader is left to infer that rather than being told. We never learn the name or even gender of either of the children. Em functions as a life force, a source of strength and a touchstone for Ish. He fears that she will die in childbirth and she reassures. The birth takes places \”off screen\” as one chapter ends with her pregnant and the next section begins some time after the birth. The reader is not told if the birth was easy or hard, only that the baby is healthy and Em is once again pregnant. Em and Ish have settled down to life in the remains of civilization. Ish reads novels and philosophy in the evening and Em knits.

A group of survivors grows up around Ish and Em until there are four adult women. All of them give birth at least once. We read no details about their pregnancies or their labour:

The Year 6 was an eventful one. During its course all four of the women bore children–even Maurine, who had seemed too old. There was, however–now that Em had led the way–a strong drive toward the having of many children. Each of the adults had for a time lived alone, had experienced what they now called the Great Loneliness, and the strange dread that went with it. Even now their little group was only a tiny candle against the pressure of the surrounding darkness. Each new-born baby seemed to give the uncertain flame a stronger hold and to push the darkness of annihilation back a little. (128)

And the cynic in this reader asks herself, \’what choice did any of these women have?\’ As one reads on one realizes that at no time does a lone woman join this group of survivors. Lone men are not encouraged to stay because of fears of sexual rivalry but since the Tribe (as they call themselvs) already have accepted polygamy the same fears would not bar a lone woman from joining up with them. Each man who joins brings at least one woman with him. One realizes that in this world there are no lone women. Women \”belong\” to men. Either the woman is lucky and belongs to a man who is \”nice\” to her or she unlucky. We she no women who are not part of group headed by a man. Since there is no birth control it seems strange to speak of there being \”a strong drive towards the having of many children.\” It seems more likely that there is a strong drive (at least among the men) for having sex. Children are simply one of the results of that drive.

Though Ish thinks about the physical threats of pregnancy and childbirth before having sex with Em for the first time those fears are waived off by Em and seldom returned to. Em apparently has her children without trouble as do the other women. Again the cynic in me asks, what are the chances that the first 10 births after the \”Great Disaster\” would be trouble free? What are the odds that at least one of those women had a horrible labour? What are the odds that none of the children would have died? Indeed we read that it is not until \”Year 11\” that, for the first time, a child died a birth. The reader is given no details at all about that death. Was the labour long? Did the mother die of exhaustion? Did she hemorrhage? We read: \”They thought that perhaps this death was caused from Molly\’s being old now. (134)\” but one doubts that the \”they\” in that sentence would have been the women who held Molly\’s hand and wiped the sweat from her as she laboured.

Pregnancy and labour take place off stage just as does most of the other work done by women. Who makes the meals? Who washes the clothes? Who supervises the children? Who mends the clothes? All of this is the work of women. Em is praised often by Ish as the bearer of courage but her life, except for the moments when Ish needs her, takes place offstage and unconsidered. We know more the internal life of Princess (who is always running off after imaginary rabbits) than we do of Em. And, although the death of that child was first that had taken place at childbirth it was apparently not in the running when they came to name the year (something they did every year.)

When it came to naming the year, however, there was a dispute between the old and young. The older ones thought that it should be called the Year when Princess Died. . . . She had been ailing, an old dog, for some time. No one knew just how ancient she was, because she might have been anywhere for one year to three or four when first she picked up Ish. She had remained the same–always the princess, expecting the best of treatment, always unreliable, always ready to disappear on the trail of an imaginary rabbit just when you wanted her. But for all you might say against her, she had shown a very real character, and the older people could remember the time when she seemed very important along San Lupo Drive, almost another person.

By now there were dozens of dogs around. Nearly all of them must be children or grandchildren or great-grand-children of Princess. . .But to the children Princess had been an old and not very interesting dog of uncertain temper.. . . (134)

If Princess is \”almost another person\” to Ish–if Princess was \”a very real character\”–what is Em to Ish? The love of his life? The person who saved him from the post epidemic despair?

When Ish looked at Em, so many feelings boiled up within him that he knew any judgment he might try to make of her would be of no value. She, alone, had made the first decision to have a child. She had kept her courage and confidence during the Terrible Year. She it was to whom they all turned in time of trouble. Some strong power lodged within her, to affirm and never to deny. Without her they might all have been as nothing. Yet her power lay deep in the springs of action; in a particular situation, though she might inspire courage and confidence in others, she seldom herself supplied an idea. Ish knew that he would always turn to her and that she was greater than he, but he also knew that she would not be of help in planning toward the future. (141-142)

Em is a life force. And life forces don\’t have thoughts. They barely have feelings. Their \”power,\” such as it is, is to support others. And when, now old and many times a grandmother, Em dies:

\”Oh, Mother of Nation!\” he thought. \”Her sons shall praise, and her daughters call her blessed!\” (283)

But we do not read of his grief, or her funeral, nor does he strive to name that year \”The year Em died.\”

Ish survives Em, an old man even by the standards of longevity before the Great Disaster. He is encouraged to marry a young woman who had \”no man to marry her.\”

He felt no love, but he took her. She comforted him in the long nights, for he was still a man in his strength. She bore him children, though the children seemed always a little strange to him–scarcely his, because they were not also Em\’s.(284)

And my flesh crawls at the idea of a young woman being \”taken\” by this old man. Even had she wanted to be a wife there was no reason for her to have to turn to an old man for among The Tribe other men had been known to take more than one wife. What was it like for her? Did she feel honoured to be taken by one of the few remaining \”Old Ones\” or had she secretly been horrified at her fate? Was she content to be the wife of a living, if old, paunchy and forgetful god?

Now no more children were born to Ish\’s young wife. Then one day she came to him with a younger man, and the two asked, respectfully, that Ish should give her to that one. (285)

We never learn the wife\’s name.

Ish, who is prone throughout the book to philosophizing and takes great pride and pleasure in marking the ways in which the old world has changed and adapted after the Great Disaster, spends no time on thinking of how things have changed for women. He is given a woman and then gives her to another man and yet he never pauses for a moment to ponder about this. He notices that this next generation cannot read but does not notice that the women of that generation have been reduced to property that is taken by men and given to other men.

The book ends as Ish\’s life comes to an end. He looks at the hills about him and notices that the hills that are shaped like a woman\’s breasts. He looks at the young men who have carried him away from the fire consuming the home that he has lived in for decades and he takes comfort in remembering the fourth verse of Ecclesiastes \”Men go and come, but earth abides.\”

Yes, men come and go. Women, save as breasts and the promise of the earth\’s fecundity, have no part of the comforting vision of the earth abiding.

I still think that Earth Abides deserves a place as one of the most important and influential pieces of post-apocalyptic fiction written in the last century. I mourn that I will never again be able to read this book without the chill sense that in Stewart\’s future there would be no room for my mind, my knowledge, my skills, my insight or my ingenuity. In Stewart\’s world my only value would be my womb and my willingness to support the man who \”took\” me.

Rating: A uncomfortable 4-1/2 stars

[1] This narrative voice comes across as very similar to that in the movie Thread, similarly reporting information which may have devastating implication in a low-key scientific way.

[2] Stewart, George. Earth abides. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1976.  

There are books (movies, tv shows) that leave one with a vague sense of disquiet. You know that they \”lost\” you at some point but you cannot quite put your finger on it. There are others that have a least one moment that one can point at and say \’there, there it lost me. I was no longer willing to willfully suspend my disbelief in the extraordinary things because the author has demonstrated that they don\’t even grasp the ordinary ones\’

I had one of these moments in Sharyn McCrumb\’s Bimbos of the Death Sun

\”Well…what does he want?\”

\”I don\’t know!\” wailed Perry. \”Something called \’Smarties\’ and \’Yorkies.\’ Drugs, I expect.\”

\”No, Miles. It\’s British candy. Smarties are like M&Ms, and a Yorkie is a chocolate bar.\” Being a Canadian gave Diefenbaker an occasional cultural advantage over his more insular American colleagues.(19) [1]

Bimbos is a murder mystery set at a science fiction and fantasy convention. People encouraged me to read it because I was a fan of science fiction, science fantasy and murder mysteries. What could be better? And part of the fun, I was told, was figuring out all the inside jokes. What best selling author was this character a send up of and which former best selling author was being made fun of in that scene.

One of the most common descriptions of the book was \”well observed\” and everyone assured me that McCrumb was making jokes and constructing caricatures from the inside looking out not the outside looking in.

And then I read page 19. And after that page I could never quite trust the author again. For you see, I am a Canadian. I grew up seeing Smarties at every grocery checkout counter. I grew up seeing Smarties at every convenience store. I grew up getting Smarties on Hallowe\’en. If I was asked if Smarties were a drug I would never, ever think to say that they were a British candy. I might say that they are candy covered chocolates that are vastly superior to M&Ms. I would not call them British.

So, if I can\’t trust McCrumb to get a detail like that right–why should I trust her about things I know less about that which candies are available in the convenience stores of Canada.

The rest of the book may be witty and full of inside jokes but I will never know. It lost me on page 19.

[1] McCrumb, Sharyn (2002). Bimbos of the Death Sun Rosetta Books

One of the charges that Catholics have been known to throw at each other is the epithet \”cafeteria Catholic\” by which they mean \”you pick and choose those aspects of Catholicism that suit you.\”

Well, apparently in New York there are public officials who consider it okay to be a cafeteria legal officials. They feel quite comfortable deciding which laws and regulations they will enforce/abide by and which they will not. So, the clerk whose actions are described in N.Y. town clerk: I won\’t sign gay wedding license feels that since it violates her religious principles for two men (or women) to marry each other she is free to \”be the law\” in her town. On this basis she feels free not to issue them a license for which they legally eligible.

What if she refused to issue license for people who are divorced? There a lots of Americans who belong to a church that does not allow divorce and remarriage after divorce. Would there be question as to how long a clerk who refused to issues licenses to people who had been divorced would keep their job?

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym (1953)

Sometimes when I finish a book I feel that there is nothing much to say beyond “good,” “bad,” “the type of thing I think you would like”, or “how did this ever get published?”

Sometimes when I finish a book I feel that any book review that did it justice would have to be at least as long as the original book.

Jane and Prudence falls into that second category of book.

So, to begin by getting some of the business done before moving on to the meat of the review.

This is an excellent book. I feel that on technical points the writing itself falls short of the standard set by Pym in Excellent Women but it surpasses that book in terms of the nuanced exploration of character and the entwined exploration of the themes of class and religion in England in the 1950s and class, gender and food rationing in England in the 1950s.

Warning the first: For those who have yet to read Excellent Women — one scene in this book containers spoilers about characters in that book.

Warning the second: This is one of those books which should be read without first reading the publisher’s description. For example, that of the Chivers Press edition of the book contains no information that cannot be gleaned without in the first few minutes of reading and mischaracterizes both the major characters, their interactions and what happens to each of them over the course of the story.

Jane and Prudence is set in the post WWII England when much of life still revolves around the problems and irritations that arose from the rationing of food. Rationing began January 8 1940 and continued even after the end of the war. Gradually, over the years, restrictions were dropped on various items such as clothes, chocolates, flour and soap but some items, particularly meat, were still rationed until July 4, 1954. These forced food shortages had the unintended consequence of making people much more consciously aware of how class, gender and social networks impacted who had access to which items.

The importance of meat is signaled early in the story, “people in these days do rather tend to worship meat for its own sake,’ said Jane, as they sat down to supper. ‘When people go abroad for a holiday they seem to bring back with them such a memory of meat.’” [1] (22)

Men, we learn as we read, can not be expected to endure the same dietary hardships as the women around them. For example, Jane and her husband Nicholas are having a meal at a local tea shop.

at last Mrs. Crampton emerged from behind the velvet curtain carrying two plates on a tray. She put in front of Jane a plate containing an egg, a rasher of bacon and some fried potatoes cut in fancy shapes, and in front of Nicholas a plate with two eggs and rather more potatoes. Nicholas exclaimed with pleasure.

‘Oh, a man needs eggs! said Mrs. Crampton, also looking pleased

This insistence on a man’s needs amused Jane. Men needed meat and eggs–well, yes, that might be allowed; but surely not more than women did? Perhaps Mrs. Crampton’s widowhood had something to do with it; possibly she made up for having no man to feed at home by ministering to the needs of those who frequented her café.

Nicholas accepted his two eggs and bacon and the implication that his needs were more important than his wife’s with a certain amount of complacency, Jane thought. But then as a clergyman he had had to get used to accepting flattery and gifts gracefully.. (p. 65)

But, the reader soon learns, Nicholas wasn\’t getting extra meat just because he was a clergyman:

Mrs. Crampton now returned and set down before Mr. Oliver a plate laden with roast chicken and all the proper accompaniments. He accepted it with quite as much complacency as Nicholas had accepted his eggs and bacon and began to eat.

Jane turned away, to save his embarrassment. Man needs bird, she thought. Just the very best, that is what man needs. (67)

Jane isn\’t the only woman who is consciously (and sardonically) aware that society seemed to feel that it was vitally important that men have their meat:

‘Mr. Driver! Mr. Driver!’ Mrs. Arkright came out on to the lawn calling. ‘Your steak’s ready!”

‘Ah, my steak.’ Fabian smiled. ‘You will excuse me, Miss Morrow?’

‘Of course. I should’t like to keep you from your steak. A man needs meat, as Mrs. Crampton and Mrs. Mayhew are always saying.’ She waved her hand in dismissal.

Fabian hurried away, conscious of his need for meat and of the faintly derisive tone of Miss Morrow’s remark, as if there were something comic about a man needing meat. (73, 74)

Pym is also clear-eyed and politely but firmly aware of the class presumptions that underline the religious habits of the British gentry.

One may wonder when Pym allows the reader into the shallow and self-centered “musings” of Fabian Driver if that sharp eye is trained only a particular type of person–someone who is facile and in the end desires social approval more than the approval of God:

He walked slowly down the main street, past the collection of old and new buildings that lined it. The Parish Church and the vicarage were at the other end of the village. Here he came to the large Methodist Chapel, but of course one couldn’t go there; none of the people one knew went to chapel, unless out of a kind of amused curiosity. Even if truth were to be found there. A little further on, though, as was fitting, on the opposite side of the road, was the little tin hut which served as a place of worship for the Roman Catholics. Fabian knew Father Kinsella, a good-looking Irishman, who often came into the bar of the Golden Lion for a drink. He had even though of going to his church once or twice, but somehow it had never come to anything. The makeshift character of the building, the certain discomfort that he would find within, the plaster images in execrable taste, the simplicity of Father Kinsella’s sermons intended only for a congregation of Irish labourers and servant-girls–all these kept him away. The glamour of Rome was obviously not there.(70, 71)

Yet Pym later reveals not dissimilar thoughts in the mind of one of the more sympathetic characters, the sophisticated and educated Prudence

But then she imagined herself sitting on a hard, uncomfortable chair after a day’s work, listening to a lecture by a raw Irish peasant that was phrased for people less intelligent than herself. Better, surely, to go along Farm Street and be instructed by a calm pale Jesuit who would know the answers to all one’s doubts. Then, in the street where she did her shopping there was the Chapel, with a notice outside which said: ALL WELCOME. The minister, the Rev. Bernard Tabb, had the letters B.D.; B.Sc. after his name. The fact that he was a Bachelor of Science might give particular authority to his sermons, Prudence always felt; he might quite possibly know all the answers, grapple boldly with doubt and overcome it because he knew the best and worst of both worlds. He might even tackle evolution and the atomic bomb and make sense of it all. But of course, she thought, echoing Fabian’s sentiments as he walked in the village one just couldn’t go to Chapel; one just didn’t. Not even to those exotic religious meetings advertised on back of the New Statesman, which always seemed to take place in Bayswater.(284,285)

Reading Pym makes this reader wonder if the petty and long lasting nature of the privations after the Second World War played a major role in breaking down (some) of the class structure and gender relations in England. People learned new skills during the war and they called on their bravery to withstand the dangers and the rigours of that time. After the war people were expected to return to their old jobs and their old ways of life as if they had not learned or experienced anything. Women who had held down jobs were expected to get married and settle done. But there weren\’t enough men around to marry even if the women wanted to do so. And the pettiness of the privations without actual physical danger to ameliorate their sting made people edgy and more likely to be critical and cynical.

The peace, even more than the war, was undermining in the old England much more than threats from foreign country. Men had gone off to fight a war to preserve the England in which they had grown up leaving behind women who were called to do things they never would have done in that old England. England was not conquered but nonetheless the old England was no longer there to return to and many of the women, if not the men, were questioning if they wanted to go back to the way things were before:

Rating: 5 stars

[1] All quotations are from Pym, Barbara (1986:1953) Jane and Prudence. Bath, UK: Chivers Press

TRIGGER WARNING: Misogyny, domestic violence, torture, rape culture

The girl with the dragon tattoo by Steig Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland

Something niggles.

I finished the book in less that 24 hours in two sittings (I don\’t \’pull\’ all nighters any longer) so I suppose the first thing to say is that it is a page turner. Okay, it is a slow starting page turner but one which, after it finally does get up a head of steam, kept me reading nonstop until I finished it.

So on that level I certainly understand why the book became an international best seller. I get why the movie rights were snapped up.

But something still niggles.

I finished the book in a matter of hours while there are other books I have struggled with for days (and in the case of the one I am wrestling with right now, months.) But I am not sure how to rate the book. I am not sure what I would say to someone who asked me if I would recommend it.

The writing itself is competent although not great. However since I was reading it in English I cannot really speak to the writing style of the author can I? All one needs to do is read the same book translated by different individuals to know how much style can be created, changed and obscured by translators.

But something still niggles.

Finally, I realize what it is. Yes, the author was outraged at violence against women but by presenting so much of the violence as outsized and horrific he was undermining his message.

Few of us feel sympathy or empathy with serial murders. Few of use feel sympathy or empathy with sexual sadists and torturers. But that is not what most of the violence that women endure looks like.

Most of the violence and abuse that women suffer is banal.[1] Yes it sometimes escalates to a level of abuse that the next door neighbours and the police can recognize as unacceptable. But most of the time the soul destroying violence and abuse that women suffer is not the stuff that makes for best sellers.

Most rapists don\’t indulge in the type of showy behaviour that if witnessed by police ensure that the victim is never doubted or questioned. Most of the men who grope women, or make threatening and demeaning comments, go home to normal looking families and normal looking homes.

I don\’t need a man to tell me that torturing people in dungeons is wrong. I don\’t need a man to tell me that raping your daughter is wrong. I don\’t need a man to tell me that murdering people in slow and excruciating ways is wrong.

I don\’t need a man to defend women by writing books full of graphic descriptions of the mistreatment and torture of women to demonstrate that other men shouldn\’t do such things.

I don\’t want to feel that the person sitting in the train station reading the best-seller about how bad it is to hurt women is having their minds eye filled of material that otherwise they could only find in torture porn magazines.

So now instead of a niggle at the back of my mind I have a question. Doesn\’t a book like this help the guy down the street to feel he isn\’t doing anything really wrong if he only slaps his wife and if he only verbally abuses his children?

[1] Not, of course, to the person on whom it is inflicted. But it isn\’t telegenic and it isn\’t material for an international best-seller. It just destroys the minds, souls and often the bodies of those who endure it.

Red Son is one of those books which I very much wanted to like and yet somehow liking it eluded me.

The basic conceit of the graphic novel (what would have happened had Superman\’s spacecraft landed in the Soviet Union rather than the United States) seemed to be a perfect jump off point for a book that would at the very least amuse me. Instead I found myself strangely excluded/alienated by the book. After reading it for the first time I set it aside and returned to it again yesterday only to find it less interesting and more excluding than on my first attempt.

I think the problem was that I was looking for a book that grappled with the unexamined nature of Superman\’s support for \”American values\” by showing what we would think about someone of Superman\’s powers and nature if they had just as unquestioningly supported a different set of values. I was looking for a book that made its readers consider just how examined their own values were and just how examined their loyalties were.

Given the number/range of people who suggested that I might enjoy/appreciate Red Son I will assume that I didn\’t bounce of it simply because it isn\’t a well written/well drawn graphic novel. I am tentatively putting it into the list of \”things which I would have enjoyed more if I hadn\’t approached them with a misunderstanding as to which genre they belonged in.

Who cares?

Yes, I know that the people who are trying to prove that Obama has falsified his birth certificate are \”looking for a loophole\” that allows them to get rid of him as President. I understand the short-term payoff (let\’s not take a chance this time on elections and impeachment by making him ineligible for office) but there is an underlying presumption/assumption being made by those on both sides of the argument.

It matters to them if someone is a \”naturally born\” American. On some level they don\’t feel that someone who has merely become a naturalized citizen is truly an American.[1]

There are many other countries where this whole line of thought seems at best silly. One could make an argument that someone who had only recently become a citizen of a country might be less likely to truly understand the hopes, dreams and needs of the its citizens–but that has more to do with the length of time one has lived in the country and the degree to which one\’s lifestyle had distanced one from the lives of most people than with actual citizenship.

It may not be unrelated that it was in the United States that I first heard people describe themselves as \”cradle Catholics\” to defend their opinions about some aspect of Catholicism.

In both cases it is just as likely that a new citizen/communicant would be more aware of the technical details than would someone who had never had to \”work for\” or \”earn\” membership.

So, just to throw a thought out there, next time someone is talking about amending the Constitution how about suggesting that they change Article 2–Section 1:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

to

No person except a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

[1] Yes, I know that there was a brief flurry of discussions about a Constitutional Amendment when Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a successful Republican governor. However an amazing number of Republicans I talked to felt that it would be just wrong to have a naturalized citizen as President. Democrats who were otherwise supports of Jennifer Granholm seemed similarly conflicted. [2]

[2] My how quickly things change in politics. Yes, there was indeed a time when it seemed that only Article 2-Section 1 stood in the way of either Governor making a serious run for their party\’s Presidential nomination.  

I\’m curled up reading one of the books I got at the recent library sale. Normally I approach any detective story only after putting my disbelief on the back burner but when one is reading a book published in the last twenty-five years by an author best known for writing \”friendly hard-boiled-ish\” stories rather than American cozies one doesn\’t expected that crucial suspension to be challenged within the first few pages and destroyed beyond repair before finishing the second chapter.

On the very first page of Sue Grafton\’s \”E\” is for Evidence[1] we learn that Kinsey Millhone (the private detective whose point-of-view the reader shares) has just found out that five thousand dollars had been deposited into her bank account by someone unknown to her. Either it is an innocent error or someone wants to make it look as if she has deposited the money herself.

I immediately stop reading and check the copyright page to find out when the book was originally published. 1988. \’Hmmmmm,\’ I think, \’I wonder what five thousand 1988 American dollars would be worth today.\’ A few seconds later I have found an inflation chart. It would cost you almost 10,000 dollars today to purchase what 5,000 dollars would have bought back then. That is far more money than most people then would have made for several months work. The deposit was made through a night-deposit slot and almost no one used those or deposited that much money at one time except businesses. And businesses are unlikely to make a cash deposit both that large and a round number.

At this point I am ready for Millhone to call the police (to report \”found\” money and a possible attempt at money laundering) and the insurance company for which she is currently doing work investigating possible insurance fraud. Because a cash deposit that large looks to me (as it should to her) like either an attempt to bribe her or and attempt to make it look as if she has taken a bribe.

The willing suspension of my disbelief necessary to read the book is already being stretched. I have known people whose jobs were unmasking fraud and they are routinely suspicious of everything. I have trouble believing that Millhone merely phones the bank to report the error and then goes back to writing up a report to her insurance company/client of her current investigation into possible insurance fraud.

\’Chill out,\’ I tell myself, \’you have the advantage on her. You know that this is important because it is the first chapter of a murder mystery. You have that advantage over Millhone.\’

\’She supposed to be a private investigator,\’ myself grumbles back, \’she supposed to notice things like that.\”

I persuade myself to read further.

Back in the pages of the book, Millhone is thinking about the events that occurred between being assigned this case of possible insurance fraud and the present. A company has filed an insurance claim after a fire at one of their warehouses. Millhone has been sent out to investigate. The company president says, after meeting her, I hope you are not going to give me any static over that. Believe me, I\’m not asking for anything I\’m not entitled to.(15. Millhone tells the reader:

I made a noncommittal murmur or some sort, hopinp to conceal the fact that I\’d gone on \”fraud alert.\” Every insurance piker I\’d ever met said just that, right down to the pious little toss of the head. (15)

A mere four pages later Millhone leaves her handbag unattended in the office of the person who had set off her \”fraud alert\” while she is taken to the actual site of the fire. Yes, the man whose office it was disappeared from the scene after answering a telephone call and yes, she did remove her wallet and bring it with her. But she left her handbag behind. In one of the offices of the business she had been hired to investigate.

At this point myself is finding it difficult not to toss the book aside. Either Millhone is a bad detective or the author is \’getting things set up\’ by having her protagonist do something no moderately adequate fraud investigator would do. Either way, I find it difficult to care what happens for the rest of the book. And it is only page 19.

[1] Grafton, Sue. E\” is for evidence : a Kinsey Millhone mystery. New York: Holt, 1988.&#8617
 

The Virgin Heiresses (aka The Dragon\’s Teeth) by Ellery Queen (1939)

Two phrases came to mind when I finally put down this book: \”backdoor pilot\” and \”eight deadly words.\”

Why did I find the first phrase applicable? According to Wikipedia: A backdoor pilot is defined by Variety as a \”pilot episode filmed as a standalone movie so it can be broadcast if not picked up as a series\”.It is distinguished from a simple pilot in that it has a dual purpose. It has an inherent commercial value of its own while also being \”proof of concept for the show, that\’s made to see if the series is worth bankrolling\”. This definition also includes episodes of one show introducing a spin-off.

One of the main characters in this book is Beau Rummell, the son of one of Inspector Queen\’s old colleagues who opens a detective agency with Ellery Queen. Much of the book is seen either seen through the eyes of Rummell or centers around him and his interactions with other characters. Rummell appeared in none of the books published previous to this one and continues to not appear in the books published afterwards. It feels as if the authors were either trying out a new character or a new style of writing. In the opinion of this reader they do neither well.

Which brings us to the second phrase, Dorothy Heydt\’s eight deadly words \”I don\’t care what happens to these people.\” The characters failed to interest me enough to care whether they lived or died or were railroaded for committing murder. Ellery Queen himself seemed to have been replaced by an even more bloodless pod-person version of himself and the rest of characters rarely rose above being (very thin) cardboard cut-outs being moved around rather lackadaisically by authors who did not themselves really care what happened to most of them.

The measure of how boring, uninvolving and uninteresting this book was is that I didn\’t even have the heart to catalogue the racism, sexism, classism and essentialism of the story and characters.

Rating: 0 stars

When your research project involves reading a representative sample of popular murder/detective novels written in (or translated into) English and published in the first half of the last century–well you aren\’t surprised to find yourself reading books that vary greatly in the quality of writing, the soundness of the plotting, the believability of the characterizations, the verisimilitude of the science and police procedures and the amount of overt, covert, passive and active misogyny, racism and classism.

As I have mentioned before in reviews published here and elsewhere, it is not uncommon for the protagonist/detective to (apparently) outwit the plodding, stodgy (and usually working class) policemen by the clever ruse of actually removing clues from the scene of the crime. When the protagonist/detective finally reveals his actions to the baffled police officers they never never respond by arresting him on the spot for obstructing justice. For example:

They were tightly, watchfully quiet, as if each had a deep personal stake in the least word being uttered by Mr. Queen. He glanced at his watch again.

\”I must now confess,\” he went on with a faint smile, \”to have engineered an unquestionably illegal suppression of important evidence. How important I leave you to judge. But I did suppress it when Mr. Rummell and I found it beneath the radiator of Room 1726 only a short time after the murderer of Ann Bloomer fled from it. In short, it was a companion-piece of the fountain-pen—an automatic pencil of the same hard black rubber composition, with similar gold trimming.\”

Inspector Queen glared at District Attorney Sampson, who glared back, then both glared at Mr. Queen.

The Inspector rose and roared: \”You found what?\”

\”I\’ll take my punishment later, please,\” said Mr. Queen.\” [1] (227)

But there was no punishment then or ever. Queen, Vance and their like are never punished for actions like this. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) rationale for their behaviour (and for their not being punished for this behaviour) is that the police would not be able to appreciate the full meaning of the clue or perhaps simply hat the police would get in the way of the detective investigating the crime as they wished. The behaviour of the detective/protagonist is not merely portrayed as justifiable it is often given a meritorious patina. On that basis they are justified in their minds, the minds of the authors and, presumably, the minds of most readers, for actively interfering with the police investigation.

No wonder the police are then unable to solve the crime.

Something else strikes me as I reread these books and that is how lacking in the basics of logic, deduction and common sense are many of these detective/protagonists. They are wont to expatiate at such length that the weary readers finds their eyes blurring as they skim over the words until they reach the end of the \”proof\” such as it. They aren\’t really presented well sourced arguments grounded in logic and accurate observations of places and people. They are just throwing loosing related pieces of information and random pieces of data in the eyes of the readers.

The only way these books work as \”mysteries\” and \”puzzles\” is that at least some (and all too often most) of the core participants do something stupid or overlook something obvious. So reader beware, don\’t focus on the inordinately complex set-ups of the crimes and don\’t get distracted by lengthy side-trips down avenues of knowledge that the author may find fascinating but which do not really move the story forward (for a good example of this read The Kennel Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine. \”Ah,\” one imagines the author thinks his readers will exclaim, \”anyone who knows so much about the breeding of that type of dog must indeed have the type of superior intellect that will allow him to solve arcane murder cases.\”)

There are quite a few books in which the reader can figure out what is really going on from the very beginning if only they set aside their presumptions that the detective knows best and instead reads the story as if everyone involved was no different than their family members, their co-workers or members of their local community group. Using the same deductive skills and knowledge as they use in everyday life most readers will suspect the true perpetrators of the crime long before the protagonist/detective has done so.

Thus, in The Virgin Heiresses by page 6 this reader was \”onto\” part of the plot that it would take the \”brilliant protagonist\” several hundred more pages of uncover (and not because of the rather rusty anvil which the author drops on the reader about bumping into door jambs.) Reading the rest of the book became nothing more than an exercise in boredom, frustration and annoyance as the reader is given page after page of evidence that contact with Hollywood did not improve the writing skills of the authors and that watching too many hard-boiled crime films did not improve their handling of dialogue. Rather than being what they had been—tolerably competent writers of the American let\’s-pretend-it-isn\’t-a-cozy-by-setting-it-in-a-big-city cozy with a protagonist who will only sound well-educated and upper-class to an audience that strives for both of those things but has achieved neither—they wrote several books that read as weak attempts at sounding like Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain.

The trouble with setting up your protagonist as a brilliant thinker is similar to the problem of setting up your protagonist as a brilliant reporter. Fred Clark addresses this frequently in his deconstruction of Left Behind. If the writer describes a character as a talented singer the reader can play along because the reader will never hear that person\’s voice. If the writer describes a character as a great dancer the reader can play along because the reader will never see that person dance. However when the writer describes a character as a brilliant thinker capable of unraveling the most deviously intricate of mysteries then the reader needs to both read of brilliant thoughts and dazzingly complex mysteries. Far too often writers demonstrate the characters brilliance by having them unravel a complex mystery which is only complex because the character is actually not that good a detective.

Tomorrow…..not so great moments in the lives of fictional detectives or \”they did WHAT?\”

[1] Queen, Ellery (1954:1939). The Virgin Heiresses, New York, NY: Pocket Books Inc. &#8617