The hitherto unsuspected versatility of "n't"

In Death and the Dancing Footman, Ngaio March has written herself a corker of a thriller, a smashing piece, what?

It really is a good, suspenseful story. That the characters are all caricatures of British dandies can be either a hindrance, or a supplement, to your enjoyment of the story. A supplement, for the likes of me.

My new favorite line in all fiction: “You used to have a pair of Canadian snow shoes, usen’t you?”

USEN’T??????

You took a walk around the block, tookn’t you?

You ate all the candy, aten’t you?

You rode your bike the to the exterminator, rodent you?

See, that last one is a pun, because “rodent” is an actual word! In a sentence about an exterminator! Clever!

Death and the Dancing Footman is full of stuff like that, those old (not ancient, but old) English idioms, that style in which every speaker is a)grammatically correct, b) sophisticated and c) able to choose words and put them in order instantaneously in a sophisticated way.

After Mandrake has been rescued from a freezing pool in the middle of a blizzard:

“I can’t tell you how distressed I am. Another sip, no, do.”
“Jonathan, somebody came behind me and thrust me forward.”

Next time you want to insult someone: “He is a poltroon as well as a popinjay.”

A subplot is that one character is desperate to keep his real name a secret, because it is utterly humiliating. I was expecting something like “ Hemorrhoid” or “Poopbutt”. Nope: “Footling”. I had to look it up. It means “something trivial.” Speaking as a Celer, I find that not even worth mentioning, let alone making a subplot.

Anyway: excellent murder mystery. And a lot of fun if you like language.

And I have blogged. Blogn't I?

Cakes and Ale and Pi

Cakes and Ale fell apart while I was reading it.  Literally, the book disintegrated during the weeks it occupied me on the bus.  I had to hold it together with a rubber band.

And that’s my review of Cakes and Ale.

Actually, it’s a pretty good book by Somerset Maughan, published in 1930 and thus continuing my series on English writers of the Late 19^th and Early 20^th Centuries.  These writers generally adopt class and manners as a theme, either mocking or accepting the English fascination with propriety and social order.  This one mocks. 

It’s about writers, specifically, one who has died but had reached the firmament on which sit Shakespeare, Fielding, etc.   As the establishment begins eulogizing, it turns out the guys did his best writing while living with a gregarious free spirited woman, with whom he cared not a whit for class distinctions or “acceptable” behavior. Which is not at all what the establishment wants to know.

Very well written, of course, and engaging characters.  If you can find it, and it doesn’t fall apart on you, read it.

Evidently there as some controversy at the publication, as some contemporary authors thought Maugham was satirizing them.  Ironically, in the book I’m reading now, by Ngaio March (published in 1941), there’s a controversial writer with a club foot who, I think, is based on Maugham.  Though it’s a fun-house-mirror version of Maugham on which he’s based.

Between Cakes and Ale and the Marsh book, though, came Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  It’s about a teenage boy who winds up crossing the Pacific on a lifeboat with a tiger.  It is very similar to what happens every day on the bus.

The boy, Pi, had become, at an early age, a Hindu-Catholic-Moslem.  This , of course, is ridiculous, as the Catholics, at least, would not allow it.  But lets say it happened.  It was still no excuse to write this book.

The story of his survival is equally ridiculous:  initially, his companions are a crippled zebra, an orangutan and a hyena, as well as the tiger.  Eventually, just the tiger.  He survive s storms, heat, sharks, a blind cutthroat   in another llifeboat, and a carnivorous island made of algae.  After 6 months, he lands in Mexico.  What is the one thing everyone wants him to talk about?  Yes – ther theory of story telling from the viewpoint of a Hindu-Catholic-Moslem.

I mean, there were some good parts, and one can certainly suspend disbelief when a story demands it.  It’s the ending that ruins it:   a teenage boy goes through all this, and in the end all he's interested in is debating the Japanese maritime investigators about whether or not life itself is a story?  Blech.

Next entry soon: I just found something in the Ngaio Marsh book I can’t wait to write about.  Have to finish the book first, though.

Harry Potter, Buddhist

Well, my determination to read two books at once didn't really pan out. I'm up to page 10 of Cakes and Ale. I have finished all 7 harry Potter books. Again.

The main reason this hapened, of course, is that the Potter story is so interssting and easy to read. A subsidiary reaosn, perhaps, is that, as I started making my way through the first book, I wanted to keep everything -- everything -- fresh in my mind. I didn't want, for instance, a reference in The Order of the Phoenix to befuddle me, or make me scramble back in a blind search through the earlier books; I wanted to remember what the reference was about.

Weird thing. At times I really resented the hold the story had on me: I wished I could do something else. But that very resentment kept me reading, so that I'd get the project over with. And reading kept me hooked on the story, the same story I resented. Catch-22.  Viscious circle.  Whatever.

Buddhism  often refers to a double structure to insure the success of a project, of the fruition of a dream. There is a vertical connection between a dsiciple and the mentor, and a horizontal relation between various disciples. I didn't notice this in my first reading, but toward the end of The Half Blood Prince, and throughout The Deathly Hallows, it becomes obvious this double structure is what the Potter story is about. Harry would have nothing to do without the vision and instruction of Dumbledore, and he would be unable to do it without the support and encouragement of Ron and Hermoine. As a Buddhist, that just leapt out at me, the importsance of those two streams of relationships. Teacher, friends -- and Harry's own determination and loyalty ("I am Dumbledore's man through and through").

Another thing I picked up this time was the depth of the supporting characters, even the ones I didn't like. Snape is a great creation, but one of the 5 Stars, I would say (with Harry, Dumbledore, Ron and Hermoine). It's the peripherals: Luna Lovegood is a treasure, Lucius Malfoy lusciously oily, Dobby -- Dobby! Dobby changes over the course of the books, but stays so consistent in his personality (unlike, say, Neville) that one wonders how Rowling did it (and I admit to crying more at his fate than at any other occurrance, even the manipulative "hooks" at the end, when all heroes emerge simultaneously when [of course] least expected).. Some of them I got tired of, while still admitting their completeness. I mentioned Neville - not particularly fond of him, once his character is established, until the heroic end. Fred and George became too predictable. Other little things too.

Lost ends 4 days from now.  The Potter saga ends in a little over a year with the two Hallows flicks. Lost stands alone, but, frankly, the Harry books are superior to the movies, in every single way.

On to Cakes and Ale!

New Colony Six Gets Mentioned!

One things about long series that really interests me is: did the artist have it all planned out, in minute detail, from the beginning? Or did events – or popularity, actors’ contracts or other effects of time marching on – influence the direction the story takes?

I think, for instance, that a lot of Lost’s last couple of seasons was made up as they went along; they did not know, for instance, that Michael Emerson would be so terrific as Ben, so I doubt Ben was a big deal when they were outlining the arc. And I don’t think Tolkein had a clue about Aragorn (for instance) when he started The Hobbit, but most certainly did have a very detailed outline by the time he started The Fellowship of the Ring.

It strikes me, having now re-read the first Harry Potter book, that Ms Rowlings pretty much had it all down when she started. I found nothing inconsistent with later books, and a lot of positively accurate foreshadowing (Scabbers!) Groundwork laid sor Sirius Black, even.

I admire that.

“I Love You So Much” by the New Colony 6 on the speaker at Goodwill today!

Oh no - not again!

I've decided once again to read two books at once.  I've done it before with A Streetcar Named Desire and Madame Bovary.  This time, I was really intrigued by a yellowed old Pocket Books edition of Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale, but can no longer hold back the impulse to read all the Harry Potter books again.  So, now, a medley of Cakes and Ale and The Sorcerer's Stone.  Great fun.

I Enjoy AStupid Book Once In A While

Didn’t get far into Castenada.  It seemed to me you had to have read his earlier books to get this one – there was a sort of “starting in the middle” feel to it.  I’m not sure it was  a “story” as much as a lecture.  It also seemed like a bunch of people sitting around talking to each other.  Snooze.

So instead:  Total Control by David Baldacci.

This is one of those books where the bad guys are invincible, omniscient and successful until the last few pages when suddenly the good guys beat them.  It’s like the Michael Jordan Bulls playing the Knicks:  “Knicks lead.  One minute left, Knicks are ahead.  Knicks lead with ten seconds left.  That’s the game – Bulls win.”

Part of the bad guys’ problem (in this and other books like it – and on TV shows like Monk, too) might be that they kill everyone immediately, until they capture the hero.  Then, inexplicably, they keep her alive for one reason or another – in the case of Total Control, so the villain can explain to the readers all the intricacies of the convoluted plot.

David Balducci also wrote Absolute Power, another one with a totally absurd plot.  In that one, it was “burglar witnesses President of the United States kill someone”.  In Total Control it’s “Fed chairman killed in plane crash while computers take over the world” (written in 1997, before computers actually did take over the world).  Actually, it’s much more complex and confused than that, even;  in the last few chapters, the heroine explains the crime, then the villain explains it, and then the FBI agent explains it – all without repeating what the others have said.  All that explication was necessary, too.  In short:  an overly complicated plot, to the point of absurdity.

One of my favorite pet peeves makes a book-wide appearance too.  That is characters whose dialogue is directed to the readers, not to the other characters.  Or, worse, dialogue that is the writer thinking out loud, engaged in character development on the fly.

Ridiculous as it all is, I kept voraciously reading.  Because sometimes you just have to read absurd, badly written escapism.  You just have to.  It really is a page turner, one thing happening after another.  When you’re traveling, sometimes the scenery stinks, but you just enjoy the feeling of movement.  Sometimes so with books, too.

Book Switching

So I’m not going to be reading The End of the Affair just now.  I started it, but it begins with the guy in the affair kind of mocking the husband of affair-ee.  Not in the mood for that.  So I tried E.M. Forster’s The Longest Journey.  That one is full of 1907 English colloquialisms, references to things probably easily understandable in 1907 England, and what I suspect are inside jokes of 1907 English vintage.  Too iconoclastic.

So I’ve switched to something easier to understand:  Carlos Castenada’s The Eagle’s Gift.

(That's an inside 2010 American joke.)

Substitute bus driver again this morning.  As I got on he asked “Am I early?”  “I don’t know,” said I.

No watch.  No cel phone.  Plus, I forget what time the bus is supposed to arrive.  I leave the house at 6:42, and usually wait on the corner a few minutes.  Seemed about normal today.  

Quite cold still in the morning, but warm in the afternoon.  Hard to dress for.