Monthly Bookpost, December 2013
Reynard the Fox
Bruin the Bear lay in the cleft of the tree in great fear and dread and held fast his head and nipped both his forefeet. He wrung, he wrestled, and cried and all was for naught. He wist not how he might get out. Reynard the Fox saw from far how that Lantfert the carpenter came and tho spoke Reynard to the Bear: "Is that good honey? How is it now? Eat not too much, it should do you harm, you should not then well con go to the court. When Lantfert comes, if you have well eaten, he shall give you better to drink and then it shall not stick in your throat.
Reynard the Fox is one of the more popular examples of the Medieval "beast fable" (Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale" is another, much shorter one). It's easy to read, but pretty tame compared to the anthropomorphic animal stories written for children today. It's a standard trickster story, where the clever fox outwits wolves, bears, and other larger animals, with the distinction that the fox later has to give account for himself at the court of beasts, and manages to fool the judge with transparent lies such that his victims get harmed again. In fact, the fox is something of a sadistic asshole. He not only hurts the other animals--not just wolves and bears, but hares and rooks and other defenseless prey--but cuckolds them as well, and then insults them gratuitously as he runs off. Woody Woodpecker and Itchy & Scratchy are progeny of Reynard.
Beast fables were popular in their era as a handy way to satirize existing clergy and royalty with less risk of getting beheaded, burned or excommunicated, as the stories are about primitive beast kingdoms, courts and bishoprics, and the ruler is only Leo the Lion, certainly not King Edward, surely Good King Edward wouldn't see anything in that cruel fool of a ruler that would remind him of himself, would he now? And that preaching crow is of course a charlatan crow preaching animal religion, NOT Catholicism. Why, to think otherwise would be blasphemy! There's a bit of that in Reynard, but not much. Even the disguised satires had to be somewhat tame.
Song of Solomon; Ecclesiastes
Your lips are like a strand of scarlet, and your mouth is lovely. Your Temples behind your veil are like a piece of pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built for an armory, on which hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, which feed among the lilies.
--Song 4:3-5
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven--a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace, I swear it's not too late.
--Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
That's right, the Bible was heavily influenced by Pete Seeger and the Byrds.
Maybe the single funniest aspect of Judeo-Christian theology is watching upright, uptight preacher-men attempt to explain that the Song of Solomon is some kind of allegory intended to express love of The Lord, or The Lord’s love for humanity, or how all men are cross-dressing “brides of Christ/brides of God”. Sorry, but...no. The Song is erotic poetry, and apparently interracial erotic poetry at that. It’s what young men read to their loved ones when they want to get them in the mood. If it’s not, I’ll leave it to any white male Christian authoritarians to explain whether it is they themselves, or God/Jesus who is the black-skinned one, and which of them has the fawn-like breasts to worship.
If the Song is a book for young lovers, then Ecclesiastes is the book for old men. Not grumpy “get off my lawn” old men, but sad old widowers who putter around in a house they live alone in, occasionally going out in June to make speeches to young, hopeful college graduates telling them they can’t change the world, so don’t even bother. It’s not an angry, hateful book; it’s merely gloomy as all get out.
Many famous quotes here: Everything is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun. Cast your bread upon the waters, because fuck it, that’s why. And of course, turn-turn-turn.
The “preacher” who narrates has seen so many summers turn to winter over the years that he no longer cares about the first road cone of spring, and he wants children to know that the money he spent his life accumulating doesn’t buy happiness (though he’s forgotten that poverty in the same circumstances won’t make one happy either), and knows deep down that nobody will listen. But they’ll learn, over time. These kids these days will just have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.
Revelations
The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.
This is the last book of the Bible, and the last section that I read in my year of reading the whole Bible. I read it like the most morbid advent calendar ever, one short chapter a day for the first 22 days of the month, counting down the days to Christmas with escalating episodes of the End of Days, with four horsemen dispensing plague, war, pestilence and death; with vengeful angels breaking seven seals and sounding seven trumpets and pouring seven vials upon the earth, each one unleashing a different curse on humanity; of red dragons and beasts and false priests and manticore-scorpion-bugs and knights on fire-snorting horses and all sorts of creative bad things come to destroy us all before the final judgment.
The first time I read Revelation, I surmised that John the prophet had eaten Tex-Mex too soon before bed, or taken the brown acid, or otherwise had a really loopy dream and set it down as holy scripture, thereby fucking up the hearts and minds of millions of followers of the gospels for 2000 years and counting. The account is very very random. I was waiting for the part where And Lo! I did stand in the corridor of the scribes, wearing only my undergarments, and the voice of The Lord did call out, Are you prepared for the examination at the end of days? And I knew that I was not prepared, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. Actually, it's more complicated than that, since at least some of what goes on has things in common with Ezekiel (see last month's Bookpost), which implies that either's there is a major coincidence or actual miracle, or thet John had read Ezekiel and had planned out Revelation so as not to be so random after all.
One of the worst book set of books I ever read was the Left Behind series, written by a couple of American evangelists who masturbated at the idea of wimps repenting too late and antichrists cursing as they descended into lakes of fire, and who horcruxed what should have been a five-volume series into a dozen or more when they found that they were making money off of gullible Christians. Their abomination of creative endeavor is evidence of the truth of a much more realistic take on what Revelation is about:
No wonder the pagans were horrified at the 'impious' Christian desire to destroy the universe. How horrified even the old Jews of the Old Testament would have been! For even to them, earth and sun and stars were eternal, created in the grand creation by Almighty God. But no, these impudent martyrs must see it all go up in smoke.
Oh, it is the Christianity of the middling masses, this Christianity of the Apocalypse. And we must confess, it is hideous. Self-Righteousness, self-conceit, self-importance and secret envy underlie it all.
By the time of Jesus, all the lowest classes and mediocre people had realized that NEVER would they get a chance to be kings, NEVER would they go in chariots, never would they drink wine from gold vessels. Very well, then--they would have their revenge by destroying it all. "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and become the habitation of devils. " And then all the gold and silver and pearls and fine precious stones and fine linen and purple and scarlet--and cinnamon and frankincense, wheat, beasts, sheep, horses, chariots, slaves, souls of men--all these that are destroyed, destroyed, destroyed in Babylon the great--how one hears the envy, the endless envy screeching through this song of triumph!
No, we can understand that the Fathers of the Church in the east wanted Apocalypse left out of the New testament. And like Judas among the disciples, it was inevitable that it should be included. The Apocalypse is the feet of clay to the Christian image. And down crashes the image, on the weakness of these very feet.
--from Apocalypse, by D.H. Lawrence
That's it in a nutshell. Jesus didn't invent the Apocalypse, and so John HAD to, so that preachers could have the power to warp good people's minds.
The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin
"All right, driver. You can pull up now," said Cadogan excitedly. "There's the church on the right, there's the alley way I came out of, and there--"
The police car drew into the kerb. Half rising in his seat, Cadogan stopped and stared. In front of him, its window loaded with tins, flour, bowls of rice and lentils, bacon and other groceries in noble array, was a shop bearing the legend: WINKWORTH, FAMILY GROCER AND PROVISION MERCHANT.
He gazed wildly to the right and left. A chemist's and a draper's. Farther on to the right, a butcher, a baker, a stationery shop, and to the left, a corn merchant, a hat shop, and another chemist...
The toyshop had gone.
The Moving Toyshop is Crispin's masterpiece, and probably the defining book that marks him for what he does. And I can barely describe it to you out of respect for spoilers, because the gradual discovery of what is going on and the twists and turns that follow are the joy of the book. I'll just tell you that in chapter one, a bored poet, pining for adventure (be careful what you wish for) arrives in Oxford in the middle of the night and, completely by chance, tries the door of a closed toy shop in the street, finds it open and goes inside. There's a dead body on the floor upstairs. The poet gets knocked on the head, comes to, and runs off to fetch the police....only to arrive with the police and find that the toy shop has changed to a grocery store, and everyone in the area says it's always been a grocery store. There's no evidence of any crime, no one's gone missing, and the police figure the poet was knocked a little too hard on the head. So the poet goes to tell his friend Professor Fen about it.
And that's when the comic mayhem begins.
Fen and the poet and an increasing cast of jolly odd duck Brits have a romp. They're investigating something serious, and they get into dangerous situations, but they romp.
And they get meta. At one point they're tied up and Fen starts muttering outlandish thriller titles, and the poet asks him what he's doing, and he say, "I'm thinking up possible titles, for Crispin." And the story and characters are so odd that this actually works.
I kept imagining the characters as played by various incarnations of Dr. Who, and that worked too. Highest recommendations.
A Rare Benedictine, by Ellis Peters; The Parisian Prodigal, by Alan Gordon; Mysterium, The Midnight Man; Bloodstone; The Straw Men, by P.C. Doherty
"You are Brother Cadfael? They tell me you are expert in herbs and medicines, and can certainly help me. I cam early back from the lord abbot's supper, with such a headache, and have told my lord that I shall go early to bed. But I have such disturbed sleep, and with this pain how shall I be able to rest? Can you give me some draught that will ease me? They say you have a perfect apothecarium in your herb garden, and all your own work, growing, gathering, drying, brewing and all. There must be something here that can soothe pain and bring deep sleep."
--from A Rare Benedictine
"Here is my challenge, wife. I wager that my investigation will bear fruit before yours.
"What are the stakes?" I asked.
"A month of getting up first with Portia," he said.
"Done." I agreed immediately. "Hugo, you are our surety."
"Ale will be withheld if either of you go back on this," he said solemnly.
"Don't even suggest that," said Theo hurriedly. "Good. The race is on. Whoever finds the killer first wins."
"What if the killer finds you first?" asked Hugo.
"Then the killer has to get up with Portia," said Theo.
"Ooooh," said Portia.
---from The Parisian Prodigal
The pool of dancing lantern light picked out all the gory horror. Walter Evesham, former Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench and Lord of the Manor of Ingachin, lay slumped, head slightly to one side, his throat cut so deep it seemed like a second mouth. Blood caked Evesham's dead face and drenched the top of his jerkin, forming a dark crust over the table and the pieces of jewelry littered there.
--from The Mysterium
Stephen sensed the change in the air around him. He braced himself against what was to come. Two shapes raced out of the murk--square faced gnomes garbed in leather jackets and blood spattered butcher aprons. Stephen closed his eyes and turned away. When he looked again there was nothing. Anselm and Beauchamp crouched in the center of the chamber, examining a canvas mattress above which hung a chain fixed to the ceiling. Beside the mattress lay a great black iron dish containing tongs, pincers and fleshing hooks with points as sharp as dragon's teeth. Stephen crossed to join them. The mattress was soaked in blood. A deep dread seized Stephen, chilling him to the very marrow. Anselm was right: horrid murder had been committed here.
--from The Midnight Man
Athelstan let his mind drift deeper into the gathering darkness to confront more threatening shapes which questioned his very vocation and basic beliefs. "So much evil, Lord." He prayed. "So deep the wickedness. The rich wax stronger and more powerful whilst the poor, like worms, are crushed and stamped even deeper into the mud. Why, Lord?"
--from Bloodstone
Huddle had taken as his theme for Pride the fall of Lucifer from Paradise. The painting depicted fanged, clawed and cloven hoofed demons as well as bat-winged, sooty hobgoblins, the usual citizens of Hell. Lucifer, however, was totally different. Still an archangel, he fell from Paradise in a thick ream of golden stars while the rebel angels he had seduced flowed after him like brilliant tongues of fire. Lucifer was no creature of the dark pit but a beautiful young man, blond curls framed a face of serious sweet youthfulness, his body glowed white and pure as the driven snow, his limbs were perfectly proportioned.
--from The Straw Men
I finished the Cadfael novels back in June, but there was one further book, billed as "Brother Cadfael's Christmas", that I decided to save for December. I needn't have bothered. A Rare Benedictine has about as much to do with Christmas as Full Metal Jacket It's mentioned. A Rare Benedictine is a short collection of three stories, thickened by including pictures. The first story doesn't even involve detection, and the other two are easily solved. Peters's strength is having warm characters who grow over the course of the book, and the stories are too short to provide that.
The Parisian Prodigal is the last, so far, of Alan Gordon's Fool's Guild (13th Century) series that travels all over Europe with Theo, Claudia, Helga the apprentice and Portia the baby, as a family of crime-solving jesters. I hope Gordon writes more, because the family really comes into stride as a team here, with Claudia taking the majority of the narrative and deduction when a man claiming to be the Count of Toulouse's spoiled brat brother becomes the presumptive suspect in the murder of a prostitute and asks the fools to clear his name. The mystery and intrigue is joined with genuinely funny dialogue and a moral agenda that stops short of preaching. Highest recommendations.
The Mysterium is the last (so far) of Doherty's formulaic Hugh Corbett (Edward I) series, and one of the better plots, this time involving the murder of a harsh judge whose career-making chance to nab an assassin failed, who was subsequently removed from office for corruption, and who is finally murdered as the story begins, followed by several of his associates. If you've read all or even several of the Corbett books, you'll spot the murderer right away, and might want to use the predictable Corbett tropes as a drinking game.
The Midnight Man is the last (so far) in the Canterbury Crime Tales series (Edward III), this time with the physician telling the story. It's not the best of the lot. It uses the excuse of a coven of Satan-worshipping serial killers to describe as many nasty deaths as possible. Also, it resorts to one of the more eye-rollingly annoying anti-woman tropes in common fiction. As with the clerk's tale from last month's Bookpost, the presence of actual supernatural forces as opposed to a Scooby Doo criminal pretending to be a monster detracts from the process of detection. And, as always in this series, the "words between the pilgrims", some of whom always know more than coincidence would support about the facts of the story, are the best part.
And then there's Brother Athelstan (Richard II), the priest sent as penance to officiate in the filthiest, most crime ridden section of Southwark, who ends up bonding with the poor and needy (who make useful informants, natch), and who teams up with Cranston, the falstaffesque coronor of London to solve crimes. I keep imagining a younger Leo McKern as Cranston. The early books in the series had an atmosphere quite different from the Corbett books, but Bloodstone, which takes place outside Athelstan's Southwark district and which involves the theft of a sacred relic and the deaths, one by one, of a company of Welsh bowmen who may have stolen it, read like a carbon copy of Corbett with different names. The Straw Men, on the other hand, is an excellent and gripping suspense story reminiscent of Hammett's Red Harvest, pitting the secret conspirators who are plotting Wat Tyler's peasant uprising against the brutal secret police of John of Gaunt, who will resort to any means necessary to quash rebellion. Both sides have some legitimate claim to moral high ground, both sides taint said claim with their underhanded tactics and overt and covert violence, and both sides have well-placed spies in the others' camp, the main mystery being identifying who the spies are while making sense of while making sense out of the secret activities of the respective factions.
Both Athelstan books give a very compassionate treatment of the plight of living at the onset of civil strife, and the way in which common citizens are forced to take sides and commit themselves in an action they'd rather stay out of, with the king demanding service under penalty of execution for treason and the revolutionaries, of comparable power to the king's, promising long memories and short ropes in store when the revolution comes.
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
A good WIFE was there OF beside BATH,
But she was somedeal deaf, and that was scath.
Of cloth-making she hadde such an haunt
She passed them of Ypres, and of Gaunt.
In all the parish wife was there none,
That to the off'ring before her should gon,
And if there did, certain so wroth was she,
That she was out of alle charity
Her coverchiefs were full fine of ground
I durste swear, they weighede ten pound
That on the Sunday were upon her head.
Her hosen weren of fine scarlet red,
Full strait y-tied, and shoes full moist and new
Bold was her face, and fair and red of hue.
She was a worthy woman all her live,
Husbands at the church door had she had five,
Withouten other company in youth;
But thereof needeth not to speak as nouth.
And thrice had she been at Jerusalem;
She hadde passed many a strange stream
At Rome she had been, and at Bologne,
In Galice at Saint James, and at Cologne;
She coude much of wand'rng by the Way.
Gat-toothed was she, soothly for to say.
Upon an ambler easily she sat,
Y-wimpled well, and on her head an hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe.
A foot-mantle about her hippes large,
And on her feet a pair of spurres sharp.
In fellowship well could she laugh and carp
Of remedies of love she knew perchance
For of that art she coud the olde dance.
The Canterbury Tales is maybe the first great work of English literature ever, and one of the great works of world literature. It is important as being one of the first widely read works written in vernacular for the masses rather than in Latin for the educated, and it is always delightful to get credit for scholarly readership while reading toilet humor. I enjoy myself more than I should at the thought of some stiff-necked old Oxford Don reciting such epic lines of poetry as , "An from his arse, he let there flee a fart."
My favorite part of the whole work is the general prologue, which sets the stage by describing a motley crew of pilgrim's to Becket's shrine at Canterbury, who will entertain one another with stories along the way. Rich and poor, high and low, sacred and profane, Chaucer describes the characters one at a time, breathing life into them. Writers have turned for centuries to Chaucer's prologue for a model example of succinct character development. Well placed warts, costly hats, and subtle gestures speak volumes about the company.
The stories themselves are as much a mixed bag as the storytellers, running the gamut from excellent to forgettable to disgusting. There's the knight's lengthy romance that inspired the half-Shakespeare play Two Noble Kinsmen; rude revenge plots that the miller and reeve, or the friar and summoner, tell to taunt one another; a beast-fable; a truly offensive anti-semitic rant about Jews who murder children; some boring sermons that aren't even stories; and a few entries that Chaucer doesn't even finish.
Some stories digress into moral lessons and lectures: The nun's priest's tale contains more discussion on the interpretation of dreams than it devotes to the actual adventure of Chanticleer the rooster. The merchant, too, spends more time talking about his own misogynistic theories of marriage than he does actually telling about how a January/May marriage unsurprisingly cuckolded an old husband.
Other times, the prologues to the individual stories are at least as important as the stories, such that they tell us about the person doing the telling. The Wife of Bath's prologue is three times as long as her story. The story itself is nothing; the prologue about the Wife's five husbands and how she became the subtle or not-so-subtle "top" in all five marriages is what makes her Chaucer's most memorable character. The pardoner, too, tells a memorable Crypt-Keeper-ish tale about bad men who swear to hunt down death, and unfortunately for them, succeed--but the pardoner's revelation of himself as an unrepentant mountebank and con artist is at least as good as the story, especially in that the story is a setup to get the listeners to pay the pardoner gold in exchange for questionable absolution.
DID YOU KNOW--The Summoner's tale is a story length fart joke, which left me puzzled why Sting would record an album of soft poetic songs and call it "Ten Summoner's Tales", instead of Franklin's Tales or Canterbury tales or something equally evocative of medieval stories without being quite so flatulent. Turns out, the title was chosen as a pun on Sting's actual name.
Chaucer has something for everybody, and something to offend everybody. Everyone should read it once.
Medieval Cities, by Henri Pirenne
The birth of cities marked the beginning of a new era in the internal history of Western Europe. Until then, society had recognized only two active orders: the clergy and the nobility. In taking its place beside them, the middle class rounded the social order out or, rather, gave the finishing touch thereto. Thenceforth its composition was not to change; it had all its constituent elements, and the modifications which it was to undergo in the course of centuries were, strictly speaking, nothing more than different combinations in the alloy.
After a year of reading medieval history, Medieval Cities, a short and simple book based on a series of lectures by Pirenne, was light and easy fare. The main thesis is that Western Civilization didn't really fall into the Dark Ages when Rome fell, but lasted until the muslims took over the Mediterranean trade routes. Gibbon's account supports this: Volume IV of the Decline and Fall is about Gothic and Byzantine attempts to carry on, and they did rely heavily on the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Pirenne has to undermine the importance of Charlemagne and the Merovingians.
The second major point is the importance of the Middle Class as a buffer between the high and mighty and the starving peasants, for it was their rise that coincided with, and maybe caused, the transition from feudal castles surrounded by anarchy to semi-self-sufficient cities.
On the Harmonies of the World, by Johannes Kepler
There are as it were two noteworthy weddings of these figures, made from different classes: the males, the cube and the dodecahedron, among the primary; the females, the octahedron and the icosahedron, among the secondary, to which is added one as it were bachelor or hermaphrodite, the tetrahedron, because it is inscribed in itself, just as those female solids are inscribed in the males and are as it were subject to them, and have the signs of the feminine sex, opposite the masculine, namely, angles opposite planes. Moreover, just as the tetrahedron is the element, bowels and as it were rib of the male cube, so the feminine octahedron is the element and part of the tetrahedron in another way; and thus the tetrahedron mediates in this marriage. The main difference in these wedlocks or family relationships consists in the following: the ratio of the cube is rational. For the tetrahedron is one third of the body of the cube, and the octahedron half of the tetrahedron, one sixth of the cube; while the ratio of the dodecahedron's wedding is irrational but divine.
Having defined the planetary orbits as ellipses in The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (see last month's Bookpost), instead of the more "perfect" circles, Kepler apparently felt obligated to argue for some geometrical perfection of the cosmos. The Harmonies is a sort of whimsical attempt to compare the ratios of the five perfect solids, the six planets recognized at the time, and the notes of the musical scale into a grand unified theory.
It's one of those things that looks nice on paper, if you even understand the scientific jargon, but which doesn't quite convince. For one thing, Kepler does things like the quoted part above, where he assigns "male" and "female" attributes to shapes without justification. For another, his proof that planetary relations are "perfect" because the five spaces between the orbits of six planets can be made to correspond to one each of the five perfect solids falls apart when the seventh and eighth planets are discovered with no new corresponding geometrical solids. And applying the ratios in the musical scale such that Mercury is said to sing soprano while Jupiter and Saturn are basses belongs more to sophistry than to actual science.
July's People, by Nadine Gordimer
Victor and his gang of boys raced chattering upon the doorway.
--Everybody's taking water! They've found it comes out the tap! Everybody's taking it! I told them they're going to catch hell, but they don't understand. Come quick, dad!--
The black faces of his companions were alight with the relish of excitement coming, the thrill of chastisement promised for others.
--But it's their water, Victor. It's for everybody. That's what I put the tank up for.--
The child scratched his head, turned out his muddy bare feet and tottered round on his heels, clowning. --Ow, dad, it's ours, it's ours!--His friends were enchanted by the performance and began their own variations on it.
--Who owns the rain?--The preachy reasonableness of his mother goaded him.
--It's ours, it's ours--
July was instantly affectionate, playful, light and boastful with the boy. --You lucky, you know, your father he's very, very clever man. Is coming plenty rain, now everybody can be happy with that tank, is nice easy, isn't it? You see, your father he make everyone to be pleased.--
This short book was written in 1981, while Apartheid was still in full swing in South Africa, and its plot is cause for white South Africans to be glad the regime ended the way it did. In Gordimer's book, it ends the other way--with violent civil uprising--and the protagonist family of five is forced to flee Johannesburg in mortal danger. Fortunately for them, they had treated their servant, July, well, and he helps them reach a place of relative safety in his native village out of town. Comic hijinks ensue. Role reversals ensue. Many of them, racial and family.
The title, July's People, is ambiguous, referring both to the black people of his village, with whom he shares a pack affinity, and to the white family, who become "his" in terms of relationship and ownership. The white adults seem to adjust to a sense of equality, while the children think that their status as whites is part of the natural order. It does not protect them. High recommendations.
A Puzzle in a Pear Tree, by Parnell Hall
Carl Perkins, his wife Nancy, and sons Randy and Jed, who had driven all the way from Greenwich to view the Bakerhaven Nativity, got far more than they had bargained for, as not one but two Virgin Marys, apparently vying for supremacy, tugged and pulled at one another, until one of the Virgin Marys spun from the other's grasp and pitched headlong from the manger, landing in a broken, lifeless heap, while the other Virgin Mary gawked in horror, then fainted dead away.
I stuck with Hall's Puzzle Lady mysteries this long because I noticed that the fourth in the series was a Christmas mystery and I felt like reading it in December. That, and the attraction of seeing what Murder She Wrote would be like if it starred an outrageous drunk without a shred of dignity.
They seem to be getting better as they go along, if you just suspend disbelief and go with the utterly implausible given circumstances and the over-the-top characterization. This one features a killer who really does imitate The Riddler and leave crossword puzzles (acrostic puzzles this time, which as usual are printed in the book for the reader to solve along) to taunt the detectives; a Christmas pageant with a director as insufferable as a stereotypical Hollywood mogul; dumb techies, horny students, and a visiting Scotland Yard detective who does everything except say "Right, wot's all this, then?" By now, I've figured Hall's tell, and was able to go back and find exactly where the clue to the killer was, before reading the solution. But it was still good fun.
Dreams of the Dead, by Perri O'Shaughnessy
After her shower, she turned on her night light and studied Burglar Boy's paperwork. Yeah. The probation officer was recommending time served. The judge wouldn't go against that. The sentencing hearing would go smoothly. She plotted out her moves to get the kid off, hoping he would do good, not bad, in the future. That was out of her hands, however. Her job had been to earn him a second chance to be the innocent they all wanted him to be.
Dreams of the Dead is the last--so far--in O'Shaughnessy's series of legal thrillers about Nina Reilly, criminal attorney based mainly around Lake Tahoe. The series is starting to get stale, but the situation in this entry is interesting enough. It involves the head of a family from a previous story begging Reilly for help because the family business is being sold, and the family black sheep--revealed as a killer in the previous book and long gone--has purportedly filed an affidavit from Brazil, a fugitive from murder charges, and his opposition to the sale threatens to gum up the works.
Unfortunately, Reilly knows that the 'fugitive' is in fact long dead, and why, and needs to protect the person responsible. And in spite of a clear conflict of interest, she just has to take the case, because soft spot for lost causes. Maybe she can prove the case against the sale is fraudulent without having to dig up the body. Pigs might fly. Despite the responsible party and 'hidden' motive being obvious almost from the beginning, I found a surprising amount of suspense here.
Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett
Somehow it was very hard to be certain what Bill Door looked like, or even remember the exact sound of his voice. Clearly he was there, and clearly he had spoken, otherwise why did you remember anything at all? "There's a lot of people in these parts as don't use the name they were born with," she said. "I always say there's nothing to be gained by going around asking pers'nal questions. I suppose you can work, Mr. Bill Door? I'm still getting the hay in off the high meadows and there'll be a lot of work come harvest. Can you use a scythe?
Bill Door seemed to meditate on the question for some time. Then he said, I THINK THE ANSWER TO THAT IS A DEFINITE 'YES', MISS FLITWORTH.
One of the nice things about Discworld is, you're not exactly required to read the books in order. At least, not in the late beginning of it all, where I still am. There's a growing list of stock characters, no arc plot, and the basic positions of them don't really change. Like a TV sitcom with nothing but the aging child actors to necessitate anything being different from episode to episode, with the distinction that Discworld is consistently funny. And poignant and dripping satirical commentary on our own times, never mind that the setting is somewhere between a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, a Disney movie and a B-grade horror flick.
Reaper Man, for example, has plenty to say about town-and-gown conflicts, what happens when we pass on, and the life-sucking properties of suburban shopping malls. And it does so by having Death--a stock character who talks in all caps--get fired by higher-ups who haven't thought it through, and take a job as a farm hand in a village of relative innocents. Meanwhile, those whose time has come are not taken to the beyond properly because the Replacement Death is not yet on hand. One such soul is Windle Poons, the oldest professor at Unseen University. Poons comes back to re-inhabit his body, for want of anywhere better to go, and finds more of a life as a corpse than he ever had in the usual course of life. Kvetching dead-rights activists, moon-crossed lycanthrope couples, mysterious snow globes, a contest to out-reap a harvesting machine, and the Death of Rats join in for a story that meets Pratchett's high standards. Highly recommended as a Delightful Romp, as is pretty much all of Discworld.
Get Real, by Donald E. Westlake
Dortmunder did not like to stand around on street corners. A slope-shouldered, glum-looking individual in clothing that hadn't been designed by anybody, he knew what he looked like when he stood for a while in one place on a street corner, and what he looked like was a person loitering with intent. The particular intent, as any cop casting an eye over Dortmunder would immediately understand, was beside the point, and could be fine-tuned at the station; the first priority was to get this fellow in charge. Which was why Dortmunder didn't like standing around on street corners. He hated to give cops the feeling there was duty to be done.
I'm going to miss Dortmunder. Unlike O'Shaughnessy and Doherty, Donald E. Westlake has passed on, and Get Real is definitely the very last of the Dortmunder books. For years now, I've made it a tradition to read a Dortmunder book on Christmas Day, not because the adventures of a small-time gang of NYC crooks whose odball capers tend to go wrong in spectacular ways have anything to do with Christmas, but because, on a day of joy, their were few things to delight me as much as reading these books. And now I've done this for the last time.
Fortunately, there's enough Discworld yet unread to replace Westlake and keep me going well into old age. It struck me this year that Pratchett and Westlake have a similar take on the silly side of life. Dortmunder is to NYC criminal gangs what Discworld is to Tolkeinish fantasy tradition. Not only are there well-known sets of tropes and cliches to point to, but in making fun of them, the author somehow manages to bring back their cathartic qualities. I've often found myself going straight from laughter to tears in both the Discworld and Dortmunder universe, and never mind that the writing just reminded me that the emotional situation is trite, hackneyed and overdone. Westlake was the only writer I know of who got away with including "Shut up," he explained in a shakedown scene.
The last of the Dortmunder books involves a reality TV producer who wants to make a reality show about the gang committing actual crimes. The gang is dubious. "You want to follow us around while we do what we do....what we REALLY do...and record it all on camera...and then show it to everybody?" "Yes, exactly." "See, in our line of work, we try to avoid having witnesses...we're supposed to stay out of jail, how exactly?" "We'll iron out the details later, run it by legal.". Plots and counterplots, naturally, ensue. Savor it. It's the last one there is.
Chimes at Midnight, by Seanan McGuire
"I am the sea witch. I am the tide you fear and the turning you can't deny. I am the sound of the waves running over your bones on the beach, little man, and I am not amused at finding you on my doorstep." She took a step forward. He took a step back. "I won't punish you for obeying orders the way she would. But I can't let an insult go unanswered. You know how it goes." A smile twisted her lips. "I'm actually grateful. You see, there are...rules...that govern what I can and can't do. But you broke them first. Now I get to do something I don't get to do very often. Now I get to play."
McGuire's October Daye urban fairy series was starting to suffer from the same problem Jim Butcher's Dresden series has--a protagonist who begins the series with minimal power in a vast world of supernatural dangers and politics has, over the course of several adventures, leveled up to the point where it's difficult to find a worthy adversary. I began the book a little bit jaded, thinking that, in order to make the book interesting, Daye would have to either level down or take on, I don't know, the Queen of the Mists herself.
Hey, no problem.
Chimes at Midnight is, in my opinion, the best Daye in the series so far, and if you remember how much I gushed over An Artificial Night (Bookpost, August 2010), you know that this is heavy praise indeed. It has real danger, plot twists, scholarly information about the fae, humor, pathos and parallels with real world problems.
I had the misfortune to be reading it on the epilleptical at the gym when I reached a spoiler moment that happens at the end of chapter eleven, and my audible anguished gasp followed by the gut-wrenching discomfort throughout the following chapter made some of my fellow gym rats concerned that I might be having a health emergency. I had to explain to a couple of helpful parties that no, it was just catharsis from the book I was reading. Neither the spoilers in the whole Newsflesh trilogy, nor the major deaths in the Game of Thrones books, which I read under similar conditions, had that effect on me. Maybe it's my special trigger. But that's what I call good writing.
Yes, there are gut-wrenching awful moments. You kinda expect that in a Seanan McGuire book. But there are also moments of joy and even spiritual uplift. Very highest recommendations.
Unless, by Carol Shields
It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life, I've heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I've never understood what they meant. To lose. To have lost. I believed these visitations of darkness lasted only a few minutes or hours and that these saddened people, in between bouts, were occupied, as we all were, with the useful monotony of happiness. But happiness is not what I thought. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.
First-person novels in which the narrator is a writer with similar general characteristics to the author of the book always flummox me a little. I keep wondering how much of it is autobiographical. It's like listening to a band sing a song about themselves singing.
Carol Shields is a Canadian writer with multiple awards. The heroine of Unless is also Canadian, maybe a little younger, with at least one award. Nothing happens to "Reta" in the book that could not conceivably have happened to Carol Shields. The two focal points of the book are Reta's constant looking back to her coming of age in the Sixties and comparing her ideals and moral compass then with how her life is now; and her concern about her oldest daughter, who, after doing very well in college, suddenly dropped out without a degree and took up sitting on street corners with a sign that says "Goodness".
The chapters are brief and disjointed. To emphasize their disjointedness, the chapter titles consist of conjunctions, prepositions and interjections; however those little connective words do add meaning to the chapters if you notice and emphasize those words when they appear in that chapter (Think of the famous Spartan reply to the Persians' ultimatum: "IF").
Gender issues make a big part of Reta's moral compass. She wonders if her daughter left school because of the school's failure to include enough female authors in the curriculum, and she begins to write to critics, professors and other literary critics (the letters are printed in full as their own chapters) to scold them for noninclusiveness in their work. She encounters an editor who wants to rewrite her new book into a completely different work "to make it more relevant". Sometimes, I couldn't tell if Reta's flashbacks were meant to highlight her previous ideals as being something silly that young people do, or if they were meant to highlight what's wrong with her present life in that she strayed from her true path. Possibly she's trying to make up her mind which it is.
Summa Theologica, by Thomas Aquinas
Whether God Exists?
OBJECTION 1: It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.
OBJECTION 2: Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
ON THE CONTRARY: It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Ex. 3:14)
I ANSWER THAT: The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But _more_ and _less_ are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in _Metaph._ ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
REPLY OBJ. 1: As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.
REPLY OBJ. 2: Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article.
It’s times like this when I feel like I ought to have my head examined. I must have CDO and an obsessive drive for completeness. How else can I explain the hours and hours, days, weeks and months poured into an examination of a GM manual for a RPG system I don’t even play?
The Summa consists of hundreds and hundreds of argued questions, structured like the one quoted above (statement, arguments against, arguments in favor, refutation of the arguments against). I posted one full question so that you might share just a sample of my misery. There are HUNDREDS of them, and for every topic as interesting as the existence of God, there are dozens that debate whether sloth is an irascible or a concupiscient quality, or whether seraphim rank higher or lower than the lesser angels. I read a few of these almost every day this year, and was bored out of my mind by most of them. The part I quoted is Aquinas’s proof of the existence of God. If you’re atheist or agnostic, it will not convince you otherwise. If you DO believe in God, it would not matter if I could completely and conclusively, to your satisfaction, disprove the Unmoved Mover argument, the ontological argument and all the rest of it-you would continue to believe in God, because your belief is not founded on those arguments. You believe for different reasons entirely. So why do we bother debating the unmoved mover, or the ontology argument or (my favorite, too late for Aquinas), the Cartesian argument where a Christian can ‘create’ God by imagining an absolutely perfect being and noting that the quality of actually existing is more perfect than not existing, therefore this perfect being MUST exist, otherwise it wouldn’t be perfect!
The Summa goes everywhere you can go in philosophy or theology. It has its most philosophical value when it turns away from arguing Catholic doctrine just on the grounds that it is authority, and when it turns to secular examinations of virtue, happiness, the making of habits and of the best system of government. Other treatises are interesting in that they explain apparent contradictions in the Bible, sometimes satisfactorily, other times not so much. The treatises on specific Catholic concepts, like defining angels and their relationship to God and Man, or why the Catholic sacraments are absolutely and provably part of God’s master plan, are an utter, utter waste for anyone who isn’t part of that RPG system. And as Bertrand Russell points out, a philosophy that begins with the conclusion and “proves” it backwards is no philosophy at all. Nevertheless, if I resolve to read the whole “Great Books” set over the course of a decade, that set includes Aquinas. Ah well, it’s done at last.
And that’s my year of Medieval concentration, not enjoyed very much but complete at last, covering 1200 years of slim pickings. Consider that all of the history that follows is a period half that length, that will take seven times as long (at least) to read.
Thankfully, 2014 will focus on the 15th and 16th centuries, from Henry IV partway into the Elizabethan era, and will include much groovier writers like Machiavelli, Bocaccio, Rabelais, Spenser, Bacon and Montaigne. Oh the relief of it!
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts
Bruin the Bear lay in the cleft of the tree in great fear and dread and held fast his head and nipped both his forefeet. He wrung, he wrestled, and cried and all was for naught. He wist not how he might get out. Reynard the Fox saw from far how that Lantfert the carpenter came and tho spoke Reynard to the Bear: "Is that good honey? How is it now? Eat not too much, it should do you harm, you should not then well con go to the court. When Lantfert comes, if you have well eaten, he shall give you better to drink and then it shall not stick in your throat.
Reynard the Fox is one of the more popular examples of the Medieval "beast fable" (Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale" is another, much shorter one). It's easy to read, but pretty tame compared to the anthropomorphic animal stories written for children today. It's a standard trickster story, where the clever fox outwits wolves, bears, and other larger animals, with the distinction that the fox later has to give account for himself at the court of beasts, and manages to fool the judge with transparent lies such that his victims get harmed again. In fact, the fox is something of a sadistic asshole. He not only hurts the other animals--not just wolves and bears, but hares and rooks and other defenseless prey--but cuckolds them as well, and then insults them gratuitously as he runs off. Woody Woodpecker and Itchy & Scratchy are progeny of Reynard.
Beast fables were popular in their era as a handy way to satirize existing clergy and royalty with less risk of getting beheaded, burned or excommunicated, as the stories are about primitive beast kingdoms, courts and bishoprics, and the ruler is only Leo the Lion, certainly not King Edward, surely Good King Edward wouldn't see anything in that cruel fool of a ruler that would remind him of himself, would he now? And that preaching crow is of course a charlatan crow preaching animal religion, NOT Catholicism. Why, to think otherwise would be blasphemy! There's a bit of that in Reynard, but not much. Even the disguised satires had to be somewhat tame.
Song of Solomon; Ecclesiastes
Your lips are like a strand of scarlet, and your mouth is lovely. Your Temples behind your veil are like a piece of pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built for an armory, on which hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, which feed among the lilies.
--Song 4:3-5
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven--a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace, I swear it's not too late.
--Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
That's right, the Bible was heavily influenced by Pete Seeger and the Byrds.
Maybe the single funniest aspect of Judeo-Christian theology is watching upright, uptight preacher-men attempt to explain that the Song of Solomon is some kind of allegory intended to express love of The Lord, or The Lord’s love for humanity, or how all men are cross-dressing “brides of Christ/brides of God”. Sorry, but...no. The Song is erotic poetry, and apparently interracial erotic poetry at that. It’s what young men read to their loved ones when they want to get them in the mood. If it’s not, I’ll leave it to any white male Christian authoritarians to explain whether it is they themselves, or God/Jesus who is the black-skinned one, and which of them has the fawn-like breasts to worship.
If the Song is a book for young lovers, then Ecclesiastes is the book for old men. Not grumpy “get off my lawn” old men, but sad old widowers who putter around in a house they live alone in, occasionally going out in June to make speeches to young, hopeful college graduates telling them they can’t change the world, so don’t even bother. It’s not an angry, hateful book; it’s merely gloomy as all get out.
Many famous quotes here: Everything is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun. Cast your bread upon the waters, because fuck it, that’s why. And of course, turn-turn-turn.
The “preacher” who narrates has seen so many summers turn to winter over the years that he no longer cares about the first road cone of spring, and he wants children to know that the money he spent his life accumulating doesn’t buy happiness (though he’s forgotten that poverty in the same circumstances won’t make one happy either), and knows deep down that nobody will listen. But they’ll learn, over time. These kids these days will just have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.
Revelations
The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.
This is the last book of the Bible, and the last section that I read in my year of reading the whole Bible. I read it like the most morbid advent calendar ever, one short chapter a day for the first 22 days of the month, counting down the days to Christmas with escalating episodes of the End of Days, with four horsemen dispensing plague, war, pestilence and death; with vengeful angels breaking seven seals and sounding seven trumpets and pouring seven vials upon the earth, each one unleashing a different curse on humanity; of red dragons and beasts and false priests and manticore-scorpion-bugs and knights on fire-snorting horses and all sorts of creative bad things come to destroy us all before the final judgment.
The first time I read Revelation, I surmised that John the prophet had eaten Tex-Mex too soon before bed, or taken the brown acid, or otherwise had a really loopy dream and set it down as holy scripture, thereby fucking up the hearts and minds of millions of followers of the gospels for 2000 years and counting. The account is very very random. I was waiting for the part where And Lo! I did stand in the corridor of the scribes, wearing only my undergarments, and the voice of The Lord did call out, Are you prepared for the examination at the end of days? And I knew that I was not prepared, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. Actually, it's more complicated than that, since at least some of what goes on has things in common with Ezekiel (see last month's Bookpost), which implies that either's there is a major coincidence or actual miracle, or thet John had read Ezekiel and had planned out Revelation so as not to be so random after all.
One of the worst book set of books I ever read was the Left Behind series, written by a couple of American evangelists who masturbated at the idea of wimps repenting too late and antichrists cursing as they descended into lakes of fire, and who horcruxed what should have been a five-volume series into a dozen or more when they found that they were making money off of gullible Christians. Their abomination of creative endeavor is evidence of the truth of a much more realistic take on what Revelation is about:
No wonder the pagans were horrified at the 'impious' Christian desire to destroy the universe. How horrified even the old Jews of the Old Testament would have been! For even to them, earth and sun and stars were eternal, created in the grand creation by Almighty God. But no, these impudent martyrs must see it all go up in smoke.
Oh, it is the Christianity of the middling masses, this Christianity of the Apocalypse. And we must confess, it is hideous. Self-Righteousness, self-conceit, self-importance and secret envy underlie it all.
By the time of Jesus, all the lowest classes and mediocre people had realized that NEVER would they get a chance to be kings, NEVER would they go in chariots, never would they drink wine from gold vessels. Very well, then--they would have their revenge by destroying it all. "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and become the habitation of devils. " And then all the gold and silver and pearls and fine precious stones and fine linen and purple and scarlet--and cinnamon and frankincense, wheat, beasts, sheep, horses, chariots, slaves, souls of men--all these that are destroyed, destroyed, destroyed in Babylon the great--how one hears the envy, the endless envy screeching through this song of triumph!
No, we can understand that the Fathers of the Church in the east wanted Apocalypse left out of the New testament. And like Judas among the disciples, it was inevitable that it should be included. The Apocalypse is the feet of clay to the Christian image. And down crashes the image, on the weakness of these very feet.
--from Apocalypse, by D.H. Lawrence
That's it in a nutshell. Jesus didn't invent the Apocalypse, and so John HAD to, so that preachers could have the power to warp good people's minds.
The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin
"All right, driver. You can pull up now," said Cadogan excitedly. "There's the church on the right, there's the alley way I came out of, and there--"
The police car drew into the kerb. Half rising in his seat, Cadogan stopped and stared. In front of him, its window loaded with tins, flour, bowls of rice and lentils, bacon and other groceries in noble array, was a shop bearing the legend: WINKWORTH, FAMILY GROCER AND PROVISION MERCHANT.
He gazed wildly to the right and left. A chemist's and a draper's. Farther on to the right, a butcher, a baker, a stationery shop, and to the left, a corn merchant, a hat shop, and another chemist...
The toyshop had gone.
The Moving Toyshop is Crispin's masterpiece, and probably the defining book that marks him for what he does. And I can barely describe it to you out of respect for spoilers, because the gradual discovery of what is going on and the twists and turns that follow are the joy of the book. I'll just tell you that in chapter one, a bored poet, pining for adventure (be careful what you wish for) arrives in Oxford in the middle of the night and, completely by chance, tries the door of a closed toy shop in the street, finds it open and goes inside. There's a dead body on the floor upstairs. The poet gets knocked on the head, comes to, and runs off to fetch the police....only to arrive with the police and find that the toy shop has changed to a grocery store, and everyone in the area says it's always been a grocery store. There's no evidence of any crime, no one's gone missing, and the police figure the poet was knocked a little too hard on the head. So the poet goes to tell his friend Professor Fen about it.
And that's when the comic mayhem begins.
Fen and the poet and an increasing cast of jolly odd duck Brits have a romp. They're investigating something serious, and they get into dangerous situations, but they romp.
And they get meta. At one point they're tied up and Fen starts muttering outlandish thriller titles, and the poet asks him what he's doing, and he say, "I'm thinking up possible titles, for Crispin." And the story and characters are so odd that this actually works.
I kept imagining the characters as played by various incarnations of Dr. Who, and that worked too. Highest recommendations.
A Rare Benedictine, by Ellis Peters; The Parisian Prodigal, by Alan Gordon; Mysterium, The Midnight Man; Bloodstone; The Straw Men, by P.C. Doherty
"You are Brother Cadfael? They tell me you are expert in herbs and medicines, and can certainly help me. I cam early back from the lord abbot's supper, with such a headache, and have told my lord that I shall go early to bed. But I have such disturbed sleep, and with this pain how shall I be able to rest? Can you give me some draught that will ease me? They say you have a perfect apothecarium in your herb garden, and all your own work, growing, gathering, drying, brewing and all. There must be something here that can soothe pain and bring deep sleep."
--from A Rare Benedictine
"Here is my challenge, wife. I wager that my investigation will bear fruit before yours.
"What are the stakes?" I asked.
"A month of getting up first with Portia," he said.
"Done." I agreed immediately. "Hugo, you are our surety."
"Ale will be withheld if either of you go back on this," he said solemnly.
"Don't even suggest that," said Theo hurriedly. "Good. The race is on. Whoever finds the killer first wins."
"What if the killer finds you first?" asked Hugo.
"Then the killer has to get up with Portia," said Theo.
"Ooooh," said Portia.
---from The Parisian Prodigal
The pool of dancing lantern light picked out all the gory horror. Walter Evesham, former Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench and Lord of the Manor of Ingachin, lay slumped, head slightly to one side, his throat cut so deep it seemed like a second mouth. Blood caked Evesham's dead face and drenched the top of his jerkin, forming a dark crust over the table and the pieces of jewelry littered there.
--from The Mysterium
Stephen sensed the change in the air around him. He braced himself against what was to come. Two shapes raced out of the murk--square faced gnomes garbed in leather jackets and blood spattered butcher aprons. Stephen closed his eyes and turned away. When he looked again there was nothing. Anselm and Beauchamp crouched in the center of the chamber, examining a canvas mattress above which hung a chain fixed to the ceiling. Beside the mattress lay a great black iron dish containing tongs, pincers and fleshing hooks with points as sharp as dragon's teeth. Stephen crossed to join them. The mattress was soaked in blood. A deep dread seized Stephen, chilling him to the very marrow. Anselm was right: horrid murder had been committed here.
--from The Midnight Man
Athelstan let his mind drift deeper into the gathering darkness to confront more threatening shapes which questioned his very vocation and basic beliefs. "So much evil, Lord." He prayed. "So deep the wickedness. The rich wax stronger and more powerful whilst the poor, like worms, are crushed and stamped even deeper into the mud. Why, Lord?"
--from Bloodstone
Huddle had taken as his theme for Pride the fall of Lucifer from Paradise. The painting depicted fanged, clawed and cloven hoofed demons as well as bat-winged, sooty hobgoblins, the usual citizens of Hell. Lucifer, however, was totally different. Still an archangel, he fell from Paradise in a thick ream of golden stars while the rebel angels he had seduced flowed after him like brilliant tongues of fire. Lucifer was no creature of the dark pit but a beautiful young man, blond curls framed a face of serious sweet youthfulness, his body glowed white and pure as the driven snow, his limbs were perfectly proportioned.
--from The Straw Men
I finished the Cadfael novels back in June, but there was one further book, billed as "Brother Cadfael's Christmas", that I decided to save for December. I needn't have bothered. A Rare Benedictine has about as much to do with Christmas as Full Metal Jacket It's mentioned. A Rare Benedictine is a short collection of three stories, thickened by including pictures. The first story doesn't even involve detection, and the other two are easily solved. Peters's strength is having warm characters who grow over the course of the book, and the stories are too short to provide that.
The Parisian Prodigal is the last, so far, of Alan Gordon's Fool's Guild (13th Century) series that travels all over Europe with Theo, Claudia, Helga the apprentice and Portia the baby, as a family of crime-solving jesters. I hope Gordon writes more, because the family really comes into stride as a team here, with Claudia taking the majority of the narrative and deduction when a man claiming to be the Count of Toulouse's spoiled brat brother becomes the presumptive suspect in the murder of a prostitute and asks the fools to clear his name. The mystery and intrigue is joined with genuinely funny dialogue and a moral agenda that stops short of preaching. Highest recommendations.
The Mysterium is the last (so far) of Doherty's formulaic Hugh Corbett (Edward I) series, and one of the better plots, this time involving the murder of a harsh judge whose career-making chance to nab an assassin failed, who was subsequently removed from office for corruption, and who is finally murdered as the story begins, followed by several of his associates. If you've read all or even several of the Corbett books, you'll spot the murderer right away, and might want to use the predictable Corbett tropes as a drinking game.
The Midnight Man is the last (so far) in the Canterbury Crime Tales series (Edward III), this time with the physician telling the story. It's not the best of the lot. It uses the excuse of a coven of Satan-worshipping serial killers to describe as many nasty deaths as possible. Also, it resorts to one of the more eye-rollingly annoying anti-woman tropes in common fiction. As with the clerk's tale from last month's Bookpost, the presence of actual supernatural forces as opposed to a Scooby Doo criminal pretending to be a monster detracts from the process of detection. And, as always in this series, the "words between the pilgrims", some of whom always know more than coincidence would support about the facts of the story, are the best part.
And then there's Brother Athelstan (Richard II), the priest sent as penance to officiate in the filthiest, most crime ridden section of Southwark, who ends up bonding with the poor and needy (who make useful informants, natch), and who teams up with Cranston, the falstaffesque coronor of London to solve crimes. I keep imagining a younger Leo McKern as Cranston. The early books in the series had an atmosphere quite different from the Corbett books, but Bloodstone, which takes place outside Athelstan's Southwark district and which involves the theft of a sacred relic and the deaths, one by one, of a company of Welsh bowmen who may have stolen it, read like a carbon copy of Corbett with different names. The Straw Men, on the other hand, is an excellent and gripping suspense story reminiscent of Hammett's Red Harvest, pitting the secret conspirators who are plotting Wat Tyler's peasant uprising against the brutal secret police of John of Gaunt, who will resort to any means necessary to quash rebellion. Both sides have some legitimate claim to moral high ground, both sides taint said claim with their underhanded tactics and overt and covert violence, and both sides have well-placed spies in the others' camp, the main mystery being identifying who the spies are while making sense of while making sense out of the secret activities of the respective factions.
Both Athelstan books give a very compassionate treatment of the plight of living at the onset of civil strife, and the way in which common citizens are forced to take sides and commit themselves in an action they'd rather stay out of, with the king demanding service under penalty of execution for treason and the revolutionaries, of comparable power to the king's, promising long memories and short ropes in store when the revolution comes.
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
A good WIFE was there OF beside BATH,
But she was somedeal deaf, and that was scath.
Of cloth-making she hadde such an haunt
She passed them of Ypres, and of Gaunt.
In all the parish wife was there none,
That to the off'ring before her should gon,
And if there did, certain so wroth was she,
That she was out of alle charity
Her coverchiefs were full fine of ground
I durste swear, they weighede ten pound
That on the Sunday were upon her head.
Her hosen weren of fine scarlet red,
Full strait y-tied, and shoes full moist and new
Bold was her face, and fair and red of hue.
She was a worthy woman all her live,
Husbands at the church door had she had five,
Withouten other company in youth;
But thereof needeth not to speak as nouth.
And thrice had she been at Jerusalem;
She hadde passed many a strange stream
At Rome she had been, and at Bologne,
In Galice at Saint James, and at Cologne;
She coude much of wand'rng by the Way.
Gat-toothed was she, soothly for to say.
Upon an ambler easily she sat,
Y-wimpled well, and on her head an hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe.
A foot-mantle about her hippes large,
And on her feet a pair of spurres sharp.
In fellowship well could she laugh and carp
Of remedies of love she knew perchance
For of that art she coud the olde dance.
The Canterbury Tales is maybe the first great work of English literature ever, and one of the great works of world literature. It is important as being one of the first widely read works written in vernacular for the masses rather than in Latin for the educated, and it is always delightful to get credit for scholarly readership while reading toilet humor. I enjoy myself more than I should at the thought of some stiff-necked old Oxford Don reciting such epic lines of poetry as , "An from his arse, he let there flee a fart."
My favorite part of the whole work is the general prologue, which sets the stage by describing a motley crew of pilgrim's to Becket's shrine at Canterbury, who will entertain one another with stories along the way. Rich and poor, high and low, sacred and profane, Chaucer describes the characters one at a time, breathing life into them. Writers have turned for centuries to Chaucer's prologue for a model example of succinct character development. Well placed warts, costly hats, and subtle gestures speak volumes about the company.
The stories themselves are as much a mixed bag as the storytellers, running the gamut from excellent to forgettable to disgusting. There's the knight's lengthy romance that inspired the half-Shakespeare play Two Noble Kinsmen; rude revenge plots that the miller and reeve, or the friar and summoner, tell to taunt one another; a beast-fable; a truly offensive anti-semitic rant about Jews who murder children; some boring sermons that aren't even stories; and a few entries that Chaucer doesn't even finish.
Some stories digress into moral lessons and lectures: The nun's priest's tale contains more discussion on the interpretation of dreams than it devotes to the actual adventure of Chanticleer the rooster. The merchant, too, spends more time talking about his own misogynistic theories of marriage than he does actually telling about how a January/May marriage unsurprisingly cuckolded an old husband.
Other times, the prologues to the individual stories are at least as important as the stories, such that they tell us about the person doing the telling. The Wife of Bath's prologue is three times as long as her story. The story itself is nothing; the prologue about the Wife's five husbands and how she became the subtle or not-so-subtle "top" in all five marriages is what makes her Chaucer's most memorable character. The pardoner, too, tells a memorable Crypt-Keeper-ish tale about bad men who swear to hunt down death, and unfortunately for them, succeed--but the pardoner's revelation of himself as an unrepentant mountebank and con artist is at least as good as the story, especially in that the story is a setup to get the listeners to pay the pardoner gold in exchange for questionable absolution.
DID YOU KNOW--The Summoner's tale is a story length fart joke, which left me puzzled why Sting would record an album of soft poetic songs and call it "Ten Summoner's Tales", instead of Franklin's Tales or Canterbury tales or something equally evocative of medieval stories without being quite so flatulent. Turns out, the title was chosen as a pun on Sting's actual name.
Chaucer has something for everybody, and something to offend everybody. Everyone should read it once.
Medieval Cities, by Henri Pirenne
The birth of cities marked the beginning of a new era in the internal history of Western Europe. Until then, society had recognized only two active orders: the clergy and the nobility. In taking its place beside them, the middle class rounded the social order out or, rather, gave the finishing touch thereto. Thenceforth its composition was not to change; it had all its constituent elements, and the modifications which it was to undergo in the course of centuries were, strictly speaking, nothing more than different combinations in the alloy.
After a year of reading medieval history, Medieval Cities, a short and simple book based on a series of lectures by Pirenne, was light and easy fare. The main thesis is that Western Civilization didn't really fall into the Dark Ages when Rome fell, but lasted until the muslims took over the Mediterranean trade routes. Gibbon's account supports this: Volume IV of the Decline and Fall is about Gothic and Byzantine attempts to carry on, and they did rely heavily on the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Pirenne has to undermine the importance of Charlemagne and the Merovingians.
The second major point is the importance of the Middle Class as a buffer between the high and mighty and the starving peasants, for it was their rise that coincided with, and maybe caused, the transition from feudal castles surrounded by anarchy to semi-self-sufficient cities.
On the Harmonies of the World, by Johannes Kepler
There are as it were two noteworthy weddings of these figures, made from different classes: the males, the cube and the dodecahedron, among the primary; the females, the octahedron and the icosahedron, among the secondary, to which is added one as it were bachelor or hermaphrodite, the tetrahedron, because it is inscribed in itself, just as those female solids are inscribed in the males and are as it were subject to them, and have the signs of the feminine sex, opposite the masculine, namely, angles opposite planes. Moreover, just as the tetrahedron is the element, bowels and as it were rib of the male cube, so the feminine octahedron is the element and part of the tetrahedron in another way; and thus the tetrahedron mediates in this marriage. The main difference in these wedlocks or family relationships consists in the following: the ratio of the cube is rational. For the tetrahedron is one third of the body of the cube, and the octahedron half of the tetrahedron, one sixth of the cube; while the ratio of the dodecahedron's wedding is irrational but divine.
Having defined the planetary orbits as ellipses in The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (see last month's Bookpost), instead of the more "perfect" circles, Kepler apparently felt obligated to argue for some geometrical perfection of the cosmos. The Harmonies is a sort of whimsical attempt to compare the ratios of the five perfect solids, the six planets recognized at the time, and the notes of the musical scale into a grand unified theory.
It's one of those things that looks nice on paper, if you even understand the scientific jargon, but which doesn't quite convince. For one thing, Kepler does things like the quoted part above, where he assigns "male" and "female" attributes to shapes without justification. For another, his proof that planetary relations are "perfect" because the five spaces between the orbits of six planets can be made to correspond to one each of the five perfect solids falls apart when the seventh and eighth planets are discovered with no new corresponding geometrical solids. And applying the ratios in the musical scale such that Mercury is said to sing soprano while Jupiter and Saturn are basses belongs more to sophistry than to actual science.
July's People, by Nadine Gordimer
Victor and his gang of boys raced chattering upon the doorway.
--Everybody's taking water! They've found it comes out the tap! Everybody's taking it! I told them they're going to catch hell, but they don't understand. Come quick, dad!--
The black faces of his companions were alight with the relish of excitement coming, the thrill of chastisement promised for others.
--But it's their water, Victor. It's for everybody. That's what I put the tank up for.--
The child scratched his head, turned out his muddy bare feet and tottered round on his heels, clowning. --Ow, dad, it's ours, it's ours!--His friends were enchanted by the performance and began their own variations on it.
--Who owns the rain?--The preachy reasonableness of his mother goaded him.
--It's ours, it's ours--
July was instantly affectionate, playful, light and boastful with the boy. --You lucky, you know, your father he's very, very clever man. Is coming plenty rain, now everybody can be happy with that tank, is nice easy, isn't it? You see, your father he make everyone to be pleased.--
This short book was written in 1981, while Apartheid was still in full swing in South Africa, and its plot is cause for white South Africans to be glad the regime ended the way it did. In Gordimer's book, it ends the other way--with violent civil uprising--and the protagonist family of five is forced to flee Johannesburg in mortal danger. Fortunately for them, they had treated their servant, July, well, and he helps them reach a place of relative safety in his native village out of town. Comic hijinks ensue. Role reversals ensue. Many of them, racial and family.
The title, July's People, is ambiguous, referring both to the black people of his village, with whom he shares a pack affinity, and to the white family, who become "his" in terms of relationship and ownership. The white adults seem to adjust to a sense of equality, while the children think that their status as whites is part of the natural order. It does not protect them. High recommendations.
A Puzzle in a Pear Tree, by Parnell Hall
Carl Perkins, his wife Nancy, and sons Randy and Jed, who had driven all the way from Greenwich to view the Bakerhaven Nativity, got far more than they had bargained for, as not one but two Virgin Marys, apparently vying for supremacy, tugged and pulled at one another, until one of the Virgin Marys spun from the other's grasp and pitched headlong from the manger, landing in a broken, lifeless heap, while the other Virgin Mary gawked in horror, then fainted dead away.
I stuck with Hall's Puzzle Lady mysteries this long because I noticed that the fourth in the series was a Christmas mystery and I felt like reading it in December. That, and the attraction of seeing what Murder She Wrote would be like if it starred an outrageous drunk without a shred of dignity.
They seem to be getting better as they go along, if you just suspend disbelief and go with the utterly implausible given circumstances and the over-the-top characterization. This one features a killer who really does imitate The Riddler and leave crossword puzzles (acrostic puzzles this time, which as usual are printed in the book for the reader to solve along) to taunt the detectives; a Christmas pageant with a director as insufferable as a stereotypical Hollywood mogul; dumb techies, horny students, and a visiting Scotland Yard detective who does everything except say "Right, wot's all this, then?" By now, I've figured Hall's tell, and was able to go back and find exactly where the clue to the killer was, before reading the solution. But it was still good fun.
Dreams of the Dead, by Perri O'Shaughnessy
After her shower, she turned on her night light and studied Burglar Boy's paperwork. Yeah. The probation officer was recommending time served. The judge wouldn't go against that. The sentencing hearing would go smoothly. She plotted out her moves to get the kid off, hoping he would do good, not bad, in the future. That was out of her hands, however. Her job had been to earn him a second chance to be the innocent they all wanted him to be.
Dreams of the Dead is the last--so far--in O'Shaughnessy's series of legal thrillers about Nina Reilly, criminal attorney based mainly around Lake Tahoe. The series is starting to get stale, but the situation in this entry is interesting enough. It involves the head of a family from a previous story begging Reilly for help because the family business is being sold, and the family black sheep--revealed as a killer in the previous book and long gone--has purportedly filed an affidavit from Brazil, a fugitive from murder charges, and his opposition to the sale threatens to gum up the works.
Unfortunately, Reilly knows that the 'fugitive' is in fact long dead, and why, and needs to protect the person responsible. And in spite of a clear conflict of interest, she just has to take the case, because soft spot for lost causes. Maybe she can prove the case against the sale is fraudulent without having to dig up the body. Pigs might fly. Despite the responsible party and 'hidden' motive being obvious almost from the beginning, I found a surprising amount of suspense here.
Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett
Somehow it was very hard to be certain what Bill Door looked like, or even remember the exact sound of his voice. Clearly he was there, and clearly he had spoken, otherwise why did you remember anything at all? "There's a lot of people in these parts as don't use the name they were born with," she said. "I always say there's nothing to be gained by going around asking pers'nal questions. I suppose you can work, Mr. Bill Door? I'm still getting the hay in off the high meadows and there'll be a lot of work come harvest. Can you use a scythe?
Bill Door seemed to meditate on the question for some time. Then he said, I THINK THE ANSWER TO THAT IS A DEFINITE 'YES', MISS FLITWORTH.
One of the nice things about Discworld is, you're not exactly required to read the books in order. At least, not in the late beginning of it all, where I still am. There's a growing list of stock characters, no arc plot, and the basic positions of them don't really change. Like a TV sitcom with nothing but the aging child actors to necessitate anything being different from episode to episode, with the distinction that Discworld is consistently funny. And poignant and dripping satirical commentary on our own times, never mind that the setting is somewhere between a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, a Disney movie and a B-grade horror flick.
Reaper Man, for example, has plenty to say about town-and-gown conflicts, what happens when we pass on, and the life-sucking properties of suburban shopping malls. And it does so by having Death--a stock character who talks in all caps--get fired by higher-ups who haven't thought it through, and take a job as a farm hand in a village of relative innocents. Meanwhile, those whose time has come are not taken to the beyond properly because the Replacement Death is not yet on hand. One such soul is Windle Poons, the oldest professor at Unseen University. Poons comes back to re-inhabit his body, for want of anywhere better to go, and finds more of a life as a corpse than he ever had in the usual course of life. Kvetching dead-rights activists, moon-crossed lycanthrope couples, mysterious snow globes, a contest to out-reap a harvesting machine, and the Death of Rats join in for a story that meets Pratchett's high standards. Highly recommended as a Delightful Romp, as is pretty much all of Discworld.
Get Real, by Donald E. Westlake
Dortmunder did not like to stand around on street corners. A slope-shouldered, glum-looking individual in clothing that hadn't been designed by anybody, he knew what he looked like when he stood for a while in one place on a street corner, and what he looked like was a person loitering with intent. The particular intent, as any cop casting an eye over Dortmunder would immediately understand, was beside the point, and could be fine-tuned at the station; the first priority was to get this fellow in charge. Which was why Dortmunder didn't like standing around on street corners. He hated to give cops the feeling there was duty to be done.
I'm going to miss Dortmunder. Unlike O'Shaughnessy and Doherty, Donald E. Westlake has passed on, and Get Real is definitely the very last of the Dortmunder books. For years now, I've made it a tradition to read a Dortmunder book on Christmas Day, not because the adventures of a small-time gang of NYC crooks whose odball capers tend to go wrong in spectacular ways have anything to do with Christmas, but because, on a day of joy, their were few things to delight me as much as reading these books. And now I've done this for the last time.
Fortunately, there's enough Discworld yet unread to replace Westlake and keep me going well into old age. It struck me this year that Pratchett and Westlake have a similar take on the silly side of life. Dortmunder is to NYC criminal gangs what Discworld is to Tolkeinish fantasy tradition. Not only are there well-known sets of tropes and cliches to point to, but in making fun of them, the author somehow manages to bring back their cathartic qualities. I've often found myself going straight from laughter to tears in both the Discworld and Dortmunder universe, and never mind that the writing just reminded me that the emotional situation is trite, hackneyed and overdone. Westlake was the only writer I know of who got away with including "Shut up," he explained in a shakedown scene.
The last of the Dortmunder books involves a reality TV producer who wants to make a reality show about the gang committing actual crimes. The gang is dubious. "You want to follow us around while we do what we do....what we REALLY do...and record it all on camera...and then show it to everybody?" "Yes, exactly." "See, in our line of work, we try to avoid having witnesses...we're supposed to stay out of jail, how exactly?" "We'll iron out the details later, run it by legal.". Plots and counterplots, naturally, ensue. Savor it. It's the last one there is.
Chimes at Midnight, by Seanan McGuire
"I am the sea witch. I am the tide you fear and the turning you can't deny. I am the sound of the waves running over your bones on the beach, little man, and I am not amused at finding you on my doorstep." She took a step forward. He took a step back. "I won't punish you for obeying orders the way she would. But I can't let an insult go unanswered. You know how it goes." A smile twisted her lips. "I'm actually grateful. You see, there are...rules...that govern what I can and can't do. But you broke them first. Now I get to do something I don't get to do very often. Now I get to play."
McGuire's October Daye urban fairy series was starting to suffer from the same problem Jim Butcher's Dresden series has--a protagonist who begins the series with minimal power in a vast world of supernatural dangers and politics has, over the course of several adventures, leveled up to the point where it's difficult to find a worthy adversary. I began the book a little bit jaded, thinking that, in order to make the book interesting, Daye would have to either level down or take on, I don't know, the Queen of the Mists herself.
Hey, no problem.
Chimes at Midnight is, in my opinion, the best Daye in the series so far, and if you remember how much I gushed over An Artificial Night (Bookpost, August 2010), you know that this is heavy praise indeed. It has real danger, plot twists, scholarly information about the fae, humor, pathos and parallels with real world problems.
I had the misfortune to be reading it on the epilleptical at the gym when I reached a spoiler moment that happens at the end of chapter eleven, and my audible anguished gasp followed by the gut-wrenching discomfort throughout the following chapter made some of my fellow gym rats concerned that I might be having a health emergency. I had to explain to a couple of helpful parties that no, it was just catharsis from the book I was reading. Neither the spoilers in the whole Newsflesh trilogy, nor the major deaths in the Game of Thrones books, which I read under similar conditions, had that effect on me. Maybe it's my special trigger. But that's what I call good writing.
Yes, there are gut-wrenching awful moments. You kinda expect that in a Seanan McGuire book. But there are also moments of joy and even spiritual uplift. Very highest recommendations.
Unless, by Carol Shields
It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life, I've heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I've never understood what they meant. To lose. To have lost. I believed these visitations of darkness lasted only a few minutes or hours and that these saddened people, in between bouts, were occupied, as we all were, with the useful monotony of happiness. But happiness is not what I thought. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.
First-person novels in which the narrator is a writer with similar general characteristics to the author of the book always flummox me a little. I keep wondering how much of it is autobiographical. It's like listening to a band sing a song about themselves singing.
Carol Shields is a Canadian writer with multiple awards. The heroine of Unless is also Canadian, maybe a little younger, with at least one award. Nothing happens to "Reta" in the book that could not conceivably have happened to Carol Shields. The two focal points of the book are Reta's constant looking back to her coming of age in the Sixties and comparing her ideals and moral compass then with how her life is now; and her concern about her oldest daughter, who, after doing very well in college, suddenly dropped out without a degree and took up sitting on street corners with a sign that says "Goodness".
The chapters are brief and disjointed. To emphasize their disjointedness, the chapter titles consist of conjunctions, prepositions and interjections; however those little connective words do add meaning to the chapters if you notice and emphasize those words when they appear in that chapter (Think of the famous Spartan reply to the Persians' ultimatum: "IF").
Gender issues make a big part of Reta's moral compass. She wonders if her daughter left school because of the school's failure to include enough female authors in the curriculum, and she begins to write to critics, professors and other literary critics (the letters are printed in full as their own chapters) to scold them for noninclusiveness in their work. She encounters an editor who wants to rewrite her new book into a completely different work "to make it more relevant". Sometimes, I couldn't tell if Reta's flashbacks were meant to highlight her previous ideals as being something silly that young people do, or if they were meant to highlight what's wrong with her present life in that she strayed from her true path. Possibly she's trying to make up her mind which it is.
Summa Theologica, by Thomas Aquinas
Whether God Exists?
OBJECTION 1: It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.
OBJECTION 2: Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
ON THE CONTRARY: It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Ex. 3:14)
I ANSWER THAT: The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But _more_ and _less_ are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in _Metaph._ ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
REPLY OBJ. 1: As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.
REPLY OBJ. 2: Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article.
It’s times like this when I feel like I ought to have my head examined. I must have CDO and an obsessive drive for completeness. How else can I explain the hours and hours, days, weeks and months poured into an examination of a GM manual for a RPG system I don’t even play?
The Summa consists of hundreds and hundreds of argued questions, structured like the one quoted above (statement, arguments against, arguments in favor, refutation of the arguments against). I posted one full question so that you might share just a sample of my misery. There are HUNDREDS of them, and for every topic as interesting as the existence of God, there are dozens that debate whether sloth is an irascible or a concupiscient quality, or whether seraphim rank higher or lower than the lesser angels. I read a few of these almost every day this year, and was bored out of my mind by most of them. The part I quoted is Aquinas’s proof of the existence of God. If you’re atheist or agnostic, it will not convince you otherwise. If you DO believe in God, it would not matter if I could completely and conclusively, to your satisfaction, disprove the Unmoved Mover argument, the ontological argument and all the rest of it-you would continue to believe in God, because your belief is not founded on those arguments. You believe for different reasons entirely. So why do we bother debating the unmoved mover, or the ontology argument or (my favorite, too late for Aquinas), the Cartesian argument where a Christian can ‘create’ God by imagining an absolutely perfect being and noting that the quality of actually existing is more perfect than not existing, therefore this perfect being MUST exist, otherwise it wouldn’t be perfect!
The Summa goes everywhere you can go in philosophy or theology. It has its most philosophical value when it turns away from arguing Catholic doctrine just on the grounds that it is authority, and when it turns to secular examinations of virtue, happiness, the making of habits and of the best system of government. Other treatises are interesting in that they explain apparent contradictions in the Bible, sometimes satisfactorily, other times not so much. The treatises on specific Catholic concepts, like defining angels and their relationship to God and Man, or why the Catholic sacraments are absolutely and provably part of God’s master plan, are an utter, utter waste for anyone who isn’t part of that RPG system. And as Bertrand Russell points out, a philosophy that begins with the conclusion and “proves” it backwards is no philosophy at all. Nevertheless, if I resolve to read the whole “Great Books” set over the course of a decade, that set includes Aquinas. Ah well, it’s done at last.
And that’s my year of Medieval concentration, not enjoyed very much but complete at last, covering 1200 years of slim pickings. Consider that all of the history that follows is a period half that length, that will take seven times as long (at least) to read.
Thankfully, 2014 will focus on the 15th and 16th centuries, from Henry IV partway into the Elizabethan era, and will include much groovier writers like Machiavelli, Bocaccio, Rabelais, Spenser, Bacon and Montaigne. Oh the relief of it!
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts