Fun with language

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson novels can be a feast for lovers of language, and The System of the World is no exception. Word origins, for example, are often sprinkled into the narrative.

The story has much to do with English coinage, so readers learn very early that the word coin came from the archaic word coign, meaning corner. Coins apparently were originally square, but assayers removed corners to test the purity of the metal. Similarly characters discuss the origins of such words as club, mob and machinery.

Stephenson often uses 18th century spellings so that club is clubb, mob is mobb and top is topp. The words fantasy and fantasize are always spelled with a ph. Yet he frequently mixes in words and phrases that sound more modern than 1714, when the story is set.

An Internet source says the phrase "queer the deal" dates from 1812, or a century later than the story. I don't know when the phrase "absentee landlord" came into the language, but a book called Absentee Ownership was published in 1923. The phrase cocktail party also appears to have been a 20th century invention.

I have a feeling Stephenson was well aware of such language incongruities and hoped readers would enjoy them as much as he did.

Dawn of a new age

For the war is over; most of the great conflicts have been sorted out; Natural Philosophy has conquered the realm of the mind; and -- today -- as we stand here -- the new System of the World is being writ down in a great Book somewhere.

Neal Stephenson, The System of the World

As Neal Stephenson's ambitious (nearly 3,000 pages) Baroque Cycle draws to a close with the third novel, The System of the World (2004), England is bathed in optimism. A new king mounts the throne in 1714. The nation is at peace. And science (or Natural Philosophy) seems to have explained how the universe works. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, both major characters as well as real people, have much to do with this optimism.

The Baroque Cycle is unusual science fiction in that it deals with real science and real people, yet the plots are mainly fiction. This time the story revolves around Newton's work at the Royal Mint, an unusual job for one of the world's greatest scientists, but he is also an alchemist. Newton uses his position at the mint to watch for Solomon's gold, supposedly once owned by King Solomon himself and supposedly heavier and more valuable than other gold.

Meanwhile Jack Shaftoe, a vagabond who will be familiar to readers of other books in the series, has been counterfeiting coins, putting Newton's reputation in jeopardy as his life draws to a close. In even greater danger is Shaftoe himself after he is captured and sentence to be hanged, then drawn and quartered. The final chapters make compelling reading. The rest of the book, like much of the trilogy, requires patience.

The world is changing in 1714, although perhaps not as quickly as characters anticipate. They speak of binary code, a Logic Mill (or computer) and an Engine for Raising Water by Fire (or steam engine), but all these must wait for the future. Still, that future rested on the likes of Newton and Leibniz.

Library miracles

Josh Hanagarne

Josh Hanagarne, in his memoir The World's Strongest Librarian: A Book Lover's Adventures, makes a couple of observations about libraries that may be worth comment.

"I really want this building to serve the purpose for which it was intended -- as a breeding ground for curiosity."

Hanagarne mentions some other purposes some patrons at the Utah library where he works seem to think the building serves. Parents drop their children off while they go to work, expecting librarians to serve as babysitters. Some people seek quiet places in the library to sleep. Teenagers seek out the same places to make out. I recently used a public library for the purpose of getting coached on the operation of a new insulin pump.

Libraries themselves, especially in recent decades, have expanded their purpose in a multitude of ways. They have cafes, computers for patron use, public meeting rooms and a wide variety of programs.

But is being a breeding ground for curiosity the main purpose of a library? It could be argued that in most cases a person becomes curious before entering the library. One goes to the library to satisfy that curiosity -- to find the answers to questions, to scratch an already existing itch.

Yet answers have a way of stimulating more questions. As has been often stated, the more we know the more we realize we don't know. And often when we go to a library to get one thing, our eyes are drawn to another book, another magazine, another video, whatever. So, yes, libraries do breed curiosity, or at least more curiosity.

"A library is a miracle. A place where you can learn just about anything, for free. A place were your mind can come alive."

In an age when almost everyone has a world of information available to them at all times on phones they carry with them everywhere, it seems amazing how busy libraries are. Sometimes even finding a place to park can be a challenge. I have seen standing-room-only author talks and genealogy meetings. Video stores may have closed, but people still go to libraries to find movies to watch. Most days when I go to the Largo Library in Florida I see the same woman in the same chair reading a different book. Patrons line up to check out books or to ask questions. At the Largo Library, they also line up just to get in when the doors open in the morning.

The real miracle may be the fact that it is all free. We also live in age where almost everything has a price, and that price is rarely cheap. Even dollar stores now charge more than a dollar for most merchandise. Yet you can walk into any public library and walk out with an armload of books, CDs, DVDs or whatever, all for free. You have to bring them back, of course, and the fact that most people do is another miracle.

A library story

Josh Hanagarne may actually be The World's Strongest Librarian, as the title of his 2013 memoir boasts. He is six-feet-seven-inches tall and weighs 260 pounds, lifts weights and tosses cabers, rocks and other imposing objects at Highland Games. Yet neither his unusual size and strength nor, for someone of his dimensions, unusual job is the most central part of his story.

Since childhood Hanagarne has had Tourette Syndrome, meaning he is subject to involuntary movements and speech, often self-destructive and often embarrassing, especially for someone with a very public job. His weight training, along with breathing exercises, has helped somewhat to control his Tourette's, which he has nicknamed Misty.

Another part of his story is that he was raised a Mormon, the product of a devout mother and a father who went through the motions out of love for his wife. Now, years later, Hanagarne finds himself in the same situation as his father: a devout Mormon wife, a son who may or may not have Tourette's and a wavering faith. In Mormon terms, he fears he has "lost his testimony," but then again, maybe not.

The book alternates between past and present, between his life story and his experiences as a staff member at a large public library in Utah. He always loved books and became a secret Stephen King fan despite his mother's objections. Yet because of Tourette's he had difficulty in school. He started college many times, only to be forced to quit. Jobs, too, came and went until he discovered the library as a perfect fit for a man who didn't seem to fit anywhere else.

His love story is a beautiful one, as is his account of the couple's struggle to have a child, then a struggle to adopt one and finally a surprise pregnancy that gave them a son.

Hanagarne has had an intriguing life, but it didn't write itself. He skillfully put it all together in a way that makes compulsive reading.

A wartime murder

Reading just two James R. Benn novels is enough to make his Billy Boyle books one of my favorite mystery series. Rag and Bone (2010), like Billy Boyle, the first in the series, is an ideal blend of history, mystery and wartime adventure.

Boyle was a young police detective before World War II intervened and he was assigned to the staff of his Uncle Ike, none other than Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, to solve a ticklish murder. More murders follow, and so the series continues. Even in wartime, when people are being killed all the time, a murder is another matter.

This time the murder that draws Ike's attention is that of a Russian officer stationed in London. Evidence suggests the killer could be Polish, perhaps even Billy's best friend, Kaz, a Polish officer who got out of Poland before the Germans invaded. Now the Soviets covet Poland, and Kaz blames them for the massacre of Polish prisoners at Katyn Forest (an actual event), for which the Soviets blame the Germans. Because the United States has a large Polish population and because the Allies need the Russians to help defeat Germany, the situation is tricky. Ike wants his nephew to discover what really happened to that Russian officer, preferably without making things anymore complicated than they already are.

His investigation takes Billy into both the London underworld and the underground, for there seems to be a connection between the murder and a poetry-reading gangster who, because of German air attacks, has made his temporary headquarters in a subway tunnel. Along the way he comes into contact with Winston Churchill and even Kim Philby, later discovered to have been a spy for the Soviets.

Benn keeps the plot moving nicely, gives us fascinating characters and turns a riveting murder mystery into a painless history lesson.

Writers go to college

Like most academics, he is fascinated by childish, unprofessional behavior.

Richard Russo, Straight Man

Richard Russo

I've noticed that several of the novels I have read this year feature college professors as characters, usually main characters. These include the recently reviewed Straight Man by Richard Russo, in which an English professor heads his department during threatened staff reductions; Nobody's Fool, also by Russo, in which the son of the main character is a professor; Ethan Canin's A Doubter's Almanac, about a mathematics professor who, because of age and careless living, has lost his brilliance at mathematics; Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam, about an economics professor who takes a leave to try to restore a happy family life; and David Lodge's Changing Places about two professors, one from Great Britain and one from the United States, who participate in a professor exchange program and find themselves leading the other fellow's life.

These books were written over a period of years, so perhaps they do not reflect a trend. I may have just happened to read these particular novels this year, yet I suspect there are enough other college-based novels and short stories (such as Mark Winegardner's "The Visiting Poet" and "The Untenured Lecturer," also read this year) to reflect at least a mini-trend.

If so, the reason is probably because so many of today's novelists and poets (and a few non-fiction writers, such as Les Staniford) are based at colleges and universities. As writers in residence they can teach a few classes, usually creative writing, and still have lots of time to write. Because most books make little money, the teaching jobs give them income to support their families. Their academic surroundings also give them material for their literary work. Even the best writers tend to write what they know.

Winegardner, according to the cover of his book of short stories, That's True of Everybody, is director of creative writing at Florida State. Balasubramanyam taught at Hong Kong University, among other places. Canin is on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. David Lodge taught at the University of Birmingham. I don't know about Russo, but Straight Man certainly reads as if the author knows something about colleges and, in particular, English departments.

Many of the works mentioned above have certain themes in common, especially the fascination with "childish, unprofessional behavior" referred to in Russo's novel. The professors in these tales tend to drink too much, sleep with the wives of other professors and with their students, and worry constantly about departmental politics. Occam's Razor (stated simply: the simplest answer is more often the correct one) features in two or three of the novels. The narrator in Straight Man even names his dog Occam.

In the spirit of Occam's Razor, I conclude that putting writers in university faculties leads to novels about university faculties.

A disappointing Edgerton

Some novels seem to be more than the sum of their parts. Clyde Edgerton's Redeye (1995) somehow seems less.

With outlandish characters, a love triangle of sorts, a murder, a determined dog with an eerie red eye and loads of outrageous comedy, you might think the novel would offer satisfaction. Instead it falls flat. It's less than 250 pages long, and when you finish it you may find yourself asking, "Is that all there is?"

It's 1891 along the Colorado-Utah border where ancient cliff dwellings are discovered and immediately viewed as a possible tourist attraction. Other parts added to the mix include a would-be mortician who thinks blowing up a corpse is an ideal way to promote his business, a young woman from the East pursued both by a handsome Englishman and a Mormon bishop (who may or may not have several other wives), a mute old woman who's convinced a mummified baby from the cliff dwellings is her own dead baby and a stranger plotting to kill the bishop in revenge for his part in the Mountain Meadows massacre (a true event in which Mormons are believed to have plotted with Indians to wipe out a wagon train).

So that sounds interesting doesn't it? Maybe there's just too much going on, or perhaps the novel is too short to develop the possibilities. Whatever the case, Redeye is at times a pleasurable ride, but it goes nowhere.

English department follies

In English departments the most serious competition is for the role of straight man.

Richard Russo, Straight Man

Bob Newhart has been an extremely funny comedian for decades, but in all of his situation comedies he was the straight man. The humor came in his reactions to the zany behavior of other characters. That's sort of the situation in Richard Russo's 1997 novel Straight Man.

William Henry Devereaux Jr., son of a noted literary critic who abandoned his family years ago for a series of sexy students, is himself a professor of literature, temporarily made the department chairman despite his reputation on the faculty for a lack of seriousness. Yet on this faculty he is the Newhart, the one who observes and reacts to the strangeness and silliness going on around him.

Other faculty members are much like him, someone who came to this small Pennsylvania college as a promising young scholar and now realizes his career has nowhere to go. He got his position in the first place on the strength of a first novel, but there has never been a second. He's bored teaching writing to students with little writing talent, but he has tenure. He discovers his secretary, with whom he is half in love  (affection for spouses and others is given percentages in this novel) is a better writer than he is.

Devereaux finds himself the department head at a time of threatened budget cuts and the possibility of staff reductions. Other English professors are convinced Devereaux has their names on a list of those to be axed, while the dean pressures him to make such a list. Meanwhile his daughter's marriage reaches a crisis, his wife has gone away on business and he wonders if she will ever return, a handyman is in love with his difficult mother and then his father, now aged and repenting only of misjudging Charles Dickens, returns home.

Russo has a gift for writing hilarious serious novels, and Straight Man is one such novel. Its pleasures are many.

Eden and beyond

The story of Adam and Eve extends from the end of the first chapter of Genesis to the beginning of the fifth. In The First Love Story: Adam Eve, and Us (2017), Bruce Feiler turns the story into eight chapters and 269 pages. But writers from John Milton to Mark Twain to Ernest Hemingway have been building on the Genesis account for centuries, always finding (or imagining) something new. Feiler uses these earlier studies and adds his own interpretations in this fine, thoughtful book.

Feiler's focus is not the first sin but rather the first love story, the initial model for all love stories to follow "They can't steal someone else's pickup lines or dance to anyone else's love songs," he writes. "They must write their own story. They must invent what it means to be in a relationship."

Getting ejected from the Garden of Eden was not all bad, according to Feiler. To him it was something akin to a couple leaving their parents and striking out on their own, facing an uncertain future alone but together. They chose love over obedience, he argues.

In addition to Milton, Twain and Hemingway, Feiler looks for insights into this story from the likes of Mae West, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lord Byron, Pope Francis and a host of others less well known.

"Their story is not just about sin, disobedience, ingratitude, squandering their inheritance, and ruining life for the rest of us," Feiler says of Adam and Eve. "Their story is also about originality, forgiveness, bouncing back from calamity and modeling resilience.

"Their story is above love in all its messy carnal, hopeful, resurgent glory."

Feiler, author of such books as Walking the Bible and Abraham, has made a career out of, in his words, "trying to relate biblical stories to the present." In The First Love Story, though some of its interpretations may strike readers as weird, he manages to do this well, making the oldest story of all fresh again.

Idle books and riffe raffes

Thomas Bodley

In his book The Library, Stuart Kells tells of Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the famous Bodleian Library at Oxford University, who later reprimanded the librarian for including so many "idle books and riffe raffes" in the collection.

Today the word riffraff is applied mostly to undesirable people, but back in the 17th century, Bodley was talking about undesirable books, books unworthy of being shelved in such a reputable library.

Just a few days ago many public libraries had displays for Banned Books Weeks, highlighting such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye. In most cases the books in question had not actually been banned, in the sense of a government entity prohibiting the publication or distribution of said book, but rather had been removed from a library or taken off a school reading list. Sometimes the book was simply the subject of a protest by anxious parents. Objecting to a book is not the same thing as banning it. Nor is taking it off a reading list, for books are added to and removed from reading lists all the time. A book doesn't have to be on a reading list to be read.

The library displays seemed a bit hypocritical to me, for these same libraries, because of limited budgets and limited shelf space, must make decisions about which books to acquire and which ones to reject. The rejected books no doubt include many Bodley would have classified as "idle books and riffe raffes."

The difference is that the books are rejected before they go on the shelves rather than after. It reminds me of auto insurance companies that give discounts to good drivers rather than raise the rates of those who have had accidents. It makes no actual difference in the insurance rates, but it sounds like insurance companies are rewarding rather than punishing.

In the same way, libraries don't appear to be "banning" books. They simply are not acquiring certain less desirable books in the first place. Yet the results are the same.

Literary time capsule

While sorting through a box of old newspapers last week I came upon some copies of The New York Times Book Review from February 1969 (Feb. 2 and 16). I don't know why I kept them, but 50 years later they serve as something of a literary time capsule, revealing what was going on in the book world back then. Some observations:

1. At the center of each issue was a two-page ad for the Book-of-the-Month Club. Ads for the Literary Guild of America, the Mainstream Book Club, the Commentary Library, the Book Find Club, the Classics Club and the Public Affairs Book Club are also present. Today the phrase "book club" has quite a different meaning, but back then many people, myself included, yielded to the temptation of getting three or four books for a dollar, and then they would be subjected to monthly choices. Forget to send back a card and you would receive books in the mail whether you wanted them or not.

The Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild still exist, but in somewhat different form.

These editions also carried ads for record clubs and even a Sculpture Collectors Club.

2. One of the Book-of-the-Month Club ads offers The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough. That is the only book I found mentioned in these pages by an author still writing (and producing best sellers) all these years later.

3. I can remember that books weren't cheap in 1969. Then, as now, I mostly purchased paperbacks. Yet seeing the prices in these Book Reviews, they certainly seem cheap. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, all 463 pages in a new clothbound edition, could be had for $10. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill cost $8.95. Novels were much less costly, mostly $4.95 or $5.95.

Paperbacks were much cheaper, of course. One could buy Cancer Ward for $1.25 and Frank Conroy's Stop-Time for 95 cents.

4. Most books, including those touted as important by the New York Times, have little staying power and are forgotten within a few years. Few books mentioned in these issue are still read today or still in print. The best-selling novel at that time was The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes. Thanks to the reissue of her books in paperback a couple of years ago, some people may still be reading this book. The same goes for Force 10 from Navarone by Alistair MacLean, also because his books were reprinted awhile back.

A few other mentioned books may still be in print -- an Agatha Christie mystery, a John le Carre spy thriller, Ulysses by James Joyce, the poems of Robert Frost, Mastering the Art of French Cooking -- but for the most part, time has left most of these books and their authors forgotten in the past. Too bad. It demonstrates just how difficult it is to achieve immortality in literature.

5. Two books in these issues awoke happy memories in me. There's a one-age review of Robert L. Short's The Parables of Peanuts by Tom F. Driver. Driver, a professor of theology, panned the book because of its poor theology and because, apparently, it just isn't serious enough. But this was Peanuts, after all. The "theology" was meant to be fun. I thought the book was more entertaining than enlightening, which I gather was how it was meant to be.

Then there is a full-page ad for a novel called The Black Ship by Paul and Sheila Mandel, which I read some months later when it came out in paperback. I enjoyed it greatly and wouldn't mind rereading it someday.

Show or tell

Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.

Chuck Palahniuk, quoted in Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve by Ben Blatt

Chuck Palahniuk

Writers of fiction, if they are any good, learn early that it's better to show than tell. Novelist Chuck Palahniuk has gone so far as to make a long list of verbs writers should avoid because they tell too much while showing too little. Among these verbs are loves, hates, thinks, knows, understands, realizes, believes, wants, remembers imagines and desires. There are many more.

Try telling any kind of story, even a good joke, without using such verbs. They may be, in fact, the first verbs we think of because they serve as shortcuts to what we are trying to say. They tell the story directly, but they don't show the story as it develops.

In Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, Ben Blatt ranks numerous famous writers according to their avoidance of these verboten words. Palahniuk himself ranks third on the list, indicating that he follows his own advice. In first place is James Joyce, followed by J.R.R. Tolkien in second and, after Palahniuk, Vladimir Nabokov.

One finds surprises on the list. Dan Brown, a popular author but not considered a great one, ranks above John Updike, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both James Patterson and Stephen King stand above John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway. Even Stephenie Meyer sits above Hemingway on this list.

So maybe there is more to great writing than avoiding certain verbs. Better to treat Palahniuk's list as a guide than a tablet of commandments. Still avoiding such words can sometimes create magic.

I just remembered a line from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey that I quoted when I wrote about the book a couple of years ago: "Lane spotted her immediately, and despite whatever it was he was trying to do with his face, his arm that shot up into the air was the whole truth." Salinger could have told us Lane loved Franny and was very eager to see her again, but instead he showed us with just an arm in the air.

The voice of Michigan

Growing up in northwest Ohio, I had no idea what radio stations other teenagers listened to. My own radio dial was stuck on WJR out of Detroit, partly because this powerful station carried every Detroit Tigers game. In this way I missed most of the popular music of the day, but I did hear a lot of Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington and Louie Prima. I also became acquainted with the voice of J.P. McCarthy, host of the station's morning show.

So when I found a copy of J.P. McCarthy: Just Don't Tell 'em Where I Am by Michael Shiels in a used bookstore in Ashland, Ohio, I knew I had to have it. And last month while vacationing in Charlevoix, Mich., I started reading it. Michigan seemed like the best place to do this, for long before the Pure Michigan campaign brought tourists to that state, McCarthy's broadcasts did the same thing. Driving to and from Charlevoix, the name of virtually every town I passed reminded me of McCarthy because I had heard him mention it.

Shiels was Joseph Priestly McCarthy's producer (he went by J.P. because of the other Joe McCarthy) and so knew him about as well as anyone, and this is very an affectionate, insider's biography. Unfortunately many of the stories, especially those about his passion for golf, sailing and travel hold interest mainly for those insiders, McCarthy's friends and family members.

Of greater interest to his former listeners are those tales early in the book about WJR. How the station managed when he showed up late for his 6 a.m. show, how he never seemed to prepare for his interviews yet always seemed prepared, why he liked Sinatra, how he met Fat Bob the Singing Plumber (a frequent guest on his show), how he hosted a "swimsuit edition" on his radio show, how he could talk with and earn the trust of both Republican and Democrat politicians without revealing his own political leanings, why major stars and political figures made it a point to stop by his studio whenever they were in Detroit -- all these and more make great stories.

And I simply enjoyed seeing the familiar names of others I used to hear on WJR: Ernie Harrell, Paul Carey, Bud Guest, John McMurray, Dave Diles, Dan Streeter and Mike Whorf among them.

When McCarthy died in 1995 from a bone marrow disease, he was given a Detroit funeral worthy of a pope.

For a J.P. McCarthy fan, this book lacks just one thing: his voice.