'Bird brain' should be a compliment

The misguided use of "bird brain" as a slur has finally come home to roost.

Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds

Accurately measuring intelligence requires the right yardstick, except that there is no such thing. There are just too many kinds of intelligence for one yardstick to measure. Jennifer Ackerman concedes in The Genius of Birds (2016), "I would flunk these sorts of intelligence tests readily as birds might fail mine." She is speaking of the intelligence tests that various species of birds can pass with ease. Take for instance the ability of some birds to hide thousands of seeds and then remember where to find them months later or the ability of a homing pigeon to find its way home from hundreds of miles away.

Scientists might frown on my use of the word intelligence because it sounds to them like anthropomorphizing. They prefer the word cognition when talking about birds and other animals. Give Ackerman credit for being intelligent enough to use the word, however, because it is intelligence that we are talking about.

Even the word cognition has been something of a concession for science, which had long preferred thinking of every amazing thing an animal does as just instinct. By now there have been enough experiments and observations to recognize that birds, more than most animal species, can solve challenging problems. Young birds don't know their songs by instinct but must learn them over a long period of trial and error, just as a child learns to talk. Sparrows in New Zealand learned to use the sensors for a cafeteria's automatic doors so they could fly in to steal food, then fly out again.

Ackerman covers many different kinds of intelligence in birds, including the artistry of bowerbirds and the ability of mockingbirds to learn not only their own song but the songs of many other species of birds.

Some birds seem to be smarter than others, and Ackerman devotes much of her book puzzling over why. Are species that eat a variety of foods smarter than those with a more limited diet? Are birds that live in social groups smarter than loners? Are birds that migrate smarter than those that stay in one place? While discussing such questions, she describes the work of numerous authorities in the field without ever losing her audience, made up of readers of ordinary intelligence, like me, who are humbled by the genius of birds.

Keep it simple, stupid

Kathryn and Ross Petras

When we try to sound smart, whether in our speech or in our writing, that is when we are most likely to sound stupid.

That is one lesson to be learned from That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras. This is a small dictionary, only about 150 entries, containing words we easily confuse with similar words that mean something else entirely. This happens to the best of us, and the authors offer examples of "the best of us" making these errors: Washington Post, Huffington Post, President Obama, Variety, Fox News, New York Times, Time, Forbes and even F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We may use notoriety rather than fame because those extra syllables seem to add a little class, except that the two words don't mean quite the same thing. Notoriety refers to a negative kind of fame. John Dillinger was notorious. Eliot Ness was famous.

Or we may use penultimate thinking it means something like: "the very best." The Huffington Post once described Abraham Lincoln as "the penultimate American president." Actually the word means "second from the last." I remember learning this word during the Watergate hearings. One of those involved in the crime, G. Gordon Liddy perhaps, used the word in his testimony, then had to explain its meaning for the confused Senate committee.

Many times we confuse words that look alike or sound alike. The Petras explain the difference between complementary and complimentary, flaunt and flout, flounder and founder, ingenious and ingenuous, prescribe and proscribe, stanch and staunch, tact and tack, and many others.

Often the authors admit that the battle has already been lost, some words have been misused so often that even dictionaries have given in and added new definitions. Now decimate means "to destroy or devastate," not just to destroy a tenth of something. Crescendo is a musical term meaning to gradually increase loudness or intensity. So many of us think of it as meaning climax that dictionaries now accept that meaning, to the disgust of some musicians.

Then there are those words that will always be confusing. For example, both flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. Bimonthly means both twice a month and once every two months.

The goal of language, the Petras write, is "to communicate ideas and desires in the clearest way possible." Simple words do this best. Use is almost always a better choice than utilize, method almost always better than methodology. Even if we happen to know the meaning of a more impressive word, those we are trying to communicate with may not.

The authors keep each entry short, witty and, at least for the most part, easy to understand. 

Hemingway's writing tips

In A Moveable Feast, reviewed here a couple of days ago, Ernest Hemingway makes a number of comments about the writing process, many of which have been helpful to other writers over the past half century. Here are a few of them:

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.

This is the direct opposite of writer's block. It's that rare period when whatever one happens to be writing, whether a novel, an article or a letter home, really does seem to write itself. The writer cannot possibly put words down on paper or on a computer screen as quickly as they come to the mind. When this happens to me, not nearly often enough, I get frustrated because in my haste my fingers jumble the letters, creating gibberish and slowing the writing process all the more.

I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good it was until I read it over the next day.

Time gives a writer fresh eyes, a more objective perspective on the quality of the work. I'm not sure a day is really enough time, however. A week would be better. A month even better than that. Wait long enough to read what you have written and it will seem somewhat unfamiliar, almost as if it were written by someone else. You will be more likely to notice flaws, typos and unclear sentences you failed to notice when the writing was still new and you could easily confuse what you actually wrote with what you meant to write.

I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next.

This may seem the opposite of what a writer wants to do. When we know whatever it is we want to say, we want to say it. And right now. But Hemingway is right. Getting started each day can be difficult, especially if you don't know what happens next. If you can stop one day knowing what happens next, you are likely to still remember that when you begin the next day. And once you have resumed writing, your mind will be in gear and you will find it easier to continue.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Hemingway here is still talking about getting started on a new day of writing, especially when beginning something new or when one has failed to stop at the right place the day before. What he means by "one true sentence" is open to debate, and perhaps it doesn't even matter. It is just necessary to write something, anything. The narrator of the Sebastian Faulks novel Where My Heart Used to Beat says at one point, "You can always tear up the piece of paper and throw it away, but if you don't begin, then nothing comes. You have to submit." That may be what Hemingway was saying. You have to prime the pump. Then the water will flow.

I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day.

This again seems counterintuitive, but Hemingway is talking about letting the subconscious do the work for you. This takes discipline, a word Hemingway uses later, but he found the practice useful. Others might put it differently: Don't take your work home with you.

A movable book

Published in 1964 after Ernest Hemingway's death, A Moveable Feast is itself something of a movable feast. Just as Easter, a movable feast, skips around on the calendar from one year to the next, so this book doesn't stay put. The copy I purchased at Hemingway House in Key West a few years ago is called "the restored edition," supposedly put back the way Hemingway wanted it, except that Hemingway died before deciding what it should contain, or even if it was worth publishing at all.

The title, though a good one, wasn't his idea. Among the titles Hemingway had considered were The Part Nobody Knows, To Hope and Write Well (The Paris Stories), To Love and Write Well, To Write It True, How It Began and How Different It Was When You Were There. The restored edition includes 19 chapters, plus 10 other Paris "sketches," many of which had clearly been omitted previously for good reason.

In this book, even the truth is something of a movable feast. Although generally regarded as a memoir of his experiences in Paris in the 1920s, Hemingway himself called it fiction, and often it reads like his fiction. When he quotes other people, they all talk like characters in his novels.

Various people have had a hand in shaping A Moveable Feast over the years. His last wife, Mary, put the original book together, which may have been a challenge since much of it is about his first wife, Hadley. Later Hemingway's sons had input into its contents. A son (Patrick) writes the foreword for this edition, and a grandson (Sean) writes the introduction.

Hemingway may be at his best in these essays (or stories or sketches or whatever they are) when speaking about writers and writing. Best of all are his pieces on F. Scott Fitzgerald, especially one about the two of them going by train to Lyon to pick up a car and drive it back to Paris. It is a comic tale, fueled by Fitzgerald's hypochondria, his inability to hold his liquor and the fact that the car lacks a top and it rains frequently on the drive home. Elsewhere Fitzgerald is portrayed as a sadder figure because of his drinking, his difficulty in writing and Zelda's (his wife) jealousy whenever he attempts to write rather than spend time drinking with her.

Comments about Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound are also fine, as is his short piece on Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris (not the same one that exists today along the Seine). At one point Hemingway refers to Pound as a saint, interesting because the poet later moved to Italy and supported the fascists.

There is much to like in A Moveable Feast, as well as much that will make one wonder why it was ever included.

A life out of tune

Brodie Moncur, the protagonist of William Boyd's 2018 novel Love Is Blind, has perfect pitch, leading to a successful career as a piano tuner in late 19th century Europe when the piano industry is highly competitive and live musical events are a prime source of entertainment. He proves much less capable of keeping his own life in tune, especially after Lika Blum walks into it.

Brodie is hired by John Kilbarron, a gifted pianist, to tour with him and keep his pianos in perfect condition for his own needs, complicated by the fact that Kilbarron has a weak right hand that requires keys sensitive to the lightest touch. Brodie falls in love with the pianist's Russian mistress, Lika, who wants to become a great opera singer but lacks the necessary talent. Kilbarron mostly ignores her, making it possible for her and Brodie to begin a secret affair.

The bigger problem proves to be Malachi Kilbarron, John's brother, who manages the pianist's career and includes keeping an eye on Lika as one of his responsibilities. Strangely Lika seems more connected to and more fearful of Malachi than John, yet she declines to tell Brodie why. And she refuses to marry him when they finally are able to run away together.

A further complication is that Brodie develops tuberculosis, at a time when that is a death sentence.

Brodie has opportunities to retreat to a simpler life in a warm climate that would be better both for his health and his peace of mind. But, as Boyd's title reminds us, love is blind, and our young piano tuner gives up financial success, takes part in a duel and flees from country to country to escape his pursuer, all for the love of Lika.

The reader knows all this cannot possibly end happily, but it makes compulsive reading. Boyd's novels are always a pleasure.

Lost and found

As the title suggests, Lisa Jewell's 2016 novel I Found You is a missing-person novel, although more accurately it is a missing-persons novel. Several characters are missing, in one way or another, during the course of her story, including a central character who is missing his entire identity.

Alice Lake lives in a remote English seacoast village with her three children, each with a different father. Now there's a man missing from her life, an empty spot in her bed, and when she finds a man on the beach who remembers nothing about his past, she begins to imagine that he might fill it. Because he is missing a name, she calls him Frank. For all she knows, he might be a murderer, yet hope drives her to welcome him into her home.

Meanwhile, hours away, an Eastern European woman called Lilly, who has recently married a British man, becomes worried when Carl Monrose fails to come home from work. When the police use the missing man's passport to try to find him, they discover that, officially at least, he doesn't even exist.

The novel's third leg, set back in 1993, involves a family of four spending a holiday in a seacoast town. Graham, or Gray as he prefers to be called, is in his late teens and protective of his younger sister, Kirsty, especially when an older boy named Mark starts hanging around her. Gray tries to warn both her and their parents that Mark acts strange and should not be trusted. Then he fails to take his own advice, and disaster occurs.

Of course, these three threads eventually weave together, and they do so in surprising ways. There are other missing people in this story, but to say who they are would reveal too much.

This is a novel, though contrived, that one will read at a breakneck speed. If Jewell's title reveals something about the plot, it also reveals something about how it ends.

An extra clue

Readers may be a step ahead of Alan Banks and his team of investigators in the 2019 Peter Robinson novel Careless Love, but that could be because readers have an extra clue, namely the book's title. Even then Banks and company seem a bit slow in figuring out that two mysterious deaths may be connected and that they may have something to do with, well, careless love.

First the body of a lovely college student, dressed in party clothes, is found in an abandoned car, not her own, along a highway. She seems to have choked on her own vomit after an overdose of sleeping pills. But how did she get in that car? Soon after that the body of a wealthy man, also in dress clothes, is found at the bottom of a ravine, apparently from a fall. But what was he doing in that remote area and how did he get there?

Banks and the three women on his team work the cases separately, two investigators each, until a third body, another attractive college girl, is found, this one clearly a murder victim. And there is evidence tying her to the first girl. Finding a mysterious third girl may be the key to cracking the case.

Robinson's British mysteries are not noted for their suspense or surprises but rather for their steady, thorough and seemingly realistic police work. They never fail to please, however, and this one is no exception. Usually mystery readers are disappointed when they can outsmart the detectives, but somehow that isn't the case with Robinson.

Forgotten battles

More than 75 years after the fact, few Americans know that the Japanese army occupied U.S. territory during World War II. Even at the time, few Americans knew about it, even though it resulted in one of the most important American invasions of the war and one of the most costly battles for both sides.

Brian Garfield tells about it in his 1969 book The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, now mostly forgotten, like the battles themselves, but still worth reading.

The Aleutian Islands stretch so far into the Pacific that they cross the International Date Line, meaning that Alaska can be called both the most western state and the most eastern. Protecting all those islands proved an impossible task, although the severe weather, even in summer, helped. In 1942 the Japanese landed thousands of men on the islands of Kiska and Attu, viewing them as both a potential base from which to launch air attacks against the United States mainland and a means to prevent similar attacks by the U.S. against Japan. Conditions discouraged actually building much of a base on these islands, however, and the Japanese were preparing to withdraw when the military minds back in Washington finally decided to take the threat seriously and ordered an attack.

The invasion plans were something of comedy of errors. Garfield offers up the great line: "The War Department worked in mysterious ways its blunders to perform." In fact, much of this book proves humorous, as he devotes entire chapters to the dark humor of those Americans unlucky enough to be stationed in the Aleutians and ridicules generals who outfitted men for battle in the tropics, then sent them to Alaska.

The fight to reclaim these otherwise insignificant islands included, writes Garfield, "the last and longest classic daylight naval battle in the history of fleet warfare." That's a lot of qualifiers, but basically it refers to a sea battle involving just warships, not aircraft. Later he refers to the Battle of Attu as "the second most costly battle of the war in the Pacific," next to Iwo Jima. The invasion taught lessons that would prove valuable on D-Day.

As for Kiska, the bigger prize, the Japanese troops had evacuated under the cover of fog and darkness by the time the Americans invaded. The invaders found an island occupied only by a few dogs.

So why didn't this World War II campaign receive more attention? Garfield cites a couple of reasons. First, there were no Marines involved. It was the Army that invaded, and historically the Army gets less attention than the Marines.  Second, there were too many blunders. The generals and admirals preferred that it all be ignored.

Garfield is best remembered as a novelist, especially for Death Wish and Kolchak's Gold. This book proves he could write excellent military history, as well.

Another look at Joy Davidman

Rarely does one find a bibliography at the end of a novel. That Becoming Mrs. Lewis (2018) by Patti Callahan has one, even if it's called by a different name, suggests how earnestly the author sought to make her novel conform with the true story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis.

A month ago I reviewed Joy, a biography of Davidman by Abigail Santamaria (See "Surprised by Joy Davidman," May 11), and it is one of the sources Callahan used in writing her novel. Yet as faithful to the facts as the novelist tries to be, her Joy Davidman seems easier for the reader to love than Santamaria's. Wherever the truth lies with regard to Joy's character, there is no question but that Lewis loved her. That is clear in both books, as well as in every other book written on the subject, including Lewis's own.

Callahan dwells little on the earlier years of Joy's short life. Mostly the novel covers the period from the early 1950s — when, her marriage to Bill Gresham floundering, she begins corresponding with Lewis —  to their marriage and her terminal cancer.

I am not convinced Callahan chose correctly in telling her story in first person from Joy's point of view. For one thing, this means that the author must find another way to mention the later stages of Joy's illness and her death. This she must do in an epilogue. For another, when we tell our own story we paint ourselves in more positive terms than we may deserve, which probably explains why Joy is more likable here. For yet another, a third-person narrative could have given insight into what Lewis, her two sons and even Bill Gresham were thinking during the growth of this relationship.

One of the best things about the novel, at least from my own perspective, is the way Callahan uses the Lewis book The Four Loves to show the development of his love for Joy, or at least how she sees that development, from friendship to romantic love.

There is much to like about Becoming Mrs. Lewis. Perhaps if I had not read Santamaria's book so recently I would have liked it even better.

Fiction vs. real life

Donna Leon

Late in her novel The Temptation of Forgiveness, Donna Leon gives us an interesting conversation between Commissario Guido Brunetti and his wife, Paola, about fiction versus real life.

"In most novels, things get explained to them (readers) by a narrator," Paola says. "They get told why people did what they did. We're accustomed to that voice, telling us what to think." Later she adds, "Life doesn't have a narrator — it's full of lies and half-truths — so we never know anything for sure, not really. I like that."

Her husband's main contribution to the conversation are the words, "So fiction really is fiction?"

This conversation is a bit ironic for two reasons: 1) It takes place in a novel, a work of fiction. 2) Throughout the course of the novel, Brunetti reads Antigone, a play by Sophocles based on a Greek myth, and thus a work of fiction. His thoughts about the play and the ethical issues involved help guide his thoughts about the case he is working on.

Paola's words about fiction as opposed to real life remind me of something C.S. Lewis wrote on the same subject. Lewis argued that the more realistic stories pretend to be, especially stories written for children, the less realistic they prove to be. Speaking about his own experience as a child, he wrote, "The fantasies did not deceive me; the school stories did." That is, the stories supposedly showing real boys and girls in real situations were always misleading, because as Paola suggests, real life doesn't work that way. They raised, Lewis says, "false expectations." When reading fantasy, all readers (including children) know it's fantasy.

It was no accident that Lewis's own fiction consisted mainly of fantasy, such as his Narnia stories, and science fiction. The farther a story is from reality, he seemed to believe, the more authentic it can be in speaking to us about our own lives. Sort of like Antigone.

Slow moving, fast reading

Donna Leon demonstrates again and again that a mystery novel need not be fast-paced, involve multiple crimes or even be particularly suspenseful to make compelling reading. She accomplishes this feat again in The Temptation of Forgiveness (2018).

Leon's secret lies with interesting characters whose daily lives are filled with enough drama and comedy to keep readers entertained even as the mystery plods along. I sped through this novel more quickly than I do most mysteries.

This time the case before Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police involves a man's death from a fall from a bridge in the middle of the night. It may have been an accident but seems suspicious, especially since the man's wife had visited Brunetti just a couple of days previously with worries that her teenage son might be involved with drugs. The commissario's first thought is that the father might have died in a confrontation with his son's drug dealer.

Brunetti seems to have a one-track mind, my main complaint with the novel. Rather than compile evidence and thoroughly question witnesses, first the wife and son, he always seems to start with a theory, then look only for evidence to support it. When that fails, he tries another theory and gathers more evidence. Yet his methods actually work in the end.

Meanwhile we are amused by his relationships with his wife and children and with the people he works with, especially Signorina Electra, the ever resourceful secretary who seems to be able discover with her computer any information Brunetti might desire. Among her secrets, known only to Brunetti, is that she has bugged the office of their boss.

While not the best book in the long series, The Temptation of Forgiveness (I love Leon's titles) will not disappoint.

Literary staying power

One Summer, Bill Bryson's survey of all the wild things that occurred during America's summer of 1927, includes a discussion of the writers at work during that period. These include the likes of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot and Dorothy Parker, among others.

Harold Bell Wright

Yet as impressive as this list of writers may be, these were not the writers most Americans of that era were actually reading. No, selling many more books than any of those listed above were writers like Harold Bell Wright, Cosmo Hamilton, Arthur Somers Roche, Coningsby Dawson, T.S. Stribling, Hervey Allen, Francis Stark Young, Hermann Keyserling, Warwick Deeping, Thyra Samter Winslow, Knut Hansun and Julia Peterkin. Never heard of them? Neither have I, with the possible exception of Wright, yet in the 1920s they were the authors whose names were found on the best-selling books.

Three authors whose books also sold countless copies during that period may be more familiar. One is Zane Grey, a midwestern dentist who made his mark writing popular western novels, many of which can still be found in bookstores. When my father-in-law was a lad, Grey was his favorite author, and late in his life, when he was nearly blind, my wife read Zane Grey stories to him, giving him a reminder of his youth.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, grew up reading books by Gene Stratton-Porter, another popular author of the 1920s. At her death she still had a fine collection of Stratton-Porter novels. Smithsonian recently ran an article about Gene Stratton-Porter, calling her "America's unsung naturalist." The Limberlost area this author wrote about, not far from where my mother-in-law spent her youth, is now a nature preserve in eastern Indiana.

Another of the writers Bryson mentions is familiar less for his books than for his most famous character, Tarzan. This is Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Bryson's comments on these writers makes me wonder yet again about which of today's writers will be remembered at all a century from now. Who are today's Hemingways and Fitzgeralds? Who are the Wrights, Striplings and Deepings? And who are the Greys, Stratton-Porters and Burroughs?

On the most recent list of bestsellers I find the names John Grisham, James Patterson, David Baldacci, Jennifer Weiner, Scott Turow and Danielle Steele. Will any of their books still be read, or even in print, in the 22nd century? I doubt it.

There would seem to be two paths to literary immortality (or at least staying power): the popular path and the highbrow path. The former requires a book or a character, as with Burroughs, that will be remembered. A popular movie can help, as in the case of Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz. Some books just remain popular with each new generation, such as Charlotte's Web or the works of C.S. Lewis. It certainly seems possible that at least one of Stephen King's novels or perhaps something on the order of The Life of Pi might remain in print for a very long time.

As for the other path, that taken by Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Eliot and company, that depends upon whom  the professors of literature and literary critics of tomorrow decide is worthy of their attention. Sometimes writers considered minor in their own times are later honored for their greatness. There may be no way to predict what will happen in the future. Those writing today are writing for today, today's concerns addressed for today's readers. Yet some of these books will also speak to discerning readers of tomorrow about concerns that are timeless. Who can say now which ones they might be?

Impressive plotting

As impressed as I am with the ability of writers of series mysteries to repeatedly come up with clever and unique plots for their characters, I am particularly impressed with the likes of Faye Kellerman and Julia Spencer-Fleming, authors who time and again must invent ways to involve a second main character, someone not a professional crime solver, in the mystery. And I am not talking about just a Dr. Watson-like sidekick

Kellerman's books feature Los Angeles Police Lt. Peter Decker, yet deeply involved in solving each mystery is his wife, Rina Lazarus. How likely is this to happen even once in real life? Yet each time Kellerman makes it seem at least plausible.

Spencer-Fleming may have an even more challenging task, for she writes about Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne and Clare Ferguson, the local Episcopal priest. The two are more than friends, not yet not quite lovers. Yet somehow whenever the Millers Kill, N.Y., police chief investigates a murder case, she is right there in the middle of it.

Her 2006 book All Mortal Flesh (the title is taken from a line in a hymn) has Van Alystyne's estranged wife as the murder victim. She had kicked her husband out of the house because of his relationship with Clare, and now her mutilated body is found in their kitchen.

As if this isn't bad enough, both of our heroes has a young woman making a pest of herself. In Clare's case, because of the scandal caused by her relationship with the chief, she has been assigned a deacon, supposedly to assist her, but really to keep an eye on her.

Meanwhile, because the chief's wife is the murder victim, he becomes the prime suspect, and an ambitious young investigator from the state comes to town to take over the case, relieving Russ of his gun and badge. Clare herself becomes a secondary suspect.

Despite these restraints, the pair, mostly acting independently, manage to solve the crime. This makes exciting reading, and the pages fly by so quickly one has little time to wonder how likely all this might be in the real world. I call that impressive plotting.