A bookstore fantasy

Of all the shops they might have needed, why would someone choose to open a bookstore? And why would they travel all the way from Sweden to do it?

Katrina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

We read fiction to fuel our fantasies, and this can include just about any kind of fiction and just about any kind of reader.

And for that matter, just about any kind of fantasies.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend will appeal not only to those who yearn for true love, but also to those of us who want to believe that a simple bookstore can change the world, or at least change a small town.

Sara is a young Swedish woman, an introverted bookworm, who had become a pen pal with Amy, an older bookish woman in Broken Wheel, a one-stoplight town in Iowa. Amy invited Sara to visit, but Sara arrives just in time for Amy’s funeral. She had planned to stay a month, but now what?

Broken Wheel has never had a tourist before, especially not an international tourist, and Sara immediately becomes special. She stays in Amy’s house, is driven around by George, a recovering alcoholic, and is not allowed to pay for anything. The townspeople seem to think she would make a good match for Tom, an introverted young man in the community, and everyone conspires to bring them together. And although Sara and Tom are drawn to each other, each is too shy to move their relationship along.

Sara wonders how she can possibly pay the town back for its kindness, then decides to open a bookstore in a vacant building that had been owned by Amy. There she would try to sell Amy’s vast library, even though Amy was apparently the only reader in Broken Wheel.

How can this possibly work, especially when Sara will be in town only for a few days? Ah, but this is fairy tale, of sorts, and anything can happen. And does.

How the impossible happened

In any murder mystery featuring an amateur sleuth, members of the police force are almost always too quick to jump to the wrong conclusions, if they aren't portrayed as being downright stupid. This cliche gets turned on its ear in Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce.

Bruce gives us a classic locked-room mystery, so common at that time. A group of people are guests at the home of Dr. Thurston and his wife. Soon after Mrs. Thurston goes up to bed, the others hear a scream. After her securely locked bedroom door is broken open, she is found with her throat cut. There is an open window behind her, and a knife is found in the yard. How did the murder happen? How did the killer get away? Who could have done it when the others were gathered in a room below?

The next day three famous amateur detectives show up: Lord Simon Plimsoll (patterned after Lord Peter Wimsey), Monsieur Amer Picon (Hercule Poirot) and Monsignor Smith (Father Brown). Also present is Sergeant Beef, the local police officer, who immediately declares that he knows who the murderer is and how the crime was committed. Nobody believes him, however, or even asks him to explain. He has been told by his superiors to allow the three distinguished detectives to complete their investigations before making an arrest, and so Beef sits in the background while Plimsoll, Picon and Smith do their thing in the manner fans of Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and G.K. Chesterton will be familiar with.

In the end, each of the three detectives names a different murderer and explains a totally different manner in which the crime was committed. And each brilliant deduction seems entirely convincing. But then Sgt. Beef tells what really happened, and offers the proof that the other three lacked.

Bruce gives us four -- make that five -- possible solutions to a crime that seems to have no solution at all. His novel is a treat for any fan of classic mysteries, and especially for fans of Wimsey, Poirot and/or Brown.

Remembered

Christopher Fowler's The Book of Forgotten Authors caused me to think of some the authors I remember that could well be mentioned in an expanded version of Fowler's book. Here are but a few of them.

John Howard Griffin

John Howard Griffin — Griffin was best known for Black Like Me, written after he colored his skin in order get a taste of what it was like being a black man in the Deep South in 1959. But Griffin also wrote an incredible novel called The Devil Rides Outside that is high on my list of books I hope to reread someday.

Susan Howatch — As far as I know Howatch is still alive, but it seems to have been a couple of decades since her last book. At one time her novels were prominent in every bookstore. She made her name with historical sagas like The Wheel of Fortune and Cashelmara, but I love her Church of England novels with titles like Glittering Images, Glamorous Powers and Ultimate Prizes.

Douglas C. Jones — Jones, who died in 1998, wrote historical novels set mostly in the American West. They include Elkhart Tavern, Gone the Dreams and Dancing and A Creek Called Wounded Knee. These are fine books that don't deserve to be forgotten.

Richard Kim — Kim was born in Korea and served in the military during the Korean War, then migrated to the United States in 1955. He wrote two significant novels, including The Martyred about the Korean War, especially as it impacted Korean Christians, and The Innocent about a divided Korea after the war.

Walter Lord — Fifty or 60 years ago, Walter Lord was what Erik Larson is today. He wrote popular works of history such as A Night to Remember (about the sinking of the Titanic) and Incredible Victory (about the Battle of Midway).

D. Keith Mano — Mano, author of such novels as Horn and Bishop's Progress, was something of an acquired taste, which I acquired in the 1970s, when I read several of his books. Then he just seemed to disappear from the scene.

Edward Lewis Wallant — I discovered Wallant while in college and became an instant fan. I especially loved The Tenants of Moonbloom, although he was best known for The Pawnbroker because of the Rod Steiger movie. He wrote just four novels before he died at 36.

All these writers are forgotten now, or on their way to being forgotten. But not by me.

Letting go

It taught me that the life of a book really begins when a reader turns to first page. The moment this happens, its fate is out of the creator's hands.

Christopher Fowler, The Book of Forgotten Authors

Christopher Fowler

Christopher Fowler is remembering his youthful days when he would scour discounted book tables and grab any affordable title that looked interesting — or any cover that looked sexy. Later his mother would sort through his purchases and toss out anything she considered inappropriate. Then the real fun would begin — opening the books one at a time to determine whether they were really trash or treasure.

I like his memories, so similar to my own, but I especially like his comment that the life of a book really begins when a reader opens it and starts reading. Christians talk about being born again. A book is born again each time a reader opens it, whether that's just after its publication or 50 years or even a thousand years later. Books can live forever, but only if they continue to be read.

A book on a shelf is like a bear in hibernation. It's inert, just waiting for the day when it can come back to life again.

To some extent this is true of any movie, piece of music or virtually any work of art that requires not just an artist but also an audience to be complete. The creator may know what he or she is trying to say but it is those at the other end of the process who determine what, if anything, the work actually says. Is it any good? The creator's opinion is not the one that matters.

Writers do their best, then must eventually, assuming publication, let their books go. They are like parents suddenly experiencing an empty nest. Will their offspring thrive, improve the lives of others and survive for a long time? Now it's all out of their hands.

Lost in translation

If being too trusting around strangers can get us into trouble, being too suspicious can be worse. So suggests Malcolm Gladwell in his intriguing 2019 book Talking to Strangers.

Gladwell uses the example of an episode of Friends in which, even if you turned the sound off or didn't understand English, you could understand exactly what is going on. That is because actors know how to portray guilt, suspicion, compassion, deceitfulness and so forth. The trouble is, in real life people don't always act the way we think they should act. Looks can be, and often are, deceiving. Even experienced judges, police officers and spy masters can't tell when someone is lying, for example, and Gladwell gives examples of each.

Most of us "default to truth," in the author's phrase, and this, he says, is actually a good thing. Society couldn't function very well without it. We need to trust each other, even if some people will take advantage of us.

Gladwell begins and ends his book with the case of Sandra Bland, a young black woman stopped in Texas for a minor traffic violation. She ended up in jail, where she committed suicide. The officer chose to view her suspiciously because, in his eyes, she was acting suspiciously. In truth, she was just a woman already under stress put under more stress by an officer making a lot out of very little. What should have concluded with a warning and a "have a nice day" led instead to an arrest and the death of an innocent woman.

The book might have been strengthened by more Sandra Bland-like examples and fewer examples of "default to truth" leading to trouble. If you fail to read the entire book, you could easily get the wrong idea about what the author is trying to say. As with strangers, you don't want to make snap judgments with Gladwell.

On friendship

You could be good at being a friend, and no sooner had I had the thought than I knew I was not. I had some friends, but did I have a community? No.

Jessica Francis Kane, Rules for Visiting

May Attaway, an introverted single woman in her late 30s. lives with her father and works tending the lawns and gardens at a local university. When she wins 30 days of paid leave, she decides to use the time to reconnect with four old friends from her youth whom she hasn't seen in years.

This certainly doesn't seem like much of a plot, especially since not much of significance happens on any of these visits, yet Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane (2019) makes absorbing reading.

Two things seem to occupy May's mind. One is trees, which May works with every day, and Kane fills the first-person novel with meditations on various kinds of trees. Like May herself, trees stand solidly and alone, yet under the surface their roots connect with others of their kind.

The other thing on her mind is friendship, or the subject of friendship. She seeks out quotes by famous people on friendship. When she considers visiting her friends — or are they now former friends? — she begins compiling her list of "rules for visiting."

There is a third subject on her mind, but she tries to keep it, or rather him, in the background. She has come to enjoy the company of a certain owner of a certain restaurant. But is he "just a friend"?

If you enjoy simple, beautifully written, understated stories, Rules for Visiting may be your baby. You may even want to share it with a friend.

 

Questions that raise questions

The Curious Reader 2022 daily calendar, produced by Mental Floss, posed an interesting literally quiz on Aug. 5. Listed were five common words or phrases and five famous writers. Which writer invented which word or phrase?

H.G. Wells

Atomic bomb was the only easy one. It had to be H.G. Wells, who wrote science fiction. He was also the only writer on the list who wrote in the 20th century. You knew Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte never worked an atomic bomb into a novel.

But what about sponge cake? Probably not Herman Melville, but which of the three others? It turns out that was Austen. The calendar, unfortunately, doesn't tells us the source of these terms. Nor does it tell us what Austen meant when she wrote "sponge cake." Was it what the term means now or something different?

Today spring cleaning is a common phrase, though perhaps not as common as it once was. Yet it was Charlotte Bronte who first wrote spring clean. Does this necessarily mean she invented the concept of spring cleaning? Probably not.

You probably associate Melville with whales or ships, not nightlife, yet it was he who put first put the word in a book.

And that leaves Louisa May Alcott with the word co-ed. So how did she use the word? Was she the first to abbreviate co-educational? Or did the abbreviation somehow come first?

Obviously this quiz leaves us with more questions than than we started with.

Forgotten

We tend to think that books, like cockroaches, will survive the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but they don't. They disappear, not just in the ravages of war like the Great Library of Alexandria, but through simple neglect, and it is our duty to keep fine novels alive.

Christopher Fowler, The Book of Forgotten Authors

Thousands upon thousands of books are published each year, and most of them will never find their way to a shelf at a large Barnes & Noble store or even a large library. And most of the new books that do manage to earn a spot in bookstores and libraries soon enough disappear for good. Merchants and librarians must find places to put all those newer books that are published.

On my last stop at a Barnes & Noble I made a rough count of the books on four shelves of fiction. There were roughly 30 different novels on each shelf, or about 120 books total. I noticed books by just nine authors whom I know to be deceased. These included the likes of Jacqueline Susann,  Jonathan Swift, Williams Styron, Walter Tevis and Leo Tolstoy. So what happened to all the books by writers both living and dead who once would have been on these same shelves?

Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant & May series of British mysteries, wondered the same thing and decided to do something about it. The result is The Book of Forgotten Authors (2017).

Fowler writes brief essays about 100 writers, mostly novelists, who were once somebody in the literary world. Today few people remember them. I am old enough to remember several, including Charlotte Armstrong, Brian Moore, John Christopher, John Collier, Winifred Watson, Pierre Boulle and a longtime favorite, Jack Finney. Most of the 100 I had never heard of, let alone read. Being British, Fowler focuses mainly on British writers, many of them fairly obscure even at the peak of their careers.

Some names we may not recognize, but we know the books they wrote or the movies based on their books. Boulle, for example, wrote both The Bridge Over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes, yet his novels were never as popular as the movies based on them.

Fowler cheats a bit, including authors who are not forgotten at all. Several of the authors he mentions still have at least some of their books in print. Publishers wouldn't print books nobody will buy.

One of the lessons of Fowler's intriguing book is that all but a few of authors writing today will also be forgotten within a very few years. Fowler, in fact, lists himself as 101 on his list: "Fowler is still alive and one day plans to realize his ambition to become a Forgotten Author himself."

Wrong again

Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute and professor of public policy at Kings College London, explains Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything in his 2018 book with that title. One thing I was wrong about was buying his book.

Actually his explanation of why we're so wrong about so much is the most rewarding part of the book. We are all biased, of course, and our biases shaped our opinions. Most of us view the past through rose-colored glasses. The good old days, when we were young and frisky, seems better to us than today's world. We are fooled by the people and media we trust. We believe what we want to believe. We're bad at math. We're bad at logic. We think our particular family group, town, school, country or whatever is better than all the others.

Duffy explains all this better than I can and is worth reading for that reason. Of course, most of us will have known most of this already. We just tend to believe those explanations apply to other people, not to us.

Yet so many of his examples of what we're wrong about seem ridiculous. What percentage of people do you think are happy? How many young adults do you think still live with their parents? What percentage of the population in your country will be Muslim in four years? But my questions are: Where's the shame in being wrong about any of those things? Why are the questions important enough for any but a few people to worry about?

Some of Duffy's value judgments seem suspect. Don't thy reveal his own biases? Might not they be as wrong as anybody else's opinions?

The best parts of this book could have been summarized in one fascinating magazine article. The book itself seems like overkill.

Punctuation, please

I find it surprising that some writers over the years have disliked and/ or discarded punctuation. I have always thought punctuation to be a writer's best friend, or at least in the top ten. And it's an even better  friend to the reader.

Gertrude Stein

Quotation marks may be the most commonly discarded punctuation marks. Some writers use dashes to indicate speech, making it difficult to place a quote inside a paragraph. Others use italics. Some use nothing at all. Gertrude Stein called quotation marks "unnecessary" and "ugly." Had I not used quotation marks there, you might have thought those words were mine, not hers.

Stein also thought question marks to be "positively revolting" and commas to be "servile." Of course commas are servile. That's what they do. They serve both the writer and the reader.

As an example, here is a line from a novel I am currently reading, In the Dark Places by Peter Robinson, first without the commas: "As he walked toward the hangar entrance the dog trotting by his side his stick clicked on the concrete." Now with just a little effort you can figure that out, but it's not a simple sentence even with the commas. Put them in, however, and it's a significant improvement: "As he walked toward the hangar entrance, the dog trotting by his side, his stick clicked on the concrete."

Commas can be overused. I often struggle with whether I should put them in or leave them out. I usually end up reading the sentence out loud to determine which sounds best.

Most of us use punctuation in our speech. We can hear it, even if we can't see it. Our voices go up a bit on the last word when we ask a question. That's our question mark. We pause slightly for commas and longer for periods. You can usually tell when a speaker is directly quoting someone else or simply paraphrasing. You can always hear exclamation points. If speech needs punctuation to be clear and obvious, then surely writing does too.

Writers who mess with punctuation seem to think their work is creative, independent, progressive, modern or whatever. I just find it annoying.

Tall tales

All that were certain is that Big did not have the gift of bridge-building. Of course he has got weaknesses. We are all termited with them.

Pete Beatty, Cuyahoga

Ohio City is a Cleveland neighborhood located just west of the Cuyahoga River. Downtown Cleveland sits on the other side of the river. With that little geography lesson one can better appreciate Cuyahoga, the delightful 2020 novel by former Clevelander Pete Beatty.

Beatty's tall-tale of a novel imagines this area in 1837 when the these two communities are separate towns and bitter rivals. Cleveland is already bigger than Ohio City, the latter's only advantage being that Columbus Road, which brings agricultural goods up from the central part of Ohio, reaches Lake Erie on the west side of the river. But Cleveland plans to build a bridge that will allow wagons to easily get to the Cleveland side. Now things get interesting.

The novel's focus rests on a Paul Bunyan-like Ohio City man named Big Son, who already has built a reputation for his incredible feats. He seems capable of anything — anything, that is, but getting a paying a job and winning the hand of his step-sister, Cloe Inches.

Big's younger brother, Medium Son (called Meed), narrates the story. In many ways more capable than Big — he has a steady job making caskets, for example — he is nevertheless jealous of his brother's exploits. And he is secretly in love with Cloe, too.

Then come a series of attempts to blow up or burn up the Cleveland bridge and a slick, fast-talking new arrival who also has eyes for Cloe. By the end of the story, Big has raced a steamboat up the river and the two towns agree to become one.

Beatty gives Meed a wonderful voice that makes his words fun to read and then reread. Each page in the novel has its own title, and there are several illustrations along the way. It's just a delight from beginning to end.

Deadly card game

Imagine a serial killer in Europe during World War II, when serial killing was the order of the day. This is what James R. Benn does with exceptional skill in his 2011 Billy Boyle mystery A Mortal Terror.

Boyle was a rookie cop before the war. Now he's an Army lieutenant supposedly given a cushy and safe post as an aide to his Uncle Ike, none other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. But because of Boyle's police background, however limited, Ike assigns him to investigate wartime murders. This time his assignment takes him to Anzio in Italy where the fighting is fierce and Boyle is anything but safe, either from the Germans or the Red Heart Killer.

An unknown American soldier is killing officers and leaving a playing card at the scene — a ten of hearts for a lieutenant and jack of hearts for a captain. Can Boyle stop him before the killer achieves a royal flush?

Complicating the situation is that Boyle's younger brother, Danny, has been sent to Anzio as an infantryman. Boyle's priorities become confused, find the killer or protect his brother? Eventually these priorities become welded together when the killer sees Danny as an insurance policy against his older brother.

This is exciting stuff, with plenty of combat interrupting the investigation. Readers may also enjoy the special guest appearances by such historical personages as Kim Philby and Audie Murphy.

The man behind the cartoons

For many readers of New Yorker magazine over the the past century, the cartoons have been the main attraction, with the movie reviews (especially during the Pauline Kael years) a close second. And many of the best cartoonists — James Thurber, William Steig and George Booth, among them — developed devoted followers. But have any of them rivaled the lasting influence of Charles Addams, whose cartoons spawned movies, television series and numerous books?

These books include a lively 2006 biography by Linda H. Davis, Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life.

Addams, it turns out, was both very much like you would imagine the man behind those macabre "Addams Family" cartoons to be, and yet at the same time very different.

He loved cemeteries (one of his three weddings was conducted in a pet cemetery). He collected ancient weapons and instruments of torture. When he traveled he sought out old houses that looked like they could be haunted. He favored women who looked like Morticia.

Yet at the same time he was rarely seen without a smile on his face. Everyone loved him, including his wives when he cheated on them. He was gullible, kind, gentle, bashful and considerate.

Despite his looks — he was often confused with Walter Matthau — Addams was incredibly popular with women. His dates included Jackie Kennedy, Joan Fontaine and Greta Garbo. He was faithful to none of them, yet they were all devoted to him, including his ex-wives.

His middle wife was the biggest mistake of his life. She was a manipulative, often violent attorney who got Addams to sign over his real estate, many of his best cartoons and the movie and television rights to his Addams Family characters. She left him to marry into British royalty, yet continued to plague his life. He kept giving her things in a futile attempt to get rid of her.

Davis sprinkles Addams cartoons liberally through the biography. Reading her book is pleasure enough, but the many cartoons are like the topping on ice cream.

Define your terms

Screwtape on democracy: You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Once upon a time, maybe just two or three years ago, when people disagreed on social or political issues, they could at least agree on what they were talking about. Not anymore. Today neither side seems to know what the other side is talking about.  We may use the same words, but they obviously don't mean the same thing.

Both Democrats and Republicans in the United States contend democracy is threatened if voters support the other party. Voter ID, to cite one example, ensures democracy, Republicans say. No, it threatens democracy, Democrats say.

More recently recession has come to mean different things to different people. Is the United States in a recession or not? According to the definition in effect five minutes ago, yes. According to the new definition, no.

And what is a woman? What is a man? Until recently we all thought we knew. It was a matter of chromosomes and naughty bits. Thanks to sonograms, parents could know the sex of their baby even before birth. They knew what color to paint the nursery. Today some would argue that parents should put off painting until the child is old enough to decide for himself or herself. One online dictionary now says "typically, a woman has two X chromosomes and is capable of pregnancy."

The Biden administration says the Mexican border is secure. Opponents point to the hundreds of thousands of people swarming across it. So what does secure mean?

One person's assault weapon is another person's hunting rifle.

Who is a terrorist? What is racism? What is diversity? What is free speech? What are fair elections? What is infrastructure? What is progress?

First define your terms, then make your argument.