Novels with soundtracks

Most movies have soundtracks, many of them quite good. Sometimes, as with The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the soundtrack can be better than the movie. But novels? Can they have soundtracks, or at least playlists? The thought had never occurred to me until I read Jason Rekulak's The Impossible Fortress, set in the 1980s and with so many songs from that period mentioned that the author gives not one but two playlists at the end, for "historical record," he says. They include such songs as Heat of the Night by Bryan Adams, Walking Down Your Street by the Bangles and Let's Wait Awhile by Janet Jackson.

More recently I read The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, which includes a playlist of songs mentioned in the novel, such as Satin Doll by Duke Ellington, Into the Mystic by Van Morrison and Handel's Hallelujah chorus. This is actually a better playlist because, in each case, the novel tells us something about each piece of music and why it is worth listening to.

Peter Robinson's mystery novel When the Music's Over doesn't have a playlist, but it should. As in other novels in the series, Inspector Banks, Robinson's hero, is an insatiable fan of music, all kinds of music. While reading this novel, I found myself making my own playlist. Here is part of it:

My Silver Lining, First Aid Kit
Tracking (the album), Mark Knopfler
Lament for Jersusalem, John Tavener
Stray Cat Blues, Rolling Stones
Rosalyn, David Bowie

If you are wondering what to listen to next on Spotify (or whatever), these novels offer plenty of suggestions. From Rachel Joyce, I was turned on to the gorgeous Icelandic choral piece Heyr Himna Smidu, which in turn led me to the Icelandic guitarist Sigurgeir Sigmundsson, whose instrumental version of that choral work knocked my socks off.

No excuses

“Bloody hell, you’ve got an excuse for everything, don’t you?”

“Not an excuse, but maybe a reason.”

Peter Robinson, When the Music’s Over

Do you recall situations like this in your life? A parent, teacher or boss demands to know why something was or wasn’t done and when you explain you are told, “I don’t want any excuses.” But didn’t you just ask for one, you want to say (but wisely don’t).

Although both words are synonyms, we tend to think of a reason as the truth and an excuse as an embellishment, if not an outright lie. “The dog ate my homework” sounds like an excuse, when the reason is the pupil played after school, watched TV until bedtime and forgot all about the homework. “I have to wash my hair” sounds like an excuse, when the reason is the girl just doesn’t want to go out with that particular boy.

The reasons we have for things we do, desire, believe or whatever are not always pretty, or as pretty as we would like them to be. So we prettify them, turning them into excuses that we hope will be believed. Surprisingly, most of the time they are.

In a recent Shoe comic strip, the teacher says, “Skyler, I hope you have a good excuse for not turning in your homework.” Skyler replies, “That goes for both of us!”

A love story for grownups

When it comes to offbeat love stories about and for grownups, British author Rachel Joyce may be the queen. She's the writer who gave us The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, actually one love story told from two perspectives. Now comes The Music Shop (2017), a different kind of story but with the same kind of appeal.

In 1988, when the tale opens, the compact disc is all the rage, but Frank insists he will sell nothing but vinyl records in his music shop. The few records he manages to sell are mostly due to his uncanny ability to spend a few minutes talking with customers and then lead them to exactly the record they need, whether they know it or not. When a customer comes in wanting Chopin, he gives them Aretha Franklin, for example, and somehow it always works. Joyce writes that he "heard the song inside people."

Then one day a beautiful German woman named Ilse shows up outside his shop and promptly faints. She has, we are told, skin "so soft, it was like touching something you shouldn't." So begins a love story, even though Frank is the last person to realize it. He is, we are told, "perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people."

Ilse, supposedly engaged to another man, has a habit of disappearing, then suddenly reappearing. Frank starts giving her music lessons, or more accurately music appreciation lessons. They meet each week at a restaurant where he gives her records and explains how to listen to them and what to listen for.

I won't spoil any of the surprises, and there are many. But this love story spans decades, resuming at a time when vinyl is making a comeback. Ilse, who has disappeared again, comes back, as well.

If you have dry eyes at the end of this one, you lack a heart.

The Bible in schools

Terry Gilliam

When I first heard about a bill in the Florida legislature to require public schools in that state to offer an elective course on the Bible, my first reaction was probably similar to that of most others: Why should public schools teach a religious text? Isn't that the responsibility of churches, synagogues and parents? Is it even constitutional? Then I had a second reaction.

I remembered something Terry Gilliam, film director and former member of Monty Python, wrote in his memoir. Not a religious person himself, although he attended a Christian school in his youth, he said he wished young people were taught more about the Bible. Why? Because Bible stories are important to our culture.

We often come across references to the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit, to David and Goliath, to Noah's Ark, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to the pillar of salt, to the Judas kiss and 30 pieces of silver and to countless other biblical images. In most cases the use of such metaphors has nothing to do with religion. Yet without some knowledge of the Bible, these references could be meaningless.

In his book The Art of X-Ray Reading, Roy Peter Clark discusses more than two dozen great works of literature, many of which have important biblical references in their texts or even in their titles. Consider, for example, Moby-Dick, The Sun Also Rises, Paradise Lost, the poetry of W.B. Yeats, the stories of Flannery O'Connor and so on. Understanding biblical imagery is vital to understanding much literary imagery.

Also important in western culture are metaphors that come from Greek mythology (such as Achilles' heel) and fairy tales or folk tales (such as the tortoise and the hare). Yet these essential stories are taught in public schools, or at least they were when I was in school. At one time significant numbers of children attended Sunday school or learned Bible stories at home, so there was no need for the schools to cover this ground. Perhaps today there is.

I can't speak for the specific bill proposed by the Democratic state representative in Florida. Is it a good bill? I don't know. But I think it may be a good idea.

Rape cases, old and new

Two cases over a 50-year period, both involving the rape of teenage girls, occupy Inspector Alan Banks’s team in When the Music’s Over, the 2016 entry in Peter Robinson’s outstanding series of mysteries. Interestingly, both cases justify the book’s title.

In the older case, Banks, newly promoted, investigates an accusation by a prominent British poet that Danny Caxton, a popular entertainer back in the Sixties, raped her when she was 14. A complaint had been filed at the time, but nothing came of it. Caxton had been a friend to top police officials in those days, as well as a generous contributor to police charities. Could that be why most of the records from the case have disappeared? Now Caxton is an obnoxious 85-year-old more confident than ever that the law cannot touch him.

The newer, more interesting case involves another 14-year-old girl found dead on a country road. Evidence suggests she has been raped by multiple men, dumped naked along the road, then beaten to death by someone else. Although Banks is technically in charge of this case, the actual investigation is headed by Annie Cabbot, a member of his team and a woman who herself was a rape victim.

Robinson doesn’t rely on chases, shootouts or even obscure clues and brilliant deductions. Rather this novel, like others in the series, focuses on solid, usually routine police work. Yet it is riveting from first page to last.

The two and only

Comedians Bob and Ray were so closely associated with one another for so long — their partnership lasted 44 years — that when one of them was greeted by himself, especially by someone who didn’t know Bob Elliott from Ray Goulding, that greeting would often be, “Hi, Bob and Ray.” Now the pair must share a biography, Bob and Ray: Keener Than Most Persons by David Pollock.

Both Bob and Ray grew up in the age of radio and gravitated to careers in that industry. Their talents quickly led to new opportunities, one of which put them together in the same radio studio at the same time. Their ad-libbed commentary, complete with characters invented on the spot, caught on with local fans and soon led to a national audience.

“Neither was a cutup, nor a joke teller,” Pollock writes. “They were pleasant, but not effusive. Their total lack of spurious affability and slickness set the two apart from the very institution they were making fun of, yet were still a part of.” Elsewhere he calls them “two introverts in an extrovert’s business.”

Without much planning on their part, one thing led to another. At one time they were on the radio seven days a week. Later came television, movies, Mad magazine and even a successful Broadway show, “Bob and Ray — The Two and Only.” They pioneered the comic commercial, something thought quite daring until business boomed for Piels beer, their first client.

Bob and Ray were heroes to younger humorists, including Johnny Carson, Bob Newhart, Harry Shearer and Dave Letterman, who wrote this book’s foreword. Pollock includes enough excerpts from their performances to help any reader who does not remember Bob and Ray to understand why. I rarely laugh out loud while reading a book, especially a biography. This one had me rolling.

For as closely as they are associated in the public mind, “there was no great bond between them,” according to one Pollock source. They did not socialize outside of work. They rarely visited each other’s homes, and often didn’t even know where the other lived. They were close as business associates, not as friends. This separation when not performing may have been one of the keys to their success.

Homework never ends

In a recent Pickles comic strip, Opal is seen lamenting to her dog about going to her dentist, stopping at the post office and buying something on Amazon and in each instance being asked to fill out a survey. "STOP GIVING ME HOMEWORK, EVERYONE!!" she cries.

For Pickles, among my favorite strips, that isn't a particularly funny gag. Still I had to clip it out because it rings so true.  Like Opal, I'm too old for homework. It's one of the most annoying things about our culture today: Virtually everyone we do business with has a survey they want us to fill out. Buy something at Best Buy and you will be asked to write a review of the product, even if you purchased nothing more than printer ink. One drug store seems to have a survey request waiting in my e-mail by the time I get home. Doctors, who give you endless forms to fill out in their waiting rooms (which most of them seem to ignore), soon have yet another one waiting in your e-mail. "How did we do?" everyone wants to know.

Feedback is valuable for any enterprise, and the internet and e-mail have made it easy, at least for them. They know most of us will ignore these requests most of the time, but by asking everyone all the time they are bound so get some surveys back some of the time. I wonder how helpful they really are, however.

There are three factors that are most likely to prompt me into filling out one of these surveys.

1. Terrible service. Or a poor product, such as a restaurant meal served cold or overcooked. Complaints seem easier to express than comments about routine service.

2. Unusually fine service. When people go out of their way to be helpful, I want to let their bosses know.

3. When I get something for my trouble. I find I am much more likely to take the time to fill out a survey when I am rewarded with a small discount on my next purchase or next meal at a restaurant than when I am entered into a drawing for a prize of $1,000 or more. Ten percent off in the hand is worth more than a thousand dollars in the bush, you might say.

My least favorite question in these surveys is always the one that asks, "How likely are you to recommend us?" There is usually a scale of from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. I am simply not the sort of person who recommends restaurants or doctors or drug stores to my friends. I don't want other people suggesting where I should do business. They probably don't want me interfering into their lives either. If someone asks, I might make a recommendation. Otherwise not. So even when I am thrilled by the service or products at a certain business, my likelihood of recommending them to others will be low. Will that be misleading or confusing to whomever reads these forms? Maybe, but figuring it out is their homework.

We are family

A.J. Jacobs, a Jew, agrees with the Mormons, at least on one thing: We are all related. Go back far enough in our family trees and we will find connections with anyone and everyone. With that theme, Jacobs is off and running with his latest gimmicky book It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree. Jacobs is the guy who set out to read an entire encyclopedia from cover to cover (The Know-It-All) and tried to obey every law in the Bible (The Year of Living Biblically).

This time he decides to organize the world largest family reunion, one to which everyone is invited because, well, we are all related. The reunion itself is almost anticlimactic for the heart of the book lies in his adventures along the way, meeting with the aforementioned Mormons, digging into his own family tree, discovering connections to the famous and the infamous, discussing some of the embarrassing discoveries that DNA research can reveal, interviewing both Hatfields and McCoys, etc.

Jacobs writes with wit and charm, and this time he has a topic that impacts us all, our family (thinking small) or the brotherhood of man (thinking big). Like many people my age, I recently came down with the genealogy bug. The further back in time I go, mostly thanks to those Mormons, the more I am struck by what struck Jacobs: We are all cousins.

Making sense of poetry

Readers who avoid poetry may also be inclined to avoid Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse. That could be a mistake, at least if these readers are a bit like me, someone who wishes poetry was easier to read and understand. Why do poets have to make their work so difficult?

If anyone can make poetry make sense it is Thomas C. Foster, whose earlier books about reading novels and watching films were so much fun and so educational in the bargain. He may tell most readers more than we want to know, but what we do want to know he explains in clear, witty prose, using a wide variety of examples from Chaucer to several contemporary poets.

Foster attempts several times to define poetry. One definition is: "It's really just a lovely form of play. That sometimes rhymes." I like that. Poetry is play with words, images, ideas and sounds. Like most any kind of game, it can be fun even if it doesn't make sense.

His book might be summarized in the seven rules he gives in his first chapter:

1. Read the words.

2.Read ALL the words.

3. Read sentences.

4. Ignore lines on first reading.

5. Obey all punctuation, including its absence.

6. Read the poem aloud.

7. Read it again.

Yet perhaps the most important lesson I got from Foster's book could be an eighth rule: Read it slowly. That has always been my biggest problem with poetry. I want to get through it quickly, at at least the same pace I read fiction. Good poetry, however, takes time. Time to enjoy the sound of it. Time to understand something of what the poet is saying. Time to probe the deeper meaning that is often there just below the surface.

Foster assures us that he doesn't understand some of his favorite poems, yet they give him pleasure anyway. That is another valuable lesson on reading poetry.

One-sentence essays

An aphorism is to an essay as a haiku is to a sonnet. It delivers the message in as few words as possible. Edward Abbey (1927-1989) was a master of these one-sentence essays. Even in his longer work, acclaimed books like Desert Solitaire, readers might be tempted to underline choice sentences here and there, those clever statements that pack a punch in very few words.

Just before his death, Abbey compiled many of his best one-liners into the book A Voice Crying in the Wilderness. Some of those one-liners were probably written on his death bed just for this book. Reading them, one can switch moods in an instant, from laughter to anger (with Abbey or at him, as the case may be), from compassion to resolve.

They are a mixed lot, even when divided by category. Some examples:

On government and politics: "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

On education: "The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book."

On music: "Music clouds the intellect but clarifies the heart."

On women: "Girls, like flowers, bloom but once. But once is enough."

Abbey is best remembered for his ruthless defense of the natural world, especially the American desert (which helps explains the title of the book). Many of his aphorisms touch on this subject, although they may sometimes seem contradictory, such as: "Nature, like Maimonides said, is mainly a good place to throw beer cans on Sunday afternoons." More characteristic is this one: "If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness." Or this one: "Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness  in the midst of a beautiful wasteland."

This may be the best Edward Abbey book I've read. It packs a lifetime of thought into barely a hundred pages.

Back from war

Heretofore it was only death or wounds or temporary transfers that depleted the company. Now peace must be reckoned with.

Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back

For soldiers returning from war, the road back can be much longer than the journey home. Other novels have made this point, but Erich Maria Remarque's The Road Back (1930) ranks as a classic, just as his more famous novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, is the classic World War I novel. This novel is a sequel to the other, even though they share few characters in common because so many characters in the earlier novel, including the protagonist, did not survive.

Ernst and a few other survivors from his company return to Germany when the war ends and find peace a difficult adjustment. There are no officers to tell them what to do. There are choices to be made again, employment to  be sought. Women reenter their lives in confusing ways. How does one sleep in silence? Perhaps most difficult of all, peace separates them even more surely than war did. They are on their own.

That a former soldier should miss the good old days of deadly combat seems odd, but Remarque makes it convincing. It's not just the radical change, of course, but also the trauma left by years of constant fear and extreme violence.

Insightful passages abound in the novel, as when Ernst sees a lovely scene and observes, "We see no countryside now, only terrain, — terrain for attack and defence. The old mill on the top there is no mill, but a strong point; the wood is no wood, it is artillery cover, — Such things will always creep in."

Other passages are just beautifully written, such as this description of a foggy night: "The street lamps have big yellow courtyards of light about them and the people are walking on cotton wool. Shop windows show up to right and left like mysterious fires. Wolf swims up through the fog and dives into it again."

For all the novel's pessimism, Remarque ends with a hint of optimism. "Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home — but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either — for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth."

This novel, like All Quiet on the Western Front, was banned and burned in Germany under the Nazis. Remarque moved to Switzerland in 1932, wrote a number of other novels and married an American film star, Paulette Goddard. For this war veteran, the road back seems to have been a little easier than it was for his characters.

What's left out

Every time we say something, we also conceal, in the instant we put it into words, everything outside it, by choosing not to put it into words.... The act of using words is always accompanied by a partial shadowing.

Takeo Doi, Japanese psychoanalyst,
 quoted by Gish Jen in The Girl at the Baggage Claim

Witnesses in trials may swear to tell "the whole truth," but of course they never really do. All truth, to some extent, is selective truth. Something told is something withheld. Lawyers, in fact, often block attempts by witnesses to tell the whole truth, insisting that they limit their answer to either yes or no or address only the specific question asked.

Gish Jen

As a newspaper reporter I had to be selective not just about what I put first in a story but about what I put into it at all. Space was limited, and some of the things that occurred at a city council meeting, for example, seemed more important than others. Some "news" never made the newspaper. That's the value of having a variety of news sources. Different reporters report news differently.

In her book The Girl at the Baggage Claim, Gish Jen devotes a few pages to this idea, expressed by Takeo Doi, that "using words is always accompanied by a partial shadowing." She discusses it in terms of two notable works of American literature, Walden by Henry David Thoreau and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.

Reading Walden we get the idea that Thoreau lived in isolation in a cabin at Walden Pond and had to depend upon his own resourcefulness to get by. In truth, the pond was just a short walk from Concord. He frequently went into town and had regular visitors from town. It has been suggested that he took his laundry to his mother.

Dillard did something similar, giving the impression she was living alone in the wild. In truth, she lived with her husband, but chose not to mention him in her book. The "incredible wilderness" she wrote about "was a stretch of woods near Hollins College," Jen writes.

So were Thoreau and Dillard being deceptive? Probably. But does what they chose not to say in their books detract from the value of what they did say? That is the more difficult question.

Those who write autobiographies and memoirs always leave something out, and not just those things they can't remember. Some memories seem trivial, others might embarrass either the author or some other person.

That which is left out of a book, a news story or a testimony before court or Congress will always be less serious than that which is included but untrue.