The missing wife

Laura Lippman's standalone novels have been very popular in recent years, yet it is hard not to miss her outstanding Tess Monaghan series of mysteries featuring a female private investigator. One of those gems is By a Spider's Thread, published in 2004.

The Baltimore detective is hired by a Jewish man to find his missing wife and their three children. Tess herself is half Jewish, as well as half Irish, and so she has some understanding of what makes Mark Rubin tick — why he refuses to shake her hand, for instance.

So protective is Mark that he refuses to divulge to Tess key details that might help her find Natalie, his wife. One such detail is that Natalie's father  has long been in prison, and that she used to visit him there. Mark used to work with Jewish prisoners, which is how he met Natalie.

It turns out that Natalie has long been in love with Zeke, one of those prisoners. While waiting for Zeke's release, she married Rubin and had three kids with him. Now that Zeke is free, she runs away to join him. The three kids, however, are a surprise to Zeke and upset his plans.

Lippman gives us both sides of the story, alternating from Tess and Mark to Natalie and Zeke. One of the key characters is Isaac, the oldest son, who misses his father and works behind Zeke's back to make his life difficult.

It's a grand story that readers will love.

Unintended art

At the beginning of the twentieth century ... novelists began making a case not only that novels were art, but also that certain qualities of certain novels were more artistic than others.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

If Jane Smiley is correct in what she says above, and I believe she is, then some of the greatest novels ever written — Pride and Prejudice, Our Mutual Friend, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Crime and Punishment, etc. — were written before novels were considered art. Thus the likes of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were creating art without realizing it. They just wanted to tell good stories.

Folk art might made a good parallel. Unassuming people in isolated places make quilts or carvings because they find them beautiful or clever, not because they are trying to create art that one day might be on display in a museum.

Did the quality of novels become better after they were recognized as art? Maybe. Maybe not. Before the 20th century the quality of novels was measured primarily by their popularity. If people wanted to read them, they must be good. Since then popularity has actually been considered a detriment to art. If people like it, it must not be very good. Or so many in the literary field seem to think.

I am not making a case that a bestseller like Lessons in Chemistry is art. I haven't read it, and I have no idea. But not all books that were bestsellers in the 19th century are recognized as art today. My point is simply that something need not be obscure or difficult to be artful.

Further, some of the worst novels being written today are by authors deliberately trying to create art. And some of the best are written by people just trying to tell good stories.

The women in his life

We never grow up. I never did anyway.

John Banville, The Sea

When a man's beloved wife dies, would his mind focus mostly on women and girls from a lifetime ago? Somehow it almost makes sense in John Banville's 2005 novel The Sea.

Max Morden's wife, Anna, has just died after a long illness, and he is heartbroken. Yet this first-person novel focuses mostly on boyhood memories about a family that lived nearby during summers by the sea in Ireland. The family includes husband and wife, a twin boy and girl of about Max's age, and Rose, a young woman in her late teens, who helps care for the children.

Partly these memories seem an attempt to remember happier times. "Happiness was different in childhood," he says. His memories are also a record of his discovery of women, which eventually led him to Anna.

His first obsession is Connie Grace, the mother. His eyes follow her everywhere while he pretends to play with her children. Then he falls in love with Chloe, the daughter. Only later does Rose enter the picture, and this leads to Banville's interesting conclusion that, to some degree anyway, wraps everything up.

Banville's literary prose does not make easy reading, which is why he has had much more financial success with his wonderful mystery series featuring Quirke, an Irish pathologist. But for patient readers, The Sea has its rewards.

Ideas out, ideas in

Both writer and reader experience the same basic pleasure — something in one form on the page takes another form in the mind. This is the essential pleasure of literature, ideas going into and out of words over and over and over, any time the readers opens a book, or the author takes up a pen.

Janes Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Jane Smiley

What Jane Smiley writes about literature above would seem true about language in general — about communication in general. Ideas out. Ideas in.

Good communication is usually thought to be when the ideas coming in (to the readers or the listeners) are the same as those going out (from the writers or the speakers). Yet sometimes we misunderstand entirely. This seems to happen all the time in conversation. What I hear isn't what you said, or vice versa. Even the written word can be badly misunderstood, even though writers can take more time framing their words and readers can always reread to better understand what they are reading.

But I am intrigued by one phrase Smiley writes: "something in one form on the page takes another form in the mind." This suggests that the two ideas, what is written and what is read, are rarely identical, and that this can actually be a good thing. Words are read (or heard) by someone with a very different mind, a different perspective, different beliefs, a different history. These differences color almost every attempt at communication. When a writer describes a scene, for example, readers will each picture something in their minds that is not quite what the writer pictured.

This is not necessarily failed communication. It is what makes language so magical. What readers read may often be something deeper, more profound, than what was written. Readers can find ideas in books that never occurred to the authors themselves, which is what makes literary criticism so valuable. Ideas inspire new ideas.

The spoken word and especially the written word are vital not just because they express ideas but because they give birth to ideas. 

Fast action

Joel C. Rosenberg's The Beirut Protocol (2021) proves to be a fast-paced thriller that will satisfy most readers, especially those who prefer action to sex and bad language.

Rosenberg is a citizen of both the United States and Israel, and this dual allegiance is reflected in the novel. Two Americans and one young Israeli are kidnapped by terrorists along the border of Israel and Lebanon. One of these is Marcus Ryker, the hero of several Rosenberg novels. The other American is a young woman.

The terrorists, while pretending to be part of Hezbollah, are actually financed by a new, independent agent. Thus, everyone — the U.S., Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, etc. — is confused by what's going on.

The three captives are tortured, but reveal nothing. If the terrorists knew one of their captives was Marcus Ryker or that another was an Israeli, things would get even worse. Most the story is about how Ryker escapes and brings about the rescue of the other two.

A two-page cast of characters at the beginning of the novel makes life easier for readers, for there are many characters, most with difficult names for American readers.

He, she or they?

For many, many years, when writers, both male and female, needed a pronoun to refer to someone of undetermined sex, male pronouns were always used — he and him. All readers understood, without confusion.

Then at some point in the lifetimes of many of us, someone decided that this is sexist, and thus the confusion began. Some writers began writing only she and her in these instances, as if this were somehow fair or perhaps retribution for past mistakes. Whenever I encounter this, my first instinct is still to try to find the woman in the text I somehow missed.

Other writers alternate, using a masculine pronoun, then a feminine pronoun, then a masculine pronoun, etc. Jane Smily uses a variation of this method in her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. She uses feminine pronouns when referring to a reader, perhaps because most readers these days are, in fact, female. When writing about a writer, especially an imagined writer of an earlier age, she uses masculine pronouns, perhaps because most writers at that time were, in fact, male. Near the end of her book, she uses both masculine and feminine pronouns in the same paragraph. Talk about confusing.

William Shakespeare

Other writers try to  avoid confusion by using they in reference to just one person. I have read arguments for this usage, and I can even agree, up to a point. Even William Shakespeare used they when referring to a single individual. And yet I still find this confusing. How can one person be a they?

So why not write in such a way that they actually refers to multiple people? This is what I do in my own writing, and it works nearly every time. When Smiley refers to a reader in her book. she could have simply referred to readers instead. She could have written about writers in general rather than just one imagined writer. Almost any sentence can be rewritten in this way. The they pronoun includes everybody, and this way of writing satisfies those of us who are sticklers for singular/plural consistency..

On those rare occasions when I actually do need a singular pronoun, I go with the masculine one. If other writers can use she or her and get away with it, why can't I use he or him?

The action never stops

One plot isn't enough for today's novels. There have long been subplots, of course, but now it can be difficult to tell which is the main plot and which the subplot.

Shadows Reel (2021) by C.J. Box is one such novel. The plot that comes first and the one in which Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is most involved must be the main plot, yet the other plot featuring his friend, Nate Romanowski, and in which Joe appears for the climax, occupies nearly as many pages.

In one plot, a Nazi photo album from World War II is dropped off at the library where Marybeth, Joe's wife, works. She takes it home with her, unaware that a pair of killers will stop at nothing to get their hands  on that album. It happens to be Thanksgiving week, when the Picketts' grown children are home. Also there is Nate's wife and daughter, spending Thanksgiving with the Picketts because Nate is off pursuing his stolen falcons.

Nate's part of the story takes him as far as Seattle and Portland, chasing the man who wants to sell the falcons to wealthy Arabs to help finance his plan to overthrow the country, using Antifa as his patsy.

With two plots at once, things never slow down in this novel. When there isn't action here, there is action there.

For those of us who enjoy Joe Pickett novels, this one does not disappoint.

Looking at the novel

Jane Smiley's ambitious doorstop of a book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), seems like two books in one.

The first half addresses her title. She looks at the novel, in general, in 13 ways: its origins, its psychology, how it views history, how it approaches morality and so on. This is interesting stuff, and I will have much to say about her points in the weeks to come, and in fact I have already begun to do that.

The second half of her book consists of her reviews of the "100 novels" she mostly refers to in her first half. I put this phrase in quotation marks because she writes about many more than 100 novels. She writes about three P.G. Wodehouse novels as if they were one. Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time,  seven novels, is treated as one. I haven't done the math, but there may be 130 or 140 novels in all that she talks about in detail.

Many of these novels are ones you, like me, have never heard of, let alone read. Don Quixote is commonly regarded as the first novel, but Smiley puts it seventh on her chronological list. The oldest, The Tale of Genji, was written by an 11th century Japanese woman.

She doesn't choose the novels she necessarily considers the best. For example, she says she regards Our Mutual Friend as the best novel Charles Dickens ever wrote, as well as one of the best novels ever written, yet the Dickens novel she writes about here is A Tale of Two Cities. She includes Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, even though she regards as "a bad work of art."

Many of the novels on her list she has read multiple times. One wonders how she found the time, especially considering how many of her own novels she has written.

Whether one writes novels or just likes to read them, Jane Smiley offers much to ponder.

Happy birthday, twerp

Albert Einstein

Einsteinian became a word in 1925. It was, of course, in reference to Albert Einstein, the great physicist who even now, a hundred years later, is synonymous with brainy. Perhaps in his spirit, that seems to have been a good year for long words in general. Among words coined that year were arachnophobia, Australopithecus, compartmentalize, configurational, neonate, neurosurgeon, oncologist, puerilism, and readability.

Each year at this time I like to celebrate the 100th anniversary of words, according to There's a Word for It, a 2010 book by Sol Steinmetz.

Some product names became part of the language in 1925: Kleenex, Leica, Tootsie Roll and Wheaties. Perhaps because of Tootsie Rolls, we also got the word chewy that year.

The year had its share of new slang words: ball-hawking, coulda, cuppa, dis, dream team, fink, freebie, giddap, gimp, hightail, nudnik, twerp and whoops.

We also got cannoli, cosmic rays, guppy, knitwear, makeover, marathoner, middlebrow, motel, mothproof, needlepointer, pinboard, quiche, superstar, usherette and zipper that year.

Some of these words have already all but dropped out of the language, but many off them seem as fresh as they were a hundred years ago.

The beauty of trees

Few works of art are as beautiful as an old tree.

I live in a part of Florida where ancient trees, mostly oaks, can be found practically anywhere — surrounding my condo complex, on an adjacent golf course where I like to walk in the evening, on the grounds of a nearby church. They take my breath away.

And so I love Susan Tyler Hitchcock's Into the Forest: The Secret Language of Trees. Hitchcock writes beautifully about trees, yet her words are overpowered by the photographs that dominate this National Geographic book. One cannot turn a page without finding a gorgeous photograph — a Japanese maple, an ancient apple tree, fig trees in Australia, children climbing a tree, beech trees in Virginia, cypress trees in a Louisiana bayou and on and on.

One need not read a word to love this book. But anyone who does read the text will be rewarded. Hitchcock's essays are brief — to make room for all those photos — but they say a lot in few words. She tells of a tree estimated to be more than 5,000 years old. Its location is kept a secret to protect it. Trees still survive that were in Hiroshima when the city was otherwise destroyed by an atomic bomb. She describes "forest bathing" — simply walking through a forest slowly and breathing in the air.

Trees have value even beyond their beauty and the worth of the wood and fruit they produce. The author writes that just one red maple tree in Ohio removes 5,500 pounds of carbon emissions over 20 years. It saves 570 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Imagine what a forest can do.

No prizes

There are no prizes for reading, no pay raises in it, no competitive advantage in it. It accomplishes nothing.

Heather Cass White, Books Promiscuously Read

Those are surprising words to find in a book celebrating reading. Are they true? Well, no, but yes.

Schools and libraries give children prizes for reading books all the time. Reading accomplishes nothing? Don't let students ever hear that. No pay raises and competitive advantages? You mean all those self-help books and business books are worthless? How can English teachers and literary critics advance in their careers without reading?

Heather Cass White

Yet for most of us most of the time, Heather Cass White probably has a point. Most of us get little or nothing of permanent value from reading a book. A week after reading a Stuart Woods novel or a Catherine Coulter novel you may have difficulty even remembering the plot. If there are any great lines or great passages or great truths in a book you've just read, you may have difficulty holding them in your mind for more than a few days, or even a few hours. There truly are no rewards for reading most of the time.

White responds to her own words above with this wisdom: "All reading has to offer is a particular, irreplaceable internal experience. Readers should keep faith that that experience is enough."

Sadly, most experiences in life, including the best ones, tend to be fleeting. A convervsation with a friend, a great movie, a walk in the park, a wonderful meal — they are all experiences that offer no prizes, no pay raises, no competitive advantages. They accomplish nothing. And yet, like reading a good book, they make life worth living.

Good, good 'Seymour Brown'

The title character in the 2023 Susan Isaacs novel Bad, Bad Seymour Brown has been dead for two decades. He may be dead, but the mysteries surrounding his life and death remain.

The novel is the second in an entertaining series featuring Corie Geller, a former FBI agent not fully recovered psychologically from her first adventure (Takes One to Know One), and her father, a retired New York City cop. He had been a police detective when Brown and his wife were consumed in an arson fire that destroyed their home and everything in it. Well, not quite everything. Their five-year-old daughter, April, somehow managed to escape.

April is now a college professor specializing in film studies. When someone tries to run her down with a car, she remembers the detective who was so kind to her years before. That's how Corie and her dad get involved in trying to figure out what's going on.

Can this apparent attempted murder have anything to do with Seymour Brown's murder? He had been a money launderer for mobsters. Are they still trying to get back all the money they lost with his death? But why would they have killed him? And why would they want to kill his daughter? Or might Seymour's philandering be the explanation for all this?

Isaacs is known for her female-centric mysteries and thrillers, starting with Compromising Positions in 1978. Her stories tend to be lighthearted and deadly serious at the same time, and Bad, Bad Seymour Brown is no exception. It's a thrill from beginning to end, with lots of giggles along the way.

What makes a classic?

"A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say," Italo Calvino said.

For those of us who have wondered what makes a literary classic, that may be as good a definition as any. If each generation can read a book and find that it has something to say to that generation and if each person can reread a book and discover that it says something this time that it didn't say last time, then you have a classic.

Most books frankly do not fit that definition. Read a typical best-selling novel from even a decade ago and it probably does not hold the same magic that it once did. You may even wonder how it ever became a bestseller. Or reread a book you enjoyed just a couple of years ago, and it may not entertain you or inform you nearly as much this time. You know the ending. It's all familiar. There's nothing new in it. There's no excitement left. What you have is definitely not a classic.

Children often enjoy hearing the same book read to them at bedtime over and over again. To them, this is a classic story. Each time they hear it, it delights them again. For adult readers, classic books work in much the same way. Some people reread the same book every year or two. They never tire of it because they always find something new in it. They view the characters in a different way each time. They find themes they had not realized were there previously. They may simply enjoy revisiting familiar characters.

And then there are old books that each generation discovers anew. They are often taught in school. Or they may be suggested by parents, who may have learned about the books from their own parents. Books like Little Women, Black Beauty, Journey to the Center of the Earth and To Kill a Mockingbird fit into this category. And of course, all fairy tales and nursery rhymes have become classics in the same way.

Classics are almost impossible to predict at the time they are first published. Some books seem like classics, then quickly disappear. Others don't make waves, then are rediscovered and become recognized as classics years later. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is one such book.

Some classics can fade in and out of fashion as tastes and attitudes change. Some classics speak mainly to intellectuals, those with the kind of mind that can appreciate something like Paradise Lost. Other classics speak to more ordinary readers. I was surprised recently to find that Jacqueline Susann's 1966 novel Valley of the Dolls remains in print. Does that make it a classic? I guess it does, at least according to Italo Calvino.

Fun with maps

You might think a terrible map would be one that, for example, shows Illinois west of the Mississippi River, not east.Yet Michel Howe in his Terrible Maps doesn't take maps seriously. The idea in his book is to have fun with them.

Some of his maps are, in fact, hilarious, as promised in his subtitle: "Hilarious Maps for a Ridiculous World." Others are yawners.

The map on the cover shows a typical Howe map. It shows the United Status. Indiana is in red. "Outdiana" is in green. Similarly a map of Africa shows Togo in red. Other countries are labeled "For here." A map of France is called "Map of Nice people." Only the city of Nice is in red. The rest of the country is green.

Howe tends to repeat the same joke over and over. For example, "Railway map of Antarctica" is blank. Likewise a map of Roman air bases in 2nd century AD. After the first, they're yawners.

Sometimes Howe really gets clever. One map shows the word for coma in all European languages. In every case it is either coma or koma, except for Poland, where the word is spiaczka. Another map shows countries with the moon on their flag and other countries with their flag on the moon.

All in all, the book is worth a few laughs, quick to read and fun to show to friends.

Guilty pleasures?

The idea of these books as lesser works, or "guilty pleasures," is baffling to me.

Louise Wilder, Blurb Your Enthusiasm

I, too, am baffled.

Louise Wilder

What Louise Wilder is talking about above is so-called genre fiction — mysteries, romance, science fiction, thrillers and westerns. Why should such books, as a whole, be considered lesser works? Why should a person ever feel guilty about reading a book in any of these categories?

True, some of these books may be poorly written. Some may be trite. Some may be mostly filled with violence, sex, profanity and descriptions of disgusting behavior. But isn't this also true of some books in the general category, even what's regarded as literary fiction? Bad books can be found anywhere, but so can good books.

The concept of dividing novels into genres began, I assume, for the convenience of readers. Many readers prefer reading mysteries or romances or westerns or whatever. And so bookstores began setting these books apart. Why should someone looking for a good sci-fi novel have to look through every book in the store to find the right one? If general fiction could be so easily divided into smaller groups, booksellers would no doubt do so.

Those who review books and teach books in literature classes, unfortunately, have tended to view genres as literary ghettos. These are considered second-class books before they can even be read. The problem with this way of thinking however, is that Jane Austen's Persuasion is a romance novel. George Orwell's 1984 is a sci-fi novel. Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a western (which won a Pulitzer). In other words, quality can be found in genres just as it can be found anywhere else.

And even if one is not looking for literary quality, but just wants a good time, why should you feel guilty about reading what you enjoy?

Maigret, both victim and hero

The cover of the most recent paperback edition of Georges Simenon's Maigret's Pickpocket (1967) shows the interior of a small Parisian restaurant. This is a good choice, for much of the novel takes place in such a restaurant. Most of the witnesses in this murder case, as well as all of the suspects, eat and drink here most evenings.

The story begins when a young man picks Inspector Maigret's pocket on a bus. The stolen wallet includes his police badge. Yet the wallet is soon returned with nothing missing. The thief reveals himself and pleads with Maigret for his help.

Ricain is an impoverished, but apparently talented, man trying to break into the film industry. He tells Maigret that while he was out searching for someone to loan him some money, his wife, an aspiring actress, was murdered in their apartment. Although the husband is the most likely suspect, Maigret does not arrest him and, after the first day, does not even keep him under surveillance. He considers everyone a suspect — those men with whom Sophie had shared her sexual favors, jealous women, those who have loaned Ricain money.

As usual in Simenon novels, Maigret gathers information bit by bit, processes it silently and reveals all only after he has worked everything out in his mind. Readers hear the same clues but have no idea what is going in Maigret's head. Cases seem to be solved suddenly, rather than gradually, surprising all including the inspector himself.

This novel, which has a twist you won't find in many mysteries, is another winner for one of the most prolific of all mystery writers.

A social experience

The extremity of the Dostoevskian world is a good reminder that the prolonged exposure to a novelist's sensibility required by a lengthy novel is akin to a long train ride with a stranger, sometimes more demanding and uncongenial than the reader is prepared for. In that sense, every novel is, in the end, a social experience as well as an experience of solitude.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Jane Smiley compares reading a long novel, like Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, to talking to a stranger on a long train ride. I don't know why the metaphor would not work just as well with a short novel and a short train ride.

Later in her book she states that "the novel is always a social occasion."

The point is that even though one may be reading in solitude, there is a conversation going on. The author is speaking to you and, at least in your own mind, you are speaking back.

Sometimes authors, in a sense, become our friends, and we keep returning to their novels because we enjoy conversing with them. A novel by a new author is more like talking with a stranger on a train or a plane. One never knows what to expect, whether we are going to like this person or not. What the author says may surprise us or even shock us. The language used by an author may repel us or confuse us — or simply delight us.

Yet the social experience of reading a novel, it seems to me, involves more that just conversing with the author. One also meets a variety of characters. And like the strangers one might meet at a party, you are drawn more to some than others. Some you want to spend more time with, others you would prefer to avoid.

Again, the appeal of novel series with continuing characters has to do with our wanting to spend more time with old friends. I keep reading Alexander McCall Smith's novels set in Botswana because I enjoy sitting in on conversations with Precious Ramotswe, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and the others. Reading novels is indeed a social experience, ideally a rewarding one.

Comfort books

We know what comfort foods are. They usually are the kind of meals Mom used to make — vegetable soup, meatloaf, baked chicken, macaroni and cheese, whatever.

But what about comfort books? Can there be such a thing? I think so.

In one sense, these are books that thrilled us in our youth, books we return to, at least in our minds. Sometimes we may actually want to sit down and read them again. With luck, these books still have the same impact, or at the very least remind us of the impact they once had. I know of a man who tried to collect all the books he read as a child, or that were read to him, preferably in the same editions he remembered from his boyhood.

In another sense, at least for some of us, books give comfort in themselves. The very presence of books might do this. Preferably they are your own books, although libraries and bookstores might help, as well.

A. Edward Newton

I came across the following quotation from A. Edward Newton, a noted collector of books: "Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity ... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance."

Books, Newton suggests, give comfort even if unread. I am sure that is not true for everyone, or even for most people. For some of us, however, it is very true. Some people find comfort in the art on their walls or in family photos or in various trophies and souvenirs from their lives. But for some of us who understand what Newton meant, books do the job by their very existence.

Little things

In Mattagash, Maine, winter is like a weight that presses you down, holds you there until you think you can't breathe anymore. You just seem to black out, and when you wake up, it's spring again.

Cathie Pelletier, The Weight of Winter

For much of Cathie Pelletier's long 1991 novel The Weight of Winter, the title describes what it is about. The entire novel takes place before Thanksgiving, meaning that for most people in the Northern Hemisphere, it isn't even winter yet. But winter comes early to northern Maine, and already there are several deep snowfalls and days of bitter temperatures. Winter comes to Mattagash long before the calendar says so.

Pelletier's novel roams from one set of characters to another, demonstrating how winter weighs them all down.

If the story has a main character, it would probably have to be Amy Jo Lawler, a middle-aged woman who lives with her mother. She has neither a job nor a husband or children. She feels that her mother, Sicily, is even more of a weight on her than winter is. She wants to put her in the nursing home where Sicily's best friend lives. This might free her to find work and perhaps to develop her affair with a married man.At the very least, the two of them would not have to reman so quiet in her bed late at night.

Meanwhile Lynn Gifford does have a husband and children, but Pike is an abusive drunk whom she still loves in spite of it all. For her children, one son in particular, it is not so simple.

And then there is the Crossroads, the bar where Pike does his drinking and which local busybodies want to close down.

Yet if the novel has a theme, it is probably not so much the weight of winter — most of what happens here could happen in the summer just as well — than with another character's comment late in the book: "There ain't no murders and bombs and hijackers. That's why them little things is so important. When they're all strung together, them little things make up the whole of some people's lives."

Pelletier's novel makes me think of the old song Little Things Mean a Lot.

Reading on the run

We are doing our reading on the run snatching time pledged elsewhere.

Jerome Weidman

Ideally reading is something we reserve time for. Some read to relax, such as just before going to sleep at night or when they are vacationing on a beach or on the deck of a cruise ship. Others prefer to read when they are most alert, most able to fully understand what they are reading. The best students do this.

Jerome Weidman

Most people — or at least most people with books in their homes that they hope to read — probably identify with the comment by Jerome Weidman quoted above. We do "our reading on the run, snatching time pledged elsewhere."

I have seen drivers with books in their hands while they wait at traffic lights. I read in doctors' waiting rooms and while waiting for my food in restaurants. We grab moments here and there so that we can read without interrupting our busy schedules.

One of the appeals provided by thrillers is that it is literally difficult to put them down.  Reading the next chapter and then the next becomes more important than "time pledged elsewhere." Most other books are easier to place lower on our agendas.

I wrote book reviews for most of my career, forcing me to into the habit of setting aside time for reading each day. In retirement I still maintain this discipline, or at at least I try to. Yet even now, with so few things actually on my agenda, I still often feel that I am reading on the run. There's always something else one could be doing.

The man after Lincoln

Countless books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Very few have been written about his successor, Andrew Johnson. Yet Johnson's presidency also had an immense impact on American history. As Howard Means says in the closing words of his 2006 book The Avenger Takes His Place, "His failures are still with us."

The title comes from a poem by Herman Melville. The couplet reads, They have killed him, the Forgiver —/The Avenger takes his place. Johnson's attitude toward Reconstruction was expected to be, and probably was, quite different from what Lincoln's might have been. Chances are, however, even Lincoln at his merciful best would have had a difficult time not making a mess out of what was left after the Civil War — an impoverished South, a vengeful North, freed slaves who had no place in a still-divided nation.

Johnson was a Southerner — from Tennessee — whom Lincoln chose as his running mate because he was anti-slavery. Yet Johnson's reasons for opposing slavery had little to do with the slaves themselves. He was resentful of those who profited from slavery, the rich planation owners and the industrialists who got rich from the cheap labor. He opposed slavery not because it was unfair to blacks but because it was unfair to whites. When slaves provided the labor, there were no jobs for lower-class whites, like himself. To him, slave owners were the evil, not slavery itself.

Johnson was not without his good points, and much of his press coverage at the time was glowing. Yet he was unwilling to compromise, and his strong biases caused him to make mistakes that Lincoln might have avoided. Even so, America was well on its way to recovery and equality of the races until the 1960s, when another Johnson — Lyndon — screwed things up again with his War on Poverty that set back the fortunes of so many descendants of slaves by making them dependent on the federal government.

Buyers or browsers?

The good bookstore sells books, but its primary product, if you will, is the browsing experience.

Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores

For those who enjoy shopping, is it the buying that is most pleasing or is it the search for something to buy?

Unlike women, most of whom seem to enjoy looking at new clothing whether they purchase anything or not, most men enter a clothing store thinking only about what they want to buy, whether it's a new shirt or a new belt. They find what they want as quickly as possible, then leave without looking at anything else. Yet in a hardware store or an electronics store, men may be the ones who like to look around at what's new.

Bookstores have both kinds of customers. Some people are looking for a particular book, a best-seller perhaps, but others just want to look at books, whether they find anything they want to buy or not. What's interesting about Jeff Deutsch's comment above is that a "good bookstore" prefers the second kind of customer, the one who comes just to look around rather than the one who comes to buy something and then leaves.

In the long run, the browser probably buys more books. I am a browser, and I buy a lot of books, yet I rarely enter a bookstore with a specific book in mind.

I doubt that many browsers leave a bookstore empty-handed.

Bookstores need to cater to browsers just as most department stores cater to their female customers. 

Hidden genius

The title of Elaine May's biography, Miss May Does Not Exist, are her own words, written as her biography on an album cover. On the same album cover, Mike Nichols, her comedy partner at the time, wrote a relatively long, name-dropping biography about himself.

It is actually a good title for Carrie Courogen's 2024 book about the Hollywood and Broadway genius who somehow flew under the radar for most of her life. Some of May's best work was as a script doctor for such successful films as Tootsie, What About Bob? and Ghostbusters II, for which she insisted she receive no screen credit. May was also a hidden influence on most of the films directed by Nichols, her former partner in comedy sketches that became famous in the 1950s.

When she did get credit, as in the film Ishtar and various Broadway flops, her work was often panned. Staying hidden seemed to work for her.

As if May's frequent anonymity did not make Courogen's work difficult enough, there is the problem that even when May did talk about herself, it was mostly lies. She told different stories to different people at different times. Even when Miss May did exist, the truth about her often didn't.

Yet the author was able to talk to many other people who worked with or knew Elaine May over the decades, giving her book more credibility than its subject might prefer. She paints May as a genius, a perfectionist and a workaholic who was loyal to her friends, and she had many of them despite the introversion that often drove her into hiding.

She was at her best as a writer, although she also drew raves as a performer. As a director, whether in Hollywood or on Broadway, she never considered her work complete. This caused her to shoot so much film that she would spend months in the cutting room trying to make a film short enough to be shown in theaters. In her plays, mostly one-act ones, she would rewrite scenes from one performance to the next. Although her difficult reputation may have been deserved, much of her work, especially Ishtar, was better than its own reputation. And some of her work, especially her early film A New Leaf, was much better than even she would admit.

Elaine May was most prominent in the public eye back when her comedy act with Mike Nichols was seen frequently on television and was a smash on Broadway. Few people still alive  remember that, but Courogen's fine book helps bring Miss May back into existence.

Write for yourself

Let the reader in you influence the writer in you. Put yourself in the reader's place, then write what you'd like to read.

Patricia T. O'Conner, Words Fail Me

Patricia T. O'Conner

Patricia T. O'Conner's advice for writers — write what you want to read — may be the best advice any writer or would-be writer will ever hear. Some writers seem to do just opposite. They write whatever seems to be most successful at the time. Their work seems imitative, unoriginal. They follow a formula. And if what they write is half-way successful, they imitate themselves

I admire writers like Ann Patchett and Jane Smiley, who never seem to write two novels alike. When something catches their attention, they build a story around it. They write the stories they would like to read, and being avid readers, they don't want to read the same story over and over again.

For the past few years I have tried my hand at writing sermons — and sometimes preaching them. I realize now that this compulsion of mine has something to do with the fact that I have been listening to sermons all my life and found most of them forgettable. I wanted to try writing the kind of sermons I would like to hear.

I think a sermon should have something for the mind (it should be intellectually stimulating), something for the heart (it should stir emotions) and something for the spirit (it should in some way make the listener a better person). And it should be something that can be remembered for at least a day or two. Have I succeeded? I do not know. But I do know they are the kind of sermons I want to hear on Sundays.

Implausibility makes the story

Jane Smiley stopped me cold when I read this line in

Jane Smiley

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel: "Every form of the novel contains some basic implausibility."

Can she be right? Isn't plausibility something we look for in a novel? Don't we want a story we can believe? Don't we criticize novels that seem implausible? I know I do.

And yet the more I thought about it the more I realized that it is implausibility that, in some sense, makes the story. There can be too much implausibility, but there can also be too little. This is true of any story, not just a novel.

If you go to the grocery story to buy a dozen eggs, it doesn't make much of a story. It is entirely plausible. But if, while at the grocery story, you encounter someone you haven't seen in 20 years and whom you didn't know was within 500 miles of that grocery store, you would have a story you would want to tell somebody. The two of you being in the same grocery store at the same time was implausible, but that is what makes it a story worth sharing.

Just the fact that a boy would get on a raft with a runaway slave and float downriver seems implausible. And why would a runaway slave want to go south, not north? And yet here we have the basic plot of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of America's greatest novels.

What are the chances that an escaped prisoner encountered by a boy would one day become that boy's benefactor? Yet there, in that implausibility, you have the plot of Great Expectations, the notable Charles Dickens novel.

Implausibility makes a story. Too much of it can destroy it.

Being nice

Midway into Kim Ho-Yeon's lovely novel The Second Chance Convenience Store, one character says to another, "Pretending to be nice, even when you don't mean it, actually makes you nicer." The story is about a  man whose life fell apart because he wasn't very nice and who gets his second chance literally by being nicer to people.

Dokgo is a homeless alcoholic who spends most of his time in the Seoul train station. He has lost all memory of his previous life. He finds a woman's purse in the station, and it has the owner's phone number inside. Instead of just taking the money in the purse, he calls that number. The elderly woman is on a train, but returns as quickly as possible to reclaim her purse. She rewards Dokgo with free food from the convenience store she owns and eventually, when he agrees to stop drinking, she offers him the night-shift clerk's job at her store.

Now committed to being nice, despite his rough exterior, Dokgo manages to give the store itself a second chance by increasing nighttime business. He also changes the lives of several of the store's customers.

But then the woman's son, who wants her to sell the store and give him the money for a business investment, realizes that Dokgo is the obstacle he needs to eliminate to make this happen. He hires a private detective to discover who Dokgo really is.

Kim gives us a charming story about the power that can be found by simply being nice.

Our idea of heaven

Where shall we find the time and peace of mind to read the classics, overwhelmed as we are by the avalanche of current events?

Italo Calvino

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges

In a way, Jorge Luis Borges answers Italo Calvino's question.

Jorge Luis Borges

Borges is not the only person to fantasize about heaven in the form of a library. I have done so myself. I assume that most people who believe in heaven want that heaven to provide them with the best of what they found in life, whether that be a reunion with loved ones, a prime fishing spot, beautiful music (those images of heavenly harps suggest this very thing) or whatever else it might be. If heaven doesn't give us what we most want, we may think, then what good is it?

One thing that heaven promises, whether it offers harps or books or fish, is eternity — not endless time but rather an end to time. And thus, to return to Calvino's question, there would be ample opportunity to read those classics. Or those best-sellers. Or all those mysteries and thrillers and romances we never found the time for. Then we could read them all over again.

And since it's heaven, maybe we would be able to listen to beautiful music and go fishing, as well. Any heaven we can imagine must have more than just books.

Artificial language

In his book Word Play, Peter Farb says that roughly 700 artificial languages have been created. None of them has ever caught on.

The most famous of these languages may be Esperanto, invented by a Polish physician in 1887. The idea was to simplify language so that people around the world could easily communicate with each other. Thousands of people have learned the language over the years, but not nearly enough. Esperanto speakers have found that the only time they can use it is with each other. When they come together, they can speak Esperanto, but when they go to a grocery store or to their jobs, they must revert to English, French or whatever language the people in their own community speaks.

Similarly a few Star Trek fans have learned the Klingon language (Klingonese), spoken by an alien race in movies and TV episodes, but have found that they can use it only with fellow fans who have also learned the language. Otherwise Klingonese is useless.

This is not altogether a negative thing. Just as slang is developed for use by insiders, not those outside the group, so an artificial language can serve this purpose. Those who speak the Klingon language probably enjoy being on the inside, even if they can't speak the language outside.

The problem with artificial languages is simply that they are artificial. Real languages develop naturally and very gradually over thousands of years. People who live in close proximity and must communicate on a regular basis speak in a way those around them will understand. We speak a language not because it is simple — most languages are not — but because we must use it to communicate with those we want to communicate with.

We may think it odd that the people of Germany, France, Spain, Italy and other European countries speak different languages even though, in today's world, they seem very near to each other. But for most of history, these cultures and languages developed separately. People didn't travel that much.

Many students learned French or Spanish in high school, yet soon forgot what they learned because they lacked the opportunity to use that language in the community where they lived. These are not artifical languages, but they might as well be in an area where there is little chance to use them.

A possessed father

Raising a teen-age daughter must be terrifying, especially for any father who remembers what teenage boys can be like.

Matt Haig explores this terror in his 2008 novel The Possession if Mr. Cave. Terrence Cave is a dealer in antiques whose wife was killed and then his son commits suicide early in this novel. And now Terrence must raise the boy's twin sister, Byrony, who is 15 and beautiful, by himself — or with the help of his mother-in-law, who always takes the side of the rebellious daughter.

As if this situation would not be intimidating enough for any committed father, Haig adds a complication, The title refers to "possession," and Terrance comes to believe he is possessed by the spirit of his son, who was always jealous of Byrony. Now, Terrance believes, Reuben is trying to harm her through him.

Increasingly the father becomes more desperate, especially as Byrony establishes a serious relationship with a boy judged unworthy of her.

Haig's novel begins with one tragedy, and every reader will know the story is moving headlong toward another one. For this reader, at least, just the initial situation was frightening enough.

Obsolete bookstores

We no longer need bookstores to buy books, even serious books. In fact, bookstores might well be an inefficient way to buy books in the twenty-first century, and it is certainly the case that we have become creatures of efficiency and convenience.

Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores

Keep in mind that the above lines were written by a bookstore manager, Jeff Deutsch, director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores. His career depends on bookstore sales, yet even he concedes bookstores have become unnecessary.

In today's world. where efficiency and convenience reign supreme, stores of almost every kind have become unnecessary. Some people even buy their cars online. Some people get Amazon deliveries of products almost daily. Grocery stores and restaurants will deliver food to your door. Pharmacies do the same, or you can use a drive-through so that you never have to actually enter the store. Many jobs you can do from home. Doctors no longer make house calls. Otherwise, you almost never have to leave home.

But our focus here is bookstores.

I rarely purchase books through Amazon, but two or three times a year I will order relatively rare books I cannot find elsewhere. More commonly I order books from the catalogs of Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller, a company that seems almost as obsolete as a bookstore. Hamilton has a website, but searching through thousands of book titles online can be oppressive. Their catalogs — several each month — are more fun to browse through. Some books are new, sold at discount. Others are remaindered, meaning they did not sell in bookstores and are now available at more extreme discounts.

Then you list the books you want, write a check and send the order form through the U.S. mail, all steps that seem somehow old-fashioned but yet work perfectly well, even though it can take weeks for delivery, not like an Amazon truck showing up in a day or two.

Yet I prefer shopping in bookstores, those few that remain. I like the atmosphere of a bookstore — shelves full of books, tables piled high with books, people who love books, like me, looking for treasures in print.

Just as many of us would rather hold an item of clothing in our hands, try it on and look at ourselves in a mirror before purchasing it, rather that ordering it online and perhaps having to send it back, many of book lovers prefer holding books in our hands. We like to read the cover, leaf through the pages and perhaps read a few lines before making a purchase. I have placed books back on at the shelf simply because I didn't like how they felt.

As long as there are people like us — people who prefer shopping and eating at an actual business, rather than doing everything online and never having a reason to leave home — these businesses will hang on, obsolete or not. Bookstores included.

The wonder in literature

Bryce Canyon

We mostly associate the phrase "state of wonder" with the natural world. A starry night, a glorious sunset, our first glimpse of Bryce Canyon or even a walk through a woods on a perfect autumn day can give us this feeling of wonder.

European cathedrals or skyscrapers can do the same, as can extremely unlikely coincidences, the first glimpse of our newborn son or daughter and a few other experiences in life. But what of literature? Can we experience wonder when we read?

I think the search for wonder may be one of our main motivations for reading. When we read thrillers, for example, some wonder comes with each plot twist. Because there can be so many of them in one novel, thrillers are extremely popular. The fingering of the killer in a murder mystery, usually an unlikely suspect, gives us the wonder we have been reading the whole novel to discover.

In other types of fiction, wonder takes different forms. Often it is found in the perfect sentence somewhere in the midst of a novel where we discover what the title really means or what the story is actually about, when we had thought it was about something else. Sometimes we discover that a character is not the kind of person we had thought all along. Or it may come when the main character, at the end of the story, takes some action we had not foreseen. Sometimes a lovely metaphor offers wonder.

In fiction, revelation provides wonder. Surprise provides wonder. Beauty provides wonder. Not unlike Bryce Canyon

Voting for W.C. Fields

"Is it possible to be funnier than W.C. Fields?" Dick Cavett asks in his foreword to a 2016 reprint of Fields for President, a book Fields wrote for his mock campaign for president in 1940.

Well, yes, it is possible to be funnier than W.C. Fields. Even in his prime, Fields was not funny to everyone. And even those of us who have laughed at his movies over the years have not laughed at everything he did. He had hits and misses, like everyone else who tries to be funny.

His book, which undoubtedly has lost some of its humor over 85 years, has some of both.

Fields's "platform" for the presidency covers seven subjects: marriage, income tax, resolutions (or campaign promises), etiquette, physical fitness, the care of babies and business success. He devotes a chapter to each.

Regarding marriage, he says, "Never try to impress a woman! Because if you do she'll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life." A hit.

On the income tax, he says, "In other words, the government fixes it so that you have a choice of (1) starving to death by having an income so low that you do not have to pay a tax; or (2) have an income high enough to pay a tax — and then starving to death after you've paid it." A hit.

As for kissing babies on the campaign trail, he writes, "I always carried a number of sterilized blindfolds, which I would casually place over each baby's eyes before I kissed it. This prevented its growth from being stunted through terror." Another hit.

The comic's misses tend to come when he gets wordy, as in a long story about a common house fly on the wall at Harvard Medical School that ends up getting a degree. What does this have to do with running for president? Not much, and the humor ends long before the story does.

Those who love W.C. Fields will find enough pleasure here to make reading the book worthwhile. Others should simply avoid it.

An international language

English has become an international language in two different ways. First, people almost everywhere in the world learn English in school even if it is not spoken in their homes. Whether it's for business, for enjoying western movies, websites, books, etc., or simply for speaking with American tourists, it makes sense to learn English wherever one lives.

Recently I stayed in a home where several young men from Nepal were living while attending college in Ohio. In conversing with each other they always spoke their native language, but they could switch to English very easily whenever I stepped into the room. I, on the other hand, know English and only English.

I have known visitors from China, Nigeria, South Korea and other countries who spoke my language as well as I did, often without much of an accent. That's because English is an international language. English speakers can visit almost anywhere in the world and find someone who understands what they are saying.

English is international in another way, as well. The language readily welcomes new words from anywhere. While French is a language that discourages acceptance of foreign words, English readily accepts foreign words and is enriched by them.

Consider the origin of several words so common that we might think of them as being English from the start: rocket (Italian), rapids (Canadian French), punch (Hindi), boss (Dutch), emotion (French), tycoon (Japanese), robot (Czech).

The reason foreign words sound English when English speakers say them is that while we may accept foreign words, we do not, as a rule, accept foreign pronunciations. We may accept ukulele from the Hawaiian language, but that doesn't mean we say it the same way native Hawaiians say it. We turned it into an English word.

By contrast, when an English word is adopted into many other languages, it is often pronounced as an English speaker would say it. Thus, it can be surprising to listen to a German radio station, for example, and to suddenly hear English words, said as an American might say them, inserted into otherwise German sentences.

When other languages sometimes adopt English words, they often take them pronunciation and all. English speakers, on the other, welcome words from anywhere, but then we make them our own.

Nothing respectable

I read in preference to almost every other activity, though I didn't read anything respectable.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Jane Smiley

Like so many girls of her generation, Jane Smiley enjoyed reading the adventures of the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew, as she describes it now, not "anything respectable." Nevertheless she matured into one of America's most respected and versatile novelists, as well as the author of 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, a 500-plus page book that analyzes 101 major novels, none of them featuring Nancy Drew or the Bobbsey Twins.

I guess one could consider today's brief essay as a continuation of the one I posted a few days ago, "Too many or too few?" At that time I considered the question of whether low-brow books drive out the high-brow ones. In Jane Smiley's case, that was obviously not true.

And I don't think it's true for young readers in general. Anything they read with pleasure, whether it's Nancy Drew mysteries or comic books, encourages the habit of reading. Perhaps they will transition one day from Nancy Drew to Harlequin romances, and that's OK. At least they are still reading. Some of these avid young readers, however, will transition to Jane Austen and George Eliot. What's important for the young is developing the reading habit, an even more challenging goal in an age of smart phones and social media.

My granddaughter, who recently turned 24, always has several books going at once, just like her grandpa. She was overjoyed when I gave her a gift card to buy more books. She is proof that even in today's world it is still possible to create avid readers, not unlike Jane Smiley.

Fake news

I loved The Onion once upon a time. Then I found the Babylon Bee, which  had sharper, funnier satirical headlines and was more consistent with my own worldview.

The other day in Greensburg, Pa., I found the first copy of The Onion I had seen in years, and I bought it to see how it stacked up in 2025.

All satire, including the Bee, has hits and misses, and much of this depends upon the individual. Some things just strike some people as funny, but not other people. This issue of The Onion had a few hits, though not many in my opinion.

On the front page, I liked the story headlined "Trump Imposes 25% Tariff On Chinese-Made Trump Products." Also funny were a couple of teasers for stories not actually in the fake newspaper: "Trump Writes Netanyahu Strongly Worded Check" and "Grandma Recalls Wild Teenage Year Before She Met Grandpa."

Inside there is a mostly dull graphic called Alligator Alcatraz By the Numbers that has one redeeming gag: "3 — Average outfit changes per Kristi Noem photo op." To be funny, satire should be exaggerated reality. Too much exaggeration and it's not funny. Not enough reality and it's not funny. This gag hits the mark perfectly.

By contrast, there is a graphic on the opposite page headlined "CDC Figures It Easier To Start Tracking People Without Measles." Here we have too much exaggeration and not enough reality. Back in the Covid-19 days, a similar map might have actually been amusing.

Most of the rest of this issue of The Onion has a similar imbalance and thus fails to tickle my funny bone.

The Babylon Bee has its own share of failures, too, and I read very few of their fake news stories because they fail to consistently amuse. Their headlines, however, are usually first-rate. Consider some recent examples:

"Entire American University System Officially Designated A Terrorist Organization."

"Millions Of Christian Extremists Gather To Pray For Those Who Want To Kill Them."

"Navy Recruitment Soars After Going Back To Blowing Up Pirates."

"Trump Invites Doubting Democrats To Touch The Hole In His Ear." (That may be a bit sacrilegious, but it's still funny.

"Chuck Schumer Said He's Never Felt In Danger Walking In DC And Neither Have His Ten Bodyguards."

"CNN: Charlie Kirk Memorial 'Mostly Hateful'"

The right dose of exaggeration combined with the right dose of reality. Now that's funny.

Too many or too few?

Is a multitude of books a good thing or a bad thing?

John Steinbeck

"I guess there are never enough books," John Steinbeck said.

On the other hand, Voltaire said, "The multitude of books is making us ignorant."

So which view is the correct one? I tend to agree with both.

I have never thought I owned too many books, even when they were in multiple stacks in the attic of my Ohio home — or now when they fill a storage unit so that I can barely enter. I just received a check for more than $1,400 from the sale of several first editions. I can't help viewing this windfall as an excuse to go book shopping.

Yet Voltaire has a point, too. When there are so many books, it becomes difficult to focus on the best ones. I am presently reading a thrilling C.J. Box novel. I enjoy his books, but I could intsead be rereading something by Steinbeck, which might be more edifying. Most of us choose mysteries or thrillers or romances over serious novels and poetry and challenging nonfiction most of the time. Is that making us ignorant?

At one time most people had very few books in their homes. And these were mostly books of high quality — the Bible, perhaps something by Dickens or something by Milton or something by Shakespeare. These were read over and over again. Then came the so-called penny dreadfuls and then cheap paperbacks, and the world of literature changed. Did it change for the better? I think so, but then again, maybe not.

Cold cases

In mysteries, old murders can help solve new murders and new murders can help solve old ones. Both are true in Peter Robinson’s 2023 Alan Banks novel, Standing in the Shadows.

Two stories, nearly 40 years apart, come together. In 1980, a student radical is found murdered, and her former boyfriend, Nick, is a prime suspect. Nick, who narrates this part of the tale, suspects Mark, Alice’s new boyfriend, but he has disappeared, and the police show no interest in finding him. And soon they lose interest in Nick, as well, and even in the case itself. What's going on?

In 2019, an archaeologist digging for Roman ruins finds a skeleton in a field, clearly just a few years old. Identifying the victim proves difficult, but gradually it is found to be the remains of a nattily dressed underworld figure.

How these two very different unsolved cases tie together makes for an interesting entry in this top-rate British police series.