Stick to the stories

Any fan of P.G. Wodehouse might think a book called A Brief Guide to Jeeves and Wooster (2013) would be irresistible. Yet spending more than a few minutes with Nigel Cawthorne's book is enough to find it unnecessary.

The most unnecessary chapters are those in which Cawthorne gives long and detailed summaries of every short story and every novel featuring Bertie Wooster and his gifted manservant Jeeves, but with none of the wit. If one wants to know what happens in these tales, better to read them. That would at least be amusing, while these summaries are just dull. He said this and then he did that? Who needs this?

Much better are those chapters which describe Bertie's aunts, and there are many of them; the many women Bertie becomes engaged to or nearly so (who knew he is engaged to marry Florence Craye four times and escapes each time?); his buddies, all with nicknames likes Sippy and Gussie; and the grumpy older men and policemen who always seem to block Bertie's path. These chapters help us keep the characters straight (for when we wonder, where have I seen this name before?) and, best of all, include a sampling of Wodehouse's humor, the reason for reading the stories in the first place.

This book might make a decent reference for a diehard fan. Otherwise pick up an copy of The Code of the Woosters or Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit and actually enjoy yourself.

Sucking up space

The woman is a word plague/A literature Barbie doll/Nearly every damn journal/I subscribe to, she's there/Sucking up space

Fred Harrington, A Crawdad's Rhapsody

Now that's not very nice, is it? But I can appreciate the sentiment.

Joyce Carol Oates

Those lines above come from a poem called "The Quotients" by Fred Harrington, found in a collection of his poetry, The Crawdad's Rhapsody. Most of his poems are tender, sometimes beautiful. But everyone loses his temper sometimes, and this time Harrington's anger is directed at the prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates.

Oates writes books faster than many of us can read them, and short stories, plays, articles and poems besides. She has been doing this for decades. Now 85, an age at which most people have slowed down if not died, she continues to produce quality material. She has written at least 58 books. The Wikipedia article may be dated.

She has also written a number of mysteries under the name Rosamond Smith.

I have read relatively few of her books, the novel Black Water among them. I have liked what I have read, and there is one of her novels that I am itching to read now. Perhaps her massive output discourages me and others from reading her more than we do. Where do you start? How do you finish?

More seriously, however, her prolific career may impact her critical appreciation. She has won literary honors, to be sure, but the very number of her books makes it difficult for any of one book to stand out. She won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award, for example, yet Fitzgerald is revered for The Great Gatsby and perhaps Tender Is the Night. Literary critics can read all of his work in a brief period of time and compare one book against another. How could one do that with Oates?

The 19th century British author Anthony Trollope may be under appreciated for the same reason. As soon as he finished one novel, he started another and churned out books by the dozens. Scholars would much rather deal with Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy. 

And so Oates intimidates both readers and critics. As Fred Harrington observes in his poem, she also intimidates other writers. This "literary Barbie doll," as he calls her, sucks up the space.

Reading experiences

William Styron

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end," said novelist William Styron. "You live several lives while reading."

That simple statement requires at least three comments:

1. I doubt that a book has to be great to leave the reader with a variety of experiences. Most books, being more than just a few pages long, tend to be a collection of facts and ideas in the case of nonfiction books or incidents, images and conversations in the case of fiction. Each of these, for the diligent reader, can produce a new experience, something to ponder, something to question, something to inspire. Mostly we just keep reading to find out what comes next, but the potential for new experiences is always there.

2. After a movie at a theater, I often like to sit for awhile to watch the credits. Not that I am interested in the credits, but I do like to listen to the music and think about the movie. Am I a little exhausted by the story? Perhaps. But I do like to spend a few moments thinking about what I have just watched.

In the same way, books often require a few moments for thought. Or maybe a few days. In the case of a novel, we may need to take the story apart and put it back together again. What does it mean? Do we really believe it? Has it changed us?

3. Living several lives at once may be the best reason for reading fiction. We get to be different people and enter minds very different from our own yet in so many ways just like our own. Reading The Elephant of Belfast recently I got to be a young female zookeeper trying save a young elephant's life, an older woman oppressed by sorrow, a member of the Irish Republican Army willing to do anything for his cause and several other people, as well.

All this while sitting in my easy chair just being myself.

Not as it seems

Innocent-looking communities that turn out not to be so innocent after all can often be found in fiction. Consider Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives or "The Lottery," the classic Shirley Jackson story. Megan Miranda successfully revisits this idea in her 2021 novel Such a Quiet Place.

Hollow's Edge is a small neighborhood where residents tend to be relatively young, seemingly friendly and employed at a local college. Yet this quiet place hasn't been quite the same since two neighbors died of carbon monoxide poisoning and Ruby Fletcher was convicted of murdering them.

Now Ruby has been released from prison after the discovery of new evidence and without asking permission moves back into the home of Harper Nash, our narrator. Everyone else in Hollow's Edge still believes Ruby to be a murderer, and Harper, although she testified in Ruby's defense, isn't sure. Soon it becomes clear to her that Ruby, who acts so strangely and so mysteriously, has scores to settle.

Harper turns detective, attempting to discover what Ruby is up to and whether she is really a murderer. Then another mysterious death adds to the tension.

Everyone in Harper's Edge seems to have a secret to hide, and readers may find it difficult to juggle them all. At least I did. But confused or not, we must keep reading, and Miranda rewards us with an ending that proves both exciting and satisfying.

Mystery in Laos

By the time the Communists took over Laos in the 1970s, most of the doctors in the country had already left. Among the few who remain is Siri Pailboun, who loves his country even if he has his doubts about Communism. Despite being in his 70s, he becomes the national coroner. This is the background of Colin Cotterill's series of mystery novels featuring Siri.

The second of these is Thirty-Three Teeth (2005), in which a series of deaths seem to have been caused by a bear. Or perhaps a tiger. Or perhaps a weretiger? Siri investigates.

The strange title — and strange titles are a Cotterill speciality, including Curse of the Pogo Stick and The Rat Catchers' Olympics — refers to Siri's discovery that unlike most people, he has 33 teeth. The Buddha supposedly had 33 teeth, and this is said to be a sign of a bridge to the spirit world. Siri's unusual powers occasionally show up in this and other novels in the series.

The novel's mystery, although leading to a breathless conclusion, tends to be less interesting than Cotterill's characters and the details he provides about Lao history and life under the Communists. For example, he tells us that Laos children are frequently given ugly nicknames "to ward off baby-hungry spirits." Siri's brilliant nurse, Chundee Chantavongheuan, is called Dtui, meaning Fatty. In her case, unfortunately, the nickname fits. It is Dtui's peril that brings Siri to the rescue and leads to that exciting climax.

Where the magic happens

Sometimes I think I can't think at all unless I'm behind my typewriter.

Joan Didion

Joan Didion

There's not much that Joan Didion (1934-2021) wrote that I could have written, but those words quoted above are an exception.

I never thought I could write and certainly had no ambitions in that direction before that day in my early teens when I sat down in front of a typewriter for the first time. Suddenly, as if by magic, I could think and I could write. Words flowed out.

I no longer own a typewriter, but any keyboard (well, not a piano keyboard) will do. Usually I have no idea what I am going to say, or sometimes even what my subject will be, until I sit down at my computer to write another blog post. Once my fingers touch the keys, however, something happens. My mind focuses and words spring out.

Perhaps this is why many writers, Larry McMurtry being just one example, continued to write on a typewriter long after home computers made typewriters obsolete. Their old typewriter was where their magic happened.

Other writers find their magic elsewhere, to be sure. John Cheever wore a business suit when he wrote his stories. William Maxwell always wrote while wearing pajamas. Others have preferred to write naked or in their underwear, usually because in this condition they would be less likely to leave their writing room until they had accomplished something. Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Carroll and Virginia Woolf wrote while standing up. Mark Twain, Eudora Welty and Jessamyn West did some of their best work while lying in bed.

Perhaps this is all just a matter of habit. Or maybe it really is magic.

Imposter

Ulysses S. Grant, broke as he was dying of throat cancer, managed to finish his memoirs just before his death to provide money for his widow, Julia, to survive on. In his novel Grant Speaks (2000), Ev Ehrlich imagines Grant living long enough to write two memoirs, one of which told the truth and was kept hidden for more than a century.

The novel is that hidden version, which for the most part follows the authorized version. Most of the characters and most of the incidents are historically accurate, even if conversations are imagined or embellished. Ehrlich strays from history by imagining not one Ulysses Grant but two and not one Julia but two.

Grant's original first name was Hiram. In his hometown there is a dominating upperclass boy named Ulysses Grant, often called Useful Grant. Hiram is called Useless Grant. The first Julia is Hiram's high school sweetheart, whom Useful seduces (or rapes?) with Useless as a witness. Useful wins an appointment to West Point, then loses his memory in an accident. Hiram's father convinces him to steal the other's identity and go to West Point in his place.

From there the author mostly follows history. The new Ulysses S. Grant becomes a capable soldier, fighting in Mexico with Robert E. Lee and other officers he would later fight with and against in a much bigger war. He meets and falls in love with the second Julia, the daughter of a slave owner.

Grant proves his greatness as a soldier in the Civil War, yet he proves hapless at everything else he tries before the war and even as president of the United States and in business after the war. And he keeps encountering Useful Grant, even though the other man doesn't recognize him. And by the end of the story, he again encounters the other Julia.

Ehrlich weaves a masterful novel out of truth and invention, causing both Grant and readers to wonder who actually won the Civil War.