Another year, another historical period to concentrate on, this time roughly from the late 1880s through WWI. The literature of Shaw, Henry James, John Dos Pasos, Willa Cather and Joseph Conrad. The philosophy of William James and Bergson. The science of Planck and Freud. The jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Mysteries featuring Sherlockian London and British Egypt. Hopefully the fin de siecle will have less ennui than some of the participants claimed.
Tired of weak Eloi Leadership? VOTE MORLOCK!: The Time Machine; The Invisible Man; The War of the Worlds; The Food of the Gods, by H. G. Wells
In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are very properly called, but who dislike extremely to be called—“Scientists.” They dislike that word so much that from the columns of Nature, which was from the first their distinctive and characteristic paper, it is as carefully excluded as if it were—that other word which is the basis of all really bad language in this country. But the Great Public and its Press know better, and “Scientists” they are, and when they emerge to any sort of publicity, “distinguished scientists” and “eminent scientists” and “well-known scientists” is the very least we call them.
One of the first time travel stories ever! One of the first alien invasion stories ever! Maybe the very first. The Food of the Gods, which is about the invention of a substance that causes living creatures to grow to enormous sizes--first wasps and rats and the like causing havoc in a village, and then humans who threaten to become a master race that must be stopped--is the only one of the four that I read for the first time; the others, I devoured several times in my childhood; I have a distinct imprinted memory of finishing an edition of War of the Worlds, with illustrations by Edward Gorey, on a Christmas Eve in a top floor bedroom of my grandmother's house, and having odd dreams combining a child's excitement for Christmas with images of the martians.
It's strange, the odd juxtopositions of English country life with weird science. Farmers confronting giant pests. the narrator trapped in one house in a deserted village among the aliens. villagers scratching their heads over the existence of someone invisible--things that aren't possible, and yet here they are.
There were things I didn't notice as a child that I noticed as an adult. How freakishly antisocial the invisible man was to begin with, and how vulnerable. He speaks of establishing a "reign of terror", when he can't wear shoes or any other clothes, nor can he eat without becoming traceable. The improbability of at least seven out of ten spaceships bent on world conquest landing in a remote part of England. But they are light, fun readings, if you think about the content just a little but not too much. high recommendations.
These Dreams: Aesthetic, by Benedetto Croce
When we have mastered the internal world, when we have vividly and clearly conceived a figure or a statue, when we have found a musical theme, expression is born and is complete, nothing more is needed. If, then, we open our mouth and speak or sing, what we do is to say aloud what we have already said within, to sing aloud what we have already said within. If our hands strike the keyboard or the pianoforte, if we take up pencil or chisel, such actions are willed, and what we are then doing is executing in great movements what we have already executed briefly and rapidly within.
Croce does a lot of telling us what art is NOT: It is not moral lessons (which puts Croce at odds with Tolstoy); it is not putting concepts together; it is not even actual paintings or sculpture or other physical things created by artists. Real art, apparently is the thought process distinguishing the ugly from the beautiful, and is fully formed in the artist's mind (as in, Michaelangelo's TRUE art was complete when he visualized the Sistine Chapel ceiling in his mind; actually making it visible to other people was just details.)
I'm not convinced, but Croce seems to be internally consistent, and it's hard to argue with him because he's claiming victory by definition.
I didn't really see what he meant until later, when Croce compared "Aesthetic" with logic, the art of distinguishing the true from the false, as aesthetic distinguishes the beautiful from the ugly. Both of these are INTUITIVE arts, as opposed to the PRACTICAL arts of telling the useful from the useless (economics) and the good from the evil (ethics). Which gives rise to the question why, if art is abstract (beautiful but useless) people pay great economic sums for physical manifestations of "art".
Intro to Freud: The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, by Sigmund Freud
Instead of willingly giving us information about their sexual life, they try to conceal it by every means in their power. Men generally are not candid in sexual matters. They do not show their sexuality freely, but they wear a thick overcoat--a fabric of lies--to conceal it, as though it were bad weather in the world of sex. And they are not wrong; sun and wind are not favourable in our civilized society to any demonstration of sex life. In truth, no one can disclose his erotic life to his neighbor. But when your patients see that in their treatment they may disregard the conventional restraints, they set aside this veil of lies, and only then are you in a position to formulate a judgment on the question in dispute.
I am...so sorry. Freud is the last volume of the original Great Books set, and contains several works, and so there will likely be at least one of these each month this year.
The first work in the volume is a famous collection of five lectures delivered in America. I first read it as a supplement to freshman Intro to Psychology, where it is understandably a staple work. If you read it, you get the bare bones of Freudian analysis, which may be all you want. People are said to have taboo desires, mostly about sex, that they push out of their own consciousness because squicky, and those repressed thoughts clamor for attention outside of one's own ability to discern them, resulting in various degrees of neurosis. The therapist has a patient lie down and relax and talk in stream of consciousness babble such that, their guards let down, the repressed thoughts come into consciousness again and may be faced. Hawkeye's therapy regarding the bus during the final episode of M*A*S*H is a famous example of Freudian therapy in action.
It makes a lot more sense if, like me, you spend a year steeped in the culture of the Victorian era immediately preceding Freud. Nice people did not talk about sex, and women especially were put on pedestals and considered to have descended into filth if they so much as had any carnal desire at all. I compare and contrast with the frank sex-positivity and open discussion of kinks I see on social media and I understand why Freud seems outdated and ridiculous: there is less of this kind of neurosis among people who show no signs of having been repressed to begin with. Now, over among the republicans, who still keep the Bible on prominent display and frighteningly stained copies of Penthouse hidden in the basement, however....
The Edwardian Murders: The Crocodile on the Sandbank; The Curse of the Pharaohs; The Mummy Case, by Elizabeth Peters; Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades, by Oakley Hall; Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet, by Michael Pearce
Bucolic peace is not my ambience, and the giving of tea parties is by no means my favorite amusement. In fact, I would prefer to be pursued across the desert by a band of savage Dervishes brandishing spears and howling for my blood. I would rather be chased up a tree by a mad dog, or face a mummy risen from the grave. I would rather be threatened by knives, pistols, poisonous snakes, and the curse of a long dead king. Lest I be accused of exaggeration, let me point out that I have had all those experiences, save one. However, Emerson once remarked that if I *should* encounter a band of Dervishes, five minutes of my nagging would unquestionably inspire even the mildest of them to massacre me.
--from The Curse of the Pharaohs
One of the others, in an obvious attempt to outdo, leaned out into the street and shouted something abusive, cursing, as is the Arab custom, not Owen himself but his father.
Without stopping, and indeed, without thinking, Owen at once replied that he would certainly have returned the compliment had his addresser only been in the position to inform him which of his mother's two-and-ninety admirers his father had been.
There was an instant of shocked silence behind him and then, almost immediately, the rush of feet. Owen cursed his over-ready tongue. One thing the Agent would not tolerate was brawling in the street with Egyptians. The footsteps came up to him and he braced himself.
And then a hand was placed gently on his arm and a voice said politely, "Please, please. I am so sorry. I did not think for one moment that you knew Arabic, still less the correct Arabic abuse. We are all very sorry. Please come and join us for some coffee and let us try and convince you that we are not as boorish as we appear."
--from The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet
"I will make a prediction," Bierce said. It has got to do with the railroad. Simple deduction. The Southern Pacific is behind 90 percent of the corruption in the State of California. A strangled and slashed dove is an emblem of corruption. Ergo."
--from Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades
I really wanted to like Elizabeth Peters. Her heroine, Amelia Peabody, is a wonderful feminist badass, and she and her family (especially her kid, Ramses) have wonderful dialogues. the mysteries themselves, however, are all variants on the "Egyptian Curse" Scooby Doo episode, with everybody except the Peabodies believing in supernatural forces, and the solution not quite stooping to the villain getting tangled up in mummy bandages so that they can pull off the latex mask, but it gets close. And apparently, the whole series is Egypt while the British are helping themselves to All The Artifacts. as their due, you know.
Michael Pearce's Egypt takes place a couple of decades later, when the English are beginning to lose their colonial grip, and Cairo has the flavor of a Casablanca on the other side of North Africa. There are Egyptian Nationalists, Egyptian loyalists to Britain, French partisans trying to take Egypt from the British, and Ottoman Turks trying to take it from the Egyptians, all factions held in check and balance by mutual distrust. Amid all this sits the Mamur Zapt, head of the secret police, who must roll for success in brute force, subtle diplomacy, or charisma to manage tight situations. In this first adventure, he investigates an attempt on an official's life at a time when the holy carpet is being brought back to Cairo from Mecca.
Oakley Hall provides a wonderful panorama of turn of the century San Francisco. Queen of Spades draws on several actual historical events from the day, most of them scandalous. Bierce is a journalist presented mostly true to what little I know about his historical character traits, who sets out to solve a series of Jack-the-Ripper-ish slayings, not necessarily for justice or challenge, but to see if he can use it as a vehicle to expose corruption in the railroad "octopus". Very well played.
Holmes Meets His Match: The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King
"How do you come to know of my interests?"
"I should have thought it obvious," I said impatiently, though even at that age I was aware that such things were not obvious to the majority of people. "I see paint on your pocket handkerchief and traces on your fingers where you wiped it away. The only reason to mark bees that I can think of is to enable one to follow them to their hive. You are either interested in gathering honey or in the bees themselves, and it is not the time of year to harvest honey. three months ago we had an unusual cold spell that killed many hives. Therefore, I assume that you are tracking these in order to replenish your own stock."
My God," he said in a voice of mock wonder, "it can think."
This is a historical mystery that I wanted to set apart from the rest of the whodunnits, as it is a treasure all its own.
Picture a 15 year old girl, sulking under the thumb of a bitter, controlling maiden aunt, who stumbles across the retired Sherlock Holmes on a heath and immediately runs rings around him at his own game of making spot-on deductions about people from tiny details. And then he becomes her mentor and they have a Buffy/Giles thing going, and begin to investigate cases just like Holmes and Watson, with the distinction that Mary Russell does not follow Holmes like an obliging lapdog with his mouth open in awed wonderment, but frequently disregards instructions, takes charge, takes dangerous risks, and is generally a titanium badass.
In other words, my kind of woman. I was smitten immediately, and was glad to see that this series is long enough to keep me happy all year.
Writer Bios: The Realists, by C.P. Snow
What conclusions can we draw from the lives and works of the great realistic masters? It isn't very helpful to discover that they were nearly all very short fat men, uncommonly bad at mathematics (exceptions--as to height, Galdos; as to mathematics, Stendahl)
This is a book of short biographies of 19th-20th century "realist" writers: Standahl, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Galdos, Henry James and Proust. Since I was in the middle of reading several books by these parties, I checked it out.
The book is short on critical commentary on any of their works, other than to assert that they are "great", or that they have relevance to various stages in the authors' lives (as in David Copperfield, or the actual train suicide that inspired Anna Karenina). Mostly you get details about the lives of the writers, major events they experienced, and how they died. You can find the same in prefaces and introductions in the authors' works.
Guilties Abroad: Where Angels Fear to Tread, by EM Forster
It was now nearly ten years since Charles had fallen in love with Lilia theobald because she was pretty, and during that time Mrs. Herriton had hardly known a moment's rest. For six months she schemed to prevent the match, and when it had taken place she turned to another task--the supervision of her daughter-in-law. Lilia must be pushed through life without bringing discredit on the family into which she had married. She was aided by Charles, by her daughter Harriet, and, as soon as he was old enough, by the clever one of the family, Philip.
Wow. Didn't see that one coming.
This short first novel by the author of Howard's End and A Room With A View begins as a bit of cozy ridicule at the snobbish dominionism of the Edwardian English. The booming Lady Bracknell prototype is scandalized, mortified, and clutches her pearls when her widowed daughter in law goes abroad and remarries to--gasp!--an Italian! And then dies, leaving an English baby to be raised by said Italian! Heavens, we MUST all go down there and rescue the wee tot from a life of depravity and take it to nice, safe England!
I'm torn between the desire to avoid spoilers and the need for content warnings. The book goes from satire to ugly tragedy real fast. And that's all I'm going to say about it.
Getting it Out of the Way: The wings of a Dove, by Henry James
His daughter turned round to him. "The condition Aunt Maud makes is that I shall have absolutely nothing to do with you; never see you again, nor speak, nor write to you, never go near you nor make you a sign, nor hold any sort of communication with you. What she requires is that you shall simply cease to exist for me."
This is the year, in my great books through history pilgrimage, to read some Henry James. Not all of him. You can't make me. But I do humbly ask any bibliophiles who like my bookposts and who like James to explain to me what I'm missing, why this man who bores me so much is considered one of the great realist writers of all time. Because he didn't get giant status for nothing, and so I'm clearly missing something.
His books are full of long, long dialogues with all the zany free spiritedness of Austen, the emotional passion of Freud, and the sparkling, lethal wit of Immanuel Kant. The Wings of a Dove involves two lovers estranged by a wicked aunt. When a very wealthy American woman who happens to be dying slowly, comes to stay with them, the woman suggests that her beau marry the American woman for her fortune and inherit it when she dies, so that then the two of them can be married. I was pissed off at everyone involved until the final chapters when it got interesting, because the man decided he had ethical scruples to this after all.
Nuggets in the dust: The Sketch Book, by Washington Irving
He recollected the place where Brom Bones’s ghostly competitor had disappeared. “If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash—he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.
There are more than 30 "sketches" in The Sketch Book, and there's a good reason the only ones you've likely heard of are "Rip Van Winkle", "The Spectre Bridegroom", and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Those three are the only clear works of fiction in the lot, and really, though they are ghost stories, only one of them is firmly rooted in the supernatural. The rest may well be fiction too, but they pass as observations taken from life: A vignette about the appearance of a jolly innkeeper and a guest by the fireside. A description of Westminster Abbey. A sermon on the strength and faith of wives when their husbands have fallen into economic adversity. Some of these portraits breathe life into things as they could be seen in post-colonial America and England; others are forgotten as soon as seen. The entire book is under 250 pages, and it's worth carrying around to have a graze in when you're kept waiting for a bit.
English Espionage: The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers
Davies never pushed home his argument here, but I know that it was the passionate wish of his heart, somehow and somewhere, to get a chance of turning his knowledge of this coast to practical account in the war that he felt was bound to come, to play out that 'splendid game' in this, the most fascinating field for it.
For some reason, I've never really responded well to espionage novels that were any more serious than James Bond. Not Le Carre, not Eric Ambler...maybe they're just not my thing. This one, which for all I know was the first in the genre, is a pretty good plot about an ordinary English government clerk who goes off on a sailing trip, finds himself secretly plotting the German coastline for features and potential military presences that would prove useful in the event of war. And then they discover the German plot.
It's a pretty good plot, or should be, and it was prophetically written over a decade before the war actually came, but I was just bored. Maybe it's me.
A Voice in the Metropolis: Lectures and Essays, by William K. Clifford
‘In the Middle Ages the priests and monks were the sole depositaries of learning.’ Quite so; a man burns your house to the ground, builds a wretched hovel on the ruins, and then takes credit for whatever shelter there is about the place. In the Middle Ages nearly all learned men were obliged to become priests and monks. ‘Then again, the bishops have sometimes acted as tribunes of the people, to protect them against the tyranny of kings.’ No doubt, when Pope and Cæsar fall out, honest men may come by their own. If two men rob you in a dark lane, and then quarrel over the plunder, so that you get a chance to escape with your life, you will of course be very grateful to each of them for having prevented the other from killing you; but you would be much more grateful to a policeman who locked them both up. Two powers have sought to enslave the people, and have quarreled with each other; certainly we are very much obliged to them for quarreling, but a condition of still greater happiness and security would be the non-existence of both.
Clifford and Willaim James must have had quite the rivalry going. It was suggested to me that I read Clifford after I read James's The Will to Believe (Bookpost, November 2018), and it turns out that Clifford also coined the "mind stuff" theory of psychology, which James refuted as well. Two learned men with beards like the cough-drops guys, putting on their fighting trousers.
The key essay here is "The Ethics of Belief", in which Clifford argues the moral and intellectual failing of believing in something without evidence (his first example is that of a shipowner who insists his boat is safe even though it is old and weathered and badly in need of refitting. Even if the boat makes it, Clifford says the owner is guilty. Compare and contrast with those today who deny climate change despite voluminous evidence, and who egg on the Epsilon-Morlocks to unnecessarily belch coal from their pickups on purpose JUST to piss off the environmentalists), while James coins "pragmatism" meaning believing something if it is useful to do so (deny climate change, and make profit! Humanity won't be fucked over until we've died naturally anyhow).
In fact, James considers religion from the POV of one who derives spiritual strength from developing a perceived relationship with a higher power that calls forth the best from one. And he is right, in that I know some people who find it in them to be a "spark in the darkness" and add value to those fortunate enough to know them.
Clifford looks at the uglier side, in which con artists claiming to speak for God scam people out of their secular assets, and bullies invoke pseudo-righteousness as an excuse to be cruel. And Clifford is right, too. Is that possible? Consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds, and all that.
Perhaps the synthesis to come out of this dialectic is that it is what you DO with your belief that counts as ethical or not. There is the kind of faith that moves mountains, and there is the kind that is no more than willful blind opportunism.
Highly recommended.
Stage murder: Measure for Murder, by Clifford Witting
"Peter would never kill anybody! he's too soft, too effeminate. All he wants--I see it now--is an easy life, good clothes, money in his pocket, and a succession of not too intelligent girlfriends. He's a butterfly, and butterflies aren't dangerous, are they?"
"I don't know. I have never seen one roused."
This one is set at the outset of WWII, and is therefore not a period piece for the period I'm looking at...but it is a good study in character and atmosphere set in an amateur theater and a boarding house. The story does a good job of avoiding some tiresome "murder at the theater" tropes and rather excellently takes care of the exposition so that the arrival of the police inspector after the murder does not have to go over unnecessary detail.
The actual solution to the crime, though, and the "clue" you're supposed to spot, are not particularly satisfying.
On Patriotism: The Man Without a Country, by Edward Everett Hale
“‘Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:— ‘In Memory of PHILIP NOLAN, Lieutenant in the Army of the United States. HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY AS NO OTHER MAN HAS LOVED HER; BUT NO MAN DESERVED LESS AT HER HANDS.’”
As far as I know, this simple story is the only work Hale ever wrote. A young man condemned for treason scoffs at the idea of love of country, and the sentencing judge wittily retorts that therefore he shall have no country, and he shall serve his days on a sailing ship, never allowed to touch land again, nor hear any news of America, ever. Naturally, the man grows up and repents his former cynical view, develops an admirable character, and wins the hearts of the captain and crew of the ship. he performs acts of courage when the ship is attacked. His sentence is never commuted because Naval inefficiency, and he suffers vividly before dying broken hearted, a man with no country.
It was very interesting to read this story at a time when our present government is a tyranny that devalues country and all that comes with it, a time when one of our two political parties openly mocks patriotism as a weak surrender of individual freedom to "big government." It reminds us what one's country, one's native land really should mean, and highlights what our Mad King is destroying and taking from us in a heartbreaking way. At this time, we are ALL Hale's protagonist, having committed no crime.
Pioneer in Op-Ed: Mr. Dooley in Peace and War, by Finley Peter Dunne
Some wan has always give me a Christmas prisint, though no one has any right to. But no wan iver give me annything I could wear or ate or dhrink or smoke or curl me hair with. I've had flasks of whisky give me--me, that have lashin's iv whisky at me elbow day an' night, an' whin I opined them, blue an' yellow flames come out an' some iv the stuff run over on th' flure an' set fire to th' buildin'. I smoke the best five-cint seegar that money can buy, yet whin a good frind iv mine wants to make me a prisint f'r Christmas, he goes to a harness shop an' buys a box iv seegars with excelsior fillins an' burlap wrappers an if I smoked wan an' lived, I'd be arrested f'r arson. I got a pair iv suspinders wanst fr'm a lady--nivir mind hir name--an' I wirrked hard that day an' the decorations moved back into me an' I had to take thim out with pumics stone. I didn't lose the taste of the paint for weeks an' weeks.
Omigosh, but the Edwardian era was big on cynicism and lethal wit! Between the rest of Twain, Wilde, Shaw, Bierce and Mr. Dooley, I may be picking up many, many bon mots this year.
If you're old enough to remember Mike Royko and his Chicago Tribune columns that often featured the wit and wisdom of his fictional barfly friend Slats Grobnik, you have a rough idea of the Mr. Dooley columns that Dunne ran in the newspapers of 1890s Chicago. Except Dooley was much more of an art form. I had a hard time choosing a representative quote, the pickings were so heavy and rich, what with drinks bein' on the Spanish as a euphemism for their loss in the little dust-up with Mr. McKinley, and an opponent's opinions being quite interesting, but not what he reckons dispositive, as Murphy said to the man who thought he could lick him.
It's a bit hard to read, since Mr. Dooley writes in a thick Irish brogue--I had to read some of it out loud before realizing that, by "Pother Ricky", he means "Puerto Rico"...but it's not much harder than the written dialects found in Mark Twain, and it's equally worthy of being studied as works of genius in the field of satirical literature. Very Highest Recommendations. And there are at least five other volumes! I am content.