BLEAK HOUSE – Charles Dickens (1852 – 53, compete volume published 1853)
Ah, Charles Dickens.
I knew I would have to read one of his novels at some point in my university studies and was not looking forward to it. For me, Dickens’s books always drag. I think it is the convoluted spider’s web plotting, where every person is interlinked and every action has a corresponding reaction. While I understand the technique and recognise it is a function of both the Victorian ‘saga’ novel and of the episodic magazine publication format employed by the author, I don’t find it in anyway realistic. Everything slots too conveniently into place. Life just doesn’t work like that: only in Dickens’s novels can an illiterate road sweeper hold the clues to an orphan girl’s parenthood; only in Dickens’s novels can the orphan girl be the font of goodness so sickening she may as well be made of treacle; only in Dickens’s novels can the best of men fall from grace and the lowest ascend to the heights; only in Dickens’s novels can every person be inter-related by marriage, custom or law to everybody else, know everybody else, help / hinder everybody else.
This method of story construction will enthral some, who I guess enjoy unravelling cat’s cradles, but the sheer density of each conspiracy tires me out. The constant recap of plot threads via a mouthpiece or an incident to remind the book’s initial readers what happened in the previous month’s issue is exhausting. I just don’t have the time for it. To top it, the very unreality of each novel’s set-up and outcome irritates and mystifies. I keep wondering why and how things happen and fail to understand people’s choices, chiefly because these moments occur to propel a plot point further in the narrative, not to serve a character trait or sensible worldly decision. I also find the language – especially the dialogue – intensely archaic. Why use one word, Dickens seems to suggest, when I can use twenty-one? It is never enough to say “I love you” it must be written: “The best of us would never suggest to say such a powerful and enigmatic phrase lest it offend the recipient, but I feel in my heart such a soft and yet unbearable emotion I simply must, even on the point of rejection, reveal the depth of my feeling for you which has built from our very first meeting and fills me with awe and a lightness of breath; oh, will you say the same to me?”.
God, I hate Charles Dickens.
Bleak House is not one of the author’s most popular novels, although it is touted mightily by some. There is a personal critique book available called 100 Great Novels [can’t remember the author] and Bleak House sits proudly at No.12, higher than Dickens’s more revered works. What marks the novel of some interest is the two-voice narrative, one an omnipotent third-person-present voice and the second a female first-person-past. The book roughly alternates chapters between the two voices. The third person narrative is rich with description, metaphor and simile. It holds us tight, perhaps too tight, in its hand and attempts to portray the ultimate foolishness of the Chancery Court, where inheritances were disputed. Dickens – or rather, the ‘voice’ – compares the law’s slow-moving, indulgent, richly self-serving legal morass to the moral and physical decay which surrounds the Inns of Court, the poverty, lawlessness and disease, the crawling, crowing, grabbing inhabitants, poor, sick and embittered. These passages, more than anything else in the novel, highlight the ‘State of the Nation’ – by which I nominally mean Britain but which in reality is encompassed here by London – and mark Bleak House as a social novel, one concerned with prejudicial societies and the health and wealth [or lack of] of the poverty stricken.
Set against this is the slightly more uplifting – though not by much – tale of Esther Summerson, a bastard child raised and educated in isolation, given a fortuitous lifeline which, as always, turns out to not be quite such a coincidence as one may have thought, and ends up the heroine to many and the friend of all. Esther is an unbelievable character even when at her best. Charlotte Bronte had some particularly disparaging remarks to cast about Dickens’s representation of women and Esther is no exception. She reminded me of the heroines of Perrault’s fairy stories: butter can’t melt in the mouth, wronged-by-all yet all-forgiven, blind both to love and of love, penitent, pretty, the best friend ever. There is a disturbing number of pet names thrown her way – “my little woman” chief among them – in a vain attempt at character forming. For Esther has no character; she is a cipher for goodness. Almost everyone else has some character flaw, most notably vanity but greed plays a huge role in the unfolding dramas. Given there must be almost fifty characters of note in the story that’s a lot of narcissism and makes for extremely torturous reading. The only note of interest I picked up on was the closeness of Esther’s relationship to her companion Ada Clare, which at times bordered on a portrait of some 19th Century cod-lesbian chic, being excessively obsessive and splattered with kind, loving words and constant references to the latter’s undoubted beauty and the former’s good and great heart. When, after a period of separation, Esther and Ada reunite they fall into each other’s arms and then to the floor in a flurry of kisses and I really did wonder what Dickens was suggesting…
Bleak House is almost 1000 pages long, and cod-lesbian chic or not, there is only so much I could take of the grim ****-lain London streets alternating with a witty mollycoddled domesticity. The whole exercise seemed to over balance every time the perspective changed. Towards the end of the novel, as the legal logjam of Jarndyce and Jarndyce begins to be breached and Esther’s true heritage reveals itself, Dickens introduces Mr Bucket, a detective, who sleuths his way to solutions to all problems. He’s your prototype Poirot, investigating people’s histories, habits and habitations, seeking clues outside the boundary of witness and confronting the offenders with withering pronouncements. It is a pity we take so long to come to Mr Bucket for his chapters are rather entertaining, although like Poirot his speeches are interminable – although what isn’t in this novel?
I can’t fault Dickens’s descriptive talent. He paints an unholy picture of London as a genuine cesspit of fog, dirt and disease where the poor live cheek-by-jowl to the rich and where a road sweeper is as likely to associate with a titled lady or a solicitor as a brickmaker or a whore. There is humour. There is pathos. We do sympathise and empathise with the plight of the poor and take some interest in the less churning tales of the law, but the novel is a long haul and it isn’t rewarding unless you like cinematic verbosity. In short, far shorter than its 1000 pages, Bleak House is, well, rather bleak.
I’ll leave you with that.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,746Chief of Staff
edited October 26
A Study in Crimson: Sherlock Holmes in 1942 by Robert J Harris
Harris ‘updates’ Holmes to WWII…
On the dates of the first two Ripper killings from 1888, two women are found killed in similar circumstances with the name Crimson Jack written on the wall above them…Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard is baffled and brings in Holmes to help stop the killer before he completes his copycat 5 killings…and what is the real reason behind them?
Harris says he was inspired by the films starring Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce and his stories are based on those actors.
Rathbone has always been my favourite incarnation of Holmes, and it’s easy to ‘hear’ his voice of Sherlock here…as it is with most of the other regular characters from that film series…the one change is actually Dr Watson - he’s not portrayed as the slightly bumbling and comedic character that Bruce played.
The story opens with Holmes & Watson asked to look into the disappearance of Dr MacReady in Scotland, which is solved in the first few of chapters - it almost reads as pre-title sequence!
A few regular characters are here - Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Mycroft & and one Baker Street Irregular ☺️
Overall I was disappointed with this…I’d hoped for a better story, it’s more an adventure than a mystery…but not a very good one. It’s a ‘light’ read.
Wilbur Smith, I feel, is something of an acquired taste. When reading one of his adventure novels, it is easy to recognise why he sold in the millions: the stories are fast paced, full of exquisite detail about wildlife, locations and what Fleming termed ‘things’ – mechanics and gadgets – and the narrative fairly rollocks along. On the downside, his characters are caricatures and while the scenarios show some originality – this one, for instance, focusses partly on the defence of Israel – they always end up on the veldt or in the Indian Ocean, in drought or monsoon, hurricane, stampede, war or revolution. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is rippled with inadequacies. Most of the people in this novel read as if a child were speaking. Their reactions are uniformly stereotypical. The depth of characterisation is skin deep – uniform deep, in the case of one military general, cryptically named The Brig in case we forget he’s rather important and steadfastly upright.
David Morgan is the hero of Eagle in the Sky. He is a young, gorgeous and carefree playboy. A rich inheritance provides for him and a place is set aside on the board of the family business, but he flounces off for a stint in the South African Airforce before grabbing his monies and galivanting across Europe, drinking, pulling birds and acting the complete idiotic lothario. He isn’t very likable. Beautiful Debra Mordecai changes all that – as only a woman can in a Wilbur Smith novel – and Morgan high-tails it to Jerusalem in pursuit of this damaged beauty and, to demonstrate his maturity, enrols in the Israeli Defence Force. Luckily, Morgan was born to a Jewish mother and speaks Hebrew, is circumcised and was educated in the Torah. He isn’t very religious though, and neither is Debra; handy, as they spend most of their time together like two randy teenagers.
Tragedy ensues when a rogue Islamic terror group infiltrates a wedding, killing several of the guests, including the bride. David and his wingman Joe [the bridegroom] go on a deadly revenge fuelled slaughter in the skies and end up getting killed, or almost killed, themselves. David’s Adonis good looks become a fire ravaged travesty of his former self and he starts to rebuild his life, although his bolshy, impulsive character never alters, hence the sudden bouts of negative self-confidence regarding his features seem entirely out of kilter with the rest of his persona. Throughout, even when married, he remains a selfish, arrogant, misogynistic he-man. The author gives his hero some horrible condescending lines to say and some verbal affections [“doll” was prominent and irksome] which irritate and fail to endear him to this reader. Debra is the more interesting character, but Smith seems less interested in her unless she is undressing or in peril. Both happen frequently.
A good enough adventure, which ticks plenty of boxes, but is ultimately as empty as the skies the author takes so long to describe. I do prefer Smith’s standalone novels to his Courtney or Ballentyne sagas, which remind me of a kind of in-print version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this one left me somewhat cold.
RAYMOND CHANDLER’S PHILIP MARLOWE (Editor: Byron Preiss)
This was originally published in 1988 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Chandler’s birth. It comprises 25 short stories about Marlowe written by 25 then contemporary authors including Max Allan Collins (another similar pastiche of his, this time of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, was recently covered in CoolHandBond’s Comic Strip thread) and Sara Paretsky. As might be expected from so many writers, the stories vary from exceptional to merely passable though I’d hesitate to call any of them actually poor. The many authors all attempt to adopt Chandler’s style, and again they vary in their success.
The last story in the volume is “The Pencil” by Chandler himself, the only Philip Marlowe short story he wrote. To clarify that, several stories that didn’t originally feature Marlowe were later republished with his name inserted.
This was my third time reading this book. The first was back in either 89 or 90 when I got it in paperback (hardbacks were beyond my means at that time). I bought it in hardback when it was reissued more recently and read it very happily, which I have now done again. Chandler wasn’t a prolific author (only seven novels plus about two dozen short stories, not all detective stories) so more Marlowe is always fine by me - except the recent “The Goodbye Coast” which was terrible.
I dont think I have The Pencil in any of the paperback short story collections in the Potts archives, I may have to find this Chandler tribute book just to fill in that gap in my collection
HERNE THE HUNTER #24 The Last Hurrah by John J McLaglen
This terrific western series was written by Laurence James (odd numbers) and John Harvey (even numbers) under the pseudonym of John J McLaglen. Surprisingly, little difference is noticed between the two writing styles. Jed Travis is known by the name Herne the Hunter, and is a feared shootist and bounty hunter who travels the West hunting down the bunch of rapists who defiled his wife, who then hanged herself. Over the course of the series he kills every one of them in books #1-3, and then has adventures in the rest of them.
Unusually, for a pulp character series, this one has a proper ending and this final entry of the series is a poignant, if extremely violent, novel as Travis reflects on his life, thinking of his long dead wife, his only friend fellow gunman Whitey Coburn, his meetings with other characters from the Piccadilly Cowboys series of books - Edge, Crow etc. and characters from popular westerns such as The Magnificent Seven. It’s a westerns aficionado’s dream novel and a fitting end to one of the truly great pulp western series.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Newland Archer comes from the monied elite of New York society c.1870. He is engaged to the beautiful, but heroically unimaginative May Welland, and everybody believes they are the perfect match. On the day they announce their betrothal, May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, presents herself at the Opera. Ellen has deserted her abusive Polish husband and returned to America intent on rebuilding her life on her terms. Stifled by the city’s societal runaround of dinner parties, easy living and gossip, Newland sees in Ellen’s demeanour and behaviour an opportunity to break the monotony of convention. In attempting to do so, the pair fall in love, but it remains unconsummated and, as Newland ages like the city he inhabits, so his love recedes to a place of cherished memory.
A romantic melodrama from Edith Wharton that in its setting encompasses her own life span and the world she was born into. As such, the novel is phenomenally well detailed and follows the conventions of the day in forms of address, politeness and understanding. For instance, early on Wharton spends several pages outlining the various histories of the wealthy families that surround Washington Square, making it clear who the important people are in New York, the why and how of their attaining such grand positions. Much of the story takes place in dark, chilly winters, bleak times for everyone as well as the reader. Here, the ravishing May Welland shines like a virginal goddess and is pitted against the earthy, European uniqueness of Ellen; baubles battling silently on a snow-tipped Christmas tree. The drama plays out like a series of small plays where we never reach the second act; each chapter builds with clues and metaphors to a character’s thought and intent, yet we never see these come to fruition. The action is static, revisiting scenes and occasion time and again; the main action takes place over two years and is bookended by scenes at the Metropolitan Opera. In-between times, whole episodes pass where only one significant line may be uttered, or an observation made, while the ‘business’ of 1870s New York – parties, crockery, marriage, gossip, travel, clothes, food, etc – is described in consummate depth. To that extent, The Age of Innocence is not as interesting as Wharton’s clever and innovative The Custom of the Country. It also has a less interesting central figure: the third-person narrator Newland Archer. He is a dull fantasist, performing most of his about-turns in his head. Reality is unexciting for Newland. Even impending marriage strikes a low chord. It is no surprise the dashing Ellen Olenska catches his [and other’s] eyes.
In fact, Newland is most interesting as a character because he is so obviously enacting the traditional female role in melodrama, where the woman is caught between a handsome and challenging romancer and a devoted, but un-spritely husband. Thus Wharton is able to challenge the literary conventions while her characters assault the societal ones. Change, which at one point is detested and decried by the dignified Van Luyden’s, eventually comes to the city, but not through Newland Archer’s potential for adultery and elopement [he discusses both subjects with his wife and with the Countess in vague, analogous fashions – the dialogue is littered with allusions and misinterpretations – I sometimes wished for more straight-forward storytelling]. More so, change happens through Newland’s influence as a doyen of polite society and civil administration, a man who upholds the past while seeking the future in the present, a role one feels he would never have inhabited had he embarked on an affair with Ellen Olenska. This only becomes clear during the bitter coda, which tops the novel off marvellously as the elegant, longed-for past metaphorically meets the brash, unbridled future only without Newland’s sturdy presence, for despite his efforts he remains tied to the established conventions he tried so hard to break.
A very fine novel, but one that perhaps ponders too much. The pace is a sedate crawl. However, the intricacies of the society game are well described and there are moments of wit and satire among the vast channels of obdurate scenery. Wharton’s writing errs to the conservative. It lacks spice. This may be because it is a later work and the need for her to startle an audience had diminished. She replaces the haughty, vicious, obvious and self-serving heroine Undine Spragg in favour of a tacit triplicate of lovers whose triangle of passion is played out in half-sentences, riddles and unspoken understandings. A kiss on the hand means so much more to these people than just a kiss on the hand. However, you do wonder why they are so unphysical. Newland Archer’s passion seems confined to taking stiff walks and grasping mantelpieces. May Welland appears to have no passion at all, so godlike a figure is she described. Only Ellen, modern, uncultured – or differently cultured, as one wag points out – breathes life into the world and even here it is fleeting and unrewarding, like chasing sunlight on a snowy morning.
Martin Scorsese made a film of the book. An unusual choice for him, one feels.
A static travelogue from the transcendental theorist Henry Davod Thoreau, Walden is a diarised account of his two years spent in self-imposed virtual isolation on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. Nothing happens. Thoreau communicates with nature. He writes. He theorises. Most of his diary is a series of ‘lectures’ about the environment, the economy, social upheavals, past times, politics, theology – the big subjects. Most of these ‘lectures’ are posed questions which the author almost answers before posing a secondary, or third set of questions. Some of his notions are interesting. All of them are long winded. The prose features a poetic ear which sits at odds beside Thoreau’s egotistical intellect. This man does not present himself as pleasant. His attitude towards rich and poor is remarkably even-handed: unless they inhabit the same ideas and attitudes as the author, he displays utter disdain for them both. His political leanings are left of centre, calling on the proletariat to demand a better quality of life and a better representation in government, fulfilling the ideals of the American Revolution. Overall however, unless you enjoy reading whole chapters about the depth, drift and colour of the ice flows on the Walden Pond, or the fish within it, or the flora and fauna around it, the book feels laboured. It is hard to divest the theorising from Thoreau’s obvious enthusiasm for nature. One feels the author wrote this not for others, but himself, and as such Walden is entirely self-absorbed.
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BLEAK HOUSE – Charles Dickens (1852 – 53, compete volume published 1853)
Ah, Charles Dickens.
I knew I would have to read one of his novels at some point in my university studies and was not looking forward to it. For me, Dickens’s books always drag. I think it is the convoluted spider’s web plotting, where every person is interlinked and every action has a corresponding reaction. While I understand the technique and recognise it is a function of both the Victorian ‘saga’ novel and of the episodic magazine publication format employed by the author, I don’t find it in anyway realistic. Everything slots too conveniently into place. Life just doesn’t work like that: only in Dickens’s novels can an illiterate road sweeper hold the clues to an orphan girl’s parenthood; only in Dickens’s novels can the orphan girl be the font of goodness so sickening she may as well be made of treacle; only in Dickens’s novels can the best of men fall from grace and the lowest ascend to the heights; only in Dickens’s novels can every person be inter-related by marriage, custom or law to everybody else, know everybody else, help / hinder everybody else.
This method of story construction will enthral some, who I guess enjoy unravelling cat’s cradles, but the sheer density of each conspiracy tires me out. The constant recap of plot threads via a mouthpiece or an incident to remind the book’s initial readers what happened in the previous month’s issue is exhausting. I just don’t have the time for it. To top it, the very unreality of each novel’s set-up and outcome irritates and mystifies. I keep wondering why and how things happen and fail to understand people’s choices, chiefly because these moments occur to propel a plot point further in the narrative, not to serve a character trait or sensible worldly decision. I also find the language – especially the dialogue – intensely archaic. Why use one word, Dickens seems to suggest, when I can use twenty-one? It is never enough to say “I love you” it must be written: “The best of us would never suggest to say such a powerful and enigmatic phrase lest it offend the recipient, but I feel in my heart such a soft and yet unbearable emotion I simply must, even on the point of rejection, reveal the depth of my feeling for you which has built from our very first meeting and fills me with awe and a lightness of breath; oh, will you say the same to me?”.
God, I hate Charles Dickens.
Bleak House is not one of the author’s most popular novels, although it is touted mightily by some. There is a personal critique book available called 100 Great Novels [can’t remember the author] and Bleak House sits proudly at No.12, higher than Dickens’s more revered works. What marks the novel of some interest is the two-voice narrative, one an omnipotent third-person-present voice and the second a female first-person-past. The book roughly alternates chapters between the two voices. The third person narrative is rich with description, metaphor and simile. It holds us tight, perhaps too tight, in its hand and attempts to portray the ultimate foolishness of the Chancery Court, where inheritances were disputed. Dickens – or rather, the ‘voice’ – compares the law’s slow-moving, indulgent, richly self-serving legal morass to the moral and physical decay which surrounds the Inns of Court, the poverty, lawlessness and disease, the crawling, crowing, grabbing inhabitants, poor, sick and embittered. These passages, more than anything else in the novel, highlight the ‘State of the Nation’ – by which I nominally mean Britain but which in reality is encompassed here by London – and mark Bleak House as a social novel, one concerned with prejudicial societies and the health and wealth [or lack of] of the poverty stricken.
Set against this is the slightly more uplifting – though not by much – tale of Esther Summerson, a bastard child raised and educated in isolation, given a fortuitous lifeline which, as always, turns out to not be quite such a coincidence as one may have thought, and ends up the heroine to many and the friend of all. Esther is an unbelievable character even when at her best. Charlotte Bronte had some particularly disparaging remarks to cast about Dickens’s representation of women and Esther is no exception. She reminded me of the heroines of Perrault’s fairy stories: butter can’t melt in the mouth, wronged-by-all yet all-forgiven, blind both to love and of love, penitent, pretty, the best friend ever. There is a disturbing number of pet names thrown her way – “my little woman” chief among them – in a vain attempt at character forming. For Esther has no character; she is a cipher for goodness. Almost everyone else has some character flaw, most notably vanity but greed plays a huge role in the unfolding dramas. Given there must be almost fifty characters of note in the story that’s a lot of narcissism and makes for extremely torturous reading. The only note of interest I picked up on was the closeness of Esther’s relationship to her companion Ada Clare, which at times bordered on a portrait of some 19th Century cod-lesbian chic, being excessively obsessive and splattered with kind, loving words and constant references to the latter’s undoubted beauty and the former’s good and great heart. When, after a period of separation, Esther and Ada reunite they fall into each other’s arms and then to the floor in a flurry of kisses and I really did wonder what Dickens was suggesting…
Bleak House is almost 1000 pages long, and cod-lesbian chic or not, there is only so much I could take of the grim ****-lain London streets alternating with a witty mollycoddled domesticity. The whole exercise seemed to over balance every time the perspective changed. Towards the end of the novel, as the legal logjam of Jarndyce and Jarndyce begins to be breached and Esther’s true heritage reveals itself, Dickens introduces Mr Bucket, a detective, who sleuths his way to solutions to all problems. He’s your prototype Poirot, investigating people’s histories, habits and habitations, seeking clues outside the boundary of witness and confronting the offenders with withering pronouncements. It is a pity we take so long to come to Mr Bucket for his chapters are rather entertaining, although like Poirot his speeches are interminable – although what isn’t in this novel?
I can’t fault Dickens’s descriptive talent. He paints an unholy picture of London as a genuine cesspit of fog, dirt and disease where the poor live cheek-by-jowl to the rich and where a road sweeper is as likely to associate with a titled lady or a solicitor as a brickmaker or a whore. There is humour. There is pathos. We do sympathise and empathise with the plight of the poor and take some interest in the less churning tales of the law, but the novel is a long haul and it isn’t rewarding unless you like cinematic verbosity. In short, far shorter than its 1000 pages, Bleak House is, well, rather bleak.
I’ll leave you with that.
A Study in Crimson: Sherlock Holmes in 1942 by Robert J Harris
Harris ‘updates’ Holmes to WWII…
On the dates of the first two Ripper killings from 1888, two women are found killed in similar circumstances with the name Crimson Jack written on the wall above them…Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard is baffled and brings in Holmes to help stop the killer before he completes his copycat 5 killings…and what is the real reason behind them?
Harris says he was inspired by the films starring Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce and his stories are based on those actors.
Rathbone has always been my favourite incarnation of Holmes, and it’s easy to ‘hear’ his voice of Sherlock here…as it is with most of the other regular characters from that film series…the one change is actually Dr Watson - he’s not portrayed as the slightly bumbling and comedic character that Bruce played.
The story opens with Holmes & Watson asked to look into the disappearance of Dr MacReady in Scotland, which is solved in the first few of chapters - it almost reads as pre-title sequence!
A few regular characters are here - Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Mycroft & and one Baker Street Irregular ☺️
Overall I was disappointed with this…I’d hoped for a better story, it’s more an adventure than a mystery…but not a very good one. It’s a ‘light’ read.
EAGLE IN THE SKY– Wilbur Smith (1974)
Wilbur Smith, I feel, is something of an acquired taste. When reading one of his adventure novels, it is easy to recognise why he sold in the millions: the stories are fast paced, full of exquisite detail about wildlife, locations and what Fleming termed ‘things’ – mechanics and gadgets – and the narrative fairly rollocks along. On the downside, his characters are caricatures and while the scenarios show some originality – this one, for instance, focusses partly on the defence of Israel – they always end up on the veldt or in the Indian Ocean, in drought or monsoon, hurricane, stampede, war or revolution. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is rippled with inadequacies. Most of the people in this novel read as if a child were speaking. Their reactions are uniformly stereotypical. The depth of characterisation is skin deep – uniform deep, in the case of one military general, cryptically named The Brig in case we forget he’s rather important and steadfastly upright.
David Morgan is the hero of Eagle in the Sky. He is a young, gorgeous and carefree playboy. A rich inheritance provides for him and a place is set aside on the board of the family business, but he flounces off for a stint in the South African Airforce before grabbing his monies and galivanting across Europe, drinking, pulling birds and acting the complete idiotic lothario. He isn’t very likable. Beautiful Debra Mordecai changes all that – as only a woman can in a Wilbur Smith novel – and Morgan high-tails it to Jerusalem in pursuit of this damaged beauty and, to demonstrate his maturity, enrols in the Israeli Defence Force. Luckily, Morgan was born to a Jewish mother and speaks Hebrew, is circumcised and was educated in the Torah. He isn’t very religious though, and neither is Debra; handy, as they spend most of their time together like two randy teenagers.
Tragedy ensues when a rogue Islamic terror group infiltrates a wedding, killing several of the guests, including the bride. David and his wingman Joe [the bridegroom] go on a deadly revenge fuelled slaughter in the skies and end up getting killed, or almost killed, themselves. David’s Adonis good looks become a fire ravaged travesty of his former self and he starts to rebuild his life, although his bolshy, impulsive character never alters, hence the sudden bouts of negative self-confidence regarding his features seem entirely out of kilter with the rest of his persona. Throughout, even when married, he remains a selfish, arrogant, misogynistic he-man. The author gives his hero some horrible condescending lines to say and some verbal affections [“doll” was prominent and irksome] which irritate and fail to endear him to this reader. Debra is the more interesting character, but Smith seems less interested in her unless she is undressing or in peril. Both happen frequently.
A good enough adventure, which ticks plenty of boxes, but is ultimately as empty as the skies the author takes so long to describe. I do prefer Smith’s standalone novels to his Courtney or Ballentyne sagas, which remind me of a kind of in-print version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this one left me somewhat cold.
RAYMOND CHANDLER’S PHILIP MARLOWE (Editor: Byron Preiss)
This was originally published in 1988 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Chandler’s birth. It comprises 25 short stories about Marlowe written by 25 then contemporary authors including Max Allan Collins (another similar pastiche of his, this time of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, was recently covered in CoolHandBond’s Comic Strip thread) and Sara Paretsky. As might be expected from so many writers, the stories vary from exceptional to merely passable though I’d hesitate to call any of them actually poor. The many authors all attempt to adopt Chandler’s style, and again they vary in their success.
The last story in the volume is “The Pencil” by Chandler himself, the only Philip Marlowe short story he wrote. To clarify that, several stories that didn’t originally feature Marlowe were later republished with his name inserted.
This was my third time reading this book. The first was back in either 89 or 90 when I got it in paperback (hardbacks were beyond my means at that time). I bought it in hardback when it was reissued more recently and read it very happily, which I have now done again. Chandler wasn’t a prolific author (only seven novels plus about two dozen short stories, not all detective stories) so more Marlowe is always fine by me - except the recent “The Goodbye Coast” which was terrible.
Barbel said: ...The Pencil by Chandler...
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I dont think I have The Pencil in any of the paperback short story collections in the Potts archives, I may have to find this Chandler tribute book just to fill in that gap in my collection
It might be under an alternative title - I've seen it called "Marlowe Takes On The Syndicate" or very close to that and there may be others.
JUST SO STORIES – Rudyard Kipling (1902)
Kid’s stuff.
HERNE THE HUNTER #24 The Last Hurrah by John J McLaglen
This terrific western series was written by Laurence James (odd numbers) and John Harvey (even numbers) under the pseudonym of John J McLaglen. Surprisingly, little difference is noticed between the two writing styles. Jed Travis is known by the name Herne the Hunter, and is a feared shootist and bounty hunter who travels the West hunting down the bunch of rapists who defiled his wife, who then hanged herself. Over the course of the series he kills every one of them in books #1-3, and then has adventures in the rest of them.
Unusually, for a pulp character series, this one has a proper ending and this final entry of the series is a poignant, if extremely violent, novel as Travis reflects on his life, thinking of his long dead wife, his only friend fellow gunman Whitey Coburn, his meetings with other characters from the Piccadilly Cowboys series of books - Edge, Crow etc. and characters from popular westerns such as The Magnificent Seven. It’s a westerns aficionado’s dream novel and a fitting end to one of the truly great pulp western series.
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE – Edith Wharton (1920)
Newland Archer comes from the monied elite of New York society c.1870. He is engaged to the beautiful, but heroically unimaginative May Welland, and everybody believes they are the perfect match. On the day they announce their betrothal, May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, presents herself at the Opera. Ellen has deserted her abusive Polish husband and returned to America intent on rebuilding her life on her terms. Stifled by the city’s societal runaround of dinner parties, easy living and gossip, Newland sees in Ellen’s demeanour and behaviour an opportunity to break the monotony of convention. In attempting to do so, the pair fall in love, but it remains unconsummated and, as Newland ages like the city he inhabits, so his love recedes to a place of cherished memory.
A romantic melodrama from Edith Wharton that in its setting encompasses her own life span and the world she was born into. As such, the novel is phenomenally well detailed and follows the conventions of the day in forms of address, politeness and understanding. For instance, early on Wharton spends several pages outlining the various histories of the wealthy families that surround Washington Square, making it clear who the important people are in New York, the why and how of their attaining such grand positions. Much of the story takes place in dark, chilly winters, bleak times for everyone as well as the reader. Here, the ravishing May Welland shines like a virginal goddess and is pitted against the earthy, European uniqueness of Ellen; baubles battling silently on a snow-tipped Christmas tree. The drama plays out like a series of small plays where we never reach the second act; each chapter builds with clues and metaphors to a character’s thought and intent, yet we never see these come to fruition. The action is static, revisiting scenes and occasion time and again; the main action takes place over two years and is bookended by scenes at the Metropolitan Opera. In-between times, whole episodes pass where only one significant line may be uttered, or an observation made, while the ‘business’ of 1870s New York – parties, crockery, marriage, gossip, travel, clothes, food, etc – is described in consummate depth. To that extent, The Age of Innocence is not as interesting as Wharton’s clever and innovative The Custom of the Country. It also has a less interesting central figure: the third-person narrator Newland Archer. He is a dull fantasist, performing most of his about-turns in his head. Reality is unexciting for Newland. Even impending marriage strikes a low chord. It is no surprise the dashing Ellen Olenska catches his [and other’s] eyes.
In fact, Newland is most interesting as a character because he is so obviously enacting the traditional female role in melodrama, where the woman is caught between a handsome and challenging romancer and a devoted, but un-spritely husband. Thus Wharton is able to challenge the literary conventions while her characters assault the societal ones. Change, which at one point is detested and decried by the dignified Van Luyden’s, eventually comes to the city, but not through Newland Archer’s potential for adultery and elopement [he discusses both subjects with his wife and with the Countess in vague, analogous fashions – the dialogue is littered with allusions and misinterpretations – I sometimes wished for more straight-forward storytelling]. More so, change happens through Newland’s influence as a doyen of polite society and civil administration, a man who upholds the past while seeking the future in the present, a role one feels he would never have inhabited had he embarked on an affair with Ellen Olenska. This only becomes clear during the bitter coda, which tops the novel off marvellously as the elegant, longed-for past metaphorically meets the brash, unbridled future only without Newland’s sturdy presence, for despite his efforts he remains tied to the established conventions he tried so hard to break.
A very fine novel, but one that perhaps ponders too much. The pace is a sedate crawl. However, the intricacies of the society game are well described and there are moments of wit and satire among the vast channels of obdurate scenery. Wharton’s writing errs to the conservative. It lacks spice. This may be because it is a later work and the need for her to startle an audience had diminished. She replaces the haughty, vicious, obvious and self-serving heroine Undine Spragg in favour of a tacit triplicate of lovers whose triangle of passion is played out in half-sentences, riddles and unspoken understandings. A kiss on the hand means so much more to these people than just a kiss on the hand. However, you do wonder why they are so unphysical. Newland Archer’s passion seems confined to taking stiff walks and grasping mantelpieces. May Welland appears to have no passion at all, so godlike a figure is she described. Only Ellen, modern, uncultured – or differently cultured, as one wag points out – breathes life into the world and even here it is fleeting and unrewarding, like chasing sunlight on a snowy morning.
Martin Scorsese made a film of the book. An unusual choice for him, one feels.
WALDEN – Henry David Thoreau (1854)
A static travelogue from the transcendental theorist Henry Davod Thoreau, Walden is a diarised account of his two years spent in self-imposed virtual isolation on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. Nothing happens. Thoreau communicates with nature. He writes. He theorises. Most of his diary is a series of ‘lectures’ about the environment, the economy, social upheavals, past times, politics, theology – the big subjects. Most of these ‘lectures’ are posed questions which the author almost answers before posing a secondary, or third set of questions. Some of his notions are interesting. All of them are long winded. The prose features a poetic ear which sits at odds beside Thoreau’s egotistical intellect. This man does not present himself as pleasant. His attitude towards rich and poor is remarkably even-handed: unless they inhabit the same ideas and attitudes as the author, he displays utter disdain for them both. His political leanings are left of centre, calling on the proletariat to demand a better quality of life and a better representation in government, fulfilling the ideals of the American Revolution. Overall however, unless you enjoy reading whole chapters about the depth, drift and colour of the ice flows on the Walden Pond, or the fish within it, or the flora and fauna around it, the book feels laboured. It is hard to divest the theorising from Thoreau’s obvious enthusiasm for nature. One feels the author wrote this not for others, but himself, and as such Walden is entirely self-absorbed.