What I read in November.
In this entry: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, including the parts you didn't see in the movie. Jung's memoirs. More than you wanted to know about the battle of salamis and the discovery of Antarctica. I read 800 pages of a mid-level 18th century British novel so that you don't have to. And i finally lose patience with Aristotle and Jim Butcher. Don't forget to take the Lt. Pike poll. And enjoy.
As always, if you miss this entry, it'll show up in "Bookflurries" and "What are you reading?" in the comments next week. So if you're reading this and won't read this, don't worry...
Soul Murder: The Tiger in the Smoke, by Margery Allingham
”That man”, he exploded, “has killed a doctor who was trying to help him, a snivelling caretaker old enough to be his father, an invalid woman in her bed, and a boy I’d give my right hand to have here with me on the job. I nipped in to see his mother today, and I couldn’t look the old girl in the face.” He was so angry that he came within an ace of tears, but he kept control of the great rackety machine and managed to be impressive in his forcefulness. “That man is killing mad,” he rattled on savagely. “He’s knifing right and left as though human life had no value and any poor beast who gets in his way had no right to exist. And what’s he thinking of? Nothing but a parcel of buried treasure out of a storybook, which may turn out to be no more exciting than a bottle of gin. He’s got no right to life. There’s no place for him under the sun. Of course they’ll hang him. Good heavens, sir, wouldn’t you?”
“I?” The old canon sat back in astonishment, He had been watching the other man’s rage with the look of acute apprehension which is usually reserved for the contemplation of some very painful but familiar operation, the extraction of a tooth perhaps. There was sympathy but no sharing of the sensation. “I?” he repeated. “Oh no, my boy, not I. I should never have made a judge. I’ve often thought that. What a very terrible job that must be. Consider it,” he added as Luke sat staring at him. “However carefully a judge is protected by the experience and the logic of the law, there must be times—not many, I know, or we should have no judges—when the same frightful question must be answered. Not faced, you see, but answered. Every now and again he must have to say to himself, in effect, ‘Everyone agrees that this colour is black, and my reason tells me it is so, but on my soul, do I KNOW?”
The same author who wrote last month’s amazing Whodunnit/Whatsgoingon More Work for the Undertaker, same detective, same London setting, but a completely different style, and one I’m not sure gets spoiled or not by talking about the plot, but I won’t risk it. Suffice it to say that it begins with a WWII widow who becomes engaged to remarry and then begins to receive recent photographs in the mail, showing a man who looks a lot like her supposedly deceased husband...and then the story has more twists and turns than the Thames.
It begins as a classic mystery, continues as a thriller and a police procedural, and concludes on a spiritual note worthy of Father Brown, as affirming of life and soul as a murder story gets. Very high recommendations, not for the puzzle so much as for the inspirational message and warning.
The Nadir of Atistotle’s Philosophy: Metaphysics, by Aristotle
Since we are seeking knowledge, we must inquire of what kind are the causes and the principles, the knowledge of which is wisdom. If one were to take the notions we have about the wise man, this might perhaps make the answer more evident. We suppose first that the wise man knows all things, as far as possible, although he has not knowledge of each of them in detail; secondly, that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise (sense perception is common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of Wisdom); again, that he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser, in every branch of knowledge; and that of the sciences, also, that which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of Wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results, and the superior science is more of the nature of Wisdom than the ancillary; for the wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.
I had the Wisdom to tackle the Metaphysics almost last of Aristotle’s works; if I had started with this thick, dense tome, I would have tossed it aside in disgust early on and never finished the set, while if I had done it last of all, I would have finished on a dry and dusty note. As it is, I pretty much bulled my way through what I considered a dull and useless tract almost solely for the sake of completeness, understanding maybe ¾ of what Aristotle was saying and caring about none of it.
Aristotle wants to explore the nature of “First Principles”, which means going back to the basics and trying to find the true beginning of knowledge, bringing life, the universe and everything to component axioms from which all else flows. Rather than reducing it all to the number 42, he gives us a few ideas that struck me as platitudes.
For example, there are the four causes of all things (that is, all the things each have four causes): material, formal, efficient and final, which I’ve come to identify as, respectively, the matter an object is made of, the shape or use that it takes, the past-reason for its existence (“it exists because of...”) and the future-reason (“it exists in order to...”).
He talks about “the one and the many”. Ancient Greek thinkers seemed to be fascinated at the idea that a group could be considered as both one thing and several things at the same time, as if it was some sort of paradox.
He loves the idea of substances, which are defined as individual things to which properties belong, always subjects and never predicates. And finally, we get to the “unmoved mover” argument for the existence of God, not as an old deity with a beard, but as the ultimate First Principle.
If those things fascinate you, then Metaphysics may be right for you. If you’re a five-year-old who loves to ask “why” about everything, you’d like the subject matter but would never understand the text. I’ve been reading for decades, and had to go back and pick apart sentences word by word to figure out what abstract concept Aristotle was attempting to define.
(As always, when I dislike an established classic, I invite readers who differ with me to explain what I may have been too dumb or too obtuse to appreciate, and in this case, why it may be important for people to study such concepts as “the one and the many”, “true substance” or the four types of causes)
Shock, Command and Geography: The Battle of Salamis, by Barry Strauss
As the Persians made their progress through a largely empty Attica, they looted whatever they could and demolished whatever seemed worth the trouble of destruction. The vengeance that had been denied at Marathon was finally at hand.
What did the Persians think of the Athenians as they smashed their vases? Did they stop to look at the painted scenes? Did they notice that the images of drinking, playing and praying were far outnumbered by those of fighting? Did they consider the meaning of all those pictures of warriors spearing, stabbing and pummeling each other to death and then fighting over the corpses—having of course first stripped the enemy dead of their arms?
What did the Persians think of the Athenians as they overturned the statues? Did they notice, for instance, a bronze statue of Apollo holding a bow? This tall, strong, lean and powerful figure is more street fighter than god of light. What did they make of Artemis with her quiver or Athena in her bronze helmet and breastplate of goatskin and snakes?
Did it occur to the Persians that they had taken on a nation of killers? Or did they simply dismiss the Greeks as braggart savages? No doubt the latter, since soldiers rarely imagine their own death. Whatever they found in deserted Attica, the Persians probably preferred focusing on the kind of scene illustrated by an Iranian cylinder seal of the period. This object, made of the semiprecious stone chalcedony, would be rolled across a wet clay stamp on a document to yield an image of Persia triumphant. It showed the Great King spearing a fallen Greek foot soldier.
This is the third account I've read this year of the battle of Salamis--neither the original Herodotus (bookpost, January 2011) nor the Will Durant blip (July 2011) gave what I considered an adequate explanation of how the Greek navy under Themistocles managed to defeat a vast armada that outnumbered it by about four ships to one and a hundred sailors and marines to one. Strauss does it, in a very quick, fast-paced read that breathes life into the era and made me think western civilization itself was being preserved, which, in some ways, it really was.
Strauss begins with a brief intro about how the Persian War began, and some battles leading up to Salamis; ends with an account of the aftermath, and in the middle is the meat of the war. (SPOILERS) In a nutshell, the reasons for the Greek victory include (1) The language barriers in the Persian fleet, which was cobbled together from dozens of subject city-states between Egypt and India; (2) the fact that the Greeks were fighting, unified, for their survival, while the Presian leaders were fighting mostly to impress Xerxes; (3) the narrow straits where the battle was fought didn't give the Persian flotilla enough room to move around. In fact, they ended up ramming each others' ships due to overcrowding; (4) The Greeks cheated by actually consulting the local fishermen, who understood the currents and prevailing weather patterns; (5) The Persians spent the night before the battle rowing to the area and entered the fray already tired, while the Greeks spent the night resting on land; (6) Themistocles had convinced the Persians that the Greeks were demoralized and ready to flee, perhaps even convincing the Corinthian detachment to actually pretend to sail away in a panic, such that the Persians were taken totally by surprised when the Greeks charged them; and (7) in the Persian tyranny, Persian generals and captains were afraid to admit defeat to Xerxes, and instead spent the day telling him what he wanted to hear, to wit, that their side was winning. Thus, the Persians continued to engage long after it became obvious that retreat was necessary.
But there's more to the book than just a summary of tactics and circumstance. We also get vivid biographies of the participants, with a special emphasis on Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus, who distinguished herself on the Persian side while the rest of the fleet flailed about like Keystone Carians. Fans of Boadicea, Camilla, and other real-life female badasses of the ancient world, will find a new fix for their heroine addiction here.
I can't agree with everything Strauss asserts; his insistence, for example, that Thermopylae was a devastating, demoralizing Greek loss puzzled me. The prevailing view then and now seems to be that it was one of Sparta's finest hours ever and that the huge Persian losses sustained in taking a mountain pass from the 300 who fought to the death would have demoralized the other side much more. Strauss doesn't bother to argue otherwise; he just seems to take it as a given that the Greeks lost, therefore it was a humiliating defeat. Overall, though, it's a great sea fighting tale that happens to have really occurred. High recommendations.
Paso Doble: Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas
My father always kept the trousers and sheepskin jacket he was wearing when they shot him, he showed them to me many times, they're probably still around; the trousers had holes in them, because the bullets only grazed him and he took advantage of the confusion of the moment to run and hide in the woods. From there, sheltering in the ditch, he heard the dogs barking and the shots and the soldiers' voices as they searched for him knowing they couldn't waste much time because Franco's troops were on their heels. At some point my father heard branches moving behind him; he turned and saw a militiaman looking at him. Then he heard a shout: "Is he there?" My father told how the soldier stared at him for a few seconds and then, without taking his eyes off him shouted, "There's nobody over here!", turned and walked away.
Salamis was the site of an ancient sea battle in Greece, most famous for the way in which the forces of Athenian Democracy defeated an overwhelming force and preserved a great civilization, all in one day. And so naturally Javier Cercas chose Salamis, of all historical battles, as the best metaphor for a three year land war in 20th century Spain, in which neither side started out with too great an advantage, and in which a fascist tyrant defeated the progressives, providing a long interlude of repression but order in a country that otherwise changed governments like some people change their socks. Maybe Cercas is saying something ironic about how historical anecdotes bear little resemblance to actual history, but otherwise I’m at a loss as to why Salamis is in the title of the novel.
As with Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock (Bookpost, May 2011), the author has written a novel presenting itself as nonfiction, in which the author describes himself, by name and profession, in his own time, meeting other people and hearing their stories. In this case, Cercas meets the descendants of various participants in the Spanish Civil War, particularly Rafael Sanchez-Mazas (a Franco supporter who really did exist), whose escape from firing squad is quoted above. I’m unclear as to whether that incident, with the soldier who did not expose his hiding place, really happened or not, or how much of the book is lifted from the truth (could be all of it), but that incident is central to the plot.
In fact, the book, at 200 pages, pretty much consists of a long short story called “Soldiers of Salamis” (Sanchez-Mazas’s biography, as written by Cercas) sandwiched between two narratives from before and after Cercas writes it, about his own efforts to dig up facts about Sanchez-Mazas and the soldier who saved him. Sanchez-Mazas is described as an academic who likes to discuss, among other subjects, analysis of the battle of Salamis, but otherwise the battle has no mention in the book, nor does it seem any more relevant than, say, Gettysburg or Stalingrad. The whole tale left me more puzzled than affected; however, it was apparently very popular in Spain when published around 2000.
Analyzing the Psyche: Memories, Dreams, Reflections, by C.G. Jung
It interested me to hear Freud’s views on precognition and on parapsychology in general. When I visited him in Vienna in 1909 I asked him what he thought of these matters. Because of his materialistic prejudice, he rejected the entire complex of questions as nonsensical, and did so in terms of so shallow a positivism that I had difficulty in checking the sharp retort on the tip of my tongue. It was some years before he recognized the seriousness of parapsychology and acknowledged the factuality of “occult” phenomena.
While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red hot—a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud, “There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.”
“Oh come,” he exclaimed. “That is sheer bosh.”
“It is not,” I replied. “You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report!” Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase.
To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his mistrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against him. I never afterward discussed the incident with him.
I don't quite know what to do with passages such as the above, presented as nonfiction. Carlos Castaneda wrote a series of nonfiction books describing his encounters with a shaman who performed commonsense-defying miracles so over the top that the obvious conclusion is that Castaneda was just making shit up. Jung has somewhat more credibility, and his claims aren't quite so outlandish--unexplained coincidences like the two loud reports; dreaming about an encounter with someone and then encountering that person--a stranger whose face Jung had never seen prior to the dream--not long after, and using information from the dream in a helpful way during the encounter. Things like that. Jung's memoirs are full of such incidents, right there with understandable skepticism from Freud and others. Whether you decide Jung is deceptive, or mistaken, or reporting real phenomena or being metaphorical will affect how you read the book. In the end, I took a "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy" approach and found it all intriguing.
There's not much about Jung's written works here, but there's plenty about him growing up, his work with Freud, his work with patients as a psychiatric pioneer, and about his travels. Mandalas and numina and anime, evolutionary consciousness, DNA-RNA brain feedbacks abound. Included as an appendix is a trippy short tract called "Sermones ad Mortuos" (sermons to the dead) that uses such weird wordplay that I wondered if Jung and James Joyce ever knew one another and influenced each other's writings. Jung's life reads as a little dry, especially in translation, but his conclusions are very interesting indeed. Highly recommended.
Analyzing the Body: Collection of Medical Writings, by Hippocrates
I SWEAR by Apollo the physician and Æsculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation—to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this Art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons labouring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further, from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the Art, respected by all men, in all times. But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!
Notice that the Hippocratic Oath does not actually contain the words, "First, do no harm." He did say that, but it was in the Epidemics, one of 18 short to middling works by Hippocrates, the first among the ancient physicians.
You won't learn much medicine from these works. His methods are way beyond dated, his anatomy imperfect, and his vocabulary intimidating. I don't know whether people who have actually gone to med school would have an easier time with these, or whether its the words themselves that are obsolete. Many references to herbs I've never heard of, used in herbs and poultices. Several references to symptoms I've thankfully never witnessed in someone. Several uses of words that don't mean what I've always taken them to mean. When Hippocrates references ulcers, he means open sores, whereas I've thought of them as internal wounds; his use of "crisis" implies getting better, while I've always thought of it as being at death's door. "Articulation" means setting a dislocated joint, often by means of a scary-sounding torture bench where the patient gets tied down and the limbs manipulated into position with large cranks. Trepanning (cutting holes in the skull for brain surgery) is a distressingly frequent remedy, and is performed with a blade like a brace and bit. In fact, after reading about the horrors that were done to people back in the day, I became ever so grateful to be living in the current day and age and resolved not to complain the next time I'm subjected to modern medical indignities. We've never had it so good.
The most worthwhile, or at least interesting, works includeOn Airs, Waters and Places; The Epidemics; The Prognostics; The Aphorisms (short pithy medical proverbs like "Alcohol in the middle of the day, washes the liver away", good for reading during short waits), and On the Sacred Disease (not syphilis, apparently, but epileptic seizures), which is downright philosophical.
Rage Against the Machine: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
I've watched her get more and more skillful over the years. Practice has steadied and strengthened her until now she wields a sure power that extends in all directions on hairlike wires too small for anybody's eye but mine. I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants. I was an electrician's assistant in training camp before the Army shipped me to Germany and I had some electronics in my year in college is how I learned about the way these things can be rigged.
What she dreams of in there in the center of those wires is a world of precision efficiency and tidiness like a pocket watch with a glass back, a place where the schedule is unbreakable and all the patients who aren't Outside, obedient under her beam, are wheelchair Chronics with catheter tubes run direct from every pantleg to the sewer under the floor. Year by year she accumulates her ideal staff: doctors, all ages and types, come and rise up in front of her with ideas of their own about the way a ward should be run, some with backbone enough to stand behind their ideas, and she fixes those doctors with dry ice eyes day in and day out, until they retreat with unnatural chills. "I tell you I don't know what it is," they tell the guy in charge of personnel. "Since I started on that ward with that woman I feel like my veins are running ammonia. I shiver all the time, my kids won't sit in my lap, my wife won't sleep with me. I insist on a transfer--neurology bin, the alky tank, pediatrics. I just don't care!"
Most non-Oregonians are familiar with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest primarily because of the incredible 1975 movie with Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher. It is one of the greatest American movies ever made, swept all five Oscars for Best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay (a feat not duplicated until Silence of the Lambs), and made stars out of some of the actors with even minor roles. If you've seen it, you know all about RP McMurphy, the chaotic-good exuberant, red-blooded, outrageous all-American rogue, con artist and can-do heir to Paul Bunyan and Mike Fink, who fakes mental illness to get transferred from jail to the nice cushy hospital for the insane. You know about Nurse Ratched, McMurphy's lawful-evil, imperturable, deadly cold enemy who rules the ward with an iron fist and a hidden needle. And you know about the war the two of them wage for control of the ward and the fates of the "acutes"--Bibbit, Cheswick, Harding, Martini, and Taber, who have committed themselves voluntarily to Ratched's care, and the "chronics", lost in their own worlds, including the gigantic, silent half-indian they call Chief Broom.
It's a near-perfect movie, with more laughter, more tears and more inspiration all put together than almost any other I could name. I've seen it four or five times, and I still laugh, cry and crescendo right along with it. But if you haven't read Ken Kesey's original book, you don't know the whole story. Kesey reportedly hated the movie like Burgess hated Clockwork Orange and Dahl hated Willy Wonka and spoke bitterly about it all his days because, for all its greatness, it does not tell the author's story.
The movie throws in slapstick elements that aren't there in the book and that emphasize mental patients being goofy. At one point, McMurphy manipulates the oblivious patients around a basketball court, riding piggyback on one of the chronics while Chief solemnly dunks the ball like an unstoppable golem. That's not in the book at all. Another time, McMurphy steals a bus and takes the whole ward deep sea fishing, with a whole fugitive montage ensuing and populace freaking out because, OMG the nuts are loose! That part is in the book, except that the trip is planned with the hospital's consent, takes place under a doctor's supervision, and doesn't have half the zany, madcap quality of the movie's fishing trip.
Most different of all, while the movie version of Chief is a silent, impregnable behemoth who only takes center stage for some few (admittedly major dramatic highlights, but still few) moments, in the book, he's not only the main character but the first person narrator. The entire story is seen through Chief's eyes. And Chief is not a reliable narrator. He has a phobia about machinery, the theme of the entire novel, in which he sees the hospital, and by extension all of America as a hostile environment where the Ratcheds of the world are creating a "combine", a well-oiled, soulless machine in which ordinary people are made into parts for the machine, or are fed to it as fuel. Nurse Ratched, connected to the machine by wires, manipulates time and space to deal out punishments and rewards. McMurphy is the spanner in the works, capable of breaking the machine and setting the people free. Chief is near-catatonic as a defense mechanism, trying to avoid the machine's unceasing gaze by shrinking himself and staying silent and unresponsive; only when McMurphy appears on the ward does he--and to an extent, other patients--begin to come alive.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a fairly short novel, under 300 pages. A significant part of it consists of Chief's reminiscences about his past, on the reservation, having to behave himself when the tourists want to take his picture. In the armed services, as part of the machine. In the factory later on, as another part of the machine. In the hospital, hiding from the machine, longing to run wild as his ancestors did, and as McMurphy does, chained or free. The clash of McMurphy's free spirit with the regulated order of the ward is the theme of the book, and as seen by Chief it takes a completely different form of epic scope than the same clash as seen on the screen. Both the book and the movie can be life-affirming, seminal experiences. To this day, when I find myself working and slowly succeeding at some strenuous task (most recently, hoisting our artificial Christmas tree out from under a year's worth of accumulated clutter in the back closet and hauling it down the hall in one piece), my own theme music swells dramatically and I imagine this scene, from the very last few minutes of the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/...
(The Redhead is going to be sooooooooo mad about our front window)
OH JIM BUTCHER NO! Proven Guilty, by Jim Butcher
Two girls, both too young for me to think adult thoughts about, sidled by in black-and-purple clothing that left a lot of skin bare, their faces painted pale, trickles of fake blood at the corners of their mouths. One of them smiled at me, and she had fangs.
I had my hand on my staff and the harsh, clear scent of wood smoke filled my nose before I stopped myself from unleashing an instant, violent, and noisily pryotechnic assault upon the vampire five feet from me. A second’s study showed irregular lumps and finger marks on the teeth—the girls had probably made them with their own fingers from craft plastic. I let out my breath in a steady exhalation and relaxed again, releasing the power I’d begun to channel through my staff.
Relax, Harry. Hell’s bells, that would be a great story for the papers. Professional Wizard Incinerates Amateur Vampire. News at ten.
For seven volumes, the Dresden Files had its ups and downs, but averaged out as a good entertaining series of candy-books with a lot of character and atmosphere, a good arc plot, and a lot of action scenes involving monsters and magic set in modern Chicago. Then I got to volume eight, the part people warned me about when I started.
Proven Guilty takes place in large part at a con, the same type of convention, in fact, at which I briefly met Jim Butcher and learned about his series. As a celebrity fantasy writer, Butcher is invited to many of these and treated well by many fans who like his books. In fact, I’d venture to say the most die hard of his fans go to these cons. You’d think he’d say nice things about them, or at least be good natured about our nerdiness in a Galaxy Quest sort of way. Not so much. At Splattercon!!! (it’s misspelled if you leave out the exclamation points, says Dresden), everyone is the idiot who goes looking for monsters with a flashlight so that Dresden can rescue them; they all wear outfits that people shaped like them evidently shouldn’t be seen in; and then we get the following fighting words:
A sign, now discarded on the floor behind the door, declared that the room was scheduled for something called ‘filking’ between noon and five o’clock today. ‘Filking’ sounded suspiciously like it might be an activity somehow related to spawning salmon, or maybe some kind of bizarre mammalian discussion. I decided it was probably one of those things I was happier not knowing.
OH JIM BUTCHER NO!
But that’s not even the bad part. The truly bad part has to do with Molly Carpenter, the daughter of Michael Carpenter, one of Dresden’s long-term helpers, a genuinely good man who has been entrusted with an archangel’s +10 sword of good-ass combat. For the last seven books, she’s been a scrappy kid. In Proven Guilty, Dresden realizes that Molly has gotten all growed up. to age 17.
A full page and a half is devoted to Molly’s initial appearance, built like the proverbial brick house, somehow managing to combine strength, grace and beauty that showed as much in her bearing, expression and movement as it did in her appearance....But wait, that’s not all. Yes, Butcher really does write “But wait, that’s not all”, in between the paragraph about his pure-hearted crime fighting friend’s 17 year old daughter’s body, the paragraph about her tarty clothes, the paragraph about her multicolored hair, the one about her tattoo, and the one about the miniature barbell-shaped bulges at the tips of her breasts, where the thin fabric emphasized rather than concealed them.
I didn’t want to know what else had been pierced. I know I didn’t, because I told myself that very sternly. I didn’t want to know, even if it was, hell, a little intriguing.
I didn’t want to know, either. I wanted even less to know how intriguing Dresden found it. OH JIM BUTCHER NO!
And then, a few chapters later, Dresden’s other sidekick, Bob the Talking Skull, sees All-Growed-Up Molly, and what he says is this:
”Did you see the body on her? Magnificent rack! Blond Nordic babeage, but all pierced and dressed in black, which means she’s probably into at least one kind of kink. And all tender and emotional and vulnerable to boot. Taking her clothes off right there in your room.”
“Kink? You don’t—look, there’s no way to...” I sputtered. “No, Bob. Just no. For crying out loud. She’s seventeen.”
“Better move quick, then”, Bob said. “Before anything starts to droop. Taste of perfection while you can, that’s what I always say.”
“Bob!”
Say it with me: OH JIM BUTCHER NO!
You see what he did there? That “Bob!” at the end is supposed to make it OK, because the protagonist is objecting (moderately, in an oh-you-naughty-scamp sort of way) to Bob’s mind-boggling offensiveness. No, it doesn’t make it OK. I can forgive it when a villain, portrayed as such, talks like that, preferably right before he gets his ass kicked by the heroine, but when the comic sidekick does it and gets a response of “Oh, that Bob. (eyeroll)”, it ain’t right. Bob has been moderately amusing as a coarse pig in the manner of Jayne Cobb throughout the series, but can you see even Jayne perving it up with a teenager? I can’t.
Besides, to paraphrase Bob Kanefsky, “How can I forgive him? He won’t let me forget.” Several times during the book, Dresden gets all introspective about his stirrings of forbidden feelings for Molly, and how wrong it is, and how he’s tempted anyway, and more descriptions of her cleavage. And then he gives himself a congratulatory pat on the back for having resisted temptation. Over and over. Is there literary value in this? Is there a valuable lesson about how you are responsible for your actions, not your thoughts, and not to feel guilty about just thinking things? I’m ordinarily ready to swallow that, or at least give it the benefit of the doubt. In this case, however, it’s unnecessary. It’s unnecessary because there is already a “temptation” subplot running through the arc, in which a Fallen Angel continually attempts to seduce Dresden into accepting dark power, with no strings attached (for now), which he may use for good purposes (for now), and anything that can be said about temptation can be said about that, without bringing in Icky Lust For Minors. It’s completely gratuitous.
More telling, Dresden is faced with other temptations in other stories, and does not react this way. In an early book, the local organized crime kingpin with the code of honor makes a very friendly overture to Dresden, offering him money that he desperately needs in exchange for, you know, just having a truce, and Dresden, without even thinking about it, rejects him so unnecessarily insultingly that he risks forcing the mobster to try to kill him instead. Because Dresden is a Hero who Doesn’t Go There. His honor, his brave and foolish honor is the one treasure he owns. Doesn’t even think about crossing the line. When it comes to money, anyhow. Or temptations to unlimited power that could corrupt, anyhow. Show him jailbait—jailbait we have been witnessing as a child throughout the series-- and only then does he agonize.
OH JIM BUTCHER NO!
And of course, young Molly is all lusty after Dresden, and of course, every other female in the book is all lusty after him too because by this point in the series, he’s leveled up to Charismatic Paladin status, and yes there are monsters to fight and crimes to solve and damsels to rescue and a whole lot of fights and probably the end of the world at stake yet again, and at least once Dresden is very satisfyingly punched out by Molly’s mother, who knows Dresden better than he knows himself, but don’t ask me for details because it all went in one end of my brain and out the other. Pity. There are scenes of Molly’s mother gearing up for battle and kicking ass that would ordinarily have been awesome, except that the thing with Molly permeated the whole story, even the parts where she doesn’t appear, like a drop of habanero sauce stirred into a chocolate shake. It makes the whole thing nasty. I can’t say I wasn’t warned and now, you can’t either.
See earlier bookposts for my takes on the first seven books. They ran the gamut from good escapist fantasy to trash; Proven Guilty falls into the “So bad you read it as a warning about how not to do it, or on purpose to pan it”. And yes, I’ll probably read the rest of the series too (I already had the next one out from the library) for the same reason I suffered my way through Twilight. However, if Molly takes center stage again—and from what happens at the end of the book, I expect she will--I may have to skip that part.
And, Dresden? You’re going to get filked.
Bi, Polar, Questioning: The Last Place on Earth, by Roland Huntford
Survival in extreme conditions depends on judgment and intuition. Conflict, suppressed or not, disturbs both. It is an invitation to disaster. Before the tensions within the party, and the defects of Scott’s personality, the dangers of the Polar regions paled. Men, as Amundsen liked to say, are the unknown factor in the Antarctic.
Exceptionally fine weather and sunshine favored Scott. He took these to be the rule, almost his right. In the confused and shifting plans he improvised from day to day, he assumed the best conceivable conditions would continue and left no margin of safety. Thus was revealed the recklessness and collapse of judgment under stress that his superior officers had already discerned. Scott was now blind to everything except a Southern record. The lives of all three—Scott, Shackleton and Wilson—depended on Wilson’s ability to make him turn back before it was too late; which meant controlling an obstinate man in an irrational state of mind. This was Wilson’s burden, besides keeping the peace between Scott and Shackleton, from 80 deg. South.
This winter marks the hundredth anniversary of Roald Amundsen's discovery of the South Pole. Seems like a good time to read up on how it happened.
When I was a little kid, Amundsen was the last episode in a PBD miniseries called "Ten Who Dared", each episode highlighting a different European explorer. I remember noticing that of all the ten, Amundsen was the only one who "discovered" some place that wasn't already inhabited. I also vaguely remembered he was in a race with some other dude to get to the South Pole first, but that was about it. Huntford's book reminded me that "some other dude" was Robert Falcon Scott, who not only got to the Pole second, but died on the way back. It also wasn't even a close race; Amundson taking a 200 mile lead early on and widening it as time passed. No wonder I remembered Amundsen's name and blanked out on Scott. "Ten Who Dared" was aired a couple of years before The Last Place on Earth was published. And yet, Huntford complains in his introduction That Scott, the silver medalist, is the only one people remember.
And boy is Huntford out to vindicate Amundsen at Scott's expense. Huntford has so many nasty things to say about Scott that it made me doubt the accuracy of the book. To Huntford, Amundsen is a Real Life Captain Kirk, while Scott combines the worst qualities of Captains Ahab, Queeg and Kangaroo. He's like the bad commander in a David Weber novel. The British Empire peaked in 1870 and then decayed because the Nelsons and Wellingtons all died off and bequeathed it into the hands of smug, smirking, overentitled bunglers like Scott who obsessed and overcompromised because they knew they didn't really have the stuff of greatness in them. They all but try to ride the glaciers on their polo ponies and get unhorsed as golf balls ricochet off their helmets. Got it? Huntford doesn't like Scott, and describes the race to the Pole as a clash of philosophies as well as nationalities, a tortoise and hare thing.
OK, I'm an American, a hundred years after the fact. I have no dog in this Iditarod. In fact, I'm naturally partial to Amundsen, the practical Norse scientist and discoverer, who appears in several black and white pictures sporting a derby, pince-nez and waxed mustache, desperately in need of a photoshopper with a bunch of steampunk gear. My kind of guy! While Scott, ramrod straight in a naval officer's uniform is Not My People. Still, Huntford's contempt for Scott is so over the top that it has (for me anyway) the opposite of its intended effect, making me feel sorry for the guy and lowering Amundsen by depriving him of a worthy adversary. The guy did make it to the Pole eventually, and lived just long enough to know he'd lost. Give the guy a break already!
Other than that, The Last Place on Earth is a wonderful true-adventure book that tells you all you want to know about the seventh continent and the challenges involved in getting around down there. I hadn't considered, for example, the dietary issues in subzero weather in an age before vitamin supplements, how deadly constipation or diarrhea could be, or the near-impossibility of having a single pair of good boots that would meet your needs. As with the story of the Titanic, you know right away how it ends, but that doesn't stop it from being amazingly suspenseful. And after you've read it, impending winter in North America doesn't seem so bad. Highly recommended.
It’s TIME for Mr. Pickle!: Peregrine Pickle, by Tobias Smollett
The one-eyed commander, who had been satisfied with the chastisement he had already bestowed upon the plaintiff, hearing him read this audacious piece of forgery, started up from the table, and seizing a huge turkey that lay in a dish before him, would have applied it sauce and all by way of poultice to his wound, had he not been restrained by Hatchway, who laid fast hold on both his arms, and fixed him to his chair again, advising the attorney to sheer off with what he had got. Far from following this salutary counsel, he redoubled his threats, and set Trunnion at defiance, telling him he was not a man of true courage, although he had commanded a ship of war, or else he would not have attacked any person in such a cowardly and clandestine manner. This provocation would have answered his purpose effectually, had not his adversary's indignation been repressed by the suggestions of the lieutenant who desired his friend in a whisper to be easy, for he would take care to have the attorney tossed in a blanket for his presumption.
This long eighteenth century English novel is a cautionary tale, and its lesson is: If your enemy performs a feat of greatness, do not attempt to get your revenge by attempting to outdo him at what he does best. According to the introduction, Tobias Smollett (best known for Humphrey Clinker, a very good epistolary novel told in Smollett's natural style) wrote Peregrine Pickle explicitly in response to Henry Fielding, who Smollett didn't like, following the success of Fielding's Tom Jones. Smollett's book is so far beneath Tom Jones that I would not have recognized the similarities if this had not been pointed out to me. I had thought it was a typical Romp-Through-Britain formula book with inns, roaring fat colonels, old misers shaking their wills, overturned carriages, absent minded scholars, chaste chased ladies in hoop skirts and corrupt lords in periwigs. Pratfalls, brawling and other physical sitcom humor described in erudite, heavily mannered prose. That kind of thing.
Unfortunately for Smollett, Tom Jones is probably the best pre-Jane Austen English novel of them all, known for an extremely tight plot, well-drawn major and minor characters, and wonderfully satirical digressions that are so delightful and brief that you don't resent their interruption of the main action. Peregrine Pickle, with the exception of two great characters--both elderly, grumpy curmudgeons--has none of these. The plot has a Bildungsroman arc that is barely visible in some places, concerning Pickle's inexplicable rejection by his mother in favor of a younger brother who, unlike Fielding's Blifil, doesn't even pretend to have any redeeming qualities, nor is he a fit villain for a hero--he can't fight, can't intrigue, can't think, can't seduce; he's a sniveling little toad who doesn't even get enough book time to do much other than Be The Enemy. Peregrine, the "hero", is more of a truculent frat boy than a hero. He spends the first part of the book mostly playing cruel practical jokes on his family, friends and teachers; the second part on a lengthy trip through Europe (with inns, roaring fat colonels, etc.) playing cruel practical jokes on his companions, who do the same to him and each other and anyone unfortunate enough to lodge with him; and the third part playing the London dandy, squandering his money, and making a failed attempt to kidnap and rape the heroine, after which (go figure), she becomes "not at home" to him and he indulges in self-pity. And yet, we know Pickle is a good man at heart, because the author tells us so, in spite of the lack of any decent behavior to clue us in on his inner nobility. Most of his bad behavior is presented in the same sort of "Ah, that youthful rascal" way that Fielding uses to describe Tom Jones's fully consensual amorous adventures, many of which involve the female as the aggressor. Also unlike Jones, Pickle is indulged by a generous uncle through all of these escapades, and given access to a seemingly unlimited purse. Only in the final 1/4 of the book does Pickle suffer actual consequences and experience actual remorse before promptly regaining his fortune and the heroine's love and living happily ever after.
Amid all that, we get the plot device in which peripheral characters show up to tell stories-within stories. One such tale goes on for over 100 pages, and has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the book. There are also digressions about London society which (again, I learned only from the introduction) are pointed barbs at Fielding the author, Garrick the actor and others who were famous in the day but who only students of history know today. Imagine a 2011 version of Huck Finn in which the wandering hero has encounters with caricatures of the Kardashians, Herman Cain and Lt. Pike, the pepper-spraying cop, people who will be reduced to trivia answers within five years and completely forgotten in 300 years. Smollett's invictive reads like that.
It's worth reading for the episodes with Uncle Trunnion, the stock perpetually blustering retired naval officer, and Cadwallader, the stock misanthropic old coot who is wiser than everyone thinks. There's a loyal but stupid servant whose efforts to help usually get Peregrine in trouble, and the heroine and her family, but for being too ready to forgive the unforgivable from Peregrine, are portrayed with pleasing virtue. There are rough diamonds in this work, but you have to mine a tad deep to dig them out.