The (S)word in the Autumn Stone: What Are You Reading, Fall 2022?

I note o.nate's comment: "mostly ends up provoking a nonplussed shrug".

"nonplussed" is a confusing-looking word which perhaps for that reason has drifted from its previous or canonical meaning, which was or I even still dare to hope is: "so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react."

That is, it used to be mean shocked and it now means not shocked.

I see evidence that this is a UK / US split, that the latter is more normal in the US (in which case poster o.nate would simply be correct), but I am unsure even that this explains the drift.

I think the truth is that the word was never very descriptive and therefore a generation of people lost touch with what it was supposed to mean, and started using it to mean the opposite, to the point where even people like me, who remember the original or previous meaning, can no longer confidently remember it much of the time, let alone use it, as others, using it the new way, wouldn't know what we were trying to say.

I have been reading through John Scaggs, CRIME FICTION (2005) and Richard Bradford, CRIME FICTION: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION (2015).

The latter author is prolific and quite suspect. He has read a lot of novels, which is good, but he tends to repeat himself from one of his many books to the other, and also to be derivative of other books. He is also something of a self-styled conservative, which tends to lead him to him striking stances rather than focusing on factual statements. (He might flourish on UNHERD along with Dr Bastani!) In this book, not for the first time, he quotes badly and doesn't make enough of the quotations. So I'm not selling his book very well but as a simple factual guide to the names and history it is not so bad. He queries the influence of Poe on detective fiction, which is at least usefully bold, and is actually OK on the complexity of Sherlock Holmes. He also has a whole chapter on global crime fiction which I have not yet read. As I say, he has read a lot of novels.

John Scaggs' book again is useful as a gathering of facts, but veers badly into certain grooves, eg: an obsession with comparing Holmes and Poirot with CSI on TV. Likewise he drags MAGNUM: PI in to his discussion of hard-boiled fiction. He also has a hobbyhorse about THE WASTE LAND and hard-boiled fiction which is much more tenuous than he implies, and spends much time repeating claims that are either obvious or tenuous.

The book clearly replicates, repeatedly, a well-worn theme, namely "detective fiction is conservative because it defends social order by focusing on catching criminals". Considering how widely repeated this claim it is, it is curious how weak it is. Most people - including, say, Jeremy Corbyn MP - are actually against crime and in favour of safer communities, though they may have differently nuanced views on how to achieve it or on how criminals should be treated after arrest (which Scaggs rightly acknowledges is an area often ignored by detective fiction anyway). Wanting "social order" in this minimal sense is not politically conservative.

Scaggs also reminds me of a critical tendency to inflate dubious claims. Example: "Chandler's private eye is really a romantic knight-errant". There is some textual evidence for this (the title THE LADY IN THE LAKE is relevant, though it refers very directly to the plot), and usually some chatter about what Chandler read at Dulwich College, but it usually mainly comes to Marlowe's one observation of a window at the start of THE BIG SLEEP. The trouble is, Marlowe is not really a romantic knight at all - this is a faint analogy, which might tell us something, but only on the margins. The genre he is in has little or nothing in common with medieval romance (which I would say misses two elements central to Chandler: detection / deduction and comedy), and even his ethical deliberations and values do not need any medieval dimension to justify or understand them. On the contrary, they are comprehensible to us as modern people (and they entirely lack the elements of religion and of monarchical authority that would, again, underpin a knight's code). So a faint analogy is routinely blown up to casual critical orthodoxy when it should really be minimised and put in its place.

The thing that perhaps most fascinates me about detective fiction is its underlying narrative shape and how far it is different from other kinds of narrative, almost to the point of being a special kind of artistic form - in which information has a different status from what it does in other kinds of narration. It seems that the best / founding statement on this remains Tzvetan Todorov's essay of 1966. I suspect that there is more thoroughgoing development of it, that I should try to read. Another book, Charles J. Rzepka's DETECTIVE FICTION (2005), is better than the two above on this stuff, and in general.

It is a strange fact that I once saw Tzvetan Todorov give a lecture. I think it was on ethical or human rights issues. I imagined that this veteran would be a wizened old figure, stumbling on a stick to the podium. (This was only about 10-15 years ago!) And yet - no, he looked healthy, tanned, dignified, much more youthful than I imagined he had a right to be.

The same was true of Quentin Skinner. I was astounded - nay, nonplussed - that this character who seemed to have been a contemporary of C.P. Snow and Lionel Trilling was lounging around in jeans and putting forward lucid and energetic arguments against the Iraq War (and this was years after the Iraq War).

Have you read Brighton Rock? Catholic education is (futher) incitement for the central character, a little monster, a criminal punk of the 30s. It can be taken comment by the leftist middle class convert on the kind of treatment he escaped by birth, but also he seems attracted to the harshness, along the way to driving this thriller as far as he should to make it a satisfying read.

I remember having my mind blown a bit by this book because it shows Greene views faith as a burden, not a blessing: the atheist character is inherently trivial because since she doesn't believe in an afterlife so hey, let's do whatever, while the Catholic character is constantly tortured by the certainty of punishment down the line. This flew right in the face of my own conception, that it is the atheist's knowledge of mortality that is a burden while the believer's sense of an afterlife is a bit of a balm suggesting things will turn out all right if they behave in a moral manner (somewhat condescending I know; very difficult for believers and non believers alike to get into these differences without at least a hint of condescension sneaking in I've found).

Greene’s view is very in line with how my parents (but not me) were raised and the older way of educating children about religion; Joyce deals with a lot in Portrait of the Artist. The End of the Affair is absolutely required reading not just because it’s a banger in its own right but because the Greene analogous narrator has a lot of thoughts about God and faith and obligations and so on.

The book clearly replicates, repeatedly, a well-worn theme, namely "detective fiction is conservative because it defends social order by focusing on catching criminals". Considering how widely repeated this claim it is, it is curious how weak it is. Most people - including, say, Jeremy Corbyn MP - are actually against crime and in favour of safer communities, though they may have differently nuanced views on how to achieve it or on how criminals should be treated after arrest (which Scaggs rightly acknowledges is an area often ignored by detective fiction anyway). Wanting "social order" in this minimal sense is not politically conservative.

I'd say the conservative element here is not thinking crime is bad but rather accepting the legal system's definitions of what counts as a crime and what doesn't, thus drawing a veil over a range of behaviours that are as or more harmful. The vast majority of crime fiction doesn't question this, and when an investigator does break the law it is more common for it to be in the service of handing out harsher or more effective punishment against the evil doers (i.e. facism) rather than any sense that the system is inhumane or punishing people unfairly. There's obv plenty exceptions to this but as a general take on the genre I think it applies.

Barry Adamson Above The City Down beneath The Stars
Great memoir from ex Magazine, ex(?) Bad Seeds bassist.
Pretty scathing about himself and i didn't realise he was going through any of that at the time. It seems he was full blown losing it at the time he was first in the Bad Seeds I don;t think he showed it. Both hooked on heroin and having extreme mental issues apart from that before his family started dying and then he loses and elder sibling and his mother in rapid succession and gets told his dad was dying.
Can't have helped his mental stability but this is before he started putting out solo material so he must have improved somewhat from that point. I have got as far as Mufti who was staying on the houseboat he was living on has given him a cassette tape with a number of soundtrack artists from the 70s on which sounds like it must be a direct influence on Moss Side Story.
I am enjoying the writing in this so hoping that he writes more. I think this might be roughly up to date though I have got as far as the mid 80s with 30 pages left to read so maybe there is space for a volume 2.
I hadn't realised he had known the Birthday Party since they first appeared in London because they moved in with a crowd he was already hanging out with.

RE: the pinefox on "nonplussed": As he correctly pointed out, my usage was the more informal, predominantly North American one. I think the common element of the two contradictory usages (surprised and perplexed vs. nonchalant and bemused) is the element of being bemused or perplexed.

Sorry guys, this is the only correct usage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrq-2FFFcrc

Hypotheses and questions about (1) detective novels and (2) descriptions of art in fiction:

(1a) control of the narrative (omniscience)
(1b) What information is shared or revealed? What knowledge is held in common?
(1c) Could motive be more important than any statements about societal control and order?

(2) IMHO there was less emphasis on the conceptual aspect and more on the documentary nature of the art, and perhaps how one reacted to that depends upon one's feelings towards children.

(2) ... but I may very well be mistaken!

Experimentation with the form of (1) could involve predetermination or existence of answers to (1a)-(1c).

xxxxpost

as drifted from its previous or canonical meaning, which was or I even still dare to hope is: "so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react."

I think the common element of the two contradictory usages (surprised and perplexed vs. nonchalant and bemused) is the element of being bemused or perplexed.

Good comments by gyac and Daniel on Brighton Rock, also Pinky the punk (and I think this gurl he's involved with) think of "good" and "bad" as merely secular, earthbound, bollocks.

And now I'm thinking of "The pure products of America go crazy": pure as in uncut, in their usual container 'til the right wrong circumstances come along---though it's nature x nurture once again: not every Catholic child acted out like Pinky, uh-uh (though maybe it's a wonder that more didn't---think Greene lets us fill that in along the way (this thing moves).

Perhaps what was ingenious about The Boys as a pandemic novel was realizing that social isolation would be the predominant experience and exploring the implications of that (i.e., an unmooring) and playing on that with the narrative and character development.

(Aimless's description reminds me to re-read The Power and the Glory; gyac re-reminds me to pull trigger and read The End of the Affair, which is already at the top of my Greene stack ffs.)

IMHO there was less emphasis on the conceptual aspect and more on the documentary nature of the art, and perhaps how one reacted to that depends upon one's feelings towards children

Well, in this case I'm thinking mainly of the husband's project/obsession, which is threatening to break apart the marriage, of recording random ambient sounds from a particular region of the American Southwest, which was the last region controlled by free Native Americans. Seems more of a conceptual art piece than a documentary one to me.

I misremembered the details of the husband's project and thought it was more about recording dialects as they are spoken and somehow thought it was more closely related to the documentary project of the author. My apologies!

Williams, The Blue Moment
Leising, Out of the Ether
Murnane, Last Letter to a Reader

eudora welty "the optimist's daughter", owen jones "chavs - the demonisation of the working class", gilbert sorrentino "myysterioso"

the sorrentino i realised after i started it was the 3rd part of a trilogy i haven't read the rest of, but that doesn't seem to make any diff to how much sense it makes

also was reading eva figes' "light" but gave up on account of boredom

I finished Martel's Fludd -- what a delightful little thing. I can see Spark making something out of the supernatural element but not of the cynical arguments about dogma and doctrine.

Dorothy L Sayers clearly enjoyed writing this paragraph, well might Wimsey exclaim at his staid policeman friend's observations:

‘Oh dear, yes! The people in the flat below and the girl at the flower-shop were able to give me quite a good description of her. Tall, overdressed, musquash and those abbreviated sort of shoes with jewelled heels and hardly any uppers – you know the sort of thing. Heavily peroxided; strong aroma of origan wafted out upon the passer-by; powder too white for the fashion and mouth heavily obscured with sealing-wax red; eyebrows painted black to startle, not deceive; fingernails a monument to Kraska – the pink variety.’

‘I’d no idea you studied the Woman’s Page to such good purpose, Charles.’

This from Unnatural Death – a book with some racial attitudes very much of the time, largely but not entirely distributed among the less pleasant characters, and a central plot mechanism a matter of the most intricate and obscure of legal points.

QUIZ TIME: Which year?

C- and L- flew the Atlantic, and S- bade farewell to Brooklands. The Daily Yell wrote anti-Red leaders and discovered a plot, somebody laid claim to a marquisate, and a Czecho-Slovakian pretended to swim the Channel. Hammond out-graced Grace, there was an outburst of murder at Moscow, F- won the Gold Cup and the earth opened at Oxhey and swallowed up somebody’s front garden. Oxford decided that women were dangerous, and the electric hare consented to run at the White City. England’s supremacy was challenged at Wimbledon, and the House of Lords made the gesture of stooping to conquer.

alimosina - how are you liking/did you like Last Letter to a Reader?

Hung out at a buddy's for most of the night doing not-so-legal things. At midnight, my idea, we went to the local karaoke joint, my first karaoke since early 2020. We hung out until before 3 a.m. I sang "She's So Cold." Got home at 3:30.

lol wrong thread

"Exclusive: The Cheever diaries, unxepurgated!"

Fizzles, I have never read anything by Murnane before so effectively I am reading him in reverse. He's an unusual combination of utter subjectivity and remorseless precision. He's comparable to Proust in a way, but Proust used models from life and Murnane makes everything up out of his visual imagination.

The writing is very dry at first, but one acclimates. It's notable how Murnane never tries to interest the reader in the slightest. He simply assumes that the reader will keep on reading.

The frequent references to, e.g., pages A of file B of cabinet C of archive D were curious. Is Murnane were slightly autistic? But an autist could not have written that beautiful ending. He's an enigma.

Typo: remove "were"

I am reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK (2009) - a volume of stories. So far the settings include both Africa and North America.

Fizzles, I have never read anything by Murnane before so effectively I am reading him in reverse. He's an unusual combination of utter subjectivity and remorseless precision. He's comparable to Proust in a way, but Proust used models from life and Murnane makes everything up out of his visual imagination.

The writing is very dry at first, but one acclimates. It's notable how Murnane never tries to interest the reader in the slightest. He simply assumes that the reader will keep on reading.

The frequent references to, e.g., pages A of file B of cabinet C of archive D were curious. Is Murnane were slightly autistic? But an autist could not have written that beautiful ending. He's an enigma.

Finished: Halldor Laxness - Independent People.

Now onto: Joy Williams - Harrow.

Seamus Heaney - Beowulf
Greil Marcus - Under the Red White and Blue

Am reading, for the very first time, obscure deep cut fantasy novel “The Fellowship of the Rings”. I will report back to you in case someone else wants to give it a try.

ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!

Seamus Heaney - Beowulf

New books take in a higher profit than books where you can easily pick up a nice used copy.

I've only just begun reading the NYRB reprint edition of Sylvia Townsend Warner that includes both a short novel and an even shorter novella featuring the same main character. The novel is Mr. Fortune's Maggot, while the novella is The Salutation. It was re-issued under the joint title Mr. Fortune. I haven't read far enough to get much of a fix on them.

fwiw, the headley is purportedly a very different translation than that of heaney et al

(i have not yet read it)

sounds like a good case for reading both translations

Patricia Waugh: HARVEST OF THE SIXTIES (1995)

Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee - I think it was his first novel, and perhaps semi-autobiographical. The first-person narrator has just described the self-discipline he practiced early in his career as a spy in completing daily registers or reports for his boss. The key was to write quickly following formal requirements without too much analysis or correction. This reminded me of the discipline cited by seasoned writers in setting aside time early in the day to write no matter what -- to get something down on paper for later revision, to practice a skill, and to let the act of writing clarify itself. The narrator also describes the art of being noticed enough but not more than required to be accepted without second thought.

Thanks to the Three Investigators discussion recently, I bought The Mystery of the Screaming Clock for a couple bucks used.

I must have read that long ago!

I have started rereading Samuel Beckett's NOVELLAS (so-called).

I am reading a collection of Don Paterson's aphorisms, having never read his poetry. They are quite funny.

I recently finished a book which I believe would fall into the category of detective fiction as discussed by Pinefox earlier in the thread, To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia. This is the first novel of Sciascia's that I've read, though I've also seen a film adaptation of another of his books (released as "Cadaveri Eccellenti"). Based on these two exposures to his work, it seems to me he occupies a distinctive niche within the taxonomy of detective fiction. His unique twist on the detective story is inseparable from the milieu of Sicily in which it take place, a place where it is generally accepted that it doesn't pay to stick one's nose in where it doesn't belong. The protagonist of To Each His Own is a professor of literature and a somewhat unworldly man, more comfortable with books than with the confusing motives and passions of the people living in his town. This being a detective story, a murder has taken place -- actually two murders -- and the professor gets drawn in, somewhat reluctantly, by his acquaintance with the victims (it's a small town) and his belief that the police are underestimating the import of a clue. His motive is not one of justice -- he doesn't seem to care very much if the murderer is caught -- but rather intellectual curiosity. An "obscure pride" prevents him from confiding in the police. There is an evocative passage: "At play in this obscure pride were the centuries of contempt that an oppressed people, an eternally vanquished people, had heaped on the law and all those who were its instruments; a conviction, still unquenched, held that the highest right and the truest justice, if one really cares about it, if one is not prepared to entrust its execution to fate or to God, can come only from the barrels of a gun." This view seems to fly in the face of the "conservative" streak that is supposed to run through detective fiction as a form.

That novel sounds good. I might enjoy it.

I continue with HARVEST OF THE SIXTIES.

The Haunting Of Hill House Shirley Jackson
playful liquid prose lightening the mood somewhat. Loving this writing.Mood created may be a bit weird for the subject matter but probably adds t the build. I've picked this up again after realising that Theodore Allen's The Invention of the White Race doesn't lend itself to short sharp bursts for a bog book.
I should be more familiar with her work. Think I will become so in the wake of this, hoping it as good. I also have a biography of her somewhere. Anyway enjoying this greatly.

Finding The Mother Tree Suzanne Simard
book on the intercommunication between trees by way of fungi. I thought it was going to be less autobiographical/memoir than it has turned out to be but may jsuty be helping establish c9ontext as to how and why the author knows what she does. Quite enjoying it anyway.
Wondering to what extent the market determines how much the author is in the book. I think other books I have read on similar subjects have been less personal/subjective. may be a reaction to the lack of possibility of fully objective perspective.
Pretty disgusted by the directives of teh Canadian Forestry services that she is talking about doing her early research work with. Seem overly destructive and she has talked about destroying very old growth forest which is sad and won't be replaced.
This has been very white perspectived too, not hearing anything about indigenous perspectives on treatment of woodland so far so hope that comes in later.

Insurgent Empire Priyamavada Gopal
book on the last century and a half of the British Empire and the role of indigenous and other colonised peoples in its demise.
I somehj9ow missed how recent the book was for a while , then became aware that the writer was referencing Brexit having happened. Book came out in 2019.
I thijnk it's pretty good and shouldn't have taken me as long to get to as it has done. I started it and then several others after doing so so its taken me several months to get through when I should have concentrated on it. I think it was a rewarding read when i did finally get to it.

Pat Barker - The Women of Troy

xpost o.nate, I think Joanie Loves Chachi mentioned Sciascia as a fave over on Crime Fiction, S/D, where there may be some more discussion of his work by now.