STORM by GEORGE R STEWART

OK, it's not a particularly short book but it is a thin one - published in my copy, in 1944 in a Penguin 'Infantry Edition' (original copyright 1941).

Not only is it not short but the publisher's description: 'A Novel', is open to debate.

Yes Storm is a work of fiction but the normal novelistic conceits, at base some sort of romantic engagement, are missing unless one accepts the relationship between the Junior Meteorologist and Maria, the nascent storm he identifies and tracks, "an incipient little whorl, come into being southeast of Japan" which provides the core of the narrative and the backbone of the 12 days (chapters) of the book.

Storm is a story of discovery and explanation not only for the reader but also, one feels, for the author.  The back cover blurb explains that, "... Stewart got the idea for Storm while on vacation in Mexico ...  and soon became interested in the development and movement of storm centers.  Before long he was gathering data for his book by traveling about studying the effects of storms in different climate areas and at different altitudes. ...".

Maria is the subject and the heroine of the tale.  Not a hurricane nor, indeed, a storm of epic proportion, her effects on the lives of millions of people and the work their leaders: the senior meteorologist, the San Francisco air traffic director, the man responsible for power distribution in that part of California, the road manager charged with keeping the traffic moving on the Donner Pass across the Rockies (he fails) and various others, have to undertake to maintain the status quo, are described in detail.

There's unsurprisingly a lot of weather here, and also a bucket-full of morality teaching wartime America that random, apparently trivial, acts may have appalling consequences.  A loose plank falls off a truck and, coupled with slurry spillage, causes the death of a salesman a couple of days later. Boys shooting at electricity distribution poles have effects nearly as catastrophic; and again motorists ignoring warnings about snow chains are badly hit.

The underlying message is, 'Pay attention America, everything everyone does is important and there are people working hard to keep things going who really need your help'. 

But above this (in all senses of the word), is the storm itself representing near-global interconnectedness: 'We are not an island'.  Some say this is a message America has still to learn.

'Storm' by George R Stewart. In my Penguin edition, published 1944 - pp 310.

QUEEN VICTORIA - A LIFE OF CONTRADICTIONS by MATTHEW DENNISON

In Queen Victoria, A Life of Contradictions, Matthew Dennison has written a fine biography and one that, to my mind, sets a standard of succinct clarity that other writers, whether describing Queen Victoria or another major figure, will do well to match.

Almost inevitably, biographies of one of Britain's great queens tend to run to great size but by focusing on Victoria the individual rather than 'Victorian' with all the latter implies, Dennison has condensed his subject's life into barely more than 150 pages (excluding notes and bibliography) gaining narrative pace without missing key detail.  As one who wanted to know more about Victoria than received ideas of pageantry and pomp, Prince Albert and John Brown, without having to embark on a quest to cut through the thickets of Britain's nineteenth century domestic history and foreign policy, this is a book I have long been hoping for.

The story contains many surprises.  I had not known, for example, how influential Prince Albert (and indeed, Leopold, first King of the Belgians) were in British politics.  Indeed, Dennison comes close to arguing that the organization and direction of mid-nineteenth century British government was a construct of Albert's. Victoria, apparently, always saw herself formally as Queen of England but was happy, in that role, to allow Albert actively to influence policy.

Equally, I had not understood that even 150 years ago - despite the absence of instant mass communication - the prevailing mood of the population could reverse so quickly and completely in response to news.  The important example Dennison gives of this took place in the period some ten to 12 years after Albert's death in 1861 when the British were getting somewhat bored by Victoria's withdrawal from public life in the long period of mourning she never entirely relinquished.  She often refused to open parliament, which went down badly, and frequently withdrew to Scotland rather than undertake ceremonial.  One such withdrawal took place at a time when she was actually ill when, moreover, it became clear that the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) - not usually a popular figure himself - was dangerously ill at the same time.

As the news of Bertie's medical condition filtered out, the strength of support for the royal family regrew very rapidly and led to prayers across the land, supportive leaders in the press, crowds at Buckingham Palace awaiting news and a collective gasp of relief when it became clear that mother and son were going to recover.  While not going so far as to suggest that the Prince of Wales' illness saved Victoria's reign, Dennison certainly implies that without it, the great ceremonies and celebrations of, for example, the Golden and Diamond Jubilees would not have had the impact on the English psyche leading to the 'God is an Englishman' self-righteousness of the pre-WW1 years, that they did.

(Amusingly, the author tells us in a lighter moment that the phrase 'Diamond Jubilee' had to be minted fresh and there were other suggestions 'Jubilissimee' was one). 

The contradictions referred to in the title, were many.  As stated, Victoria was Queen with a capital 'Q' and British with a capital 'B' but had to be coerced into the public appearances the population craved but then she almost always enjoyed them when they did take place.  She was Queen but despite her good or bad relationships with her various Prime Ministers, she was not as much of a ruler as her advisers turn out to be. Again, she took advice in great things but dug her heels in when obstructed in a domestic or court setting - a characteristic that caused problems throughout her long reign.

Long reign, short book, excellent history.  

Queen Victoria, A Life of Contradictions published by  William Collins, 2013.  My edition on Kindle.        

   

MAIGRET IN COURT by GEORGES SIMENON

Chief Inspector Maigret of the Quai des Orfèvres is, the first and, I would argue, still one of the best of the series of tired yet effective police detectives now known to us in the form of Donna Leon's Commisario Brunetti (Venice), Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano (Sicily) and going back, Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen (Venice), Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse (Oxford) and the estimable Van der Walk (Amsterdam) authored by Nicolas Freeling. There is also, of course, a growing band of Scandinavian models.

The backdrop to the Maigret stories, the first eleven of which according to the bibliography I have in front of me, made an appearance in 1931, is usually although not inevitably Paris, and the regular themes include almost consistent pipe-smoking not undertaken quite as furiously as Holmes was apt to do in an earlier generation, lunch (and dinner) at home prepared by the laconic Madam Maigret, and the failures of the heating system at the Quai des Orfèvres frequently leading to heat in summer and no heat in winter.

Unlike some of his more modern police procedural counterparts, Maigret usually has the support of senior members of the police department and of the judiciary whenever his methods shift towards unorthodoxy and Maigret in Court is a case in point.

The story has an unusual structure.  It begins with a long session in court focused on Maigret's evidence taken in the course of investigating a double murder.  The accused is a quiet frame maker, the deceased his aunt and her young ward, the motive robbery.  Despite the fact the case appears straightforward, it slowly becomes clear that Maigret is unsatisfied and has, via earlier chats with prosecution and judge, gained the opportunity to introduce evidence that casts strong doubt on what, pre-trial looked to be an obvious - guilty - verdict.  And, indeed, the accused is acquitted but surprisingly doesn't look too pleased with the outcome.

The tale then moves into a phase of standard police procedure with a platoon of detectives following the principal characters, in Paris, outside Paris and in the south of France.

It is here that Simenon's genius as a writer of fiction (and not just detective fiction) is displayed.  To Maigret, the real solution of the case is fairly obvious and has been so since the beginning of the trial. However for the frame maker and the reader, the answer is slower to underline itself although the former moves to resolution much more quickly than the latter (at least this reader).

At the end, we find the solution was clear and had always been, given the attested facts.  There is no Poirot-like twist here, no last minute fresh evidence of the kind so frequently revealed by Perry Mason.  Simenon is more subtle and less dramatic and as the last page is turned, one is left with a sense of the inevitability of Greek drama where what begins with death must also, as 'the Kindly Ones' take a hand, end with death.

Maigret in Court, published in 1960, is not the best Maigret novel I have read nor is it the one that I would recommend as an introduction to the oeuvre.  It is, however, to be commended for its construction and moreover for the fact it is a clever take on an ancient narrative tradition.



Maigret in Court (Maigret aux Assises), first published 1960; my edition - Penguin 2005 (first Penguin pub 1965)       

A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY by SERGE AKSAKOV (Aksakoff)

I came across Aksakov courtesy of George Borrow, whose book Wild Wales, I had just finished in an early twentieth century OUP edition.  Listed in the back of the Borrow were other OUP offerings of the time including, in the autobiography section, Aksakov's Days of Childhood.  I had never heard of the man and was intrigued that an apparently major author should have entirely escaped my attention; not that I had not read him, there are many I haven't read more famous than he (Charlotte Bronte to name just one), but that I had never even heard the name. 

This gap in my literary knowledge is now partially remedied - I've read the first two volumes of autobiography and will shortly address the third - a memoir of the author's grandfather which was, I believe, the first of the family trilogy to be published.  Never mind, I now know more than I did and I am exasperated by what I have found.

Aksakov is one of those writers whose quality of recollection I find astonishing primarily, I suppose, because this isn't a characteristic I share.  He remembers and narrates not only minor incident after minor incident but also the emotional response they prompt and all this in provincial Russia at a time - in A Russian Schoolboy - when the war with Napoleon had just begun.

Not that Aksakov was either interested by or responsive to grand events.  The only 'major news story' mentioned in Days of Childhood was the death of Catherine the Great which took place when Serge was five.  Napoleon (and General Bagration) get a mention - more than one - in A Russian Schoolboy - but, as I said, they elicit little interest from the author.

To quote some lines from the end of the book: 

"The year 1807 began, Russia was now definitely at war with Napoleon.  A militia was enrolled for the first time in our history; young men crowded into the army, and some of the students, especially the pensioners, asked permission of the Government to leave the University for active service against the enemy; among these were my friend, Panayev, and his elder brother, Ivan, our lyric poet.  I blush to confess that I never thought at that time of 'rushing sword in hand, to join the fray; ..."    

Aksakov was no Tolstoy although I now gather he is at least a figure, some would say an important figure, in Russia's literary hierarchy; he does, however, share many characteristics with Proust - the high emotional response to minor events, being an extreme mummy's boy; a highly developed literary sense.  He does not, however, share Proust's extraordinary ability to describe, even to caricature family, relatives, servants and friends nor does he share Proust's sense of narrative structure.  Aksakov's book(s) is too linear, too formally chronological to the extent he apologizes on the few occasions when he goes off-piste off the timeline.

I mentioned exasperation.  There are many occasions in the book when you feel all young Aksakov needs to bring him 'up to snuff' is a good slap.  Massive enthusiasms: for fishing, shooting, butterfly collecting, acting - the next driving out the former with never a middle way.  Huge fears: of being clasped by the hands of a corpse, of crossing a river whether or not in spate, of being parted from his home in the provinces, and above all, of earning his mother's displeasure or being separated from her - these and illness are the dominant themes.

Particularly his mother, always his mother.  

I didn't like Aksakov's mother and I don't think he ever really saw her as she was.   She was as terrified of being parted from him as he from her (despite the presence of a little sister and latterly, three other children). She hates the country (which he loves - one of their few areas of difference) and refuses ever to take part in running a household preferring to dream of 'society' and, when it suits her (so it seems to the reader) being ill to enforce her purposes.

Aksakov's description of first going to school in Kazam makes the point far more easily than I can. He is clever, well-read for his age and thus, despite being incapable of any concept of mathematics, is sent away to school despite his mother's major misgivings.  He has his hair cut:

"When my father saw me, he laughed and said, 'Well, one would hardly know Seryozha again!'  But my mother, who had failed to recognize me at the first moment, threw up her hands, cried out, and fell fainting to the floor.  I cried out wildly and fell at her feet. ..."

He's to be a boarder but she visits every day, twice a day.  Finally mother is persuaded to go home and, very quickly, he becomes ill - some thought it was epilepsy but the modern reader would be more likely to diagnose some form of acute anxiety syndrome - so mother returns (and these journeys are not short).  And finally, after various Russian episodes of long cold runs on sleighs, crossing rivers with recalcitrant ferrymen and fighting with the school authorities, she takes Serge home and that's that for another year.


A Russian Schoolboy by Serge Aksakov, first English translation in 1917 (trans by JD Duff); my edition on Kindle.    

84, CHARING CROSS ROAD by HELENE HANFF

Helene Hanff's 1970 book, 84, Charing Cross Road is an epistolary gem.  The correspondence, which has since formed the basis of a film, is largely between the acerbic Hanff, a struggling and periodically successful scriptwriter (usually for TV) based in New York and Frank Doel, one of the senior employees of a bookshop, Marks & Co., of the Charing Cross Road.

Hanff is remarkably literate enjoying, indeed needing, those books that would have appeared on a list of the 100 books one should have read, a century ago.  She also wants good copies and as each appears, throws out books she perceives as either poor or worthless never, apparently, expanding her collection beyond the one set of bookshelves she has in her apartment.

The story is lifted by three elements - the jokey, aggressive style that Miss Hanff employs when writing to Marks & Co. and the slow development of confidence in reply that the naturally polite and somewhat nervous Doel adopts; the building of the transAtlantic friendship, still by letter, between Hanff and members of Doel's family as well as other inmates of the bookshop; and, over this, the background of America and England just after the Second World War epitomized by the plenty enjoyed by the former and the still rationed restrictions afflicting the latter - these are brought into sharp focus by the food parcels (and nylons) that Hanff sends across either as a thank you for a first edition John Henry Newman, or for birthdays, Christmas or to help celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

84 Charing Cross Road is very short and though I've read it at least four times, it was only on the last occasion that I genuinely understood the timescale it covers.  Hanff sends her first letter on 5th October, 1949 and receives her last, twenty years later as London has moved into the Swinging Sixties.  Also a lot of the correspondence is missing, lost or has been edited out to create pace and, if the latter, very successfully.

A continuing theme is the often long gaps between Hanff's request for specific books and the ability of Marks & Co to supply them.  These result in some sharp rebukes from the New York side of the relationship:

"SLOTH:  i could ROT over here before you'd send me anything to read. i oughta run straight down to brentano's which i would if anything i wanted was in print."

or

"Dear Speed - You dizzy me rushing Leigh Hunt and the Vulgate over here whizbang like that. You probably don't realize it, but it's hardly more than two years since I ordered them. You keep going at this rate and you're gonna give yourself a heart attack."

on the other hand, when something fine turns up, the pleasure is palpable:

"The Newman arrived almost a week ago and I'm just beginning to recover. I keep it on the table with me all day, every now and then I stop typing and reach over and touch it. Not because it's a first edition; I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty about owning it."

But woe betide Marks & Co if an edition is not up to scratch:

"WHAT KIND OF A PEPYS' DIARY DO YOU CALL THIS?  this is not pepys' diary, this is some busybody editor's miserable collection of EXCERPTS from pepys' diary may he rot.  i could just spit."

Only Hanff appears in the inverted commas above primarily because her prose is that much more quotable.  The English side of the equation, however, does supply a fine balance and one which is accented by the building desire that Hanff has to visit Charing Cross Road and to see literary London, and of the Marks & Co. family to accommodate her.

The visit never takes place - there's always some reason, a move to a new apartment, the cost of dentistry - but, in reality one begins to get the impression that Hanff is fearful of having her illusions broken. Friends of hers visit, and report back with enthusiasm, but never the lady herself.  And then it's too late:

"Dear Miss.  I have just come across the letter you wrote to Mr Doel on the 30th of September last, and it is with great regret that I have to tell you that he passed away on Sunday the 22nd of December [1968]. ... He had been with the firm for over forty years and his passing came as a very great shock to Mr Cohen, particularly coming so soon after the death of Mr Marks. ... Do you still wish us to try to obtain the Austens for you?"

I'll leave the last words (coming from the book's penultimate letter), to Helene Hanff writing to an American friend of hers about to embark for London. For me, at least, this is tear-jerking stuff:

"But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there'.

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.

"The blessed man who sold me all my books died a few months ago. And Mr Marks who owned the shop is dead. But Marks & Co. is still there. If you  happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much."

So do I.




84 Charing Cross Road, originally pub by Grossman, 1970.  My copy pub by Penguin, 97pp.
   

JOHN WENTLEY INVESTIGATES by JFC WESTERMAN

John Wentley Investigates (1939) is the second of three John Wentley tales written by boys' adventure writer, John Francis Cyril Westerman.  I have only read the one.

JFC Westerman is, these days, an unknown story-teller but, looking at the British Library catalogue, he published around 30 books primarily in the 30s and early 1940s and in so doing was for twenty years or so, actively writing at the same time as his father - also a teller of adventures - the more familiar Percy Westerman whose total output was at least five times his son's.

The narrative in this book is linear and trite.  The storyline concerns a global aeroplane-based conspiracy (don't be confused by the racer on the dust wrapper) stealing not only gold and specie but also the 'planes and pilots to undertake this nefarious business. Wentley's former employer has lost a couple of 'planes and their crews and pilot John, accompanied by the somewhat hapless George is sent to sort out the mess. Which he does.

Without spoiling the plot (as if you care), a key element of the criminal gang's success (the gang is called the 'Hovering Eagle', incidentally) is the possession of a device capable of projecting a tractor beam which draws aeroplanes to it.  (The existence of mysterious rays operated by crooks is also a common theme in Percy's books).

I've read a lot of Percy and even from this single incursion into the son's oeuvre I can see two stylistic differences between the pair.  The first is that Percy commonly uses boys or very young men as his central characters - directly associating the target reader with the fiction.  John Wentley, however, is older - mid to late 20s and is, in fact, rather a pale shadow of the younger Biggles.  Unfortunately he's not supported by the cast of characters - Algy, Bertie and Ginger - that WE Johns created.  George, sadly, is just not very interesting and also has an annoying habit of doing himself down despite being an accomplished pilot.

The second difference is in the dialogue.  Where Percy uses (somewhat dated) slang phrases: 'My festive' comes to mind, JFC uses none - at least not in this book - and so there's none of the dashing raffish airman, merely a clever young man sorting things out.

From the number of pages, 256, one would not immediately say John Wentley Investigates is short enough to qualify for this blog.  But the type is large and the line spacing significant so it takes no time to read.




John Wentley Investigates - 256pp.  My copy published by The Children's Press (London and Glasgow).



       

MONSIEUR PAIN by ROBERTO BALAÑO

Even the title of this novel is uncertain if not surreal.  In the author's 'Preliminary Note', Bolaño tells us the following: "Many years ago, in 1981 or 1982, I wrote Monsieur Pain.  Its fate has been haphazard and erratic.  Under the title The Elephant Path it won the Felix Urubayen prize for a short novel awarded by Toledo City Council.  Not long before it had been shortlisted in another provincial competition under a different title."

If this information is true it is at best confusing since, at least to my reading, there is no reason whatsoever why this story set in Paris at the time of the Spanish Civil War but harking back to events 10 or 15 years earlier, should ever have been called The Elephant Path or, indeed The Elephant Track (although this may be a translation issue) which is the title of the so-called 'Epilogue for Voices' which closes the book .

I say "if it is true" without wishing to doubt Bolaño, but he does use three first person characters.  The first, as quoted, presumably his own voice; the second through the main body of the narrative, the eponymous Monsieur Pain a survivor of the First World War horrors of Verdun and an amateur practitioner of 'animal magnetism'; and then an unknown 'I' in the Epilogue who provides brief biographical notes on some of the characters - I'm tempted to call them 'inmates' - of the story.

For example (from the Epilogue) and talking of how, post World War II, Monsieur Pain came to work at a cabaret: "How did Monsieur Pain come to work there? I guess it was after he lost his war veteran's pension at the beginning of the Occupation.  So it must have been in September, October or November of 1940 that he turned up at the House of the Old Companions looking absolutely pitiful, as if he'd gone for a month without eating so much as a mouthful of bread; Gandhi was plump by comparison.  I was fifteen at the time and working as the cabaret's errand boy."

Other reviewers have described Monsieur Pain as containing elements of Poe, Borges and even Chandler.  Borges, certainly, but I failed to find the horrors Poe would have imposed and there is none of the pace nor humour of Chandler in this story of an lone 48 year-old tangentially involved in the death, either by natural causes or as the result of a conspiracy, of Monsieur Vallejo - a poor poet.  Characters shift in an out of vision.  At one point Pierre Pain declares his love for Madame Reynaud, the widow of a man whose life Pain failed to save on his first and only attempt (prior to Vallejo) to use Mesmeric forces to save life in terminal decline. 

But Pain does not declare his love to Madame Reynaud but does so when talking to Monsieur Rivette, an aging sage who may, or may not know what's going on but is certainly not party to the suspicions that Pierre Curie, Marie Curie's husband, was killed by intent rather than by accident when run over by a carriage on the rue Dauphine in 1906.  These are told to Pain by the enigmatic Aloysius Pleumeur-Bodou (a.k.a. Maurice Feval) when talking about a friend, Terzeff, film footage of whom, working in a laboratory, has been grafted into a later movie, Actualité, that Pleumeur-Bodou has seen many times but still includes sections, he says, that he may never understand.    

At its best, Monsieur Pain occupies the interstices between sleeping and waking or between sanity and madness.  Pain dreams frequently and bizarrely; much of the conversation between Pain and Pleumeur-Bodu takes place in a cinema where Actualité is playing and is intercut with descriptions of, and dialogue from, the movie; the Clinique Arago, where Vallejo is dying, is a Escher construction of irrelevant staircases and half-finished rooms with non-sequential numbering; a warehouse where Pain spends the night in near total darkness is an unexplained repository "full of useless junk, but at first I couldn't determine the nature of the objects or the uses they might once have had."  And then we have the two half-described Spaniards who threaten Pain, bribe him (to stop treating Vallejo) and are then relegated to walk-on parts never again fully spotlit. Underlying all this are recurrent themes of drunkeness, rain, darkness and shadows.

The book that this story most strongly brought to my mind is Ishiguro's, The Unconsoled  which itself was, as I recall, described by The Times as a work of either genius or madness.  Exactly.

Monsieur Pain, first published 2010.  2011 UK edition by Picador 134pp. 

TENNIS AND THE MASAI by NICHOLAS BEST

Nicholas Best's short novel about a young schoolmaster and wannabe soldier, coming of age at a prep school in post-Independence Kenya's Masai country, is no masterpiece but it is a fine light comedy and should be better known.

The book's strength lies with its cast of eccentric characters including the headmaster of Haggard Hall, Desmond Gale, an ex-army man and former adventurer, "of a type well known in Kenya", the Padre with his enthusiasm for racing pigeons (notably 'Siege of Paris'), Gentleman's Relish and cricket, Lady Bullivant a brook-no-nonsense, riding-to-hounds colonial of a type familiar to viewers of the TV series 'Two Fat Ladies', and the regularly absconding pupil, Smith-Baggot, who through the book's pages seems to spend as much time in the bush as he does in the classroom (but nonetheless, with a certain amount of 'help' does get a Common Entrance to King's School, Canterbury).

I have yet to mention the book's principal figure, Martin Riddle - the young schoolmaster - whose move from Purley Way in Surrey to Haggard Hall (and back again) creates the framework which supports the text.  Riddle is perhaps a little obvious, a mummy's boy who fails his Army entrance tests primarily because of a lack of self-confidence but who, responding to the force of circumstance, does rather well in Kenya and is thus set up for the future.

But I should include, primarily for the joy of the succinct introductory description of her, the school's matron Mrs Fisk, a former air stewardess. "She was in her early thirties, heavily made-up, with a hairstyle that spoke of private fantasy."

And I should also include at least one of the school's retainers, Mogadishu, an anti-Catholic and the only one of the Africans who knows how to roll the cricket pitch properly.  

Thoroughly enjoyable.  While not in the league of school novels by Waugh or, indeed, Huxley, Tennis and the Masai certainly lives with Ellis's AJ Wentworth BA and benefits immeasurably in being set far beyond England.

Tennis and the Masai by Nicholas Best, Hutchinson, 1986 176pp.