These Are A Few of My Favorite Books

The Stephanie Patterson Best Books of 2015 isn’t nearly as well known as that published by The New York Times, The Washington Post or Publisher’s Weekly.

But I’m going to offer a few of my favorites anyway. If I wrote about a book in the blog earlier this year, it was a favorite and won’t be mentioned here. Also note that unlike NYT, WaPo and PW, my list reflects books I read this year, but they weren’t necessarily published this year.

Best Books of 2015

Atkinson, Kate, Life After Life.
Every time Ursula Todd dies, she is born again. She drowns, she falls off a roof. When she dies in the London Blitz she appears again as the wife of a Nazi officer who hangs out with Eva Braun. This is very cleverly done. Don’t be put off by its description as “postmodern,” it’s a page turner. Just as good in its own way is the sequel to this book, A God in Ruins. It seems like a much more conventional narrative until the last few pages.

Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland and Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass.
Alice is 150 this year but as fresh, funny and witty as ever. All honor to the man who gave us “galumph” and “chortle.”

Clanchy, Kate, Meeting the English.
Philip Prys, a famous English playwright, has a stroke. Struan is a bright 17 year old from Scotland who needs money to get himself to college. He has considerable experience with stroke patients and nursed his father through his final illness. When he begins to take care of Philip he also has to deal with his patient’s entitled children, his patient’s ex-wife, and his current wife, a 26 year old Iranian artist. His sense of what family members owe to one another and what his patient’s family feels entitled to clash again and again. Well worth a read.

Dickens, Charles, Nicholas Nickleby.
I’m lucky to own a fabulous 2 volume edition of this book which has the monthly installments of the novel as they appeared originally in serial form. This means that every chapter includes wonderful Victorian advertisements for nostrums, all sorts of patent medicine, and other books (Miss Farley’s Botany for Young Ladies). Dickens' good characters are too good to be true but so many of the characters are fabulously drawn and named (Wackford Squeers, The Cheeryble Brothers, the pitiable Smike). If you like lots of colorful characters and plot twists and turns this is the book for you.

Egen, Elizabeth, A Window Opens.
Alice’s husband, Nicholas, does not make partner and leaves his law firm to start his own practice. She then needs to leave her pleasant part-time job as a book reviewer for a women’s magazine for something more lucrative. She lands at Scroll (hint: The author worked at Amazon) where she hopes to create the perfect reading experience for customers. Alas, there is a “pivot” to computer games. Alice also has to deal with her husband whose career switch is not going smoothly, her children, who miss her, and her father, who is growing increasingly ill.

Essbaum, Jill, Alexander.
Hausfrau Anna meets her gorgeous Swiss husband in America. She lives for many years in Switzerland feeling bored and lonely. (She never bothers to learn the language.) She starts therapy. She joins a German language class. She meets lots of men. Overtones of Flaubert and Tolstoy are deliberate.

Everett, Percival, Erasure.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an African-American author of experimental novels. He gives talks on the theory of the novel at academic conferences. When the family from whom he is estranged unravels, he realizes he needs to make some money so he writes “a ghetto novel” like those sometimes favored by talk show hosts. This is satire with humanity and a novel within a novel.

Edison, Jonathan, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance.
Harriet is a woman in her 70s whose husband suddenly dies. She goes on a cruise following his death even though she discovers he meant to go with his mistress. Harriet has many things to contend with, not the least of which are her grown children. The real treat in this book is the narrator, who, depending on his mood, praises, encourages, chides, and mocks his heroine.

Groff, Lauren, Fates and Furies.
This is a more literary version of Gone Girl. Once more we have an account of marriage from two points of view, the wife and the husband. Lotto (short of Lancelot) sees his wife Mathilde as almost perfect. She doesn’t see herself that way and neither does the reader.

Knausgaard, Karl Ove, My Struggle: Book Four.
I’m never sure I actually like this series of books, but I keep reading. This one finds our “hero” starting his career as a writer, working as a teacher and hoping to find a girlfriend. The events in these books are stunningly ordinary but I do find myself wanting to know how the series (there are two more books to come) turns out.

Murray, Paul, Skippy Dies.
Paul (“Skippy”) Juster is a student at Seabrooke College, an Irish boy’s school. When the priest who runs the school is taken ill, he is replaced by an administrator who is interested in “branding” and mission statements and all things blandly corporate. He is frustrated at almost every turn by students and faculty. Besides the sensitive Skippy, he must deal with the young genius Ruprecht Van Doren who is trying to find a portal into another world. Then there is Howard (the Coward) Fallon who tries to rouse both his students and himself from a constant torpor by having them read Robert Graves’ WWI memoir, Goodbye to All That, and consider the lives of young men not much older than they are when they go to war. The is book is complex, ambitious, thoughtful and hilarious.

Packer, Ann, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier.
On a Memorial Day weekend Carrie and Michael, who are engaged to be married, drive out to Clausen’s Pier for a picnic. Michael is paralyzed after diving into shallow water. Burdened by guilt and the expectations of others, Carrie drives to New York City and a new life. Eventually, Carrie has to decide where she will be happiest. I understand that readers, frustrated by her decision, have hurled the book across the room. My Kindle is pricy so I didn’t go that far.

Yanagihara, Hanya, A Little Life.
I didn’t so much read this book as live in it. It is grim, but compelling. It follows four male friends live in NYC. JB is an artist who chronicles the group friendship in his work, Malcolm is an architect and Willem becomes quite a famous actor. The focus of the group is frequently Jude St Francis whose brutal physical and sexual abuse as a child continues to blight his adulthood. While he has a brilliant professional life and commands the love and loyalty of many people, he is never really able to reveal much of himself to them. Some of the book didn’t ring true to me, but all in all, I found it hard to put down.

Crime Fiction

Armstrong, Charlotte, Mischief.
When a couple travel to NYC so that the husband can make a speech (about what we never know) at an important dinner, he and his wife bring their young daughter with them. They hire a babysitter to take care of her in the hotel room and that is when the mischief occurs.

Dahl, Julia, Invisible World.
Rebekah Roberts is a stringer for The New York Tribune. When she begins investigating the murder of the wife of a prominent Hasidic Jew she confronts a crime that no one seems to want to investigate. Rebekah’s mother is a Hasidic woman who left home shortly after Rebekah was born. Her father is not Jewish As she is drawn deeper into the investigation she learns more about her community and her own past.

Greenwood, Kerry, Cocaine Blues.
This is the first of the Phryne Fisher mysteries. Phryne is what used to be called in the 1920s a New Woman. Her first mystery finds her leaving her boring London season to investigate the disappearance in Australia of a friend’s daughter. There is plenty of wit and adventure and the portrait of post WWI Australia is fascinating as well.

French, Tana, The Secret Place.
Just a word of warning. It’s best to read Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad mysteries in order. (This is her fifth). If you don’t, certain allusions and quirks of character won’t make sense. The action for this case is set at an exclusive girls' school. Holly Mackey, the daughter of detective Frank Mackey, thinks she may have found a clue to an unsolved crime committed at the school. French’s understanding of the loyalties that young girls form and the secrets they keep make this
mystery most absorbing.

Hawkins, Paula, The Girl on the Train.
This has been one of the best selling books of the year and hardly needs my endorsement. Rachel passes the house of two people she calls Jess and Jason. They seem happy and she spends a lot of time imagining what their lives might be like. Then one day she sees Jess kissing someone who isn’t Jason. Jess then seems to disappear. This is fun because you have the perspective of several unreliable narrators.

Nesbo, Jo, The Harry Hole novels: (Cockroaches, Redbreast, Nemesis, Devil’s Star, Redeemer, The Snowman, The Leopard, The Panther, The Police).
Harry Hole is a cop based in Oslo (though the first two books take place in Australia and Thailand). His personal life is a mess. One can question whether any police detective, no matter how brilliant, would be retained by his employer if he consumed the the number of substances Harry does.The books are undeniably compelling. Detective Hole is very smart (except about his own life) and the books are riveting.

Nonfiction

Allingham, Margery, The Oaken Heart: An English Village at War.
Allingham is best known for her murder mysteries, but this is a tale of her life in rural England during WWII when she helped families evacuated from London (people from urban areas don’t necessarily find the country soothing) and neighbors cope. She also manages to work on a novel. Other accounts of Allingham’s life don’t necessarily jibe with the portrait she paints here but she is, after all, a writer of fiction.

Carr, David, The Night of The Gun.
This is better than a memoir. Who can really trust the memories of a drug addict? Carr, a substance loving, award winning reporter goes back and essentially researches and reports his own addiction. He talks to friends, lovers and people he betrayed. This is a great book about the fallibility of memory but also about the rewards of recovery.

Cooke, Rachel, Her Brilliant Career.
This is a look at 10 British women who had major careers in the 1950s. I had heard of none of them and when I checked out the Amazon UK site found that many of the British readers of this book knew little about these women either. Subjects include the Box sisters, who were very much involved in the British movie industry, Elizabeth David, a sort of British Julia Child, and Rose Heilbronn, one of the first women to “take silk” (become a high court judge). My total unfamiliarity with any of these women didn’t get in the way of my enjoying the book.

de Margerie, Caroline, American Lady: The Life of Susan Mary Alsop.
Though she was both an author and a Washington hostess, Susan Mary Alsop came of age in a time when women got their power, in part, from their associations with men. She married Bill Patton, had a child with British diplomat Duff Cooper, and then married Joseph Alsop at at time when his Georgetown dinner parties were the place to be for important and policy changing political discussions. The book is fascinating look at a woman who was notable even though the times in which she lived did not especially favor women who asserted themselves.

Granger, Farley Include Me Out: My Life From Goldwyn to Broadway.
Farley Granger may be best known for his role in Hitchcock’s filming of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on A Train. This is a good book about movie star life in the 1950s and being gay when it could ruin your career. Granger and writer/director Arthur Laurents lived together for a while, Laurents paid for Granger to undergo psychoanalysis. When they broke up Laurents offered to find Granger an analyst in New York. Granger said, “But I don’t feel guilty about being homosexual. I don’t need analysis.” Indeed, Granger hadn’t been keeping his appointments in California. He just drove around for a therapeutic hour.

Hart-Davis, Rupert, and Lyttleton, George, The Lyttleton-Hart-Davis Letters (v1-2 1955-1957).
Whenever I meet someone who has read these letters, I know I’ve met a kindred spirit. Hart-Davis was a British publisher, author and editor (he edited the complete correspondence of Oscar Wilde) and Lyttleton was one of his Eaton masters .
They meet at some literary function and Lyttleton complains that no one wrote to him. Hart Davis takes up the challenge until Lyttleton’s death in 1962. It is a wonderfully bookish correspondence and has had a substantial impact on my book budget.

Lough, David, No More Champagne: Churchill and Money.
This is the letter to his wife Clementine that inspires the name of this book: “No more champagne is to be bought. Unless special directions are given only white or red wine, or whiskey and soda will be offered at luncheon and dinner. The Wine Book is to be shown to me every week. No more port is to be opened without special instructions.” Churchill’s daughter has no recollection of these directions ever being followed. We owe the flow of Churchillian publications to the fact that he never had enough money. He did expensive taste, a love of gambling and stock market speculation. A book sure to make any reader feel better about her financial acumen.

Manning, Molly Guptill, When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us During WW II.
During WWII the US government thought providing soldiers with books would offer a wonderful contrast to the book burning of Nazi Germany. This is the story of ASEs (Armed Services Editions) that were produced and the paperback revolution they heralded. The most popular book printed in these editions? A Tree Growns in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

Maraniss, David, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story.
Maraniss, a Detroit native, tells the story of an 18 month period in the history of Detroit from roughly 1962-1964. There’s a lot about the auto industry and the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King led a march that foreshadowed the March on Washington. There is lots of good stuff about Motown. You can read about Aretha Franklin and her influential pastor father, C. L. Franklin.

Reidel, Michael, Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway.
This is not a full account of Broadway musicals. Reidel is interested in the musicals backed by the Shubert Brothers and the Nederlanders. If, like me, you’re not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan, the latter part of this book is fascinating in the way a train wreck is. But there’s lots of gossipy details about many Broadway stars and how various Broadway properties did or did not make it on The Great White Way.

Risen, Clay, The Bill of the Century: The Story of the Civil Rights Act.
You see, once upon a time government worked. This is the story of the many people who made the Civil Rights Act possible and how they worked together to get it passed. Democrats worked with Republicans—I know you think I should have put this in the fiction section—and a major piece of legislation was passed. It makes me proud and sad to read about this much more productive time in political history.

Schultz, Kevin, Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped The ‘60s.
The subtitle here might be more accurate if it characterized the relationship between Buckley and Mailer as one that reflected the ‘60s rather than shaped it. The interest of the book lies in its portrayal of two very different people trying to understand each other.

Silberman, Steve, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.
Silberman’s book traces the history of autism theory, diagnosis and treatment but also looks at how people with various neurological idiosyncrasies have affected our technology and our culture.

Stephanie Patterson

Opening Lines Quiz - The Answers

Here are the answers to yesterday's first lines quiz.

1. They threw me off the hay truck about noon—The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain.

2. Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write—A Judgment in Stone, by Ruth Rendell

3. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again—Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.

4. My bodyguard was mowing the yard wearing her pink bikini when the man fell from the sky—Dead Over Heels, by Charlaine Harris

5. When I finally caught up with Abraham Traherne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon—The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley

Stephanie Patterson

First Lines That Keep You Reading: A Brief Quiz

So below you will find five of my favorite opening lines in mystery novels. What are the books? The answers will appear tomorrow. Feel free to add your own favorites. (No fair looking on Google.)

1. They threw me off the hay truck about noon.

2. Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.

3. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

4. My bodyguard was mowing the yard wearing her pink bikini when the man fell from the sky.

5. When I finally caught up with Abraham Traherne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

Stephanie Patterson

I Confess

A number of years ago I was trying to get published without much success. I wrote personal essays and short stories. I wrote proposals for nonfiction articles. I got a lot of form rejections and some more personalized rejections (“ I enjoyed reading this, but it’s not for us”) but no one wanted to publish my stuff.

One day I was leafing through a copy of Writer’s Digest and saw a book on how to write confession stories. The book was more than I could afford so I decided to study the market. I lived in Center City Philadelphia near a number of large newsstands but no one seemed to carry these magazines anymore. I called my mom who said she’d check out the local drug store and, sure enough, I got a package with copies of True Confessions and Modern Romance.

One of my aunts read confession magazines as a teen and I remembered thinking they were steamy. They were illustrated with photographs and one story featured a photograph of a man walking a blanket-clutching woman into the woods. But I was 10. What did I know about steam?

The magazines my mother sent me featured young women with a variety of personal problems: unwanted attention from a man at work, not enough attention from a man at work and single moms trying to find romance.

I thought I had an idea of what the editors were looking for so I wrote a story with a disabled protagonist (disability and romance might get someone’s attention). and sent it to Modern Romance. Six weeks later it came sailing back in my self-addressed stamped envelope with a from letter “Thank you for sending us you story, however…”

I had just gotten a new job and didn’t really have much time to think about writing and so consigned the story to the desk drawer that held all my other unpublished stories. I continued to write other things but couldn’t get them published.

Several years later I was going through this desk drawer again and came upon my confession. I read through it. It certainly wasn’t “The Dead,” but for what it was it was OK. I retyped it and sent it off to True Confessions.

A mere 18 months later I got a response from True Confessions. They would publish the story and I would get a check the last week of the month in which the story appeared. Had I been trying to make my living as a writer I would have been homeless and starving. It was another few months before my story appeared, but I had a day job so I was ecstatic.

My mother sent the story to relatives and friends. The magazine was still illustrated with photographs. My mother got a few puzzled responses. “Is that Stephanie in the picture. I don’t remember her being so blonde. Is she coloring her hair now?” and “The girl in the picture looks to be in her twenties. Isn’t Stephanie a bit older than that now?”

I wrote a second story based loosely on how I met my husband. Work was still demanding but I developed something called “benign positional vertigo” and my doctor put me off work. “I don’t want you falling off city buses and it might be a good idea if you weren’t living alone just now.”

Bob moved me (and my computer) to his place. In a few weeks I had the story ready to go. Bob read the story and told me that my protagonist had to do more than read books all day and her favorite dessert couldn’t be creme brulee, which was, at the time, hard to find anywhere.

True Confessions responded quickly.

“They Fed-exed their response,” I said to Bob. “I think this is the kind of thing that happens right before you win The Pulitzer Prize.”

My twenty page story was considered a book length feature and they wanted it in the next edition of the magazine. It appeared. I got paid and life was good.

I had an essay published in a medical journal (long story) and wrote a feature that I hoped would set me up to write articles for what Sylvia Plath called “the slicks.” Alas, I had to settle for what was in essence a kill fee.

So I have become a writer of occasional pieces. If there’s an occasion when I want to write something then I do. I have a novel I tinker with now and again. But I have to be honest. If I have a bad day at work, I want to relax and be entertained. At those times, I am happy to read the words of others.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Childhood and Adolescent Reading

I’ve been going through a book called The Pleasure of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them edited by Antonia Fraser. I love these kinds of books because I’m always curious about what other people read.

This is a wonderful collection of lovely essays. I don’t think I have a lovely essay in me right now but let me offer brief thoughts on some of the books I read as a child and adolescent.

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew— Poor children are happy. Rich children are miserable. Rich children are made happier by getting to know poor children. My mother told me that I once came to her and asked if we were rich. She assured me that we were not. She swears I responded, “That’s good. Rich people are so lonely.”

Little House on the Prairie— I loved these books as a child but as an adult I couldn’t help noticing how paranoid Pa Ingalls was about the U.S. government. He also kept moving the family because there were just too many damn people around. No way was this guy Michael Landon.

“Little Boy Blue” by Eugene Field— When every line of more sophisticated poetry that I have committed to memory has left my brain I will still be able to recite this poem. I was a morbid child at times. I had a similar fascination with The Bird’s Christmas Carol. In this Kate Douglas Wiggins’ novel, a wealthy but sickly girl is befriended by poor children (see Five Little Peppers above, also by Kate Douglas Wiggins).

In case you don’t know the Eugene Field poem, here it is:

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
    But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
    And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
    And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
    Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
    "And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
    He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
    Awakened our Little Boy Blue—
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
    But the little toy friends are true!

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
    Each in the same old place—
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
    The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
    In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
    Since he kissed them and put them there.

Saint Thomas’ Eve— This is a novel about Sir Thomas More. Alas, I became totally distracted by the references to More wearing a “hair shirt.” No adult could tell me what it was. Hillary Mantel has a somewhat different take on More than the one you’ll find here. She makes sure to remind you that he burned heretics at the stake.

Two books from my adolescent years stand out:

Look Homeward, Angel— I loved this book when I first read it. Eugene Gant wanted to know everything and so did I. Alas, I read it a few years ago and wondered what I ever saw in it. The great Maxwell Perkins was Thomas Wolfe’s editor but he didn’t cut enough.

Advise and Consent— I knew nothing about homosexuality when I read this book as a teenager. No one I knew talked of such things. So when I read that a senator was in trouble because someone had a picture of him “with a man,” I was pretty puzzled. I re-read it just a few years and the matter still seemed to me to be dealt with obliquely. However, I did still find it quite entertaining.

Stephanie Patterson

The Horror! The Horror! Getting Rid of Books

“But however many bookshelves Crispin built there were never enough. The books in alphabetical rows were overgrown by piles of new books, doubled in front. Books multiplied, books swarmed, books, I sometimes dreamt, seemed to reproduce themselves—they were a papery population explosion. When they had exhausted the shelves, they started to take over the stairs… You cannot have a taste for minimalist decor if you seriously read books.”

Say Amen, somebody! The paragraph above is from Linda Grant’s Kindle Single, “I Murdered My Library.” The rest of the essay goes on to consider things I’m not much interested in, but this bit struck a chord. I don’t have Crispin (the gentleman who built Grant’s bookshelves), I have Bob (the husband who bolted numerous canning shelves to our walls). Bob has a boyhood friend, an architect, who asks ever so gently, if we might want to put in something more attractive.

The answer is no. We will eventually be moving to a smaller place and we aim for sturdiness, not beauty. The shelves are bolted down because I am not always fleet of foot and I fall. What would happen if I grabbed a bookshelf and it fell on me. Bob has insured that I will not be maimed or killed by the objects I love so much.

When we moved to our current house 10 years ago, we were moving to a bigger place. Even then the books were an issue. The movers came to do an estimate.

They figured I had 90 boxes of books and that this would add an additional $1,500 to the move. Bob moved the books and I would get phone messages at work. “Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins are in Collingswood.”

Since then, I discovered one click at Amazon and I still frequent book stores.

The Kindle has eased things, but I read old books that often mention other old books.

Kindle tells me I have “The Complete George Bernard Shaw” but it doesn’t include “Pen Portraits and Reviews” which other bookish people assure me is not to be missed. Many wonderful things are not available electronically. And there are so many pleasures in old books. The aforementioned Shaw volume comes from The Lancaster (England) Public Library. A little sticker in the front of the book tells me I can borrow it for two weeks, I must alert the library when I move out of the district and I cannot borrow books if someone in my home has an infectious disease. In a volume of Anne Fleming’s letters, someone has obliging included newspaper clippings: Anthony Powell’s review of the letters and the obituary of a Fleming relative. The letters are fun, by the way, but Fleming, I suspect, will always be known primarily as the wife of two famous men, Lord Beaverbrook and Ian Fleming.

A cozy mystery I bought (The Case of the Missing Book by Ian Sansom) included a gift note. The giftee was ill and the giver offered the book and any other assistance that might be needed. I rely on my Kindle but electronic books don’t allow for personal touches, though I am always interested to see what passages other people highlight.

I had intended this to be a little meditation on what books I’d gotten rid of and find that I’ve talked more about why I still need to acquire paperbacks, hardcovers and what Amazon calls “unknown bindings.” In the field of addiction there’s the concept of “harm reduction.” You may not be totally abstinent but your needles are clean and you don’t use as much. I used to get rid of 2 books and buy 5. Now it’s the other way around.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Another First Day at School

What I remember most about my childhood homes is leaving them. Just as my life threatened to dry up in one small town or another, the United States Navy, my family's own deus ex machina, would appear to move us to a new and always dangerously innocuous location. My friends, many of whose lives were dictated by military maneuvers, found themselves in various parts of Europe; I toured various parts of Maryland. While many of my peers were only a short drive from Vienna—I was only minutes away from Busch Gardens. When I complained to my father that we never went to Europe, he would do in one breath what Atilla the Hun could not accomplish after numerous invasions—reduce the continent to the rubble of inconsequence.

“I've been there,” he'd say, “you wouldn't like it.”

So I learned to accept the small corners of America as my lot in life. I grew to enjoy moving; it seemed a nice trick that I, whose movements were circumscribed by leg braces, should become the master of the quick getaway.

Indeed movement became my chief talent. I changed schools so frequently that at an early age I developed the forced gaiety of a road company Blanche Du Bois. Too often I felt as if I had just sold Belle Rive and was going to depend on the kindness of yet another stranger.

My first day at school was a familiar ritual. My father, absent on so many other occasions of my life, was always impressed into service for this event. These were always uneasy times because my father always displayed how really little he knew about me. I feared being placed in the wrong grade because he always believed me to be two years older than I was. He would peer at me quizzically—as if he were nearsighted and I was a total stranger—when forced to answer the questions about my coloring that appeared on the school registration form.

As if to make up for having blown his lines in this part of the performance he would ask to speak to the school principal. While I was never sure what my father said to these administrators, I was convinced that he assigned to me qualities that would have made Little Eva look hopelessly jaded.

The principal, usually a blue-haired woman, would emerge from her office misty-eyed; if my father had given a bravura performance, she would be wiping away tears. She would gaze forlornly at my braces and then give me a smile reserved for children about to undergo operations from which they might not recover. My father, under the guise of giving me lunch money, would pull me aside, wink at me slyly, and say, “Well, kid, I paved the way.”

Since I never remembered putting in bids for roadwork, this final comment always perplexed me. Dad would square his shoulders and straighten his tie secure in the knowledge that he had given a performance that any actor worth his Stanislavski would envy. The principal would turn her still moist gaze on me, take me by the hand, and lead me to the classroom.

I always dressed inappropriately for these occasions. As a rule my mother bought me demure pastel dresses that called no particular attention to my physical appearance. However, perhaps in apology for our constant wandering, she always allowed me to choose the dresses I wore on my many first days.

“Gaudy,” my mother would say as I picked out bright colored dresses—I favored odd shades of purple and red—in flimsy materials.

“You have the taste of a taxi dancer,” she would add.

But I adored these dresses. My leg braces might thunk unbecomingly, but these cheap gauzy materials swirled so effortlessly around my knees it really didn't matter. I never let my mother know how often I heard teachers whisper “Who dresses that child?"

Since I always seemed to make my entrance just before recess, I was plunged immediately into the task of making myself known to my classmates. Though the world of the jungle jim and the seesaw was not my natural mile, I pretended I was hosting an urban garden party and prepared myself to be a receiving line of one. With my gauzy clothes and my air of coming from a different and much more interesting planet than the one I was visiting, I managed to antagonize my audience. I braced myself for the inevitable question, posed this time by a small boy who displayed both curiosity and chutzpah.

“Why is that stuff on your legs?”

I would usually meet the query with the authority of the Surgeon General.

“I have cerebral palsy. It's a birth defect.”

But that day I was a little weary and a little less gracious and I remembered what a drunken relative had said to me when I complained of unceasing questions.

“Tell the little bastards you're in the tertiary stages of venereal disease.”

I said it. I loved saying “tertiary.”

The kids had no idea what I was talking about. My teacher did.

The principal I faced after recess was not the woman reduced to mawkishness by my father's charm. I was suspended for two days for “conduct unbecoming to a lady of such tender years.”

Clearly the principal shared my love of affectation.

As I was leaving her office, the principal said “Your father told me you were shy, painfully shy.”

A poster child. I bet he made me sound like a poster child.

Later that night, at home, when I repeated the principal's parting shot to my mother, she replied, “Next time you talk to her, tell her she's not the first woman he lied to.”

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Summer Reading

(which truth to tell is not that different from my winter, spring or autumn reading)

Several of the British literary magazines I subscribe to do these features where notable authors and others talk about what they’re going to read during the summer. What I have in mind to read at any given time changes so often that any list I prepared at the beginning of summer would be a piece of short fiction, but good luck to the person I read about who was planning to read a three volume biography of Napoleon in French.

The books below are listed in the order I read them. Books I discussed earlier on the blog are not here. If I wrote about them I liked them.

Disclaimer by Rene Knight. A woman picks up a book and realizes that it describes incidents in her life. It’s difficult to discuss this book without revealing key plot details. Suffice it to say the author of the book is not a friend.

Life After Life by by Kate Atkinson. Every time Ursula Todd dies, she is born again. She drowns, she falls off a roof. When she dies in the London Blitz she appears again as the wife of a Nazi officer who hangs out with Eva Braun. This is very cleverly done. Don’t be put off by its description as “postmodern,” it’s a page turner.

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith. If I had not followed politics during my childhood and seen a lot of Nelson Rockefeller I would find it unbelievable that the man described here was a Republican (FDR and Harry Truman urged him to switch party affiliation). There was no realistic chance that he would ever be the Republican nominee for the presidency and his marriage to Happy Murphy and the rise of the right wing of the party certainly doomed him in 1964. He was a fascinating man and you get a real sense of how the Republican party and the role of government has changed in the past 50 years.

The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics by Barton Swaim. Mr. Swaim admired Mark Sanford and offered his services as a speechwriter. I kept thinking it was a pity he didn’t read Never Work for a Jerk. This is short book that is as much about enduring a job you hate as it is about politics. Mr. Swaim is a good writer. It’s a pity Mark Sanford didn’t understand that.

A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of George III by Janice Hadlow. An entertaining look at what many consider the first modern royal family. George III was more than just the bete noir of the American colonies. This book teaches you that being royal, especially if you’re a woman, is quite tedious. This account is enlivened by contemporary diaries and letters.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. This is a contemporary country house murder complete with snow storm, non-functioning landline and cell phones that won’t work in the middle of nowhere. Nora gets an invitation to a “hen party” (bachelorette party) for her best friend, Claire. However, she and Claire have not seen each other for ten years and Nora is not invited to the wedding. The questions: Who invited her and why?

The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer. On a Memorial Day weekend Carrie and Michael, who are engaged to be married, drive out to Clausen’s Pier for a picnic. Michael is paralyzed after diving into shallow water. Burdened by guilt and the expectations of others, Carrie drives to New York City and a new life. Eventually, Carrie has to decide where she will be happiest. I understand that readers, frustrated by her decision, have hurled the book across the room. My Kindle is pricy so I didn’t go that far.

Erasure by Percival Everett. Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an African-American author of experimental novels. He gives talks on the theory of the novel at academic conferences.

When the family from whom he is estranged unravels, he realizes he needs to make some money so he writes “a ghetto novel” like those sometimes favored by talk show hosts. This is satire with humanity and a novel within a novel.

In the last weeks of the summer I saw the documentary “Best of Enemies” about the Buckley/Vidal skirmish during the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions. This inspired me to do a little reading about the 1960s. I started with Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the 1960s by Kevin M. Schultz. Though I think the subtitle overstates the importance of the relationship, it is interesting to see two such combative people try to understand each other. Then I tried Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Pete Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the 60s. I learned a lot reading this book. I knew far more about Dylan than I knew about Seeger. The problem with the book is that it never made me want to listen to the music and in a book like this that’s a major flaw. Finally, I moved on to Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein, the first volume of a trilogy, is fascinating if deeply dispiriting. The book was a bit too detailed in spots for me. I didn’t really need to know all the factional fighting within the Young Americans for Freedom but I was otherwise riveted. The message? All those people who thought LBJ’s landslide crushed the right wing of the Republican party were wrong. The right is very patient. Barry Goldwater was the wrong messenger, but Ronald Reagan, as befits an actor, was waiting in the wings.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Will Michael Dirda Convince Me to Read Science Fiction?

Michael Dirda and Maureen Corrigan (of NPR) are my two favorite book people.

I avoid the word “critic” here because Dirda insists he doesn’t have the sort of mind needed for literary analysis. However, this collection of essays, which appeared originally on The American Scholar’s homepage, shows a real genius for enthusiasm.

Because we have so much in common, he makes me want to read every single book he recommends. For starters, Mike (if I may be so bold) and I have read the correspondence of George Lyttleton and Rupert Hart-Davis. It is, as my favorite “bookman” describes it, “the book chat to end all book chat.” George Lyttleton is an Eton master who complains that no one ever writes to him and Rupert Hart Davis, publisher, biographer of Hugh Walpole and editor of the correspondence of Oscar Wilde, takes up the challenge of keeping his former teacher amused and informed. 6 volumes (collected in 3 paperbacks) later, I was sad to see George die and the correspondence end. (Though I have to say I never figured out what a “test match” was). Mike and I also yearn to hang with the same English writers: Evelyn (Waugh), Cyril (Connolly), Paddy (Leigh-Fermor) and the Mitford sisters.

Oh, and we both love Wonder Books, a used bookstore I’m familiar with because I’m lucky to have an amazingly wonderful cousin who lives in Frederick, MD. Mike buys collectibles and I do not, but the regular stock is fabulous.

Where Mike really shines is in his championing of books that most people haven’t heard of, much less read. He exhorts us all to look further than the best seller list. He loves classic adventure books, weird tales (what most of us would think of as horror fiction) and science fiction. The organizations he belongs to will give you an idea of his taste: The Baker Street Irregulars, North American Jules Verne Society, The Ghost Story Society, The Washington D.C. Panthans (devotees of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and The Lewis Carroll Society. More recently he has been made an honorary member of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He attends meetings of Capital! Capital!, the Washington D.C. Chapter of the P.G. Wodehouse Society and within the last few years has joined Mystery Writers of America.

Mike and I have one decided difference. I now buy more e-books than “real” books. (Sorry, Mike). He has many lovely things to say about the superiority of print over pixels.

“Michael Dirda still buys books,” I said to my husband. “He has boxes of them stored in his basement.”

“How old is he? Does he have people who help him carry them around?”

I do have a “real book” version of Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert Wise. It’s a favorite of Mike’s and it is absolutely wonderful. I recommend “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” by Robert Hichens.

So while reading Browsings I’ve downloaded collections by M.R James, E.F Benson, Lord Dunsany, Margaret Oliphant and a formerly banned novel of lesbian love called Twisted Clay.

Mike is coaxing me to try science fiction, a genre for which I’ve not felt much affinity. A few of my my dearest and most intelligent friends (That’s you, Bill and Suzanne) are avid readers of speculative fiction. A former boss of mine, known for his odd way of communication, once shouted at me, apropos of nothing, “Philip K. Dick! You’d love him.” I now have a Library of America volume of Dick’s novels.

But I’m trying one of Mike’s recommendations first, Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories by Michael Bisson. The first two stories are among the best I’ve read recently.

When I read books about what other people read, I’m looking for a kindred spirit and book recommendations. In Browsings, I found both.

Thanks, Mike!

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

A Little Chill

I’ve been spending some of my summer reading time enjoying The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists edited by Irene and Alan Taylor. What fun they must have had. The format goes from January 1 to December 31. The entries start in the 16th century and go to the late 1990s. For instance, January 7th starts with Fanny Kemble and ends with Brian Eno. Most diarists are British or European, but the collection also includes, among other Americans, Alice James, Henry David Thoreau, and John Steinbeck.

There is a delightful entry from Lord Louis Mountbatten in which he recounts that when he was going to Cairo, Barbara Cartland gave him some of her romances because she had heard that Jehan Sadat was a fan. But President Sadat said, “No, I will read them first. I’m a great fan myself.” He also suggested that Ms Cartland might visit Egypt to do research for a romance. I tried to picture him reading An Unexpected Love from The Pink Collection but my imagination failed me.

We also have Lawrence Durrell reporting from Corfu on the legend of the woman who rises from the ocean and inquires “How is it with Alexander [the Great]?” Wise sailors who do not want their boats destroyed know to answer, “He lives and reigns still.”

But I got a distinct chill when I read the following 1970 entry from Cecil King, a British newspaperman: “Took part yesterday in a radio programme, ‘Speak Easy,’ to be broadcast this evening. The chairman was Jimmy Savile, an unprepossessing figure with long, bleached-white hair, a necklace of painted shells; gym shoes, white socks and a very shabby corduroy suit. But ignoring the trimmings and looking into his face, you could see that here was an absolutely genuine human being. He gets lots of money from the B.B.C. and from a column in the People, lives in a mini-bus or a caravan, (sometimes one, sometimes the other), and devotes his life to good works—particularly at Broadmoor and Rampton. He is indeed a latter-day saint, dressed up in clothes that render him acceptable to the young multitude. He has great psychological insight. I was saying that I wondered why people are uninterested in the old, though they will be all old some day. He said it was ‘conscience:’ the old remind them of their old relatives, who they neglect. He said one of the B.B.C. higher-ups had a mother in Leeds he had not seen in several years. He said also people don’t want good health. He recently broke a finger wrestling and still wears a finger-splint when he wants attention and sympathy. People don’t want to have to cope with someone really ill, but like sympathizing with someone wearing a finger-splint. With all his good fun, he devotes his life to the drearier kinds of good works.”

Mr. King died in 1987, long before the world found out to what uses Jimmy Savile put his ‘great psychological insight.’ Indeed this anthology was published in 2001 when Mr.Savile was still admired for his good works among society’s most vulnerable. It was only a year after his death in 2011 that the British public found out that he was a sexual predator and that his image as a “latter-day saint” gave him almost unlimited access to facilities where he molested the people for whom he also raised money. There were 450 complaints of sexual abuse lodged against Savile. Some of them occurred before his death, but the reports were not believed. What chance did these people have against “this absolutely genuine human being?"

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Was The Trial More Exciting Than the Book?

During a week when many people were trying to come to terms with two different fictional lawyers, both named Atticus Finch, I was reading the true story of a British barrister who was the pre-eminent defense attorney of his generation. The title, Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories, does not come trippingly off the tongue, but Thomas Grant, also a barrister, has written a hugely entertaining book. Baron Hutchinson is still alive, at 100, and provides the postscript to this volume. Mr Grant insists he is as sharp as ever though a little wobbly on his pins.

Hutchinson’s mother was the inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway and Jeremy is said to be one of the models for John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, though no one would ever accuse him of being a Old Bailey hack and I doubt he’s imbibed much Chateau Thames Embankment.

Hutchinson defended several spies, an art forger and Christine Keeler. He is best known for his role in R v Penguin Books, the most famous obscenity trial of the 1960s (there were quite a few). Penguin wished to publish an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterly’s Lover to mark the thirtieth anniversary of D. H. Lawrence’s death. All prior editions in Great Britain had been pirated. The government believed that LCL was obscene and felt “if no action is taken in respect of this publication it will make proceedings against any other publication difficult.”

The prosecution contended that the book was obscene because “it sets upon a pedestal promiscuous and adulterous intercourse. It commends … sensuality almost as a virtue. It encourages, and indeed even advocates, coarseness and vulgarity of thought and language.” The prosecution even went so far as to let the jury know how many times certain four letter words appeared. Whatever literary merit the book might have was outweighed by its obscenity.

The defense had numerous academics and writers ready to testify that such was not the case. They settled on, among others, Roy Jenkins, Richard Hoggart and E.M. Forster. T.S. Eliot was prepared to follow Forster but his testimony was not needed.

The most effective witness was Richard Hoggart, a university lecturer little known here but famous in England for his book, The Uses of Literacy. In the book Hoggart talks about popular culture (self-created) v. mass culture (imposed from above).

Hoggart, a child of the working classes, comments on the passages that Hutchinson reads aloud in court. He talks about how often four letter words are used in everyday life. He contends that the descriptions of sex are all carefully woven into the psychological portrait of the characters. He calls the book “virtuous and puritanical.”

When the prosecution objects to the word "puritanical," he explains that the distinguishing feature of Puritanism “is an intense sense of responsibility for one’s conscience. In this sense the book is puritanical.”

The prosecuting barrister makes many missteps. He feels compelled to explain to the jury what a phallus is (“for those of you who have forgotten your Greek”) and calls not a single witness or expert. The prosecution had considered calling Rudyard Kipling. Alas, at the time of the trial, Kipling had been dead for over 20 years.

Despite the poor performance by the prosecution, a not guilty verdict was not a foregone conclusion. The judge was very clearly on the side of the prosecution and the verdict needed to be unanimous. When it was delivered the judged neither agreed to pay Penguin’ s legal costs nor did he thank the jury.

I’ve not ever finished Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Almost all of Lawrence’s other novels are much more interesting. Then in graduate school I was subjected to a Lawrence seminar. There’s nothing like attending graduate school in English to kill one’s love of reading.

As Wordsworth said, “We murder to dissect.”

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Norwegians Would

It occurred to me that while I have not seen anything of Europe other than a few airports, I’ve spent a lot of time in Norway. My husband and I both read Kristen Lavransdatter some years ago. The four volumes of The Master of Hestviken nestle in my Kindle. I’ve been working my way through Karl Ove Knaussgaard’s My Struggle (I’m about to start volume 4 of 6), and I’ve read many Jo Nesbo mysteries.

I should also mention that Edward Grieg is our house (and automobile) composer.

These are all fictional and artistic manifestations of Norway (though what Knaussgaard is doing and how well he’s doing it are open to debate).

Though Nesbo’s novels certainly suggest that all is not hunky dory in Norway, the story that Asne Seirstad tells in One of Us: The Story of Anders Brevik and the Massacre in Norway beats, in brutality, almost any murder mystery I’ve read.

The structure, dictated by the events as they unfold, is pretty simple. You spend the first half of the book learning to care about people and the second watching them die.

Anders Brevik murdered 77 people, most of them teenagers. He was responsible for a car bomb that exploded in Oslo and then the shooting deaths of dozens attending a Labor Party youth conference on the island of Utoya.

Brevik’s mother was born to a woman who contracted polio during her pregnancy and ever after blamed her daughter for her disability. She spends her early years in an orphanage When she is reunited with her mother, she becomes her caretaker. After finally escaping her claustrophobic existence she marries a diplomat, but they are soon divorced and she is left with a child she doesn’t seem to like.

Brevik’s school noted early that he had many problems and he and his mother were treated for quite a while at a child guidance clinic The clinic recommends that he be put “in another care situation.” But he remains with his mother and their difficulties continue.

As Brevik gets older he becomes obsessed about immigrants ruining Norway. He rants about multiculturalism and Islamization of Europe. Though he has a brief period where he becomes quite wealthy producing phony diplomas and certificates, eventually he moves back in with his mother and spends months in his room playing World of Warcraft.

His isolation and xenophobia contrast sharply with the openness and idealism of the young people he will kill. Seirstad focuses particularly on two young people: Simon, the son of Norwegian school teachers and Bano, a young girl who immigrates to Norway from Iraq. Bano, despite being teased because she is darker than her Norwegian classmates and can’t speak their language, becomes a sunny and engaging girl filled with ideas of how to make Norway a better place. She shares one dream with Anders Brevik. They both want to meet former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Bano wants to shake her hand; Anders wants to cut off her head.

Brevik plants a car bomb and kills people near government offices in Oslo. Though the police get several tips, almost everything goes wrong. Even after they have his license number it takes the Oslo police hours to realize the significance of it. When they finally figure out he’s headed to Utoya, they discover that GPS cannot show them where this small island is.

The kids on the island know something terrible has happened in Oslo. But Brevik is clever and sews a police badge on his clothing. The kids come toward him expecting to be rescued and they are shot. Even when they figure out that they’re in trouble they have nowhere to go.

Brevik is caught and tried. He sees himself not as a murderer but as a political assassin. He was working to save Norway from the next generation of multiculturalism.

He is incensed that the first team of psychologists who evaluate him after his arrest want to seem him treated not tried. He fights successfully to get another evaluation--one that will confirm that he knew very well what he was doing. He’s now serving a 21 year sentence that can be extended.

Several reviewers found this book superior to In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song. However, it’s really hard to compare them. Capote and Mailer wrote “non-fiction novels.” They felt free to wax lyrical or shade the truth. Seirstadt has written a piece of scrupulous journalism. The epilogue of the book discusses her methods of research and reporting.

It’s a wonderful book. It’s especially compelling as one sees the indifference and hostility toward immigrants around the world. But is is a very difficult read.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Whistling Something Other Than Dixie

I spent some years of my childhood and adolescence attending school in Jacksonville, Florida. When I entered 7th grade, I attended school at Jefferson Davis Junior High School. I sang in a girls’ choir called the Confederettes.

After I finished at J. D., I enrolled at Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. Our chief rival in football was Robert E. Lee High School. Sports were big at Forrest. We had good football and basketball teams and many early school day pep rallies.

The pep rallies were popular. We would stand quietly as The Star Spangled Banner was played. Then the band would break into Dixie and the crowd went wild. Now I went to three different high schools and ten schools in all during my early life and so I was something of a particpant observer to all of this. I did wonder how black students felt about this glorification of the Old South but I didn’t interview them about it.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate general who was reported to have killed black Union soldiers after they surrendered. He went on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Forrest High School reportedly got its name because the Daughters of the Confederacy pushed for it. Other folks, including students, wanted to call it Valhalla High School. Wikipedia tells me that Valhalla is Old Norse for “hall of the slain.”

It also brings to mind Richard Wagner who appears to have had some odd notions about racial purity. In 2014 Forrest High School was renamed Westside High School. This might bring to mind the popular Broadway musical except that nothing about Jacksonville ever reminded anyone of New York City.

There is one other interesting fact. These pep rallies featured another song that students adored—Night Train. It was written by Jimmie Forrest and recorded by many people including Duke Ellington and James Brown.

It's Brown's version that you'll find below:

Stephanie Patterson

When Murder Was Golden

Some years ago I got an electronic subscription to The Spectator, a British magazine known for its ties to the Tory Party. Most of us know it from those essays of Addison and Steele that we read in high school and college. It’s most famous contemporary editor is the mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Though I rarely agree with the Tory political view, the magazine is well written and has an excellent book section. I frequently find out about books that are available here, but not reviewed or in any way noticed.

My latest find in that category is The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards who is himself a mystery writer. Edwards tells the story of The Detection Club, which was founded in London in 1930. Among its early members were Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. It’s first president was G. K. Chesterton.

Its oath said, in part, that members would “do and detect all crimes by honourable means; conceal no
vital clues from the reader; honour the King’s English and observe the oath of secrecy in matters communicated within the brotherhood of the Club.”

My favorite part of the oath is this: “Do you swear to observe a seemly moderation in the use of thugs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, Super-Criminals and Lunatics; and utterly and forever to foreswear Mysterious Poisons Unknown to Science?”

I was initially a bit frustrated with the book because Edwards does not always seem very organized. He dwells too long on Agatha Christie’s disappearance and Dorothy Sayers’ illegitimate child. I did uncover what I believe to be the chief trait of the successful mystery writer: girth.

That’s right, guys and gals! Feel free to chow down.

Edwards mentions repeatedly the large size of G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. He also mentions that Allingham became so depressed that she underwent ECT. I was a bit surprised by this as I just recently read her wartime memoir, The Oaken Heart, and she seemed absolutely intrepid and unflappable.

But Edwards clearly loves these authors and their work and talks about many other writers not as well known as the founding members of The Detection Club. The book is also filled with interesting tidbits (usually found in footnotes):

W.H. Auden, a mystery addict, was approached to “write a few poems masquerading as the work of P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh.” He was a James fan but died before he could honor the request.

Of the first 10 Penguins published, two were mysteries: The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.

Josephine Tey was never invited to become a member of the Club.

Georgette Heyer refused membership, probably, says Mister Edwards, because her husband developed the mystery plots.

The chappie who reviewed The Golden Age of Murder for The Spectator complained that the author never met a Golden Age mystery he didn’t like. But I, for one, was reminded of writers I hadn’t thought about in a while (Anthony Berkeley and Nicholas Blake) and introduced to ones I knew nothing about (Muriel Bowers, Helen Reilly, Raymond Postgate, Anthony Gilbert.)

While I’m sure it’s true that some writers’ reputations fade because their mysteries don’t wear well, it’s also true that many very fine writers never get the recognition they deserve. I’m sure I’m find some gems among these Detection Club members who are now largely unknown.

Stephanie Patterson

Dave and Mom

David Letterman aired his last show Wednesday night. My mother would have been sad to see him go. Mom had insomnia and watched a lot of late night television.

I remember waking up in the early mornings when I was a child and hearing my parents discussing what Johnny Carson had said the night before. Mom watched Johnny until the very last show. But after he left The Tonight Show, Mom felt no loyalty to his successor.

Jay Leno got The Tonight Show. Dave Letterman got my mom.

Mom was an avid fan. When I would visit she would regale me with bits from the Letterman monologues, Top 10 Lists, and interviews. At times it seemed Mom was keeping me posted on the doings of a zany relative whom I rarely got to see.

Mom always wanted me to stay up and watch Dave when I visited her, but I’m one of those annoying morning people and by the time Dave appeared I was deeply asleep. During these visits, I slept on a futon in front of the T.V. She tried a time or two to wake me up when he started his monologue, but she was unsuccessful.

“Whaaat?” I would ask.

“Oh, never mind. You’re asleep.”

As my mother got older, she developed health problems and we all decided that she could no longer live alone or at least not so far away. We moved her from Maryland to New Jersey and my very generous mother-in-law invited my mother to live with her for a time.

Alas, my mother-in-law believed in an early bedtime.

My husband and I took my mother and mother-in-law to breakfast every Saturday. One Saturday, as my husband and mother-in-law went to pay the check, I chatted with my mom.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen David Letterman once since I moved in with Aida. She shoos me off to bed.”

I had a word with my husband and Mom and Dave were keeping company again.

Below you’ll find a clip from the final show. I think Mom would have liked it.

Stephanie Patterson

My First Trip to New York City

So I have had many memorable trips to New York since my first in 1972, but the first was like none of the subsequent trips except that it involved theater.

The Shakespeare class at my college, of which I was not a member, was going to New York to see Much Ado About Nothing and Two Gentlemen of Verona. There were extra tickets available so I was invited along. The trip conflicted with a final exam in one of my other courses, but the professor said I could make it up.

“I do have an additional request,” he said. “I want to make sure you see all sides of New York City. Bring back a pack of pornographic playing cards.”

Well, many of the finest coming of ages stories have a quest myth and this was to be mine.

Our group stayed at The Times Square Motor Hotel which was cosily seedy or seedily cozy depending on how you see these things. When we first walked in a guest and the person in charge of the registration desk were insulting each other. Alas, I can’t bring myself to type what they were saying, but you can fill in with any number of colorful ethnic slurs. There was also a gentleman at a bank of pay phones going from one phone to another, picking up the receiver and shouting “Hello. Hello.”

We had some time to kill before the performance so we checked out the club attached to the motel. This was in the midst of Superfly craze and people were dressed as if they were movie extras. People ground their hips together and I sipped sherry. We couldn’t figure out why people were peering into the club. It was only later that we realized there were signs promising topless dancers.

The production of Much Ado About Nothing was wonderful. It was probably not the first live theater I had ever seen but it was the first that stayed in my memory. It starred Kathleen Widdowes as Beatrice and a wonderfully goofy Sam Waterston as Benedick. I can’t find that guy in the actor I’ve seen on Law and Order. The play was set in America at the end of the Spanish-American War and featured a marching band that came down the aisles and on to the stage. I was entranced all night but I had to get my sleep because there was hunting to be done the next morning.

So a small group of us set off in search of pornographic playing cards. We came to a promising location and went in. I didn’t know where not to look first. The guys on the trip, who I thought might make the request for me, headed toward the back of the shop. I went up the counter and and said, “I want to buy pornographic playing cards.”

The gentleman behind the counter took umbrage.

“I do not sell pornography. I do not sell pornography.” He took a breath. “I sell position cards.”

He slapped a plastic container on the counter. Yep, playing cards with people in positions. I thought I was set.

“That’ll be five dollars.”

Alas, my entire budget for the trip was eighteen dollars. No sale.

Our next stop was the musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona. While I later saw a wonderful version of this play with Larry Kert in Washington, D.C., this production in New York seemed tired and the actors were playing to each other and not to the audience.

After that it was time to go. Much Ado About Nothing had been fabulous, Two Gentleman of Verona had been pleasant enough but I didn’t have the pornographic playing cards.

As we were about to leave, one of the women on the trip noticed that the motel had a gift shop. She went in and came running out.

“Stephanie! Stephanie! Look what I found.”

There for the low price of two dollars was a key ring with a small plastic container attached. Sure enough there were playing cards that featured a series of bare breasted women nestled in what looked to be kitty litter. (I’m sure it was supposed to be sand).

Pornography? Not really. But if my professor wanted proof that I had been in a part of New York that was sleazy, this was proof enough.

You know what they say. It’s a helluva town.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

Pick Up a Trollope*

I’m not on Facebook, I’m not Linked In and I’ve never been all aTwitter, but when it comes to 19th century novels, I’m on the cutting edge. It’s Anthony Trollope’s 200th anniversary and people are falling all over themselves to describe how wonderful his novels are. The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik wrote an article on “Why Trollope is Trending” and talked about how many “amateur readers” (I guess that’s me) share their enthusiasm for their favorite novels.

The Guardian had a feature in which famous Brits discussed why they loved Trollope and named their favorite novel. Antonia Fraser picks the first of the Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her? She was introduced to his novels during WW II when all of her relatives read his work because Trollope cheered them up.

I never faced WWII or the London Blitz but I have read Trollope to similar effect.

Many years ago there was a book club called The Reader’s Subscription. One of its offers to new subscribers was a free set of the six novels that make The Barsetshire Chronicles. This lovely set of books sat on my shelves for some years and gathered a film of dust.

Then one day a friend got me an interview for a new job. The interview didn’t go especially well. The people interviewing me spent more time talking to each other than they did to me. They announced that they wanted to see other people. Having heard this from any number of men I dated, I assumed that I and the interview team were quits.

I thought no more about this until my friend called to say I had gotten the job.

“I’m surprised,” I said. “They seemed unimpressed.”

She hesitated.

“What aren’t you telling me? I asked.

“Well, you weren’t anybody’s first choice, but nobody objected to you.”

So I had not been voted Most Likely to Succeed. I was either The Least Offensive or The Most Innocuous. At the job I held at the time, I was adored. My boss dressed in black on my last day.

I spent my first days on the new job traveling with someone I knew not at all. I returned to the office and found people to be generally indifferent.

When I got home from work one night, for some reason never very clear to me, I picked up The Warden, the first of the Barsetshire novels, and fell in love with that cathedral town and many of its inhabitants. The atmosphere at work was tense but the cathedral close was cozy.

The Barsetshire novels are not about religious practice and theology. They’re about family and getting ahead. Each clerical position comes with its own degree of status, housing and income and the clerical men in black spar and scheme to get the very best positions they can. That said, Septimus Harding, the gentle man who oversees the religious life of the twelve elderly men at Hirarm’s Hospital, is the best Christian I’ve come across. His right to so much money (800 pounds) for so little work is questioned by a young reformer and subsequently by The Jupiter (a fictional stand-in for The Times of London). Harding is convinced by what he reads in the paper that he is doing the twelve elderly men a disservice, so even though the legal case is dropped, he decides to leave his position and take two less remunerative church posts.

Mr. Harding is surrounded by much more ambitious clergymen and we see more of them in Barchester Towers. His son-in-law is the archdeacon and son of the current bishop. The son wants his father’s job but the bishop doesn’t die soon enough and a man inimical to the archdeacon’s interests becomes Prime Minister and makes Dr Proudie the bishop. Dr. Proudie comes with a strong minded wife (known as the she-bishop) and his own chaplain, the greasy, fawning, odious Obadiah Slope. (Can you tell I don’t like him?) The struggle among these people to attain power and wealth is hugely entertaining and one of the big questions is who will take over the position abandoned by Mr. Harding. Will Mr. Harding be offered the job of warden again or will it go to Mrs Proudie’s favorite, Mr. Quiverful, who must provide for a wife and 14 children?

While Dickens and his characters are better known (and don’t misunderstand me, I love Dickens as well) I would argue that Trollope’s characters are more subtly drawn. Dickens characters are either unspeakably evil (Fagin, Ralph Nickleby) or incredibly good (Little Nell, Little Dorrit).

Trollope gives his good people weaknesses (Septimus Harding spends a large amount of money self-publishing Harding’s Church Music) and can be sympathetic to his less likable characters. When Mrs. Proudie finally gets her comeuppance in The Last Chronicle of Barset, the reader feels sorry for her.

With regular doses of Trollope I was able to get through the rough patch that was the start of this new job. I went on to read many other Trollope novels, but when after 11 years I left this job to find another, I once again spent time with the people of Barsetshire. I have found them fascinating many times since.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

* I’m sure this joke grew stale quickly in the 19th century. Later in the twentieth century it was said that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan “liked to go to bed with a Trollope.”

A Mall Story

My parents were great fans of the Sunday drive.

We lived in variety of suburbs over the years and they all looked pretty much the same to me. We lived outside of Washington D.C. on several different occasions but we never went into the city because it would be dangerous. Aimless driving in housing developments just never appealed to me. Since I couldn’t read in a moving car without getting sick, I saw the whole venture as a colossal waste of time.

But one week we had a destination. We went to watch a mall being built. My heart did not race at the thought. We went to the construction site and it was clear that many other people had had this same idea for Sunday entertainment.

It was hot, crowded and boring. Nothing happened. Well, that’s not true. I think I watched paint dry. I fidgeted. I made tiny whining noises. Nothing happened. My parents seemed to be enthralled.

Finally, I whispered to my mother, “I want to be a strip-teaser.”

Her eyes widened. “Shush,” she said.

I went over to my father. “I want to be a strip-teaser.”

His eyes widened. “Shush,” he said.

I really didn’t understand why I had to be quiet about my career choice.

The mall construction didn’t get any more exciting. Nothing was happening. It was Sunday after all.

“I want to be a strip teaser.” I said.

My parents shushed me again and I earned a glare from a few people in front of them.

“I WANT TO BE A STRIP TEASER!!” I yelled.

Things happened quickly and my father swept me up in his arms and he and my mother beat a hasty retreat to the car.

“What’s wrong with wanting to be a strip teaser?” I asked.

“Not one word until we get you home, young lady!” said my father.

This was serious. My parents rarely hit me but I was steeling myself for a spanking. I still didn’t understand why my career choice was so unpopular.

When we got home, my father started.

“Just where did you get the idea that you wanted to be a strip teaser, miss? It’s disgusting.”

“No, it’s not. It would be fun.”

“You think taking off your clothes in front of people would be fun?”

“I don’t want to take off my clothes in front of people!” I yelled.

“Then what are you talking about?”

I went over to the couch and picked up the Sunday comics and pointed to “Dennis the Menace.” “I want to do this. I want to be a strip teaser.”

I thought my interpretation of strip teaser made perfect sense. I didn’t get spanked. I did get sent to bed without supper. Now as I look back, I think I was being punished for not appreciating the mall.

And you know what? I still despise them.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

On Royalties for Library Books: A Fantasy

I browse the website for The Guardian quite a bit and am struck by how many articles there are on reading trends in the U.K. These sorts of stories about reading pop up occasionally in the United States. The news is usually gloomy. No one reads literary fiction or poetry. No one reads for pleasure. There are too many other ways people can be entertained and informed. Why bother reading a book?

What’s interesting is that many of the Guardian stories are based on what people borrow from the library, not what they buy. The latest of these stories appeared in January. There are no real surprises in the names of the people whose books are checked out most often: James Patterson, Dan Brown, Lee Childs, Harlen Coben. Mark Billingham, a writer probably better known in Britain than in the States, was also on the list. So we have the usual suspects or the usual creators of suspects. (Years ago I visited a book shop in Edinburgh and said to the bookseller, “Your bestseller list doesn’t look any different than the one in the States.” “How depressing,” she replied)

The good news for writers in the United Kingdom (and Canada and Scandinavia) is that royalties are paid when a writer’s books are checked out of the library. It’s known in the UK as the Public Lending Right. The most recent figures I could find indicated that a writer got about 8 cents per checkout and there was an annual cap of about $!0,000. Imagine the boost this gives writers. A perfectly wonderful, out-of-print book could continue to make money for its author.

I have been to many mystery conferences where enthusiastic, literate people come up to a mystery writer and say, “I just love your books; I always check them out of the library.” It’s always great to have readers and writers inevitably respond positively to people to love their work. But I’m guessing most of us would rather hear: “I just love your books. I buy them immediately in hard cover. And I give copies for my 50 closest friends, too.”

Of course, these programs in the UK and elsewhere are government sponsored. Alas, we know how people feel about government sponsored programs in this country (unless it’s Social Security or Medicare. Believe it or not some people are unaware that Medicare is a government program). But I digress.

And all is not skittles and beer in the UK. Libraries there are suffering from budget cuts. Some communities have established alternative libraries where it turns out the royalty arrangement does not apply.

It’s a shame that in the United States, people (or at least many people who pursue politics) think of books, plays, art and music as “frills.” I think a lot of the folks making policy in cities, towns, state capitals and Washington D.C. would find that their lives and their minds improved if they decked themselves out in more frills.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

****My information about Public Lending Right came from The Guardian, Wikipedia and the blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Celebrating Letters ( the kind that were written on paper)

I used to be a very good writer of letters and I probably still would be if it weren’t so easy to succumb to the ease and immediacy of emails.

Sean Usher oversees a blog called Letters of Note. He took letters from the blog and produced a beautiful book called Letters of Note: Eclectic Correspondence Deserving of A Wider Audience. Since my home is already bursting with books, I own the Kindle version of this. It’s in no way beautiful but it’s still a terrific collection.

Haven’t you always wanted Queen Elizabeth II’s recipe for drop scones? You’ll find it in a letter to Dwight Eisenhower in which she remembers his visit to Balmoral Castle.

If you want to continue on the royal road there’s Mary, Queen of Scots’ letter to Henry III announcing her imminent execution (it happened 6 hours after she wrote the letter).

For the literary, there is the suicide note that Virginia Woolf leaves for her husband, Leonard. She can no longer read or write and is hearing voices again. She adds, “Everything has gone for me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could be happier than we have been.”

These letters are not all gloomy. Kurt Vonnegut writes about the firebombing of Dresden, but he survived it and went on to write Slaughterhouse-Five. Patrick Hitler, Adolf’s nephew, begs to be allowed to fight in the US military against his uncle. His letter was handed over to J. Edgar who did eventually agree that he could serve.

A 23 year old Eudora Welty begs The New Yorker for a job: “I read simply voraciously and can drum up an opinion afterwards… I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end. I have studied flower painting.”

My favorite letter (which went to many people) comes from Robert Pirosh who wants to become a screenwriter. He went on to get an Oscar for his screenplay of Battleground:

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I l like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words like Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty.

I like sullen, crabbed scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s sake-words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

Stephanie Patterson