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That Lonesome Whistle Wednesday
Apr. 25th, 2018 11:37 amWhat I've Finished Reading
The Affair has the usual C. P. Snow quality of seeming slow and quiet while moving fairly quickly, and of being packed with sturdy but not stunning epigrams about characters we're more or less interested in while they're on page and forget about immediately once the page has been turned. It has a good plot: An unlikable young scientist gets his fellowship revoked by the narrator's old college for using a faked-up photograph in a paper, only it wasn't him who faked the photograph - it might have been his highly respected co-author, who is now dead. One of the Fellows might even have removed the fake photo from the respected co-author's papers in an attempt to muddy the waters. The narrator is enlisted to try to get some justice for the young scientist, who makes it difficult by being as unlikable as possible and by making it clear that he has no values in common with the rest of the Fellows, not even the basic one of "caring one way or the other whether your co-author is a big old faker."
The young scientist thinks he's been blackballed because of his leftist politics, but it's a little more complicated than that - it's more that the Fellows see him as an epitome of the vices of the Younger Generation, and his politics as a symptom of the same sloppy education and unjustified sense of entitlement that (they think) led him to cheat in his research. They don't suspect the respected co-author because he doesn't fit their image of a cheater.
There are some exceptions to the rule of general forgettability. I like the ancient professor and Icelandic scholar, M.H.L. Gay, and was extremely happy to see him again, still making trouble and rambling about how much better Iceland is than everywhere else at 90. I also liked the unlikable scientist and his loyal no-perspective-having wife, and selfishly wish there were more scenes of them digging their own graves by alienating everyone who tried to help them, and I was glad they came out all right in the end even if they don't have the good sense to see it.
What I'm Reading Now
I fully intended to say some more nice things about C. P. Snow, but got hopelessly distracted by The Mansion, which is an entirely different kind of book, the HEART-STOPPING PAGE-TURNER. By twenty pages in I was already biting my tongue to keep from explaining poor Mink's predicament to everyone I met, and failing miserably.
Mink is a poor young farmer with one cow. His whole brief life has been a quiet struggle against Them, the numberless and implacable powers of everyone and everything that isn't Mink. His rich neighbor Jack Houston offers to board the cow over the winter, but when Mink comes to pick up his cow, Houston says the cow is worth four times as much now due to the better food and the attentions of his bull, so Mink will have to work off the new price of the cow. Well, Mink doesn't want justice or charity, he just wants what's his, and to fight a fair fight against Them even if They can't be bothered with fairness, and if he owes thirty days of labor to Jack Houston to buy back his cow, then he'll do his thirty days without complaining. Only when Mink comes to pick up his cow, on the morning after the last day of labor, Jack Houston tells him he still owes a dollar for the overnight boarding of his cow past the pick-up date. He'll have to work that off too, at his usual rate of fifty cents a day. Do you see the problem here? Mink! They got you again, Mink!
Well, we already know that Mink is going to shoot Jack Houston and go to jail for it, because that's the first line of the book. Now he's waiting for his rich cousin Flem to bail him out, but Flem is a calculating son of a bitch who only cares about money, and there's no money in getting Mink out of jail because, as we have all been made painfully aware by the preceding, there's no money in being Mink.
Does that sound like there's not much to this story? Does it sound like it might be boring grimdark rural misery porn? It's not at all, despite being a story about a poor grudge-having farmer with the world against him. In a way it reminds me more of L. M. Montgomery than anything else - there's a similar small-town closed cosmos of suffocating family lore, though the people of Jefferson, MS are as a rule scrubbier, hornier, and more inclined to murder one another than those of the P.E. Islandverse. Or maybe they're just written by William Faulkner instead of by L. M. Montgomery, and that's the main difference between them.
Anyway, I've been helplessly clutching my face and whispering "OH NO, MINK, MINK" to myself for some time now and I'm probably going to go on in about the same way for the next 400 pages; wish me luck.
What I Plan to Read Next
I've actually started B for Burglar, but I'm so close to the beginning that there's not much to say yet except "Oh, Kinsey." I don't even know what the nature of Kinsey's disappointment is going to be this time, but I already know it's coming.
I made a trip up to one of the semi-local used bookstores to drop off a box of books, and came back with a bag. They'll show up here in due course.
The Affair has the usual C. P. Snow quality of seeming slow and quiet while moving fairly quickly, and of being packed with sturdy but not stunning epigrams about characters we're more or less interested in while they're on page and forget about immediately once the page has been turned. It has a good plot: An unlikable young scientist gets his fellowship revoked by the narrator's old college for using a faked-up photograph in a paper, only it wasn't him who faked the photograph - it might have been his highly respected co-author, who is now dead. One of the Fellows might even have removed the fake photo from the respected co-author's papers in an attempt to muddy the waters. The narrator is enlisted to try to get some justice for the young scientist, who makes it difficult by being as unlikable as possible and by making it clear that he has no values in common with the rest of the Fellows, not even the basic one of "caring one way or the other whether your co-author is a big old faker."
The young scientist thinks he's been blackballed because of his leftist politics, but it's a little more complicated than that - it's more that the Fellows see him as an epitome of the vices of the Younger Generation, and his politics as a symptom of the same sloppy education and unjustified sense of entitlement that (they think) led him to cheat in his research. They don't suspect the respected co-author because he doesn't fit their image of a cheater.
There are some exceptions to the rule of general forgettability. I like the ancient professor and Icelandic scholar, M.H.L. Gay, and was extremely happy to see him again, still making trouble and rambling about how much better Iceland is than everywhere else at 90. I also liked the unlikable scientist and his loyal no-perspective-having wife, and selfishly wish there were more scenes of them digging their own graves by alienating everyone who tried to help them, and I was glad they came out all right in the end even if they don't have the good sense to see it.
What I'm Reading Now
I fully intended to say some more nice things about C. P. Snow, but got hopelessly distracted by The Mansion, which is an entirely different kind of book, the HEART-STOPPING PAGE-TURNER. By twenty pages in I was already biting my tongue to keep from explaining poor Mink's predicament to everyone I met, and failing miserably.
Mink is a poor young farmer with one cow. His whole brief life has been a quiet struggle against Them, the numberless and implacable powers of everyone and everything that isn't Mink. His rich neighbor Jack Houston offers to board the cow over the winter, but when Mink comes to pick up his cow, Houston says the cow is worth four times as much now due to the better food and the attentions of his bull, so Mink will have to work off the new price of the cow. Well, Mink doesn't want justice or charity, he just wants what's his, and to fight a fair fight against Them even if They can't be bothered with fairness, and if he owes thirty days of labor to Jack Houston to buy back his cow, then he'll do his thirty days without complaining. Only when Mink comes to pick up his cow, on the morning after the last day of labor, Jack Houston tells him he still owes a dollar for the overnight boarding of his cow past the pick-up date. He'll have to work that off too, at his usual rate of fifty cents a day. Do you see the problem here? Mink! They got you again, Mink!
Well, we already know that Mink is going to shoot Jack Houston and go to jail for it, because that's the first line of the book. Now he's waiting for his rich cousin Flem to bail him out, but Flem is a calculating son of a bitch who only cares about money, and there's no money in getting Mink out of jail because, as we have all been made painfully aware by the preceding, there's no money in being Mink.
Does that sound like there's not much to this story? Does it sound like it might be boring grimdark rural misery porn? It's not at all, despite being a story about a poor grudge-having farmer with the world against him. In a way it reminds me more of L. M. Montgomery than anything else - there's a similar small-town closed cosmos of suffocating family lore, though the people of Jefferson, MS are as a rule scrubbier, hornier, and more inclined to murder one another than those of the P.E. Islandverse. Or maybe they're just written by William Faulkner instead of by L. M. Montgomery, and that's the main difference between them.
Anyway, I've been helplessly clutching my face and whispering "OH NO, MINK, MINK" to myself for some time now and I'm probably going to go on in about the same way for the next 400 pages; wish me luck.
What I Plan to Read Next
I've actually started B for Burglar, but I'm so close to the beginning that there's not much to say yet except "Oh, Kinsey." I don't even know what the nature of Kinsey's disappointment is going to be this time, but I already know it's coming.
I made a trip up to one of the semi-local used bookstores to drop off a box of books, and came back with a bag. They'll show up here in due course.
