Send My Roots Rain

The Mythological Reader would think that it being summer and all, Your Humble Narrator would be able to keep up on book reviews on this here blog.  In so thinking, however, the Mythological Reader would be confusing theoretical capability and practical capability.  For reasons which elude Your Humble Narrator, even in a summer in which the average work day has precisely zero scheduled activities, reviewing activity hereon is not as diligent as Your Humble Narrator might desire.  At present, the stack of books awaiting review is getting perilously high.  Thirteen books, to be precise.  There are three more nearing completion at home and three others nearing completion in the office.  There are others in the pipeline.  Mathematics starts becoming troubling at this point.  Even if Your Humble Narrator were to a) cease reading and b) diligently review a book every work day for every day left in the summer, the books would not all be reviewed before the start of the semester.  Even more troubling, while the second clause is at least conceivable, the first is inconceivable. (And, yes, I do know what that word means.)  (The Alert Mythological Reader (an oxymoron?) might surely ask why reviewing in the aforementioned thought experiment is limited to work days.  Why not review on weekends?  The answer is technological: at home, my primary computer is now an iPad, on which it is really annoying to compose lengthy ruminations.  Great for many purposes, the iPad, but composition is not one of them.)

In addition to the troubling mathematics above, there is a distinction in the paragraph above which is worthy of comment (well, as worthy of comment as anything ever written in this space is worthy).  What is the difference between a book at home and a book at the office besides the obvious spatial separation?  Are there Home Books and Office Books?  Interestingly, or perhaps not so interestingly, I assumed there was a difference, but as soon as I started trying to define the difference between books I read at home and books I read at the office, counterexamples immediately occurred to mind.  So, I am no longer certain why some books are read at work and others are read at home.  If I were to start pulling books at random off my shelves, there are some I am certain I would only read in one place or the other (Agatha Christie—clearly a home book; but now I am stuck trying to find an office book which I cannot imagine reading at home), but most, as in almost all, I can imagine reading in either place.  Yet, once a book is started at home or in the office, the book rarely migrates between places.  Odd and vaguely (but not ominously) troubling

(By the way, all books live in my office—all the bookshelves at home hold Janet’s books.)

(Also, by the way, I got my new bookshelf last week.  The filing cabinet is gone.  More space for books.)

Thinking of locations reminds me of a pair of books I recently read.  (Hey!  Two books being reviewed at once—a clever solution to my (Number of books) exceeds (Number of days) problem.)

Henning Mankell, Faceless Killers

Alexander McCall Smith, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

Both are detective stories and both are the sort of detective stories which are not really mystery stories per se (though there are mysteries in both), but rather novels in which the main character is a detective.  That is an important distinction.  Agatha Christie, for example, leaves no doubt that the point of the story is to leave the reader trying to figure out who did what to whom.  But, that is just one type of mystery story.  There is also what can be called the Police Procedural, in which the point is to watch detectives do detective work.  Then there are novelists, people trying to write literature in which we see the protagonist struggle with Life.  In any novel, the protagonist must have some occupation, and one possible occupation is, of course, Detective.  But, in this last case, the novelist is trying to do something beyond the genre of “Detective novel.”  It is an interesting balance: detective novels have a built-in market, and a built-in- market means sales which means royalties.  Royalties are a good thing.  So, you can’t stray too far from the genre.  On the other hand, genre fiction is in low repute because, well, most of it is trash.  So, imagine an author with literary pretentions who writes genre fiction, but aims to write something better than the filler which dominates the genre.  As I said, it is a tricky thing to pull off.

Both of the books in question do pull this off; both of these books are worth reading on their own merits.  Not Great Books (not even close) but worth reading.  The comparison is fascinating, however, because while the books are similar in their literary taxonomy, they feel remarkably different and the difference in entirely due to the locale.  Mankell is Swedish, the story is in Sweden, and the tone is bleak.  Make that Bleak with a capital B.  It is cold and snowing and dark and Bleak.  Smith is Rhodesian/Zimbabwean, the story is in Botswana, and the tone is sunny.  Make that Sunny.  It is bright and hot and full of Sun.    One protagonist faces life with a grim determination; one protagonist faces life with an idealistic optimism.  In both novels, horrific crimes are committed.  In both novels the criminals are found by the end of the novel.  But the story of getting from crime to resolution feels remarkably different.  Interestingly, based on these stories if you had to decide whether to live in Sweden or Botswana, it wouldn’t be a contest which country offers the higher standard of living.  And it is not the one which would be suggested by looking at GDP statistics.

Even more curious—I enjoyed Mankell more than Smith.  There is a peppiness to Smith’s writing which I find a trifle hard to endure.  Don't get me wrong, I have every intention of reading more of the exploits of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, but I’ll be quicker to read more Mankell.  (Technically, that prediction is cheating—I already have read more Mankell—it is also in the books awaiting review—but the second book has some other interesting features which make it worthy of a Review of Its Own.  So, let’s pretend I am writing this review in a timely fashion before the prediction has already come to pass.)

In thinking about how the setting of these books tells us something about the regions from which the authors come, I am instantly troubled by noticing the Roald Dahl book in the stack of books awaiting review.  (Look—a third book being reviewed!)   If Dahl’s’ short story “The Visitor” is any indication of what life in Great Britain is like, then believe me you do not want to live in Great Britain.  Dahl is mean.  That is what makes him so enjoyable after all—if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wasn't so mean, would anyone like it?  “The Visitor” is brilliantly mean.  For 40 pages, it seems insanely wandering and pointless and like a story which is going nowhere fast, and then suddenly in the last half-page, the whole story takes on a twist which elevates the previous 40 pages to the level of Art.  It is a marvelous story.  But, I sure hope it tells us nothing about England.

Speaking of place, Joseph Bottum has been hyping his new album on his Twitter feed.  This is a very rooted album.  If music could tie you to the soil, this music would do so.  It’s most certainly worth your time to check it out.  Be careful, though; it's an addictive album.