A Farewell to Lou Reed

Lou Reed died over the weekend, at age 71.  I won't even try to compete with the discussions of his career that you can find elsewhere, but will just say that I found his song-writing to be amazing and inspiring, particularly in his solo work.  I particularly loved his album New York, and, from that album, "Busload of Faith": 

"You can't depend on your family
you can't depend on your friends
You can't depend on a beginning
you can't depend on an end

You can't depend on intelligence
ooohhh, you can't depend on God
You can only depend on one thing
you need a busload of faith to get by, watch, baby

...

You can't depend on the goodly hearted
the goodly hearted made lamp-shades and soap
You can't depend on the Sacrament
no Father, no Holy Ghost

You can't depend on any churches
unless there's real estate you want to buy
You can't depend on a lot of things
you need a busload of faith to get by, who

...
You can depend on cruelty
crudity of thought and sound
You can depend on the worst always happening you need a busload of faith to get by, ha..."

Thank you, Lou, for your music and your words...

Re-reading Rex Stout's Early Novels

I’ve started doing reading “projects,” for some reason, and the most recent was to re-read the non-Nero-Wolfe books by Rex Stout.  I actually have them all, and the largest sum I have ever paid for a book, I paid for one of them.

Five novel:
Under the Andes (1914)
How Like a God (1929)
Seed on the Wind (1930)
Forest Fire (1933
The President Vanishes (1934) [Published anonymously], reprinted under his name in 1967]

Four mysteries:
The Hand in the Glove: A Dol Bonner Mystery (1937)
Mountain Cat (1939)
Red Threads (1939) [Inspector Cramer]
Alphabet Hicks (1941)  [APA: The Sound of Murder (1965)]

The Tecumseh Fox mysteries:
Double for Death (1939)
Bad for Business (1940)
The Broken Vase (1941)

I’ve said this before, Rex Stout is my favorite mystery writer.  But I will also have to say that the five novels he published are mostly not worth reading.  Under the Andes reads very much like an attempt to write something like Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger books (in particular, The Lost World).  How Like a God—well, here’s a fairly accurate review of it on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7502340-how-like-a-god).  Seed on the Wind (which is available from an Amazon seller for $783.50, if you’re willing do something foolish, and for between $300 and $500 elsewhere) is (how shall I phrase this politely) a bad attempt at a Freudian sex novel.  Forest Fire—which I purchased for $75—is another psychological novel, set in Montana, in which the main character is a sexually confused forest ranger.  Its sole reason for continued interest is that Stout reused a scene in it (which went on for about 4 pages) in Death of a Dude (in which it took two paragraphs).  And The President Vanishes, which is actually the most readable of these five books, reminds me in a lot of ways of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here), in that there’s the threat of a totalitarian military takeover of the U.S.  Subject yourselves to these only if you’re feeling masochistic.  The last 10 pages are pretty good, though.  It’s hard to believe, really, that he published this book in the same year that Fer-de-Lance appeared; the first Wolfe book in incomparably better.

Of the 7 non-Wolfe mysteries, by far the best is the first, The Hand in the Glove, featuring Dol Bonner.  (Bonner, of course, appears in subsequent books—one of the Fox mysteries, one of the Wolfe novellas, and in one of the Wolfe novels.)  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hand_in_the_Glove)  Bonner re-appears in Bad For Business, and seems to have an almost entirely different character. 

Mountain Cat, set in Cody, Wyoming, involves the effort of Delia Brand (aside—Stout reused this name, for the character of Delia Brandt, in Might As Well Be Dead) to solve her father’s murder.  The town in which it is set has always seemed to me to appear larger than it really was (1,800 in 1930; 2,500 in 1940), with taxis, “high-rise” buildings, and so on.  But the main character is fairly well done and the solution is fairly arrived at.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Cat)

Inspector Cramer has a major part in Red Threads (and the red threads involve an old Navajo blanket unraveled and re-woven into a jacket).  (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/148957.Red_Threads)  The introduction to this book, which was re-printed as a part of Bantam’s Res Stout re-issue series, in notable for trashing—justifiably—Stout’s knowledge of and use of native American culture.  Still, the mystery is fairly well done, and it’s nice to see Cramer not dealing with Wolfe.  Although he doesn’t actually solve the mystery.

Alphabet Hicks, the title character of the book, is a disbarred lawyer currently driving a cab, and apparently becoming involved in the occasional investigation (2 or 3 others are mentioned in the book).  (http://thepulpfictionproject.blogspot.com/2012/01/alphabet-hicks.html)  Hicks is hired by Judith Dundee to figure out why her husband, industrialist R. I. Dundee, believes she’s selling trade secrets to his arch-rival.  It also has one of the most insipid love-struck young men in the history of mystery novels.

The three Tecumseh Fox books, in terms of quality, are close to The Hand in the Glove.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh_Fox)  Double for Death is nicely plotted and makes use of a confusion of identities twist.  Bad for Business, which Stout re-wrote as a Wolfe novella (and, frankly shouldn’t have), deals with industrial sabotage (and also has an insipid love-struck young man).  The weather provides a crucial clue.  The Broken Vase involves the suicide of an extremely promising classical violin player, and a stunningly simple ploy for destroying his career.  (Stout also re-uses a plot twist in this book in one of the Wolfe novellas—but with a, well, twist, but telling you which would be a spoiler.)  It’s also the best of the three Fox books.  Stout was known to have said, in later years, that Fox was not a real character, just a bundle of characteristics.  I’m not sure he was right about that; was is true is that the books apparently did not get good reviews and sold poorly.

After re-reading all of them, I find my love of the Nero Wolfe books intact, and I also find it difficult to understand how it was possible for his earlier books to be so…inadequate…when, from the beginning, the Wolfe books were so compelling.

And this has been much longer than I intended.

Another Week, Another Song

This one has no lyrics.  The best description I've ever heard of it was the spoken introduction to the song:

 

You know, sometimes we're not prepared for adversity.  When it happens sometimes, we're caught short.  We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up.  Sometimes, we don't know just what to do when adversity takes over. .  And I have advice for all of us, I got it from my pianist Joe Zawinul who wrote this tune.  And it sounds like what you're supposed to say when you have that kind of problem.  It's called “Mercy…..Mercy…..Mercy.”

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," from Cannonball Adderly's Mercy, Mercy, Mercy: Live At "The Club."  This is a remarkable album in a number of ways.  First of all, all the songs are incredible.  The first side of the album consists of three songs:  "Fun,",  ("This song was written by Nat Addrely, our brass section.  He comes from a distinguished family.  The only reason we played this song was so we could couple it with his newest composition...") "Games," and "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy."  The flip side, also three songs--"Sticks," "Hippodelphia," and "A Sack o' Woe," the last song being an amazing blues.  (Cannonball composed "Sticks" and "A Sack o' Woe;" Nat, did "Hippodelphia.")  Second, the playing is amazing.  Cannonball on alto and Nat on cornet play beautifully together and when they are playing against each other.  Victor Gaskin (bass) and Roy McCurdy (drums) are a solid rhythm section.  And Joe Zawinul's keyboard work throughout the album is worth the price of the album all by itself. 

 

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" is a remarkable buoyant and joyous blues, and Zawinul's playing it is breathtaking.  I could listen to this song--and to the entire album--over and over again.  And I have.  It will make you feel better when you're down, and it will lift your spirits higher even when you are felling good.  It makes me happy every time I hear it.

Another Song of the Week time has arrived

Another song that has a lot of personal meaning for me, related to a particular time in my life and one very good friend who helped me survive, Jackson Browne's "That Girl Could Sing":

"She was a friend to me when I needed one
Wasn't for her I don't know what I'd done
She gave me back something that was missing in me
She could of turned out to be almost anyone
Almost anyone--
With the possible exception
Of who I wanted her to be..."
(Video here.)

Turns out you can fall in love with someone for the wrong reasons, and come out on the other side with a friend for life, if you're lucky.

Once again, it's the best song on a very fine album, Hold On, Hold Out.  "Hold Out" is a fine some  ("Baby I guess you know my story/ Baby I guess you know my side/ It seems I've traded love for glory/ But I'm still not satisfied" is how it opens); as is "Boulevard" ('Nobody rides for free/ Nobody gets it like they want it to be/ Nobody hands you any guarantee/ Nobody").  "Call It A Loan" ("Oh.../can we call it a loan/ And a debt that I owe/ On a bet that I lost ")...and the others.  This is an album about realizing what you've lost, and why you've lost it--why you have lost it, not alibis. 

 A little more from "That Girl Could Sing":

"Stumblin' into the lights of the city
And then back in the shadows again
Hanging onto the laughter
That each of us hid our unhappiness in.."

Song of the Day (or Week, or Month, Depending on How Often I Get Around to It)

Looks like weekly for the time being.

I think this is a brilliant song, if only for this:

...Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
A little voice inside my head said "Don't look back, you can never look back..."

The Boys of Summer.

This song was on Building the Perfect Beast (1984), and came out at a time of a little turmoil in my life.  Somehow, it helped (and the MTV video was awesome).  The whole album is pretty damned good, especially the title song, and "All She Wants To Do Is Dance," "Sunset Grill" ("You see a lot more meanness in the city/ It's the kind that eats you up inside/ Hard to come away with anything that feels like dignity/ Hard to get home with any pride"), and "Driving With Your Eyes Closed" ("I met a Frenchman in a field last night/ He was out there with an easel painting carnival light/ He said, "I used to paint the princess, I used to paint the frogs/ Now I paint mustaches on dangerous dogs").

I always thought that "Dangerous Dog"s would be a good name for a band.

Song of the Day (or Week, or Month, Depending on How Often I Get Around to It)

When you're 65 and a half years old, the lyrics have a somewhat different meaning than they had when you were 25 and a half...

Neil Young's "Heart of Gold."

"I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old."

Plot Holes in Books We Love: Mr. & Mrs. North Edition

Once in a while, I re-read books that I like a lot.  The “Mr. & Mrs. North” books by Frances and Richard Lockridge fall into that category, and I just re-read Death of a Tall Man.  Now, while I like these books a lot, I would be the last person to argue that the Lockridges’ are great writers.  Their plots tend to be formulaic, many of the (non-continuing) characters are more-or-less from stock and not very well developed.  And their plots frequently have significant, shall we say, shortcomings.

It’s the plot shortcoming in Death of a Tall Man  that I noticed this time through.  Oddly enough, despite my having read the book several times, I hadn’t actually noticed it before.  So if you haven’t read the book and think you might want to, the entire rest of this is a plot-revealing spoiler. 

The murderer has been revealed, and Bill Weigand (Acting Captain in the Homicide Bureau) is explaining what actually happened to the cast (including, of course, Pam and Jerry North).  For the murderer to have pulled off the murder, he had to impersonate, first, a patient awaiting (in an examination room) an eye examination, and, second, the doctor doing the examinations.  In this case, there were six patients in individual waiting rooms, all referred for a specialist examination for worker’s compensation claims.  Each patient has a card with his name (and other information) on it.  Here, from early in the book, is a description of how the patients were handled:

Between 11:35…and 11:55, five more men came in,,,They identified themselves…and were assigned to the examining rooms in the order of their arrival, Weber going into the first room, Oakes to the second, and so on…[At this point, they are all in the waiting room]…At noon, Grace Spencer came to the door and said, “If you gentlemen—“ and they stood up…Grace took their cards, which Deborah [Brooks] had numbered in pencil in accordance with the room assigned.

Following the examination, during which the doctor (Andrew Gordon) has made notes on their conditions, the men leave and their cards are collected and returned to Deborah (subsequently to be provided to Dr. Gordon for him to write up his findings.

Now, we jump to the explanation.

“Somehow he got in and got one of the referral cards in Gordon’s office,” Bill said.  “Oakes’ card, by what turned out, for him to be bad luck.  I suppose Oakes had been in before and the card hadn’t been returned [for which I think we need to read “filed”].  Probably it was on Miss Spencer’s desk.”

We have a reason why both Grace Spencer and Deborah Brooks would have remembered Oakes, which we need not rehearse here.  It’s a sufficiently striking reason, however, that Deborah Brooks would have been likely to remember his name (at least I should think so), but she apparently does not:  “A number,,,More a number than a name.  A man in one of the rooms…”  And our murder got the card, as Weigand says, he “[s]kipped in and got one of the morning cards…They were done with and filed; they wouldn’t be checked for days; with the doctor dead, they would probably never be checked…”

This gives us our first couple of problems.  First, the murderer needs to be familiar enough with the layout of the office, and the office routines, to have some idea how the examination process works and where the cards are likely to be.  Specifically, where the cards from the morning group of compensation patients are likely to be.  (If they had been filed, this would be very difficult; at one point, we’re told that they were on Spencer’s desk, at another that they had been filed.)  But we are told explicitly that neither Spencer nor Brooks knows him well, that he has not been in the office often (or at all?).  Second, the murderer, after arriving (not first, and not last) has to sit in the waiting room for 5-10 minutes.  Now, he has done something to his hair and is wearing dark glasses.  But if he is familiar enough with the office to have found a card, then Spencer or Brooks would have would have been likely to recognize him, disguised or not.  So we have a contradiction.  Third, the card would have a number penciled on it from Oakes’ actual visit to the office that morning.  So either the murderer had with him a pencil and managed to surreptitiously erase the number (without leaving a trace of its presence) or Brooks was incredibly obtuse.

(We are told explicitly, however, that "neither of the women in the office knew him well—“The nurse and Debbie barely knew him by sight; there was hardly a chance that they would recognize him behind the dark glasses, and they had not.”  This is hard to reconcile with his apparently detailed knowledge of how the examination procedure works.)

Then our murderer kills Gordon (in Examination Room 2) and drags him back to his private office and props him up in the desk chair.  He takes Gordon’s glasses (to use now in his impersonation of the doctor), proceeds to “examine” the remaining four patients, and then ducks quickly out of the office by its rear door—where Spencer, the nurse, was sitting.  Presumably, the murderer was physically similar enough and dressed similarly enough (e.g., in a suit of approximately the same color and cut) to get away with this, although we are not told.  He goes away to establish his alibi (which depends on everyone believing that Gordon actually performed the examinations—and here’s our next problem—and presumably made notes on the cards of the patients in writing similar enough to be take for Gordon's.  Cards with no notes would raise an issue, and handwriting too different would raise a very similar issue.  For the murderer’s alibi depends strongly on Gordon’s having been alive after the murderer, disguise and all, had left.

Incidentally, no one seems to have commented on the fact that no one saw “Oakes” leave despite a physical distinctiveness that would have made him very noticeable.

So we have us some problems here, and I don’t pretend to have any clear ideas about how to get around them.  But, then, I did read the book several times before I noticed…