This entire post is a spoiler, so skip it

...if you're intending to read Nicola Upson's second mystery featuring Josephine Tey, Angel With Two Faces. The first book in this series, An Expert In Murder, was good enough to get me to buy and read the second. Which was bad enough that I'm not going to read the third.

In Angel..., Tey and her close friend Archie Penrose (of Scotland Yard) travel to Cornwall, to his home village, to get away from London. The setting (which is real) is well-enough evoked, but the plot seems primarily designed to provide (fictional) evidence for Sherlock Holmes' tirade about the countryside (from "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"):

"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.… The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser."

I don't know if I can convey a complete sense of how unpleasant the people in this Cornish village turn out to be, but let me try.

The story is set in Archie's home town/village/manor in the 1930s. The character whose actions generate, really, the entire book (Harry) has a long-standing (and consensual) incestuous relationship with his twin sister Morwenna. When his parents discovered that relationship (some years before the book opens), he burned down their house, killing them, and himself escaping only by the efforts of his neighbors, who also rescue his younger sister (Loveday). (He apparently didn't care whether she lived or died.) (And Loveday is widely considered to be a bit simple-minded.)

Harry subsequently, in a drunken rage, kills a stranger to the village, fakes his own death (using the stranger's corpse). He finally kills the man (Nathaniel) who had been his best friend for most of his life.

Nathaniel, the curate, (a) has discovered that he is in love with Harry, an affection he tries hard to disguise and (b) has been told, by Harry's younger sister Loveday, what Harry did the night his parents died. (He confronts Harry, which ultimately triggers his death.)

Archie's mother (Lizzie), as it happens, was the victim of rape by her younger (Jasper) brother many years before. (Archie, you will recall, is the Scotland Yard guy.) Jasper, now the vicar, is stealing from the church and also corecing at least one member of his parish (Beth Jacks) into a sexual relationship. Beth's husband, the gamekeeper on the estate, beats her regularly for no particular reason. This is widely known, but no one does anything about it.

Lizzie married and had a long and happy marriage, until her husband (whose name I cannot remember or find) began to suffer from what we now call Alzheimer's disease. Ultimately, she poisoned him (to relieve his suffering) and then, some weeks later (long enough that the two events would not be directly linked) apparently also poisoned herself. Not that either of these poisonings was suspected.

The cook at the manor house, Dorie Snipe, was also badly abused by her husband. He, however, was discovered by his brother, Jago (now the undertaker), who told him to leave (which he did).

Jago and another man in the village (Joseph Caplin) both lost their wives in childbirth at about the same time. The village wise woman (Morveth) convinced Caplin to given up his son to the orphanage-cum-old-people's-home-cum-poorhouse, convincing him that he would not be able to raise the boy on his own. Morveth then removes the boy (Christopher) from the orphanage and gives him to Jago, whose baby daughter died along with his wife, telling him that he could provide Christopher with a good home and life.

Christopher, now an apprentice undertaker and believing himself to be Jago's son, falls for Loveday, and gets her pregnant (which she doesn't realize). Morveth (the wise old woman) and Morwenna (her older sister, Harry's twin) conspire to induce a miscarriage (both think the child was Harry's).

In the end, Harry comes secretly back home, where Morwenna feeds him a sleeping potion and then sets a fire in his bedroom (after helpfully locking him in). She then hangs herself in the wood, at least making sure that Loveday does not discover either Harry's body or hers.

Meanwhile, no one much gets upset by any of this. Morveth wants to cover it all up. As it all slowly comes out, Archie loses it when he finds out about what his uncle did to his mother, and Josephine loses it when she is struck by the full realization of Morveth's influence over everyone. But there's a pronounced lack of shock or amazement or revulsion or shame or concern for the lives of those left behind, especially given that the story is set in the 1930s.

Virtually every character with a significant role in the book (the exceptions are Archie and Josephine, Archie's cousins Lettice and Robbie, and their father, Archie's uncle, William) has a dark secret, all of which are exposed as we go along. By the end, the accretion of all this is almost painful. And, by the end, all the killing has been done by people who are now dead, so all those other secrets look likely to remain secret.

I'm not sure how one is supposed to feel about that ending, but it's sure not comfortable...

Incongruous Amazon Orders

Amazon informs me that they have shipped my most recent order:

Seamus Heaney, Human Chain: Poems

William Tapply, Outwitting Trolls: A Brady Coyne Novel

I suppose it could be an odder combination (Seamus Heaney and Mickey Spillane?), but, still, it's odd enough.

The greatest song ever written

The morning dj on my favorite radio station (Lin Brehmer on WXRT-FM, 93.1 on your FM dial, or over the limitless internet) frequently tells us he's about to play "the greatest song ever written (I think he up to 193 of them so far). It is, of course, just a little trope, but it always makes me think...what is, for me, the greatest song ever written? Which is, of course, just a trope for me.

But there are three songs for which I can remember the first time I ever heard them, so maybe that'll do for a start.

"Mr Tambourine Man," which came out on Bringing It All Back Home in March 1965...I heard it first when three of us were driving around the east side of Indianapolis in a 1957 Chevy convertible and it came on the radio. Which was tuned to WBZ in Boston. I heard Dylan's version before I heard the Byrds' truncation of it, and I can still hear that song anytime I want.

"Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’,
Swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone,
It’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces
Of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time,
It’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing..."

The ending especially:

"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Sillouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With no memory or fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today
Until tomorrow..."

There's not a wasted word, not a wasted syllable in the whole song...

Five years later, I was driving from Madison, Wisconsin, to Greencastle, Indiana, on bitterly cold February night, just north of Wolcott, Indiana. The snow was so deep that I felt like I was driving in a tunnel (but the pavement had been plowed), when, all of a sudden, on a radio station I don't remember (but it must have been Chicago), I heard this:

"When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all..."

I felt like I already knew that song, like I could sing along with it having never heard it before...

"I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down..."

I felt like Paul Simon had heached into my head and managed to know what I felt...

"When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down..."

I felt like I was sailing, through the black night, to somewhere I would be safe...

"Sail on silver girl, sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind."

I can still hear Art's beautiful tenor and feel the music. Right then, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" seemed like the greatest song ever written.

Another five years, January 1975. Another road trip. This time, driving from Bowling Green, Kentucky to Indianapolis, Indiana. Somewhere around Louisville this:

"Early one morning the sun was shinin'
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin' if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red..."

Another vision of which I felt like I was a part...

"So now I’m goin’ back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters’ wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they do with their lives
But me, I’m still on the road
Headin’ for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue."

No one had to tell me it was Bob Dylan (again changing my life). I can still sing that song to myself, and I often do. "Tangled Up in Blue" still makes me stop and listen (and, to this day, I think that Blood on the Tracks has to be one of Dylan's four or five best albums).

(An addendum, about something which, believe it or not, I hadn't noticed until I was writing this post. Look at how the perspective shifts from verse to verse:

"I was laying in bed..."

"She was married when we first met..."

I had a job in the great north woods..."

"She was working in a topless place..."

"I lived with them on Montagu Street..."

Ending with the narrator:

"So now I'm going back again..."

It's an amazing song.)

Are these the greatest songs ever written? Well, probably not. But they are the only ones I can place in time and space, the only ones that I can hear, every time, as if it were the first time...

Where were you?

For many people about my age, four dates stand out in our memories.

Where were you when John Kennedy was shot? (November 22, 1963)

Where were you when Martin Luther King was shot? (April 4, 1968)

Where were you when Robert Kennedy was shot? (June 6, 1968)

Where were you when Alison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were shot? (May 4, 1970)

In memoriam...

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio

Two American Photographers

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered two photographers whose work has just blown me away—Robert Adams (born 1937) and Andrew Moore (1957). Their work is very different—Adams is more a landscape photographer, while Moore seems drawn to urban settings, with some emphasis on urban decay. But both of them have created works of immense beauty.

I saw a review of Robert Adams’ book Summer Nights Walking, a recent republication and expansion of his 1985 book Summer Nights, both published by Aperture, which is virtually a guarantee that the technical aspects of the book, and its physical appearance, will be perfect. Aperture’s website describes the book as follows:

Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, the houses, roads, sidewalks, and fields in Summer Nights, Walking (Aperture/YUAG, September 2009) retain the wonder and stillness of the original edition, while adopting the artist’s intention of a dreamy fluidity, befitting his nighttime perambulations. The extraordinary care taken with the new reproductions also registers Adams’s attention to the subtleties of the night, and conveys his appeal to look again at places we might have dismissed as uninteresting. Adams observes, “What attracted me to the subjects at a new hour was the discovery then of a neglected peace.”

These black-and-white photos, shot in Colorado in the 1970s and 1980s, lead you through a community you’ve never seen, and make you a part of it. His other images take you through an American west that is endlessly interesting. His images are generally uncluttered, with a clear central focus; they are always sharply observed; the viewer, even one seeing a familiar setting, sees it differently, changed. A recent exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco focuses on trees—stumps, seedlings, (what looks to me like a clear-cut) mountainside, mature trees…again, an American landscape transformed by how it is viewed.

Andrew Moore has worked, it seems, largely in color. His recent exhibition at the Akron Art Museum, is the basis for his book Detroit Disassembled. This is a stunning collection of a city in the midst of collapse, with images from the industrial heart of the city (photographs of Ford’s River Rouge plant, Fisher Body, the old Packard Motor Car Company plant), to municipal buildings, to civic landmarks to the neighborhoods. It’s interesting to contrast his photographs of the Rouge (e.g., on pp. 9 and 13) with the extremely elegant photographs in Michael Kenna’s The Rouge. Kenna worked in b&w, and his images are understated, the decline and decay less obvious behind a foreground of strength and solidity.

Moore takes us inside, shows us the rusting equipment, the empty factory space, bare of equipment and people, stretching, it seems, almost to infinity. Two struck me with special force. The first is an office at the former Ford headquarters building (p. 31), with what appears to be a sumptuous green carpet, but may be, you realize, sumptuous green mold. The second is an elegant brick building, obviously abandoned (p. 103), when you note the homeless man in the entryway. It’s the University Club of Detroit, once the locus of upper-middle-class power in the city, now covered with vines, in red, yellow, and green.

But throughout the book I saw images that arrested me—an old, classic movie palace turned into a parking deck; a (closed) library branch, with carousels of paperbacks still there…

Take a look yourself, at the work of both of these photographers, and be prepared to have your way of seeing changed.

Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (Volume I)

I was doing my usual today, driving down I-65 for a couple of hours, for which I need music of my own for the 90 minutes or so I'm out of range of decent radio (no sattelite radio for me yet). I'd brought along Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, which I played. (Man, is than one short CD--35-40 minutes, max). Ten songs, which are (albums, with links, in parentheses):

"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" (Blond on Blond)
"Blowin' in the Wind" (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)
"The Times They Are a-Changin'" (The Times They Are a-Changin')
"It Ain't Me Babe" (Another Side of Bob Dylan)
"Like a Rolling Stone" (Highway 61 Revisited)
"Mr. Tambourine Man" (Bringin' It All Back Home)
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" (Bringin' It All Back Home)
"I Want You" (Blond on Blond)
"Positively 4th Street" (not previously released on an album)
"Just Like a Woman" (Blond on Blond)

Now, that's quite the set of music. But as I listened to it, I thought, you know, it'd be possible to do another 10 songs, from the same period (i.e., nothing past Blond on Blond), and it'd be easy enough to call that his greatest hits, too. So I thought I'd try it. Here's the rules: Same number of songs from each of the same albums; nothing that was subsequently released on Greatest Hits, Vol. II (which, from these albums, would rule out "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," "All I Really Want to Do," "My Back Pages," "Maggie's Farm," "She Belongs To Me," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."

So that's three from Blond on Blond, two from Bringing It All Back Home, one each from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Highway 61 Revisited, and one previously unreleased. Hmmm...leaving out the things on GHII could make this tricky.

So, three from Blond on Blond.
"Visions of Johanna"
"Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine"
"Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"

Two from Bringin' It All Back Home:
"Gates of Eden"
"It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding"

One from Freewheelin':
"Masters of War" (that was easy)

One from The Times They Are A-Changin':
"One Two Many Mornings"

One from Another Side...:
"Chimes of Freedom" (probably the weakest song so far)

One from Highway 61...:
"Highway 61 Revisited" (although I'd be happy to take "Desolation Row," too, or "Tombstone Blues")

One unreleased:
"Farewell, Angelina"

So let's line them up:

"Visions of Johanna"
"Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine"
"Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
"Gates of Eden"
"It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding"
"Masters of War"
"One Two Many Mornings"
"Chimes of Freedom"
"Highway 61 Revisited"
"Farewell, Angelina"
Bonus tracks:
"Desolation Row"
"Tombstone Blues"

I'd buy it.

Words I never thought I'd hear someone say at work

"Well, I just washed my mouse."

That's all.