All the Ms: Maloy to Maltman

Maloy, Kate: Every Last Cuckoo is about a not-uncommon topic: the death of a spouse. It is somewhat unique because the main character, Sarah, is seventy-five; her husband, eighty when he dies. She mourns him. She also deals with different issues than do books with younger bereaved protagonists, such as older children and grandchildren. A nice variation on the form!

Malte, Marcus: The Boy.  Lots of vague pronouns. I realize “on” translated from French is often “we” in English, but the two words don’t have the same meaning. Faulkner can get away with “we” because he has a purpose. I don’t think anyone else should use it. 

Maltman, Thomas: The Night Birds tackles a fairly fascinating reality that I think often gets lost in discussions of history: The German pioneers on the American frontier had a fraught relationship with the Indians, whom they feared. The book presents is the darker side of the pioneering experience. 

However, my biggest issue with the book is actually the voice. The boy, Asa, is–as far as I can tell–about ten or so at the book’s beginning. But he sounds much older, not just when he is remembering but when he states things he thought at the time. In comparison, one of the truly remarkable aspects of To Kill a Mockingbird is that Harper Lee retains Scout’s perspective and understanding from whatever age she is throughout the book (she matures in the book in a way she does not in the movie). 

The issue here is difficult. I resolved it in His in Herland by having the second narrator question his own memories from his early teen years: Did I really think that? Or is that what I understand about myself now?  
 

Della Street and Betty Jones: Attitudes Don't Work on a Timeline

One of the more irritating attitudes that occurs in every age is the chronocentric insistence that everything has led up to now (us). There is consequently, an insistence on streamlined history which moves from Point A to Point B to Point C to where-things-are-now.

It was the best of the times. It was the worst of times. 

The fallout is an inability to perceive or acknowledge that things are not automatically better or worse just because of the year or because a theory. 

One common story, for instance, is that women once upon a time were so hemmed in and exploited and powerless than anything post-1950 must be better. 

I recently watched Perry Mason (1957-1966) and Barnaby Jones (1973-1980). What struck me is that Della Street, played by  Barbara Hale, is a much more put-together and independent character than Betty Jones, played by Lee Merriweather. 

Della from Day 1 is direct, outspoken, involved with the investigations. She discovers dead bodies and copes. She leaves the office to find witnesses. She occasionally confronts bad guys (though she rarely fights them). She is down-to-earth, uncowed: a great role model! 

In the first season of Barnaby Jones, Betty Jones takes messages, gets worried, falls for a conman, and gets kidnapped. 

Seriously? 

Maybe she gets more to do later on.

But the difference here indicates that a tough, no-nonsense woman is not the product of an increase in years or "modernism." Good grief, Portia from Shakespeare has more oomph to her than Betty Jones!

I won't say that nothing every improves over time--such as medical understanding of the human body or legal rights in certain contexts. 

Only, most things don't work to a pattern, what with changing politics, changing religious beliefs, changing opportunities, black swans, changing stigmas, and so on. Things can change in one area but not in another. They can change and then revert. They can change, then have entirely unintended consequences. 

Even with medical advances, people should be humble enough to think, Maybe things are more complicated. Real life doesn't work according to trends.

Problems with Utopias: Civil Order and Stigma

Many utopias purport not to need a police or other type of civil force. Citizens are described as complying with the society's blueprint. The authors rarely address probable realities, such as More's city-dwellers refusing to move to the countryside or leaving the countryside before their 2 years of required labor are up. The idea that "it says so on paper, so it will happen" is part and parcel of the utopia. 

The narrator within More's text goes on to claim that there are few private disputes in Utopia, which "observation" doesn't correspond to any human society that has ever existed in the course of history. 

Granted, More's Utopia is partly a thought experiment--but one imagines that a thought experiment would include some way to enforce the expected social customs/structure. Faced with how often human beings would fall short, how could the place possibly be kept going as described?

There are only two ways: totalitarianism or stigma/condemnation. 

More falls back on a combination. The ultimate punishment is in fact death--first, the malefactor (breaker of customs) is placed into slavery (from which the malefactor can be pardoned), but if the prisoner/slave continues to rebel, the slave is killed. (How slaves are monitored is bypassed: the necessary number of guards is never addressed.)

The section on Punishments and Rewards focuses more on stigma/condemnation. The virtuous are rewarded with accolades while the threat of possible stigma lurks around every corner (social media, anyone?). Citizens, for instance, can eat at home rather than in communal cafeterias but "no one does it willingly because it is not thought proper...besides, it would be stupid." 

Guess all us homebodies will have to go live in one of the colonies (thank goodness!). 

Many utopias disguise stigma/condemnation with assumptions of compliance. They then rave about harmony and beautiful vistas, rather like small-minded American idealists being ushered about by bored Soviet hospitality managers. Oh, my, everything looks so nice--how can Reagan be so critical of the USSR?! (See PJ O'Rourke's Holidays in Hell.)

In truth, these assumptions of compliance are a variation on stigma/condemnation. When people argue their "niceness" or "good intentions" or "high-mindedness" or "identity" or, for that matter, how "non-nice" other people are (and therefore, deserve to be rebuked), they are arguing for stigma. It becomes okay to take away people's jobs, smear their reputations, steal their life's work, commit violence against them, and attempt through various venues to cow them into submission. 

Jealousy and small-mindedness under a veneer of benevolent righteousness. 

Joseph of Old: The Ultimate Transformation Tale

Joseph of Old is the Old Testament's most complete epic. One of its most endearing qualities is that it embodies--in a way that few epics do other than the Epic of Gilgamesh--change, even transformation. 

The transformation is not only external but internal; not only directly stated but implied. 

Externally, Joseph himself transforms from farmer to urbanite powerbroker. 

Internally, his oldest brothers transform from envious to repentant. The change is focused not on the oldest son but on Judah (which explains the odd little tale of Judah and the prostitute in the middle of the epic). It is Judah who offers himself in Benjamin's place. 

Joseph transforms internally from distrust to trust. He embraces his brothers, implying forgiveness. After Jacob's death, he assures the brothers that his forgiveness goes beyond filial obedience. He will not take revenge on them at any time. 

It's a remarkable story and lends itself to endless interpretations around a coherent whole. The first "fan fiction" I ever wrote was about Joseph. The computer ate the document, and I never tried to start over. I realized that I didn't have much to add (beyond Mann and Andrew Lloyd Weber) since I think the original holds up fairly well. Unlike with various fairy tales, I didn't think a "true" version was lurking underneath.

The tale Of Joseph stands quite well without "fixes." There's a reason great epics last with so much intact! 

I recommend the Genesis Project/New Media version:    

Part 1 

Part 2 

Part 3 

Part 4 

Part 5 

Insecurity in Jake & the Fatman

Jake and the Fatman is a very smart show in many ways. One of the smartest aspects is that the crime takes place as much in the criminal's head as in a particular time and place. 

That isn't to say that the show is psychological mystery. It is very much a whodunnit/howdunnit action show. But the motive can be what people imagine as much as what actually takes place. 

Dorothy Sayers understood the power of the imagined grievance when she addressed the impact of jealousy on a relationship. Agatha Christie also understood it, particularly the way an idea can become a story in the brain. With several would-be murderers, Poirot gently makes the point, "You imagined a murder--that doesn't mean you committed it."  

The entire world of love and abandonment that Elinor imagines in Sad Cypress (over a fiance who isn't worth so much emotional investment) is a poison that is eventually purged. She never goes as far as she thinks she might. (The Poirot version, though well-acted, misses the point--the scriptwriters insisted on making the affair a matter of actual sex rather than emphasizing that Elinor has invented a more passionate fiance than she has; her identity, her imagined future, is on the line, not an actual flesh-and-blood relationship.)

More destructively, the husband in "Magnolia Blossoms" has convinced himself that his wife MUST sleep with his business partner to get some papers back, and he sends her off to perform that task without warning her. She doesn't, in fact, have to sleep with the other man; she is able to get the papers by simply asking. But she leaves her husband when she realizes his assumptions and suspicions, how willing he was to trade her based on a story in his mind.

Several of the criminals in Jake and the Fatman act not based on good judgment or objectively collected information but on that type of invented story. They think that there were let down, abandoned by a lover when, in fact, they never were.

In the first season episode "Fatal Attraction," a wife and stepson kill off the husband/father. Jake then uses the young man's competitive nature to drive a wedge between him and the wife. When the young man apparently disappears, the wife is easily persuaded that he gave her up--which he never did.  

Likewise, a later villain believes that his girlfriend gave him up when Jake gets her a singing gig. But she never did. 

The police don't have to manipulate these villains. The singing gig, for instance, is completely legitimate. If the girlfriend had held on in the first place, rather than giving up and resorting to crime, she might have broken into the field.

For the boyfriend, the legitimate nature of the singing gig underscores his insecurity. He knows--as does the stepmother with the stepson--that the lover has a less criminal option. Maintaining a relationship through dodgy behavior brings the foundation into question. It backs the idea that humans are attuned to fairness versus unfairness at a basic, non-taught, "natural" level. Something has got to give.

Or, perhaps, the reaction hints at a fundamental belief (however avoided through sophisticated philosophizing) that what goes around, comes around. The villains' stories about others and themselves and the world have convinced them of a particular outcome, and that's the outcome that comes about. 

From a romance point of view, the  criminals' insecurity underscores the inherent vulnerability of love. Love me? Really? For how long? 

Translation by Eugene Woodbury Available

Eugene completed a number of translations, most notably translations of Twelve Kingdoms novels. He understood that a translation is itself an art--not something that can be left to a machine. A translation needs to capture the tone and pacing of an original--as well as its allusions, even jokes!

In the past few years, he completed translations of Ranpo Edogawa's Boy Detectives Club books.

The first translation he made, The Space Alien, is now available on his blog.

The year is 1953. The Korean War is winding down. The Cold War is heating up. In 1952, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb. In 1954, Godzilla will stomp onto the world stage. UFOs are appearing all over the world. And in Ranpo Edogawa’s latest young adult novel, five flying saucers zoom across the skies of Tokyo.

A day after that alarming incident, a woodsman stumbles out of the forest to report the landing of an alien spacecraft in the mountains southwest of Tokyo. A month later, Ichiro Hirano’s neighbor goes missing. He then reappears as abruptly as he vanished, claiming he was kidnapped by a mysterious winged lizard creature—

The same lizard creature that is now stalking the pretty and talented sister of Ichiro’s best friend. What in the world is going on? What do the aliens want? These are the kind of questions that only master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to answer.

Complaint: Microsoft is Currently Run on the Principle of *Cut Off One's Nose to Spite One's Face*

Rather than buy a new computer, I recently downloaded Windows 11 onto my computer.

Before I continue, I will note that generally speaking, I think Microsoft programs work well and prove useful. I have no desire to own a Mac. I prefer the flexibility of (I will now date myself) IBM products. 

Okay...

Unfortunately, Windows 11, while it remarkably preserved just about everything I had already done on the computer, downloaded a tremendous amount of TOTAL CRAP that I couldn't simply turn off. It downloaded the news feed, for instance, and this is not real news. This is tabloid, gossipy, AOL-looking, full ads with malicious software, embarrassing to the human race and to critical-thought garbage. It's idiotic and horrible. 

I eventually figured out, I think, how to get rid of it  (I got rid of the Search bar initially and then, with help, went into settings and turned some stuff off), but I was amazed at how non-right-click that process was. I couldn't just say, "Stop forcing me to look at crap." I had to practically beg Windows 11 not to overload my computer with crap. 

It then insisted on saving everything to One Drive. Not Word documents, thank goodness, since I lost material years ago when syncs didn't work, so I'd already defaulted Word to my computer. But everything else. Constantly. 

So I tried to remove the One Drive icon from my File Explorer. 

I couldn't. 

So I edited the Registry--and that worked temporarily. 

Except one morning, the little icon was back! 

So I removed One Drive from my computer with help. 

My point here is that I honestly have no problem with One Drive--or I didn't. I was perfectly willing to let it sit there. In fact, there were a great many apps that came with Windows 11 that I probably would have left running--I wouldn't have cared--except they slowed down my computer so much, I felt like I was back in the days of dial-up.

I do very little on my computer other than occasionally stream Brit Box and Crunchyroll, check online courses, and work on Word.

So if I think the computer is slow (I'm not video gaming, not conferencing, not even Zooming these days)...that's SLOW! 

Over and over in the last few weeks, I have found that the only ultimate choice I can make is to uninstall apps entirely. 

Microsoft isn't just being unethical (use our product--get exposed to grifters and scam artists who try to take your money!) and less than efficient (your computer now runs slower than ever!). Microsoft is also being STUPID. Because, again, ultimately, one must get rid of stuff entirely rather than just let it run quietly or simply turn it off (with the possibility of turning it on in the future).

I will likely stop using One Drive for my personal needs (I have to use it at work), not even going in directly from a browser. I think back-ups are important, but the app isn't worth the manipulative, thoughtless, inefficient, messing-up-my files accompanying hassle.  

I continue to miss Windows 7.  

All the Ms: Malouf to Malone

Malouf, David: David Malouf is one of the great authors that I thought I’d heard of but didn’t put into context until I started this project. An Imaginary Life starts with an italicized prologue and then the use of the singular and plural first-person with no clear name, so, frankly, I was prepared to dismiss the book. But it actually caught my interest, being a story about Ovid and a child raised in the wild. From this list, it is one of 1/4 or so that I actually went on to complete! 

Malmquist, Tom: In Every Moment We Are Still Alive sounds, uh, rather pompous and that was honestly my initial opinion since the book uses a kind of stream-of-consciousness format (no quotation marks for quotes). However, the topic is quite practical and day-to-day, if sad since it begins in a hospital. 

Malone, Jen: 12-year-old girls get up to craziness in The Sleepover. Clever beginning with a decent narrator! And it reminded me how much I disliked sleepovers as a teen. I wasn’t scared. I simply preferred then and now to sleep in my own bed. There is something, even now, utterly satisfying about returning home. Sometimes, I think that is the primary reason I go to work...so I can go home. 

Malone, Michael: First Lady is police procedural meets James Faulkner: police case with reflections on the South.

Give Characters Jobs: Clergy

Speaking of religion...I mention in an earlier post that Jessica Fletcher's job of writer--which gives her a reason to travel around the country and make contacts in settings as diverse as higher academe, the theater, and stockbrokers' offices--is a great boon to a mystery series.

One role that supposedly lends itself to equally diverse settings is clergy. 

There are several priest and nun detectives in books and shows: Brother Cadfael, Father Brown, Father Dowling, the clergy from Grantchester. 

In truth, I find them a little less believable than Jessica Fletcher. As Dorothy Sayers points out in Nine Tailors, a clergyman who is doing his job, like Venables, is somewhat too busy visiting parishioners and burying people and training/rehearsing the choir/bell-ringers and making emergency preparations and writing sermons and running festivities and keeping in contact with soldiers, sailors, and missionaries, taking care of the church itself and handling issues that are often resolved, these days, by outside agencies...to run around solving mysteries. 

However, doing all the above IS the reason that the clergyman has so many opportunities to ask questions! 

I rather think the Brits manage their mystery-solving clergy better. Father Dowling always puzzled me since so many of the cases end up being gang/mafia-related. Granted, a few decent clergy members in The Closer deal with gangs. They run up against Brenda as they try to deal honestly with the police and protect their parishioners and do right by specific gang members. But again, they are way too busy dealing with those complicated issues to also run an investigation. 

The Brits produce clergy, like Father Brown, who operate as freelancing members of the community. That is, they occupy positions which allow them to stand in and outside the community. (Cadfael, for instance, is a monk who must live by the Order's rules but his work as an apothecary gives him more freedom than his peers.) Since they also tend to live in  villages, their involvement in any event--while implying as large a death toll as Cabot Cove--is instantly excusable. 

My favorite such detective, of course, is the delightful Sister Boniface, played by the delightful Lorna Watson. Her forensic specialty makes her a consultant for the laidback police. The demands of village life bring her into contact with a variety of people, including visitors. The show also doesn't bother to excuse the number of murders. It's England! And there's a lack of angst (unlike early Midsomer Murders, which seasons made me roll my eyes: I mean, come on, talk about angst based on contrived situations!). 

Sister Boniface is simply a ton of fun.     

1 Nephi 4-6: The Wilderness

 As with posts about utopias, I am posting excerpts from my Book of Mormon from the Nineteenth Century Viewpoint blog. 

I believe that readers can best understand and appreciate The Book of Mormon by examining it from the perspective of nineteenth-century readers. What questions were they asking? What religious problems concerned them? 

1 Nephi 4-6: The Wilderness

Nineteenth-century readers would have reacted positively to the idea of wilderness as freedom. This perspective is often applied only to white settlers in North America--and Manifest Destiny, articulated in 1845, was used to justify the practice of white settlers steadily moving west. However, lots and lots of people—including escaped ex-slaves—also moved west. Irish immigrants, Blacks, and displaced Native Americans occupied the fringes of society as well as a number of religious groups. 

It helps to realize that those “fringes”--what was labeled “the West”--kept moving. At one point in the 1800s, “the West” was western New York and Ohio. It then became the Mississippi River Valley and then what we now refer to as the Mid-West. (California became a self-described utopia and sophisticated “other” coast fairly early on—though it was also perceived as part of “the West.”) 

The Gold Rush, naturally, contributed to the idea that traveling into the West equaled a new start, but that metaphor impacted North American pioneering as early as the Mayflower (possibly earlier, if one goes back to the Vikings). It links to the Puritan idea of “exodus” from a corrupt society. Methodist preachers--circuit riders--were immensely popular in the nineteenth century while their stable, elite, (well) paid, stationary counterparts on the east coast were perceived as missing the plot. 

Consequently, nineteenth-century readers would likely have reacted positively to Lehi’s decision to move his family away from perceived urban corruption into a potentially dangerous wilderness. And the thread of violence that inhabits these chapters would have made more sense to nineteenth-century readers than it often does to modern readers. The “Wild” West was truly “Wild” in some cases and the attitude “better left alone to take care of themselves” from state and Federal governments (pre-Civil War) was prevalent.  

However, the wilderness was not embraced because it was nice or cute. Though indigenous people and trackers and traders saw the wilderness as an approachable and useful, many North American newcomers--when faced with so much risk--demonstrated a more medieval than Enlightened mindset, namely: 

One goes into the Wilderness and dies heroically (and/or becomes a hermit--see Saint Anthony--and dies sacrificially) or one goes into the Wilderness and fights off all contenders as part of a social order. 

The tensions here between wilderness as freedom and wilderness as anarchy personified--wilderness as necessary refuge and wilderness as wholly threatening and dangerous exile--as well as the tensions between individuality and organized leadership, pacifism and violence--continue through The Book of Mormon. Nineteenth-century readers could relate. 

Izzy: Transformation through Maturity

Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt is a YA novel about a fifteen-year-old who loses her leg in a drunk driving accident that is not her fault.

Izzy or Isobel is a pleasant, "nice" (in her own words), somewhat proper (though not prim young woman. She gets average grades and has rather ordinary friends. She is pleasant and pretty and gets along with others. 

There is more to her than even she realizes. There's little doubt she would have grown up to be a thoughtful, nice woman with commonsense and grounded insights. 

The accident doesn't alter her personality. In fact, Voigt captures a truth here--which is that grand events (for good or bad) don't fundamentally change people's temperaments, which is why people who win the lottery end up bankrupt. If one is bad with money to begin with...

Likewise, studies have shown that people who undergo terrible trauma, such as losing a leg, often revert to a baseline within a year. 

Lost leg in shark attack.

The book takes place in the first 5 months after the accident. Izzy hasn't yet gotten the cast off her other leg. And she won't get her plastic leg until the stump has fully healed. The reader is introduced to Izzy while she is still undergoing the great upheaval in her life. 

She experiences change. She sees her erstwhile friends for the rather self-centered and shallow, limited people they are. She doesn't stop being friends with them; she simply moves on. She gains new, more honest friends. She expands her skills and interests (without suddenly becoming a prodigy at something). She doesn't lose her niceness or sense of propriety but she gets more real and stronger. And the bravery that she has always had comes out when she prevents a younger woman from making the same mistake she made.   

It is skilled writing, made more so by Izzy maturing into the woman she would have become. She admits that if she could go back, she could change what happened to her--but "the richness in me; there was so much more than before." 

She still gets sad. She is still nervous about the artificial leg. She still wishes that things could be different. She doesn't suddenly become all-knowing (just as she doesn't suddenly become a prodigy at an instrument or other talent). And she doesn't suddenly become a poster-child for a CAUSE. She adapts--and as she adapts, she matures. She adapts in the here and now.  

Problems with Utopias: Problem of Isolation

Over the next year or so, I will be posting now and again from my "sub-blogs." 

The post here is from the associated blog, Problems with Utopias.

* * *

It is typical of utopia novels/tracts to start with "I met a man who told me about..." similar to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

More's Utopia, for instance, is described by a traveler, Raphael, who claims the place was already populated when a group of Romans and Egyptians arrived there in a shipwreck. The resulting perfection is a combination of those cultures. James Hilton's Shangri-la is described by one man to another man based on the first man's encounter with Conway (the Ronald Colman character in the 1937 movie). Shangri-la is in the mountains and only reached by Conway and his companions when their plane is hijacked. 

The implication is that these places exist within the real world but are difficult to reach. Only the occasional survivor or visitor will find a way to pass on the story. 

The problem is that in reality, stuff and people leak out. Why wouldn't Utopia's fisherman keep sailing? Why wouldn't Herland's citizens up and leave? George Mallory isn't the only one who wanted to climb a mountain because it was there.

In fairness, Gilman's women are infinitely practical, which is a welcome change from rampaging idealism, but human nature is not infinitely practical, male or female. Road trips and rituals like Rumspringa exist for a reason. Good grief, Gilman got a divorce and hauled herself and a child all the way across the country to California--why wouldn't her women do the same? For that matter, at age 25, I drove cross-country in a non-air-conditioned Dodge Colt (stick shift) in the summer with a cat by myself. I would never do that now! (People get more risk-adverse as they age.) 

Even during Japan's most extreme isolationist period, people still knew it was there and eventually showed up in a "here we are; what are you going to do now?" way. (And, yes, people did leave, even if they did so partly unintentionally. Courtesy of Eugene, see John Manjiro, "whose biography would barely be believable as fiction.")

In addition, one of the most fascinating revelations of archeological digs is how much people in the past got around. Goods from Asia show up in medieval England. Folks from England show up in the Mediterranean world.

Not to forget, during the nineteenth century, that time of no-holds-barred nationalism, the attempt by antiquarians to discover the "pure" past of a nation ended in failure. German fairy tales weren't German--for one, a lot of them were French. 

And so on.

Isolation is necessary to utopias. Mobile people undermine utopias since (1) restless people indicate that people care about more things than their immediate "needs" (sorry, Marx); (2) if mobile people can leave, other mobile people can arrive, and there goes the perfectly structured society. 

Star Trek tackled this problem in several ways (setting aside the utopian ideals of the show itself). TOS tackled it philosophically: How can you thrive if you are too happy? TNG tackled it, to my mind, somewhat more realistically. In "Masterpiece Society," the engineers on the planet are too excited about Enterprise technology to give it up. Now we see the cost of not being part of a space-faring community! No, thanks!

Welcome to human nature. 

All the Ms: Mallette to Mallone

Gloria Mallette: Distant Lover starts with a clearly characterized protagonist. Lots of family problems, so I didn’t keep going, but I did, I confess, skip to the end, and the end pleasantly surprised me! 

G.M. Malliet has written a number of mystery books. Death and the Alma Mater begins with a humorous account of college in-fighting in Cambridge over an alumni fundraising weekend. The tone reminded me of the Home Improvement episode where Tim Taylor–like Tim Allen–is awarded a degree by his alma mater. The woman who greets him at the ceremony makes it clear that he was selected for his potential construction-building contacts. Others at the college wanted to give the degree to "an award-winning poet--like he could help us raise a dime!" 

Allan Mallinson: A Regimental Affair takes place in the early 1800s and seems to be in the Hornblower tradition. It begins at the House Guards, which reminded me of one of my favorite books A Minor Inconvenience by Sarah Granger, which tackles romance and spying during the wars against Napoleon. 

Thomas Mallone: Fictionalized recountings of historical events are quite common. I’m not a huge fan–though I did read The Agony and the Ecstasy–since I would rather just read the history. That is, I enjoy stories set in history but stories about actual people and events seem to be better handled by documented non-fiction. 

Thomas Mallone wrote Watergate. I read the beginning and could see the attraction, the idea of being in on the action, a fly on the wall of a seminal event. I still didn’t continue…

Henry Wood: Not a Disguise to the Lover

One of the best episodes of Granada's Sherlock Holmes is "The Adventure of the Crooked Man." 

Years earlier, Nancy DeVoy fell in love with Henry Wood. A fellow officer, James Barclay, was jealous of the relationship since he wanted Nancy for himself. He arranged for Henry to fall into enemy hands, a move that Nancy--who becomes his wife--later characterizes as resembling David's treatment of his general Uriah. 

Henry survives torture and mutilation and finds his way back to England. Thirty years have passed, but he encounters Nancy who recognizes him. He then confronts her husband who dies from the shock. Holmes's investigation doesn't uncover a murder but does clear Nancy of suspicious in her husband's death. 

I find it entirely believable that Nancy would recognize her past fiancee, despite the passage of time and physical damage. 

Whether or not a wife/fiancee would recognize her lover from years earlier is a question I've discussed with my mother since we both love mysteries, and mysteries often use such disguises, such as in Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. My mother believes that it depends entirely on the people involved. (After all, I'm not sure David McCallum ever changed!)

The wife in Death on the Nile, for instance, is rather self-absorbed. It's a little odd that she wouldn't recognize the man she married over twenty years earlier but the novel's set-up and the character's personality prepares readers for that possibility. In Henry Wood's case, on the other hand, he could still retain the voice, speech patterns, and underlying facial bones of the man he once was, especially since--unlike the husband in Death on the Niles--he isn't attempting to hide himself. 

In this rather romantic tale (and Arthur Conan Doyle was a romantic!), the disguise is not from the lover but from the detectives. And the disguise is one that Conan Doyle and Christie relied on: people's assumptions about what they are going to see. 

It takes Holmes to see past the "crooked man" who uses magician tricks to entertain soldiers to the young soldier of the past, to connect that man to the man with whom Nancy fell in love.

Nancy never suffers a doubt.   

Elementary Moment of Chivalry

One of the things I love about Sherlock on Elementary is how he never quite loses his British respect for protocol and hierarchy. Sure, he is brash and often off-kilter. Sure, he is a recovering drug addict. Sure, he breaks barriers and upsets people.

But at a fundamental level, he is respectful of forms. (The ability to challenge the status quo and still respect the queen is...very British.) 

So when the King of Bohemia visits, he demonstrates courtesy and even executes a little bow. 

This innate courtesy extends to all types of people, including the sex doll in "The Uncanny Valley of the Dolls." Unlike the others who scoff and sigh and roll their eyes at having to question the sex doll ("I guess her AI wasn't ready for a police interrogation," the creator says apologetically), Sherlock answers all her questions directly and kindly, no matter how loaded her questions are with salacious content. When she asks, "Do you want to fool around?" he responds without pause or loaded innuendo, "No, not right now." 

He perceives her entirely as a machine (as his joke on Marcus later demonstrates) yet he treats her as human and deserving of gentle respect. 

What a guy!  

Major Houlihan: Great Well-Rounded Female Character

I mention earlier on Votaries that Major Frank Burns had more potential than the writers allowed for. 

Apparently, Loretta Swit objected to her character's ongoing affair with Frank. (Maybe Swit did; maybe she didn't--what gets reported isn't always accurate).  

In any case, I've always considered Major Houlihan one of the great female characters of the 1970s. She doesn't spout off the correct-sounding stuff. She is a full character with layers. And I never had any trouble understanding why the seemingly tough and ambitious Houlihan would have an affair with Frank. 

First, she likely isn't as interested in marriage as she thinks she should be--she is a product of her time period, and a woman in the military is still an outlier. She sees friends getting married and settling down and having kids. She would hate that life, but a part of her thinks she is supposed to love it--until an actual marriage fails her. 

Second, a person can be savvy and hard-headed in one area yet a fool with romance. She marries a jerk--in fact, she acknowledges at one point that Frank was better than her cheating husband, Lt. Colonel Penobscott, who was entirely shallow and fell short of Frank's devotion.

Third, she isn't stupid--the obvious person for her to hook up with his Hawkeye...and they would kill each other in a fortnight (as the episode when they sleep together proves). Hawkeye is too cynical. He is also, work-wise, her mirror. She doesn't need a mirror, and Hawkeye isn't comfortable with one (as the episode with a female surgeon proves). 

Fourth, Houlihan has enough self-knowledge to understand herself regarding Frank. To him, she states, "You were military issue. I got you with my mess kit and khaki girdle."

Consequently, I wouldn't pair Frank with Houlihan in the long run. I would have them become good friends who can confide in each other. But Frank is looking for a wife--and, as stated above, Houlihan isn't necessarily looking for a husband, even if she thinks she is.   

The above analysis is based on the character--what she does, what she says, how she says it. The complexity and strength is there!  

Fantastic character! And excellently acted!  

All the Ms: Malerman to Mallery

Josh Malerman: A House at the Bottom of a Lake I picked up because I loved the title. I’m fascinated by water and places under water. The book is about the relationship between Amelia and James, starting with the first date. 

Aanchal Malhotra: The Book of Everlasting Things is a saga of a young man and a forbidden love. I know that from reading the dust jacket. The first chapter is about the young man’s ability to smell perfume. The chapter is very well-written. 

Tania Malik: Three Bargains is a saga tale set in contemporary India. Overall, like the book by Malhotra, it seems to embrace life, even if sadness is part of the equation.  

Ally Malinenko: Sometimes during this project, I feel like every writer in a group of books I got out of the library is writing on the same subject. It likely says more about the human tendency to find patterns than about every author in the Mal range being interested in the same thing. With this post, there are several books about houses!

Malinkenko's Appearing House starts with Jae, who is recovering from cancer. The first chapter sets an interesting premise

“She’d read the books. The stories were always the same. Kid got sick; everyone felt bad; kid taught everyone to love in a deeper, more meaningful way; kid died; everyone remembered the kid as a hero…She’d never read about a kid who’d Gone Through What She Had and lived. They didn’t write stories about those kids.” 

Susan Mallery: Susan Mallery has her own shelf at the Portland Public Library. The books are what I call “world” romances—that is, in Three Sisters–which also begins with a house!--the story is as much about the neighborhood and the job and the friends of the main character, who meets two other women who have romances of their own, as about the romances. Not my cup of tea but the first chapter was more engaging than other romances I’ve read in the Ms.

Buddy Shows: Librarians versus Leverage

Generally speaking, I appreciate a show where the main characters aren't fighting or breaking up every two seconds. 

And yet, I find The Librarians more unbelievable in the buddy-buddy aspect than Leverage. 

Christian Kane is a member of both. Yet why is Leverage--which relies (in a life versus death, jail versus not-jail way) on the main characters liking each other--a better show than The Librarians--which also relies on the main characters liking each other. 

I think the primary reason is that Leverage, like Bones, allows the characters to (1) be idiosyncratic--strange in their individual ways; (2) have different types of relationships with each other. 

The Librarians uses idiosyncratic characters, but there is a constant need within the script to reaffirm the group's togetherness--which often means treating the idiosyncrasies as entirely positive and understandable. 

In Leverage, Eliot continues to be irritated by Hardison's techno-babble (even when he is willing to die for him). And Parker never stops being very Parker-ish. Likewise, in Bones, everyone acknowledges that Bones is going to do things in Bones's way. 

The Librarians are constantly proclaiming their affection for each other (it does get worse in later seasons). The result is a kind of flattening effect. They are all equal all the time in all the same ways about everything because they are all completely supportive all the time in all the same ways about everything, including (weirdly enough) betrayal of the group. It's rather like Star Trek ships: in the next episode, no matter how much damage the ship got, it's back to pristine condition.

I rather like Star Trek. I don't think the solution is, necessarily, to go the Battlestar Galatica route. But--some actual personality traits and opinions and fears should survive the weekly break!  

In Leverage and in Bones, the characters' ability to work together is considered far more important than what they say to each other in the final scenes. In the meantime, the individual relationships hugely differ. Parker dates Hardison. Eliot relates to Parker on the job because they think the same; he treats Nat very much as a leader, even when he criticizes him. On Bones, Angela is Bones's best friend; Booth is her lover and her husband; everyone else, one gathers, is some form of subordinate, which doesn't mean she doesn't care for them. 

I do find it notable that Christian Kane--even with Angel--seems to be drawn to roles where he acts alongside a group.  

A-Z Character Transformations: Little Nikita

My current A-Z List looks at characters in terms of disguises and transformations. I am going by character name. For "G," I chose Grant, Jeff or Nikita in Little Nikita. 

I am reposting my review of the movie. I originally posted in under "Like it Anyway" for artworks that I admire despite critics--and sometimes the general public--labeling them "bad." 

In terms of my current list, one reason I chose Grant, Jeff is that the character doesn't transform into a radically different person when he learns his parents are "sleeper" agents. He is shocked. But he doesn't turn into a spy or run away. He is the boy of loving parents. He remains the boy of loving parents. 

*** 

Every few years, I check out Little Nikita with River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier. The movie has a 52-54% rating on both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. (It has a higher rating on Amazon, which is not unusual since Amazon ratings are often by folks renting the movie through Prime; if they are going to rent it, they already have a reason.)

In truth, the plot makes absolutely no sense. It is the ultimate McGuffin. The rogue agent, Scuba, is killing off sleeper agents supposedly to embarrass the Soviet Union (I guess), yet makes zero effort to contact any news agencies. Also, once the sleeper agents are dead, who is there left to embarrass the Soviets? If the Soviets are trying to protect their agents, why do they use the last agents to pay Scuba? Why don't they just ship them back to Moscow? And if the payment is to capture Scuba, wouldn't Scuba guess? And why are the Soviets so impressively bad at capturing and/or eliminating this guy? 

In the end, though, I don't care. Sure, I think a few tweaks to the script would have made it more sensible. But ultimately, again, I don't care. Phoenix's Nikita character falls into a category that I will address in a future A-Z List [A-Z List 11] since I enjoy character journeys so much. He is a character in disguise, only he doesn't know he is in disguise. That part of the movie is exceptionally well-done with excellent pacing. 

And pacing is an important element of film. The movie isn't fast. It isn't slow. It is, rather, inexorable. The inevitable unveiling--the movement from one understanding of one's self to another--is what matters. 

Consequently, the exchanges between Nikita and the adult characters--his father, mother, Sidney Poitier--carry the film. Even Richard Bradford and River Phoenix in the final scenes (however nonsensical in terms of plot) are enough to keep the viewers' attention.