Roger's Rambles

Not so close readings

Caravan site offices often have a cache of secondhand books on sale at a £1 or so each. The money goes to a charity or to pay for plants to brighten up the site. There’s mostly rubbish on offer but occasionally I discover something worth taking back to the van to read. Recent finds have included Howard Jacobsen’s first novel, Coming from Behind, and Jay McInerney’s Brightness Falls, both entertaining.

One I didn’t enjoy was Henning Mankell’s The Man Who Smiled. Having read reviews of the Wallender television series, I was interested to see what the fuss was about. On the first page was a paragraph starting thus: “The fog came rolling in from the sea. He was driving home from Ystad…” The fog was driving?

The hamfisted writing continued. Possibly it’s the translator’s fault but the dialogue was as stilted and jaggedly logical as Abba lyrics. There was not so much a narrative as a set of stage directions, interspersed with lectures about aspects of Swedish society the author disapproved of. Mankell’s characters were so wooden that Ikea could make furniture from his discards. (“The Wally bookshelf system — a simple and rigid storage solution.”) I didn’t finish the book.

Crossed off

A few days later, I saw that James Patterson’s books were those most often borrowed from British public libraries the previous year. (The list is here; it’s a PDF.) I bought one — Jack and Jill — the next time I was in a supermarket.

The writing was better than Mankell’s but that didn’t make the book good. Its hero — Alex Cross — is, in the currently approved term, an African-American. Patterson doesn’t make this clear until well into the book, although there is plenty of coat-trailing along the way. Does he think his new readers are so dim they wouldn’t work that out?

Cross is over six feet tall, well-built, immensely strong and able to run as fast as miscreants many years his junior. He’s a black Wilson the Wonder Athlete but with a gun and a degree in some form of psychothingummy. There’s much sentimental conversation with his daughter to show that Cross is humane and vulnerable, despite his macho persona.

Every so often a chapter would end with a warning that there was worse to come. I think this referred to the events being described rather than the quality of the writing but you never know. This seems a sign of insecurity. Why not let the reader find that out as he or she progresses?

Having paid something like full price for this book, I stuck at it until about halfway through. I then decided that I’d rather waste money than time; it was my life that Patterson was dribbling away with this tosh. I couldn’t even be bothered to go to the end chapters to see who did it.

The cover quotes some stooge of a reviewer as saying it’s a “page turner”. It certainly was but I suspect you’re meant to read them first. As Dorothy Parker said, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

A tooth for a sleuth

I’m a sucker for a good detective yarn, although neither of those books qualifies. I especially like ‘police procedurals’ — not so much whodunnits as howdunnits. The main populariser of these was Ed McBain, a pen-name of Evan Hunter (born Salvatore Lombino), with his 87^th Precinct stories. I recently bought his Cop Hater at a charity shop. The book was first published 50 years ago but reads as though it was written this century. Either McBain was before his time or the current crop of writers has not advanced the craft. Possibly both are true.

Two expert modern exponents of the detective thriller are Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly. They’re accomplished wordsmiths and I enjoy reading them but have difficulty remembering which of their books I’ve seen before. I can’t be certain even if I leaf through a copy, so I’ve stopped buying their output.

I’ve given John Grishom and Robert Ludlum a go, having enjoyed the film versions of some of their books. On a screen is the best way to ingest their work. Without the aid of expert rewriters, handsome actors, dramatic lighting and a good soundtrack, their stories come across as ponderous and dull. Often, their characters don’t speak so much as declaim. At other times they filibuster. “Get on with it!”, I’d be muttering.

Conserving the mould

All these books are written to a largely unvarying formula. The hero (seldom a heroine) is a tough guy, good in a fight and handy with a gun. His powers of recovery from physical and psychic injury would put Superman to shame. He is also a loner, often with a military background, impatient with routine and scornful of authority.

It’s almost compulsory for there to be something in this chap’s past that damages his career prospects and haunts his present thoughts — alcoholism, marital difficulties, recent loss of a loved one or killing somebody in controversial circumstances. Consequently there is a recurring interior dialogue about his burden, whatever it might be. This typically has the subtlety and emotional depth of a script for Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. The same is true of the supporting characters, who occasionally aspire to two-dimensionality.

Why read these books, then? Because they have pace and action, in bucketfuls. Also, often, there’s a genuine puzzle.

Some of their writers should follow the advice on these two pages*. On the other hand, they’re coining it, so why should they care?

*The Lester Dent rules are here. Shame he sounds like a brand of toothpaste. A more studious examination of the form is The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler, a master.

One of the prototypes for this wish-fulfilment stuff was, of course, the Sherlock Holmes stories. Here was an idle, misanthropic, manic-depressive junkie fiddler who was at the same time an expert swordsman, master of disguise, dead-eyed shot and agile mountaineer. How did he stay so fit?

I’ve always thought there was a Fast Show character to be created around Holmes — a super-confident reader of events, motives and minute clues who always proves to be diametrically wrong in his conclusions.

Give us an E

Electronic books — ebooks — are becoming popular. They have been available for years from places such as the admirable Project Gutenburg, which specialises in free copies of out-of-copyright works. (Copyright usually lasts until 70 years after an author’s death.) These versions were originally intended for reading on a general-purpose computer, such as the one you’re probably using this minute.

More recently, companies such as Sony and Amazon have sold specialised computers for reading books and other publications. These machines, called readers, are small enough to hold in the hand and have large screens purpose-made for viewing text.

While I was travelling in mainland Europe, Amazon announced the availability of the latest version of its Kindle electronic book reader. I had hoped it would be ready before I left, as getting English books abroad is difficult and costly, but had to wait until my return to get mine.

It arrived within a couple of days of ordering and I have been pleased with it. I got the 3G version, which lets me order and, if necessary, pay for books from Amazon wherever I am and download them at no charge. (The other, cheaper version needs you to have access to a wifi network, such as at home or in a coffee shop.)

I’ve just taken advantage of Amazon’s Christmas offer to download a selection of new books at £1 apiece — charity shop pricing. If you’re hesitant about any purchase, often you can download a free extract of it first. It’s a brilliant way of selling. No wonder people worry about the future of paper books and no wonder Amazon sold an estimated 8 million Kindles last year.

Amazon is not the only source open to you. There are several online bookstores beside Project Gutenburg that will sell or give books to you either in Amazon’s format or something convertible to it.

The best software I’ve seen to make those conversions is Calibre, which is free. It also lets you download and convert masses of other material, including most newspapers. I’m saving so much by not buying the weekend papers that it’s paying for the Kindle.

There are some drawbacks, inevitably. One physical shortcoming is that if you’re reading in bed and nod off there’s a risk of a chipped tooth if you let go of the Kindle. (That said, the reader will at least remember where you were in the book at the time.) Reading in the bath is not a good idea, either.

A more serious problem is that many of the publications from Amazon have digital rights management (DRM) built in. This means you can’t swap them with other people the way you can a real book. (Amazon has recently introduced a limited scheme for this but the loan period is a meagre two weeks.) Downloads from elsewhere are not usually restricted this way.

There’s lots more I could say about this clever machine and the technical and commercial arrangements Amazon has made to keep people supplied with reading matter but I think you get the idea. It’s not for everyone but I recommend the Kindle.

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02. January 2011 by RogerGW
Categories: Off at a tangent | 2 comments