Lookit lookit what I found! More Ursula Curtiss

So I'm was browsing the bookshelves in a charity shop I don't often go to (but when I do I ALWAYS find something), and lo:

Isn't it just a lovely paperback! The story was quite good too, but having now read two Curtisses I am starting to form the opinion that there is a little bit too much of the coincidence in the storyline. I'm not sure I buy the premises completely. Nonetheless, I liked this. Victoria Devlin has been asked by a friend to stay at her grand house for a weekend and pretend that the friend is there but very ill and can't receive visitors. In reality, the friend has gone away to sort out some sort of important business - Victoria doesn't know what. What is her friend afraid of? Then a murderer escapes from a nearby asylum, a murderer who kills his victims with a sickle ... DUN DUN DUUUHHHNN.

What I don't understand is why the Americans don't do more filming from the wealth of good suspense stories they have from the Golden Age of detective fiction. This stuff beats almost all of your modern scripts. A bit of retro flair, some Mad Men type styling - you could rake in the cash, surely. Instead we have the English filming Agatha Christie twenty million times. I call misogyny in the US to be honest. When we learn about American crime fiction from say the first half and a bit of the 20th century it's all men and Marlowe. The Story of Film (such a brilliant programme!!!) brought up and showed the huge part that women played in early cinema, something that isn't at all plain if you read about the history of films in the mainstream works on the subject. You'd be forgiven for starting to see conspiracies, a conscious wiping-out of female contributors. I call another one. :/Class, please discuss.

These pulp-type paperbacks also have those great ads at the back where you can send off for more of the same. There are ads for two Curtiss books that I'd quite like to read, then some others that meh, not so much. Knock 3-1-2 and The Lenient Beast sound like vile shite.

Just fantastic.

I fingered another pulpy novel when in the shop, but decided not to get it. I can't justify dragging home books just because the cover art appeals to my sense of nostalgia and my childhood memories... but look at this:

I REGRET IT NOW.

The Katy books

Ah, what everyone loves - a crap photo post! I really am the worst at photographs, I know. This one was shot in my window at work this morning while waiting for the computer to warm up, and you can just barely make out the covers, can't you? Mad skills.

I thought I'd given these books away. When we were moving, I agreed to let go of my collection of what in Swedish is called flickböcker and in English... I don't know offhand... books for girls anyway. The genre encompasses Little Women and Anne of Green Gables and Nancy Drew etc. Girls' series books? Google isn't being very helpful. Anyway, when I was little I used to go to a book shop on the way to church every week and spend my pocket money on second hand books, and a lot of these were girls' fiction about plucky good heroines and their adventures. I've held on to these books for years and years (with some very sparse culling), and finally agreed to give the final ones up last year provided my husband passed them on to his colleague who more seriously collects them. I'm so sure I wrote a post about this but I can't find it (maybe the post was in my head, sure I never get a proper chance to write these days). But he forgot! So I found them all in a plastic bag only the other day. Ha! And that prompted me to read them online as ebooks in English, because as you can see my copies were in Swedish.

There's so much written about Susan Coolidge's novels online I don't need to be elaborate. I've always been aware that they are classics even though I've never met anyone in the flesh I think who has actually read them, but for some reason I never actually bothered to look her or her bibliography up before. Therefore I was surprised to learn that the three I have are not the only ones about the Carr family. I didn't find a free copy of Nine Little Goslings online, but I found one of Clover, so I read that after re-reading What Katy Did, What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next. The photo shows my books in that order left to right. Note the cover art. The book in the middle, What Katy Did at School, has my favourite cover, and it was the only one that helped me somewhat place the books historically. The other two are much too modern and I remember as a child being mightily confused by these pictures when what was going on in the story was clearly happening a Long Time Ago (ca 1860s if you're asking). They are also fugly. I might get rid of these, nostalgia be damned, and look for copies in English instead. The middle one is pretty, and the colours and style do somewhat capture the books better.

I read these over and over. I wanted to be like Katy, loved and respected by her siblings and  everyone. I delighted in descriptions of Christmas boxes full of delicious treats for the boarding school, of pretty embroidered hankies and bouquets of flowers decorating every room. (As an adult I can see that Katy and her siblings are really much more interesting for the first half of the first book, before Katy is injured and reforms, but as a child I loved it all.) Any book with a description of a happy family was sure to seduce me of course (which meant that boarding school books were shoo-ins what with happy families at home AND happy family of friends at school - double win!).

Books like these have been derided for the message they allegedly send to young girls of docility, virginity and domesticity - but the problem isn't so much the message as the fact that only girls partook of it. The values (bar virginity perhaps, a value so taken for granted it's never even on the table for debate) are on the whole universal: be kind, be respectful, be neat, be considerate. The novels do in a way also stress what sort of values a woman should hold as ideal in a husband - and there is something refreshing about that in this shallow age where women are still taught to always keep looking for The One (man) but the brief on what he should be like focuses on his appearance or sexiness. Compared to what boys learned while reading Jack London (fuck him) this is grand. 

Speaking of Jack London - I obviously can't plead enlightenment on behalf of these books when it comes to questions of race. I think I counted two black people in all four - nothing disparaging said or anything but they clearly don't count at all. The worst bit is when they are talking about an old school friend who is now a teacher in the Indian Territories and they discuss how no Indian would take her scalp what with that smelly pomade she uses. Charming, I don't think. At the same time it is representative of how white people actually did think at the time, and sure I'm always complaining about modern books about the past in which the authors can't bear their main characters to be unenlightened but instead write them as pro-integration, pro-gay, pro-everything about a hundred years before this is at all likely. No, this is what the past was like. If we're charmed by the old-fashioned values of gentleness and politeness we'll just have to be more civilized here in 2013 and extend it to everyone, won't we.

Sometimes they can be surprisingly modern. I've often seen, on Facebook or forums, people (women) sharing quotes from old housekeeping books aimed at new wifes; the type with helpful hints like "help your husband put on his slippers when he comes home, he is tired after a hard day at work". Okay, I made that quote up, but it COULD BE TRUE. Here is a quote from Clover, as they read aloud from one such book that Katy receives as a wedding gift:

It proved to contain a small volume bound in white and gold, entitled, "Advice to Brides." On the fly-leaf appeared this inscription:—

To Katherine Carr, on the occasion of her approaching bridal, from her affectionate teacher,

Marianne Nipson.
1 Timothy, ii. 11.

Clover at once ran to fetch her Testament that she might verify the quotation, and announced with a shriek of laughter that it was: "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection;" while Katy, much diverted, read extracts casually selected from the work, such as: "A wife should receive her husband's decree without cavil or question, remembering that the husband is the head of the wife, and that in all matters of dispute his opinion naturally and scripturally outweighs her own." Or: "'A soft answer turneth away wrath.' If your husband comes home fretted and impatient, do not answer him sharply, but soothe him with gentle words and caresses. Strict attention to the minor details of domestic management will often avail to secure peace." And again: "Keep in mind the epitaph raised in honor of an exemplary wife of the last century,—'She never banged the door.' Qualify yourself for a similar testimonial."

"[Katy] never does bang doors," remarked Amy, who had come in as this last "elegant extract" was being read. "No, that's true; she doesn't," said Clover. "Her prevailing vice is to leave them open. I like that truth about a good dinner 'availing' to secure peace, and the advice to 'caress' your bear when he is at his crossest. Ned never does issue 'decrees,' though, I fancy; and on the whole, Katy, I don't believe Mrs. Nipson's present is going to be any particular comfort in your future trials. Do read something else to take the taste out of our mouths. We will listen in 'all subjection.'"

There, you see - nobody appreciated those books. And young girls reading the Katy books could be told that they are full of nonsense even then.

When reading old novels like these it's so much fun to see how the people who lived then clearly thought that civilization had reached it's absolute apex. Miss Nightingale had reformed nursing with her modern ideas on hygiene and order, there were telegraphs and even telephones! steamers! trains that raced along at 30 miles per hour! Things could hardly improve after all this!

So I ended up bringing these to my book club, which has been dormant for a while. To reinvigorate it we decided to each talk about something we'd read since last time and then set a new date and pick a new book (it ended up being one by Denise Mina, could be interesting). I don't know if I converted/reinspired anyone to read vintage girls' fiction, but I did try... It was so good to see everyone again, all together. I'm looking forward to next meeting in October!

So, I did it...

... after all, they're collectibles. I may never have another chance to get them. Googling finds me much dearer copies (if I include postage).

The fronts: 

They are so PRETTY.  The backs:

Closeup of the back of Death in Five Boxes by Carter Dickson:

No closeup of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Rinehart because I neglected to get a good one, but how about the insides?

I love them so much. Am reading Death in Five Boxes now. 

Bonus picture: they had paperbacks of some Agatha Christies in an edition that my mother owned at least one of, Evil Under the Sun, the one on the left. Also great cover art. That brings back memories. 

Pardon the reflections, I can't take pictures worth a damn.

The one I didn't read

Like I said, cool cover art but I wasn't gripped at all. Gave it up. By cool I mean genuinely retro, you understand, not perhaps artistically pioneering. Anywhoo, despite glowing front blurb (sorry, hard to see) I found it dull. A bit too pastischy?

Not reading and re-reading

I "read" two books that I gave up on, one Simon Brett (The Murder in the Museum) which was as usual with a Brett mediocre and I have no tolerance for that type of nonsense at the moment so remind me not to bother ever again and am now re-reading Josephine Tey, The Singing Sands. I have a second hand copy with a ludicrous cover, viz.

























Love the font, but the picture? Ha. I'll have to get back to a proper post on this, because I checked my archives and I haven't blogged about this one at all. It's worth a post.

Speaking of covers, one of the books I didn't read has a retro-cheesy cover deserving a photo, so I'm going to do a post for it later which is why I didn't bother writing more now.

 Reading Josephine Tey after Simon Brett is like ... like ... a drink of water when you're thirsty, if you'll excuse a worn metaphor. Such a difference in depth of writing. Brett must assume all his readers are pretty much illiterate. (I'm feeling snarky.)

John Dickson Carr: The Problem of the Green Capsule

Now THIS is a second-hand find! This is what I look for when I'm in charity shops, not any fecking Jeffery Deaver. The condition of this book is atrocious. It's an extremely cheap copy from 1956 (the book was first printed in -39) with rather magnificent cover art. And on the spur of the moment, since I happen to have time, I give you a picture.

Not a GOOD picture, mind. Don't get greedy. Isn't it superb? Anyway, all the pages start to come off the broken, torn spine whenever I turned the page, so we'll see how long it survives in my careless household.

The crime of the book is murder by poison. Very tragically the first murder is completely random -   poisoned chocolates are introduced into the local shop's countertop selection, eventually causing several children to be poisoned, with one fatality. Psychology plays a large part in the discussion and solution of this mystery - the psychology of witness perception and the mental setup of a poisoner, specifically men who poison. The analysis is remarkably modern, if I remember my popular psychology correctly:

"But the men are a more uneasy menace to society, since to the slyness of poisoning they add a kind of devilish generalship, an application of business principles, a will to make good by the use of aresnic or strychnine. [ ... ] First of all they are usually men of some imagination, education and even culture." [ ... ] "Now,", pursued Dr Fell, "what is the first most outstanding characteristic of the poisoner? It is this. Among his friends he usually has the reputation of being a thoroughly good fellow. He is a jovial soul. An open-handed companion. A real sport. Sometimes he may display slight Puritanical scruples, about strict religious observance or even good form socially; but his boon-companions can easily forgive him for this because he is such a decent sort."  [ ... ] "Whereas actually there is in their characters, as a reverse side to the same picture and perhaps an essential part of it, such a blind indifference to the pain of others - such a cool doling-out of death in its most horrible forms - that our ordinary imaginations cannot grasp it.  [ ... ] it really does express the attitude of the poisoner towards human life. Wainewright had to have money, so (obviously) someone had to die. Wiliam Palmer needed money to bet on horses, and so it became clear that his wife, his brother, and his friends must be given strychnine. It was a self-evident proposition. And it is also true in the case of those who blandly or even plaintively 'have to have something'.  [ ... ] and he gained only a few thousands by killing his wife's mother. But he wished to be free. He 'had to have it'. Which brings us to the poisoner's next characteristic; his inordinate vanity. All murderers have it. But the poisoner possesses it to a bloated degree. He is vain of his intelligence, vain of his looks, touched with the bruch of the actor, even the exhibitionist; and as a rule he is a very good actor indeed.  [ ... ]And nowhere does the male poisoner's vanity more clearly express itself than in his power - or what he thinks is his power - over women. "

 Dr Fell's lecture is much longer of course (you can see I've abbreviated it), and I think he's describing what we today would call a psychopath. The inability to feel empathy. The vanity - except we don't call it vanity these days when vanity is no sin. It's very good.

Another part that jolted me a little was a throwaway comment after the young woman suspected by the town of benig guilty has just had a stone thrown at her through a shop window. At the idea of her not being able to walk freely Detective-Inspector Elliot (who, sadly, has a Scottish volatile temper leading him to "growl" a lot - I ask you) says what! are they in Germany? are they a bunch of Non-Aryans cooped up in a citadel? - which is one of those little throw-away comments that shows that the rest of Europe knew oh perfectly well what was going on in Germany in the 30s. No-one can claim ignorance if you can reference persecution in a detective story.

God, now I'm back on the vintage horse, my dears. I need more. Perhaps perhaps I should commit to some internet shopping.

Books you can't read in public

Noticed the paperback covers on the novels by Markus Heitz (the dwarf stories).

Well.

I'd feel really conspicuous. I mean really.

Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time

Reread this today. Well, started earlier, but finished today. Read it years ago, but this copy was a gift from my cousin. It's a nice one, because it has the portrait of Richard III on the cover, which is helpful considering that the story starts with that and they keep referring to it. I love this, even though I do lose track of some of the historical characters. Mr Bani started to read it in an attempt at solidarity with my hobbies but he wasn't too keen apparently. Philistene. I wonder if the Babes in the Tower are ever mentioned in the tv series, The Tudors I mean? I think not, right, it starts with Henry VIII doesn't it? And it's his father who is the true murderer, according to Tey. Great book anyway.

Christine de Pizan: The City of Ladies and Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class

I'm putting these in the same post because I happened to read them back-to-back and found a similar theme. I started with The City of Ladies on 8th of March - International Women's Day - and finished with Veblen's two days later. Both books have been hailed as feminist literature, and reading them so close together sparked lots of comparisons in my mind. All brilliant, all very intellectual. Sadly, I can't remember any of them now, I don't think.

Samuel R. Delany: Babel-17

I reread this recently, because I want science-fiction and I remembered that I'd read this and liked it but that I was more than a little fuzzy on the plot. We own a copy, this edition which is beyond fugly by the way - I'd much rather own the one pictured on the Wikipedia entry (the first edition paperback cover), at least that one is retro fugly. But but but, it's the contents that matter, the contents above all, and isn't this a good novel to use to discuss just that.

Dorothy Gilman: Mrs Pollifax on the China Station

I’m not sure why the previous owner (TPO) poked a hole through the cover and first finger-width of pages of my second-hand copy (see picture after the jump). Did he or she feel a burning urge to try to drive a nail through a paperback, but then give up? Was it a tragic accident? Did TPO really hate it? Hate hats?

Ngaio Marsh: Scales of Justice and Hand in Glove

Let’s go on with two entries that have been (empty) on my draft list since 25 of June this year. I bought a stack of Ngaio books, as you may recall, and of course read them a long time ago. I’ve been putting off blogging about this because I wanted to have the covers in the post too, and I’d scanned them at work (norty norty), and I had to e-mail them to myself, and then remember that I’d done so … clearly this sank on my list of priorities.

Ngaoi Marsh: Off With His Head

This is the one I wanted to write about for midsummer, seeing as how it was about Morris dancing and all. Morris dancing is apparently not a vaguely silly, quaint dance, but an ancient ritual with a lot of deeper meaning. In this case, the dance (our Dame writes in the foreword that she's freely mashed together a few different ones in the name of fiction) shows the ritual death of the Fool, who then is resurrected. I forget the word for this, but you know - it keeps the world going for another year, that type of thing?

This dance takes place in the middle of winter in a small village that has stuck to the old ways in this respect, and that has succeeded in keeping out the tourists and others who might gawk at their customs instead of participating. Sword Wednesday is a big deal, and the primary part of the fool has been performed by the old smith Andersen for many years. His five sons too dance, and even this is part of the ritual. This time as usual they mime beheading the fool, but when it is time for him to be resurrected he lies there dead, his head away from his body. Who has beheaded him under the eyes of all the spectators at the dance?

And the cover? Well friends, it is not a folkloristic, pagan fool we see, no siree. This one wins the awful cover competition hands down and head off, all categories, all prizes. If you weren't afraid of clowns before, you will be now.

Ngaoi Marsh: Death at the Bar

There is a bookmark in this book, well, a business card from my pilates teacher, and on it I've scribbled "p 100 12 o'clock?" which is a reminder to myself to mention this when writing. However, page 100 in Death at the Bar mentions nothing about clocks, so I remembered that actually the reminder belonged to Overture to Death. I think. I haven't got the book here at work (from whence I'm furtively blogging) so I can't check. The note was to remind me of a mistake - Alleyn and Fox get to their inn after a hard night's work, at the crack of dawn, and mention that it's 12 o'clock. Something like that. So there you are. Pulp fiction fault I suppose.

Now, pulp indeed, feast your eyes on the cover to your left above on your left. A cover that, incidentally, is also wrong. The man who dies is not a middle-aged fellow whose eyelids have been glued to stay open - no, the man who dies is a young brilliant lawyer. Here you can note the title's pun - the bar, gettit?
Sorry for the spoiler, but hey. This annoys me a little, I have to admit. Even though it strenghtens my theory that they had a certain selection of people who posed for these covers and there was no young handsome man among those.

The story is that three men, an extraordinarily gorgeous actor (Parish), his cousin, a brilliant lawyer (Watchman), and their friend who is an earnest and talented painter (Cubitt) (no prizes for guessing who is the best man among them) have a tradition of holidaying in a small fishing village in Devon, a village with the curious and isolating feature of being virtually hidden behind a stretch of cliffs and only accessible through a tunnel through the mountain (unless you approach by sea, of course). This time when they arrive they find a new-comer, a slightly odd man who is a wizard at darts and who has rapidly risen to the position of secretary and treasurer in the local Communist party. Watchman starts behaving strangely towards this man and appears to wish to provoke him. After a drinking session he challenges the newcomer to throw darts between his fingers - a party trick that the newcomer has demonstrated earlier. This time he misses, and Watchman receives a minor injury (minor, not crucifixion as the cover implies). Within minutes he is dead - was the dart poisoned?

There are a few twists here which make it rather fun, but the most interesting aspects of this book are class and gender. Class - in the background is the Communist party, staunchly defended and supported by the pub-owner's son, whereas the pub-owner himself is a roaring Tory. A local young woman has been given a university education and is now trapped between her background and what she has become. To her the Communist party promises egality, but it's clear that she thinks only in matter of class, really. When Watchman sexually assaults her she dismisses it as "nothing, nothing she couldn't handle". In a sad echo of one of the Soviet Union's big equality failures and hypocrisy wins she isn't aware of any feminist theories on patriarchal power, instead pretty much takes the blame herself.

Also, I wonder if the distinction between public and private bars exists anymore in the UK? Would be interesting to see.

Nora Kelly: My Sister's Keeper

I took this out because the cover blurbs compare Kelly to Amanda Cross, whom I love, and because the book looks like this, like someone photocopied it in a cellar somewhere to smuggle into Soviet Russia, except the paper was better. It's not terribly good, but I'm intrigued enough to maybe one day borrow another one of hers. It's too obviously moralistic and - what did that one reviewer say that I happened across on the net... something about dialectics... damn, I should have blogged about it straight away, shouldn't I? Point was that she preaches a message, but the other guy put it better.

The books heroine, Gillian Adams, is a college professor, but there endeth all comparisons to Amanda Cross. She has a position of boss-ness at her department (don't ask me to remember the title, but not dean), and gets caught in the centre of things when a group of feminists want to change old and misogynistic traditions at the university. It's quite obvious who'll die, but less obvious who did it. The plot isn't terrible I suppose. However, it's not very interesting unless you need a crash course in gender studies - actually, it's not even that informative, it just tells you over and over that misogyny is bad and feminism good. Meh, but MAYBE I'll try another one some time.