A Hole in the Middle

Tags

Boston Ballet, Chroma, George Balanchine, James Bond, Joby Talbot, Philip Glass, Serenade, Symphony in C, Wayne McGregor

This past weekend, my family and I went to see the latest dance program at Boston Ballet, Chroma. We are season subscribers and typically attend anywhere from 3 to 5 programs per year. I like to go and support my adopted hometown’s premier dance company. And, as a former dancer who still occasionally wishes that genetics had played in her favor to allow for even considering a career in the field, I like to go and think of What Might Have Been.

The program consisted of three separate pieces, Serenade, by George Balanchine, Chroma, by Wayne McGregor, and Balanchine’s Symphony in C. I’d seen the two Balanchine works several times, and was interested to see how Chroma, a more recent piece, would compare and contrast.

Serenade is not, per se, a story ballet, but as my husband said at the first intermission, there’s definitely a story there. Everything about this ballet, the first that Balanchine choreographed in the U.S., is iconic.

The ballet opens with 16 women onstage in flowing translucent tutus, looking out over upraised right arms. As the music continues, they slowly lower their arms toward their faces, then down into lower first position. Then as one, they turn out their feet from parallel into first position, a definitive This is Ballet moment. They then dance in various combinations, with dancers running on and offstage (reflecting the fact that Balanchine had different numbers of women to work with day by day as he was choreographing the piece).

As I mentioned, Serenade is plotless, but it has a story archetype – Woman loves Man, but Man can only stay a while before he is taken offstage at the end, sightless, by Otherworldly Woman who may be Death. Once he leaves, Woman (also known as the Waltz Girl) is lifted up by a group of dancers, and carried off backstage left by three men, her back arched. The group of dancers follows her in the same pose. I spent most of this ballet in or near tears, because it’s just so dang gorgeous. And resonant. Every movement and formation just looks right.

The second piece was Chroma, by Wayne MacGregor. In this piece, 5 men and 4 women, all in fairly androgynous outfits, push the limits of technical dancing within a stark white box, while Joby Talbot’s music blares.

So, um, um. Hmm. The technical execution of this piece was incredible. The orchestra, which included an extra five percussionists, did a great job playing the music. The dancers, clearly having the time of their lives, got to show off the full extent of their training. Incredible feats of partnering, jumping and flexibility abounded.

But (you knew there was a “but,” right?) there just wasn’t much THERE there. There was no driving theme behind the dancing. I’m not saying I need a story, but there was no idea to bring it all together and explain why these dancers were in this space doing these movements. And the music, while well played, sounded like Philip Glass wandered into an old James Bond movie and got really excited about throwing in some extra orchestration.

Sometimes that’s my issue with some contemporary ballet choreographers – they throw every move in the book into a piece, set it to some avant-garde music and expect that everyone will then think it’s really profound. This is not to say that all contemporary dance-makers are like this, or to paint myself as a complete reactionary, but there are definitely a few out there.

We had our palate cleansed at the end with more Balanchine, his Symphony in C, originally set on the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947.

I remember once reading a review that compares this ballet to a glass of fine champagne, and it is absolutely true. Set to Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C, it is a classic tutu ballet, with all the Balanchine touches that distinguish it from its 19th-century forbears. The most touching section is the second movement adagio, with a beautiful pas de deux that features the ballerina, holding her partners’ hands and touching her nose to her knee in arabesque penchee. (In English, that means her back leg is raised and pointing toward the sky.)

There’s no story to this ballet either, and the main theme seems to be, Look I made a beautiful ballet with beautiful tutus to beautiful music. But somehow it’s still more poignant, more touching, than Chroma, AKA (to me, at least) as The Hole in the Middle of the Program.

For a Good Time, Call Joe

Tags

Albert Campion, Aunt Agatha, Barbara Cleverly, Colonial India, Fletcher Library, Joe Sandilands, London, Margery Allingham, Paris, Scotland Yard

A little while back, I was wandering aimlessly among the Fiction stacks of my local library and wondering what to read. (Wandering and wondering…) In the back of my mind I was hoping to find a new British mystery series, set in the Golden Age but written recently, preferably by a woman. (Sexist, I know, but justified. All my favorite mystery authors are women. Sorry, Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen.) It didn’t have to be as profound (or depressing) as P.D. James, but at least a bit meaty/character-driven with a definite avoidance of the overly twee.

And guess what? I found it! Lurking around the CHE-CLO aisle, I saw the magical tag “Mystery” on a set of books on (of course) the bottom shelf. Barbara Cleverly…never heard of her, but the titles sound intriguing. Set in the early 1920s, soon after World War I, perfect. And the detective is a dashing young Scotland Yard maverick? Sold!

Cleverly’s detective is Joe Sandilands, Commander at Scotland Yard. (The title is not a typical police rank, and was assigned to Joe as part of his work in a special branch involving sticky homicides and other crimes, many of which take place in politics or among the elite.) He is in his early 30s, surprisingly young for his rank, and the product of both an English father and Scottish mother, both Cambridge and four years in the trenches at Ypres. Thus he blends in well with the knobs and aristos, but can also fit in well with the Common People. He is tall, dark and handsome, but a war-time facial scar also gives him a forbidding and dangerous look. In other words – hot hot HOT, and the ladies respond accordingly.

In the first four books of the series, Cleverly sends Joe to India, still the crown jewel of the British Empire in 1922, to teach modern police methods to both the Colonial and native Indian police. While there he (of course) comes up against murders and murderers, all of them highly inconvenient for the Raj and the colonial government. In the first book, The Last Kashmiri Rose, someone is offing the wives of senior British military officers, officers who may have been present at a pre-war tragedy. The second book, Ragtime in Simla, has Joe investigating a sniper shooting in Simla, a posh summer resort in the Himalayan hills.

The third book, The Damascened Blade, sends Joe to a remote British fort near the Afghan border as bodyguard to a headstrong American heiress who is desperate to see the “real” India. And in the fourth, The Palace Tiger, Joe must visit the independent kingdom of “Ranipur,” a British ally in North India, to investigate the suspicious death of the maharajah’s heir and protect the next in line for the throne.

All of these stories sound exciting but fairly one-dimensional when described thus, but they really aren’t. The characters, both British and Indian, are interesting and complex. No one is completely bad or completely good, everyone has his/her own agenda, and loyalties – amorous, political and familial – are complicated and often opaque. Cleverly brings out many of the issues in the latter days of the Raj – you can see the forces building toward the eventual decolonization of India 25 years later.

Cleverly also marks herself as a 21st century author by not shying away from topics that Golden Age writers would never address, or at least never address directly. Homosexual relationships, infertility, alcoholism, graphic depictions of violence and war wounds…you’d never see these described so matter-of-factly in an Aunt Agatha novel. And Joe himself is not averse to discreet liaisons with pretty ladies, both married and single.

The next several books in the series (there are nine Joe Sandilands books altogether, according to Amazon and Wikipedia) depict Joe’s return to London and his dealings with sticky homicides there and in various parts of France. (Conveniently, he speaks fluent French – I told you, HOT!) In one of these adventures, Folly du Jour, Joe meets up again with two of the more colorful characters he encountered in India, but this time, in Lindbergh-era Paris.

An intriguing aspect to the Sandilands mysteries is that they are not strictly in chronological order. All of the India-based books take place in 1922; however, while the

Cleverly says Joe looks like this. I disagree.

end of Ragtime in Simla sees Joe on a French steamer ship on his way home, the next two novels concern his adventures in India before he gets on that steamer. So in a way, they take place “within” Ragtime in Simla, much the same way that C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy takes place “within” The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Similarly, after the London/France set of adventures, set in 1926-27, Cleverly takes Joe back to 1922 London after his return from India in The Blood Royal. I’ve just started reading this one, and it’s taking me a bit of time to re-set my brain back a number of years from 1927 Paris and Folly du Jour. But it definitely keeps things interesting!

I’m enjoying this series immensely. Joe makes for a very engaging detective protagonist, and he lands in some very entertaining adventures. I’m not as emotionally attached to these books as I am to Sayers or especially to Margery Allingham (so much more to come about Allingham and Albert Campion in the future), but they are still quite a delight.

The More Things Change…

Tags

Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, Blazing Saddles, Boston Strong, Celtics, Forever, Judy Blume, Spring Break, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, Warriors

Last week was spring break in Massachusetts, and for the second half of the week, we went out to visit old and dear friends in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. We had a terrific time doing very little – eating and drinking (and planning the eating and drinking), taking the kids and the dog for walks around town and in the woods, napping, playing euchre, watching sitcoms and basketball (go Celts!) and Blazing Saddles, and just enjoying one another’s company.

(We also followed the dramatic and scary events happening back in Boston, prayed for everyone involved, and had a celebratory drink on Friday night after the capture. There are plenty of posts about that whole crazy, tragic chain of events. This is not that post.)

When we arrived on Wednesday afternoon, I found a pile of familiar paperbacks on our bed in the guest room. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recognize them right away. Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Freckle Juice, Deenie, Blubber, Starring Sally J. Freeman as Herself…I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Our friend’s mom was cleaning out her bookshelves, and gave me all her old Judy Blume paperbacks to give to my daughter.

I first heard of Judy Blume in fourth grade, when my wonderful teacher (with whom I’m still in touch – hi, Mrs. Wright!) read us Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing in installments. And yes, she read Fudgie in a Fudgie-voice, which I can still replicate in my head, 35 years later. We all then went on to devour the rest of the Blume oeuvre, finding aspects of ourselves in the teen and pre-teen characters. The only one of her books that was off-limits at that point was Forever, but we managed to sneak a copy from somewhere and giggle over the sex scenes, embarrassed but intrigued.

(Forever wasn’t in the stack our friend gave me, thank goodness. No need to hide it from my daughter. She’ll find it herself one of these days without my help.)

While we were out in the Adirondacks, I read Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Starring Sally J. was better than I remembered. It concerns Sally (of course), a 10-year-old living in New Jersey in 1947, and what happens when she and her mom, brother and grandma move to Miami for a year after her brother is sick. Sally has to get used to a new school, new friends, strange creatures like lizards and man ‘o’ wars (men ‘o’ war?), segregated bathrooms and water fountains, and a neighbor who might be Hitler in disguise. Most of all, she misses her dad, back home in New Jersey.

Reading Starring Sally J. was even more compelling now than when I was a kid, mainly because I understand the legacy of World War II so much better. Sally has lost an aunt and a cousin in the gas chambers of Dachau, and though she is somewhat shielded from the true horrors of the Holocaust, it pervades the unspoken dynamics of her extended family. She fantasizes about going to Europe during the war as a secret agent, rescuing her cousin and taking revenge on Hitler and his henchmen. Sally wants nothing more to be a regular girl (well, except maybe to be the next Margaret O’Brien), but she and her family live with the shadow of this grief over them always.

Are You There God? was worse than I remembered. It follows 12-year-old Margaret Simon as she moves with her family from New York to New Jersey in the early 70s, and has to get used to a new school, new friends, strange creatures like training bras and teenage boys, feeling alienated from her grandma’s Judaism and her other grandparents’ Christianity, and a neighbor who might be Hitler in disguise (just kidding). Most of all, she wishes she won’t be the last girl in her group of friends to get her period.

Yes, seriously. Margaret has some serious issues to deal with in her life – particularly her issues with religion – but she’s most obsessed with getting breasts and menstruating. I get that entering puberty is important, and of course these milestones ought to be celebrated, but Margaret’s just so spoiled about it all. I’ll just die if I’m the last to get my period! she whines to God one night. Apparently in Margaret’s world, your monthly bill is all sweetness and butterflies and there’s nary a mention of cramps, accidents or violent mood swings. And who knows, maybe it is…for her. 14-year-old me would beg to differ, especially during ballet class.

But anyway, Are You There God? is still compelling and interesting, and I should probably take some notes as my daughter heads into pre-adolescence. With any luck she’ll start reading our new Judy Blume collection soon…those books will give her more pointers about navigating life stages than the books she’s currently reading about feral cats and their daily dramas in the forest.

Watching Over and Letting Go

Tags

Boston, Chihiro, courage, endurance, hayao miyazaki, joe hisaichi, letting go, Spirited Away

Yesterday my daughter and I were feeling lousy – not really actively sick, just feeling logy and low and glandy and sinus-achy and tired. So we had a mother-daughter movie session and watched Spirited Away, an animated movie by Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki (and one of my favorite films).

Spirited Away is focused on Chihiro, a whiny, spoiled 10-year-old who is moving with her parents to a new city and a new school. Through a series of events, she is thrown into the world of the spirits, and must rescue her parents from enchantment by working in the local bathhouse. There, she finds strength, courage, perserverance and patience, and shows others what unconditional love looks like.

The bald storyline sounds very afterschool special-ish, but there’s nothing corny or trite about this movie. And its images are just breathtaking. Every frame is overflowing with color and imagination, all the characters are real and indelible, and the soundtrack is lush and exciting. It’s not surprising that Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2002.

There’s one scene that always gets me. Late in the movie, after a confrontation with a terrifying monster called No-Face, Chihiro leaves the bathhouse and boards a train to return a treasure to a witch, thus saving her dear friend, Haku. She is traveling with two friends, both under an enchantment as a tiny bird and a mouse, and No-Face (now no longer terrifying). The train travels through beautiful but flooded countryside, with faceless silhouetted travelers boarding and leaving at every stop.

The scene has no words, just Joe Hisaichi’s plaintive piano music in the background. It perfectly captures the loneliness and isolation of travel. Toward the end of the scene, Chihiro sits on the train, stoic, patient and determined, with her two mini-friends sleeping on her lap. Her expression is heart-rending…and familiar. It’s every parent, every person with someone to love and protect, enduring whatever they have to in order to do so.

And then, right near the end of the movie, a new moment caught my eye this time. Chihiro and her friend Haku must say goodbye as she returns to the human world; not forever, but for the foreseeable future. In order to break the spell she must leave and not look back. They are holding hands, and as she walks away, a close-up on their hands holding, touching fingers…and then parting. You have to let go of everyone, of your children, of your friends, of all those you love. You’ll probably see them again, but right now it’s time to move on.

***

A few hours ago my beloved Boston was hit by horror and tragedy, on a day that’s traditionally reserved for stories of courage, fortitude and accomplishment as we celebrate Patriot’s Day and the running of the Boston Marathon. Many people are gravely injured and in critical condition at local hospitals; at least 2 are dead. We endure it because we have to. We let go of those who leave us, because we have to. But we are horrified, and we grieve, and we wonder why. It shouldn’t be like this. My thoughts and prayers are with the injured and the first-responders and everyone in our city this evening.

Mediocre Travel Poetry

Tags

Alaska Airlines, business travel, family, Philadelphia, Seattle, Wilmington

Last week I spent 6 days away from home on travel for work. I know you’re dying to know where I went, so I’ll tell you. From Monday to Wednesday I was in beautiful suburban Wilmington, Delaware at client meetings. Then Wednesday afternoon I took a car to Philadelphia Airport and flew out to Seattle that night. I spent Thursday and Friday in client meetings outside of Seattle, then had dinner Friday night with my brother-in-law and his family, who live out there. I flew home Saturday morning, and thanks to the vagaries of cross-country Eastbound travel, I got home just in time for dinner with my family that night.

Six days, you guys! As my business trips go, this is about as long as it gets. Most of my trips are more of the one- or two-day variety, and require only minor adjustments from the other residents of my household. This trip, being six days, took a little more advance planning, especially because my husband had his spring concert last Thursday night. Because he had rehearsals and the concert and I was away all week, we needed a babysitter for three nights and got our neighbor to pick up our daughter from her after-school activities. It takes a village, people.

On my flight out to Seattle from Philadelphia, I wrote a travel poem. It came spilling out as we left altitude and started our descent toward the airport, probably because (a) I was tired and emotional and only halfway through my trip, and (b) the flight attendants had just made us turn off all our electronic devices, so I had nothing better to do.

So here it is. It may seem familiar to some of you who travel at all for work.

On the Approach to Sea-Tac

April 3, 2013

You feel more detached when traveling long distances alone
Weightless, untethered, floating along like a freed balloon
Weightless, but with an ache that grows with the distance from home and loved ones
A panicky ache that makes you wonder if you’ll ever see them again
Is this what losing someone feels like?

(You also feel more dramatic when traveling long distrances alone)

The Cascades loom up toward the plane, glowering
Flaunting their snow in the face of April and spring
You’re past weary, and uneasily wondering if you’ll regret watching movies on this flight
Instead of reading client documents for tomorrow

The lights of Seattle appear in the distant dusk
You’re clear across the country from home, preparing for three days of hard work
But counting the minutes ‘til the return home, when you walk back in the door

A Gentle Reminder

Tags

Daddy-Long-Legs, difficult clients, happiness, Jean Webster, stress, work

This week is a stressful one for me. I’m preparing for two back-to-back trips for work next week, one a client training on a subject that is not in my wheelhouse, and one a strategic exercise for a client team that seems to change its mind about scope, focus, participants and duration at least once a day. There are a lot of parts to the success of both events that are entirely out of my hands, which for a control freak like me is difficult. Every time I think about next week I freak out a little. My brain and stomach seem to be in knots most of the time.

So it’s no surprise that for respite I’ve turned to a charming book that I’ve never read but am nonetheless very familiar with – Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster. Last week I found a very cheap Puffin Classics edition on Amazon, and impulsively ordered it, along with another Webster novel, George MacDonald’s fairy tales for my daughter, and 2 non-fiction tomes about detective fiction.

My knowledge of Daddy-Long-Legs is based on two prior sources, the charming if slightly icky Fred Astaire/Leslie Caron movie of 1955, and a thoroughly charming and not-at-all icky musical version, which my husband and I saw a couple of years ago at our local repertory theater. The latter is much more true to the original story, which concerns Jerusha Abbott, an 18-year-old orphan from the John Grier Home who is sent to college thanks to a mysterious benefactor, “John Smith” whom she rechristens “Daddy-Long-Legs” after seeing his back as he leaves the orphanage.

I knew the story was charming and delightful, but didn’t realize that Webster’s writing was so good. The story is told in a series of letters from Jerusha (or “Judy” as she renames herself early in her freshman year, never having liked her given name – not surprising, as the orphanage matron got it from a tombstone) to her unknown patron. The letters trace her journey into womanhood, from her first days at school…

October 1st

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs:

I love college and I love you for sending me – I’m very, very happy, and so excited every moment of the time that I can scarcely sleep. You can’t imagine how different it is from the John Grier Home. I never dreamed there was such a place in the world. I’m feeling sorry for everybody who isn’t a girl and who can’t come here; I am sure the college you attended when you were a boy couldn’t have been so nice.

…through to graduation:

June 19th

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs:

I’m educated! My diploma is in the bottom bureau drawer with my two best dresses. Commencement was as usual, with a few showers at vital moments. Thank you for your rosebuds. They were lovely. Master Jervie and Master Jimmie both gave me roses, too, but I left theirs in the bathtub and carried yours in the class procession.

I won’t give away the ending, but it is very sweet and more than a little heart-rending and about as romantic as a sap like me could wish for. But what struck me even more than the plot were Judy’s periodic philosophical musings. Her background, which she successfully keeps secret from even her closest friends, affords her a different perspective on life than her more well-to-do and better-connected classmates. She’s able to see the truth and beauty and sorrows and joys of life more clearly than those who’ve been surrounded by love and material comfort since their cradle days. And this is one of the things that makes her so compelling…and so lovable.

After an exciting trip to New York to visit her roommate’s super-rich Brahmin family for the Christmas holiday during her junior year, Judy returns to college and finds that she prefers the simpler pleasures of academia over the Glamorous Life.

It isn’t the great big pleasures that count the most; it’s making a great deal out of the little ones – I’ve discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be forever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant. It’s like farming. You can have extensive farming and intensive farming; well, I am going to have intensive living after this. I’m going to enjoy every second, and I’m going to know I’m enjoying it while I’m enjoying it. Most people don’t live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose all sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn’t make any difference whether they’ve reached the goal or not. I’ve decided to sit down by the way and pile up a lot of little happinesses, even if I never become a great author. Did you ever know such a philosophers as I am developing into?

Well. After that gentle reminder – or is it a giant slap upside the head? – of What’s Important in Life, how can I worry any longer about next week? Things will work out or they won’t. Clients will be pleased or they won’t. In the meantime, am I doing my best? Am I fully present in the moment, counting as many blessings and deriving as much happiness as I can in whatever comes my way? Judy’s words are words to remember…and live by.

Dangerous to Know

Tags

college, Entertainment Weekly, friendship, Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl, Sherlock Holmes, sociopathy, Tom Ripley

So a little while back I took my daughter to Target so she could use some gift cards that she’d gotten for her birthday back in December. (She got a little notebook and the latest Rick Riordan. Her blog, if she had one, would be all about fantasy books, because even regular fiction is not interesting or exciting enough for her.)

Anyhoodle, while she was deciding which young reader fantasy book to buy, I browsed the adult hardback bestsellers and caught sight of Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. As it was 30% off (thanks, Target), I bought it. And it sat on my nightstand for a month or two as I read library books, or books I got for Christmas, or the latest Entertainment Weekly. But a few weeks ago, I finally picked it up and read it.

Holy cow. This book starts off as a kind of a thriller/murder mystery, except there’s no body and only a few people who could really have done it. The two main characters are Nick and Amy Dunne, a married couple hit hard by the recession and financial downturn of 2008. They’ve both been laid off from their New York journalist jobs and have been forced to sell their apartment there and move to a rented McMansion in Nick’s hometown, a foreclosure-heavy suburb of St. Louis. In Missouri, Nick opens a bar with his twin sister Margo, and Amy…stays at home and does…what? This is unclear.

On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears, and you realize that the Dunnes’ marriage is not as happy as it appeared on the outside. Is she dead? Did Nick kill her? He’s certainly acting suspicious, lying to the police and his sister and visiting strange places near their home. His in-laws and neighbors are certainly giving him the side-eye. But if Amy’s not dead, where is she? And did she go willingly, or was she kidnapped?

I won’t give away any more of the book, because it is very well-written and you should go read it. But I will spill a little tiny SPOILER and that is…that although most of the characters are unsympathetic or weak (in the way that we are all in some ways unsympathetic or weak), one of the characters is a sociopath.

Merriam-Webster defines a sociopath as a person “characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder.” Psychological websites include among the typical traits of the sociopath “grandiose self-worth,” “glib and superficial charm,” “pathological lying,” “conning and manipulativeness,” “promiscuous sexual behavior,” “irresponsibility,” and “criminal versatility.” It’s a truly frightening list of behaviors, and this character is truly frightening. It makes me glad I haven’t ever met or known any sociopaths in my own (limited) experience.

Or wait…maybe I have. One of my best college girlfriends met a guy from a nearby university at the end of our junior year, and they started dating. He was attractive and smart and charming and funny and easy to relate to. They continued to date after we graduated, then moved in together in a large city in the Southwest. When they got married, I was a bridesmaid and I was really thrilled for her.

A year later I married my husband, and my friend was a bridesmaid at my wedding. At that time it was already clear that their relationship was in trouble. In the months that followed, I heard stories from her about his behavior that made me wonder, Who is this guy? I don’t even recognize him.

He started to say mean things about my friend’s actions and appearance. He started spending money he didn’t have. He started trying to control my friend’s activities, telling her where she could go and the people she could see. He stayed out late without
apology, or even explanation. When I asked her what happened to the awesome guy we’d all known before, she said she’d asked him that too. He told her it was all an act so that people would like him and think he was a good guy.

Finally this guy started having an extramarital affair with one of his grad school colleagues, and didn’t bother to hide it from my friend, his wife. She started divorce proceedings. During the divorce he tried to get his hands on a sizable amount of money my friend had inherited. We urged her to stay strong, and fight back, even though she was tired of fighting. She did, and they divorced, and he disappeared off into his new life.

OK, so maybe this guy isn’t a sociopath, just a total jerk, in the way that some of us can be total jerks when relationships fall apart. The part that makes me wonder is the fact that he admitted to creating a persona for himself, so everyone would think he was a great guy. That, to me, goes beyond jerkdom into something more sinister. Not that we all don’t make an effort to hide our flaws so people will think better of us, but to act like someone else altogether? What is that like, to live behind a mask all the time? To pretend to be someone you’re not, to the point where even your nearest and dearest are fooled? It must be exhausting. It must be lonely.

And so, as much as I think poorly of my friend’s ex-husband, considering his terrible treatment of her, I also feel sorry for him. As, at the end of Gone Girl, I actually felt sorry for the sociopath. What must it be like to be effectively cut off from ordinary human emotions such as empathy, compassion and (yes) real love? Terrible. And tragic, because you don’t even realize what you’re missing.

(Don’t feel bad for my girlfriend, though. She moved away to a new job in a new city,  met a wonderful man who is not a sociopath, and they have 2 beautiful kids.)

Did They Deserve It?

Tags

Agatha Christie, Aunt Agatha, Charles Darwin, DNA, eugenics, Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton, Herbert Spencer, Hercule Poirot, human genome, Murder on the Orient Express, Nazis, Ron Paul, Signor Cassetti, social Darwinism, Thomas Malthus

One of the most common tropes in classic murder mysteries is that the victim is a terrible person, whom most if not all the principal suspects want dead. No one mourns Colonel Smythe-Derrington’s violent demise; he was a bullying drunken skinflint who tyrannized his children, neglected his wife and abused the servants. Or maybe he was just your garden-variety a-hole who annoyed his neighbors and embarrassed his family.

In many classic mysteries, the sentiment that the killer has done everyone a favor and the world is well rid of the victim is freely expressed. Mystery novelist and philosopher G.K. Chesterton had various characters repeatedly express this theme in his Father Brown mystery stories, only to be chided (gently or not-so-gently) by his priest-detective for their hypocrisy and lack of humanity.

The most famous (infamous?) total jerkwad murder victim in British detective fiction is Samuel Ratchett, AKA Signor Cassetti, who is offed in chapter 2 of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Mr. Ratchett is traveling as a rich American businessman on the luxury train from Istanbul to Calais. But after his death (multiple stab wounds), brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot soon discovers that he was a ruthless gangster who kidnapped and murdered a baby girl, extracted a fortune in ransom from her parents, and was acquitted of the crime by paying off the jury.

So essentially Christie is daring us not to believe that Cassetti deserved what he got. If ever there was a brutish, evil monster in this world, it’s this guy. A heartless baby-killer…who got away with it! All the passengers on the Orient Express think so too.

“If ever a man deserved what he got, Ratchett or Cassetti is the man. I’m rejoiced at his end. Such a man wasn’t fit to live!” says Mr. McQueen, the dead man’s secretary. “I did so rejoice that that evil man was dead – that he could not any more kill or torture little children,” says Greta Ohlssen, a Swedish missionary. “Then in my opinion the swine deserved what he got,” declaims Colonel Arbuthnot, British Army.

But did he really? Did he really deserve to be drugged and then stabbed twelve times in the chest? In real life as in mysteries, we like to run around making pronouncements about who “deserves” to live and die, but we often don’t really think through what we’re saying.

It’s not surprising that classic mysteries should concern themselves with whether the murder victim deserved his fate. The golden age of the British detective novel, the 1920s and 30s, coincided with a surge in regard for the principles of social Darwinism, in which Great Minds went beyond a person’s right to live on moral grounds and right into whether he or she deserved life based on economic situation and ethnic background. Charles Darwin’s most famous work, On the Origin of the Species, was published in 1859 and focused largely on the environmental adaptation and natural selection in the animal world. However, Darwin and others, notably Herbert Spencer, soon took these concepts, pithily described by Spencer as “survival of the fittest,” and began applying them to human societies.

Influenced heavily by 18^th century clergyman (!) Thomas Malthus, the social Darwinists proposed the idea of “stronger” and “weaker” races, as well as “stronger” and “weaker” social strata. According to the rule of “survival of the fittest,” being rich and Anglo-Saxon was an indication of superior evolutionary potential, while poverty indicated intrinsic weakness and non-whiteness meant genetic inferiority. In the interests of the furtherance and refinement of the species, therefore, “progress” came in the form of removal of the Other. In his The Descent of Man  (1882), Darwin says:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

 

Yes, my friends, he really is saying that black people and Aborigines are more closely related to our ape ancestors than white people.

The ideas of social Darwinism (and eugenics, first conceptualized by Darwin’s first cousin Francis Galton) had already been freely used in the late 19^th century to justify European imperial expansion. In the 1920s and 30s these ideas were intertwined with fascism and communism, endowed with quasi-scientific validity, and eventually applied with frightening dedication and scope in Hitler’s Final Solution. Under the Nazis, people didn’t just “deserve” death for moral failings or doing something wrong, as in murder mysteries (or societies with a criminal death penalty), they deserved it for being born Jewish, or Romany, or gay, or disabled, or with a genetic health condition. A 1938 Nazi propaganda poster proclaims that someone with a hereditary disease costs the state 60,000 marks over his lifetime: “Comrade, it’s your money too.”

Remnants of belief in the principles of social Darwinism still haunt us today. You don’t even have to research neo-Nazi fringe groups, just look at internet comment sections or Republican primary events. The idea that some people deserve to die – or, at the very least, to be prohibited from procreating – is still alive and well. Disposing of entire ethnic groups is now somewhat passé (except maybe in those aforementioned fringe groups), but the notion that poverty and want are an indication of weakness and moral inferiority still looms large in our national dialogue. Who can forget that shining moment in American history when audience members at a 2011 debate shouted “Kill him!” when Ron Paul was confronted with the theoretical example of a sick man with no health insurance? (Damn right you should’ve looked bemused, Ron.)

And the eugenics boogieman continually re-surfaces. Should people with life-threatening genetic conditions be saved? Or be allowed to pass on their DNA to a new generation? In the eyes of many people, no. Recently an article ran on Yahoo about a woman with a genetic heart condition, several of whose family members had died from the disease, and her efforts to raise awareness of it. Many of the comments talked about how “irresponsible” she was for having children, as if she’d suffered a moral lapse along with her arrhythmias. There is always talk of forced sterilization of whatever undesirable population shouldn’t be having babies – people with genetic conditions, or people with Down’s syndrome, or the mentally ill.

Fortunately, policy makers haven’t done anything about this…in the last decade or two, anyway. Which is prudent because, frankly, where would we draw the genetic line in the sand? As researchers learn more and more about the human genome, we are realizing just how many markers there are in our DNA for all kinds of ailments, from heart disease to breast cancer to male-pattern baldness (really). And even those without obvious conditions have glitches in their code; a geneticist told me recently that the process of DNA creation and replication via the genome is akin to reading the Bible once through and then trying to write it down word for word. It’s almost a wonder we get functioning bodies at all.

So OK, we’ve come a long way from the murder victims in mystery novels, but the question is still the same. Did Signor Cassetti deserve to die, drugged and stabbed on the Orient Express? Did paupers or native races deserve to die in the name of empire-building and “survival of the fittest”? Did the “genetic inferiority” of Jews and others merit a Holocaust? Do today’s poor people or those with genetic conditions deserve to die (or be barred from procreating)?

The answer may seem obvious, but the question keeps coming up, so I’ll just say, ad nauseum: no, and no, and no, and no.

A Bit Too Much

Tags

#1 Ladies Detective Agency, 44 Scotland Street, alexander mccall smith, dachshunds, hedgehogs, overdeveloped dignity, portuguese irregular verbs

Among the crop of contemporary mystery writers, among the most soothing and contemplative is Alexander McCall Smith. “Soothing” and “contemplative” aren’t usually words you’d associate with mysteries – which, generally, are focused on acts of horrific violence. But McCall Smith’s #1 Ladies Detective Agency books aren’t really about murders – they’re about relationships, and life, and families, and human frailties, and Botswana. Mma Ramotswe, the main character of the #1 Ladies books, is more often consulted to solve “smaller” mysteries – whether a husband is unfaithful, what happened to someone’s bicycle – than to solve capital crimes.

But this post isn’t really about the #1 Ladies books. McCall Smith is quite the prolific writer, and has authored a number of other series as well – the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the 44 Scotland Street novels, and a new series called Corduroy Mansions, set in London. All of these are highly enjoyable, very philosophical and, like the #1 Ladies books, focus on relationships and human interaction.

He’s also written several books in the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. Last week we were on vacation in Florida for Winter Break, and my husband checked out these last books from the library. I read all four of them while we were away. (Not actually that much of a feat – all of them are less than 200 pages, more like novellas than full fictional narratives.)

And, um….um. The premise was interesting: the foibles and minor exploits of Herr
Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a scholar at the Institute of Romance Philology at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Dr von Igelfeld is the author of that seminal work of scholarship, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and as such feels that he merits more respect and accolades than he in reality receives. This causes entertaining frictions between himself and his Institute colleagues.

But (you knew there was a but, right?) Dr von Igelfeld is also one of those people who cannot (or will not) admit that he is wrong, or has made a mistake, or that someone else’s mistake has put him in an uncomfortable position. We all know people like that, people who walk through life in a veil of denial, pretending that they are perfect, or at least unassailable.

Dr von Igelfeld’s personality quirks might just be amusing if they concerned squabbles over who gets the best office at the Institute or who deserves that honorary degree from the Universidad de Sevilla. But in The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, the second book in the series, it goes farther than that. Through a whole complicated chain of events, Dr von Igelfeld is mistaken for a veterinary doctor, and because he’s unwilling to admit that he’s not, he ends up in a surgery to amputate the shattered leg of a dachshund that’s been hit by a car.

At this point, I think the rest of us would finally break down and admit, “Oops, there’s been a terrible mistake, I’m not a vet,” but not our friend. He instructs his assistant to amputate the leg…and it’s the wrong leg. This happens not once but twice, and the poor dog has to wear a contraption of wheels to get around on its one remaining leg. The kicker (sorry) in the story is that the dog belongs to von Igelfeld’s colleague and part-time nemesis at the Institute, Dr Unterhalzer.

This is where McCall Smith lost me. I could happily read all day about office politics in obscure German academic departments, especially in the author’s lucid and engaging prose. But maiming a fellow creature rang a harshly discordant note in my head, and I finished the books more out of duty than enjoyment. (My husband couldn’t even finish the books, that vignette disgusted him so much.)

Hence the title of this post. McCall Smith is terrific at those awkward, interesting or quiet philosophical moments, but disfiguring a dachshund is A Bit Too much. Think I’ll stick with #1 Ladies and Isabel Dalhousie in future.

Halfway There

Tags

birthday, HCM, life events

Today is my birthday. 42 years ago today I entered the world, some 3 weeks earlier than anticipated. (I’ve always been a bit impatient.) Every year I do some reflecting on or around my birthday – how am I doing? How was the last year? How is my health? How is my family? And occasionally – how old am I again? Once you hit a certain age the actual numbers tend to blur together and you have trouble remembering whether you’re 37 or 38, 43 or 44. (My husband is the master of age-forgetting.)

It occurs to me this year that if the statistics are correct, I’m about halfway through the journey. 50% behind me, another 50% to go. Of course, given that I basically died and was resuscitated half my life ago at 21, I’d appear to be anything but a typical statistic on life expectancy. And of course, I could (as the saying goes) get hit by a bus tomorrow.

The last year has been pretty challenging, both personally and professionally. My surgery and subsequent long road back to health pointed to the fact that…well…my body is aging and I can’t expect to push it the way I used to. It’s funny – I know I’m getting older because of all the physical challenges, but there’s a part of me in there that’s still 15 and is somewhat shocked at how old I am. Happily, the 42-year-old part of me wins out over the 15-year-old in outlook, wisdom and acceptance (most of the time).

On the career side, I lost a job, looked for a job and found a new one. In this economy that seems to be something of an accomplishment. I’m still adjusting to the new position – especially the extra travel and the commute into the city. My household is also still adjusting. It’s difficult to venture forth to the airport every other week or so, leaving my husband to juggle single-parent duties. The eternal ambivalence of the working mother, I guess.

Still, overall, even with all the challenges, I am blessed. I’m blessed with a wonderful family and great friends. I’m blessed with a nice home and all its attendant comforts. I’m blessed with an inquiring mind and a hard work ethic. I’m blessed with stable health and the desire to keep it that way. I’m blessed with the aim of improving myself and with the ability to admit when I’ve screwed up (most of the time). And even in the face of challenges and hardships and difficulties, I’m blessed with strength and courage (and a good support network) to face anything that life throws at me. And that’s a valuable gift, no matter how old you are.