If You Want Classic Fast Food Literature Ask The Erle

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It's funny how it's just over a year since I was in Essex exile looking after my mother, visiting her in hospital and then nursing her back to health. People ask me how I managed it and in truth you just do. What I did and experienced was just a fraction of what carers have to do for family members 24/7.

But if you discover things that relax you through this process then it's a help. I've already chatted about becoming unexpectedly a fan of the TV series Bones and the latest book I've read reminded me of someone else who helped as well.

Perry Mason Is Back

It is literary fast food. More enjoyable than Lee Child but still fast food. Easy to digest. A formula you already know (someone's in trouble for murder - Only Perry can deal with it) which you like and indeed trust.

It's not like fast food immune to criticism under examination. Perry Mason is too calm and perfect. How he worked the solution to the crime here is not really something the reader could have even guessed. The court scenes are also annoyingly short in relation to the rest of the book. However like fast food you don't look at the detail you allow everything to overwhelm you. And again as entertainment this really works.

Gardner's treatment of women is interesting. Whilst some including Perry Mason's assistant/secretary Della Street are described as having a good figure there is no one who could be called a bimbo. Neither is a female (or in this day and age male) character there so seduced by his charms she's ready to jump into bed with Mason either.

Also in these times of  #Metoo there was a moment when a secretary was asked by Perry whether her boss tried to make a pass at her. The answer was yes but he respected the "no trespass signs". Perhaps that's the tenplate for office rules in the future.

Ultimately like fast food you will forget this book months in the future. But you will also remember the experience. And like all good fast food, you'll remember it was fun.

Until the next time.

It Might Have Been International Women's Day But Fathers And Sons Is Better Than Wives And Daughters...And Other Books

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today,

Well have been reading a few books since we last chatted. So let's start with a biography of Robert Burns by John Sharp. If this book was a meal I'd describe it as edible but nothing more. I'm sure there are better bios to use your time on instead.

You may remember a few posts back that I chatted about Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and that I didn't like it. Well in the random way I pick books to read the next book turned out to be Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (and it was random....honest!).

Whilst not perfect I enjoyed it. On the one hand you get the sons, with their youthful hopes,ideals cynicism, and disdain for their elders. Also properly discovering for the first time the mystery that are women. On the other there are the fathers. Men you feel are dissatisfied. The feeling that as their best years have passed them by they haven't yet found a certain peace within themselves.

There is more of the sons than the fathers, and as now I belong to the former I would have rather seen it the other way. Still of the books I'm chatting about today this was the best in my view.

The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace is one of those books that's perfectly acceptable as long as your brain is cruising in first gear. That said, Erle Stanley Gardner is better.

To be clear with regard to my criticisms of other Wallace thrillers it didn't strike me as racist and regard to sexist whilst the heroine has moments of dimness where she needs the help of men the cleverest villain is a woman. So I suppose that is some sort of equality.

Beowulf then. No one knows who wrote this epic poem but I think we can hazard a guess that it was a man, Indeed I'll go further by saying that it was not the sort of man who would wander lonely as a cloud and chat about daffodils either.

At the risk of being beheaded by the ghost of some Viking warlord what it didn't do is become one of those exceptions to my disregard of poetry. Ditto The Dalby Bear and Other Ballads by George Borrow.This time though I think this was my fault as I downloaded writers mentioned by Robert Macfarlane in his book Tracks ( W H Hudson was another) but in my eagerness to download everything I disregarded the fact that this is a ballad so probably better appreciated with music. I'll give George a pass.

Regular readers will know that there are certain writers that I describe as literary Switzerland in that whilst I don't dislike them I don't understand why they're considered great either. Anton Chekhov falls into this category and taken as a whole The Schoolmistress and Other Stories does not change anything.

There are exceptions. The title story (which is the best of the collection) and a few others make you sit up and take notice. But for the most part I just shrugged and moved on to the next tale.

In another tick off the literary bucket list the book I'm reading now is The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Can't say I'm happy with the portrayal of the villain but I'll chat about that when I've finished.

Until the next time.

On A Boring Underground / Subway Journey? Call Perry Mason

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

For those who don't know. If you want to go to Victoria Underground station from Snaresbrook station you take the central line to Mile End, cross the platform and take the District Line to Victoria and that's it. Great railway journeys of the world it ain't.

So what you need to pass the time is a book. And I don't mean the Kindle either. Wasn't going to take that to the underground. So instead I looked at my mother's bookshelves and noticed a slightly battered paperback that I bought. I took it and read it. Half from Snaresbrook to Victoria on Tuesday and the remainder on the reverse journey today?

Why? Because wife/daughter came down from Wales to remind themselves what I looked like (and of course vice versa) for these five days.

A couple of diversions from the main chat. Firstly Monday is important as to whether I stay in Essex exile or can leave for Wales that day. Everything will depend on the result of my mother's outpatients appointment and whether after that able to leave before the Beast From The East snow arrives. Fingers crossed for that.

Secondly a quick word about the borough of  Westminster. People talk about the contrast within a short space of time between rich and poor. Must admit I agree. Here is a building near Victoria station.

Rich 

I must admit I really hate this building. Not just because of my dislike of untrammelled capitalism. But because it hurts my eyes.

A short walk away you'll get this

Reality

Anyway back to the book I picked which was...

Erle Stanley Gardner - The Case Of The Negligent Nymph

Erle Stanley Gardner's creation Perry Mason was the lawyer cum detective. This was in fact the first Perry I've ever perused. And I loved it.

It occurred to me as I was reading that this was the sort of novel (part of a series of course but this was written in 1956) that I think is rarely written nowadays. Where you're reading a book purely as an entertainment and you get the feeling that the author is having fun. That Erle is holding a party and you, the reader have been invited.

I suspect any degree of realism in this book was purely coincidental and that if you're a member of any branch of Law and Order you'll be tearing your hair out at the depiction of characters in your profession being ridiculed by the genus that is Mason. But it really doesn't matter. It's an entertainment. It's the perfect book for a commuter ride. Doesn't think you're thick. But doesn't expect your brain to be in top gear either. 

Until the next time.