Category: Books and literature

Discussion of books and other literature

Holmes: people versus puzzles

The sterling reputation of Sherlock Holmes as a detective is legitimately based upon a combination of a keen ability to reason from observation coupled with a high level of personal energy. Holmes is not above waiting for hours in the dark to catch his culprit, disguising himself for long spans of time in uncomfortable ways, or even living in a rough shelter on a rainy moor so that his client doesn’t know that he is close at hand and observing.

At the same time, it is worth pointing out that Holmes frequently subjects his clients to unnecessary danger, so as to satisfy his own curiosity about the precise nature of the peril they face. In “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, Holmes intentionally uses his client as bait, knowing full well that whatever danger he faces is capable of being fatal, since it already killed an escaped convict. In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”, Holmes repeatedly exposes his client to an unknown pursuer, who later turns out to be armed. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, Holmes leaves his client in the power of her violent stepfather, who he suspects of having killed her sister (though he does relocate the client on the night when he expects her assassination to occur). In “The Adventure of the Priory School”, Holmes leaves the son of the Duke of Holdernesse with his kidnappers for an unnecessary span of time, so that he can explain the manner in which he located him with maximum drama and in a way that earns him £6,000.

All this demonstrates the dangers of choosing a consulting detective who is obsessed with solving the puzzle, potentially at the expense of the welfare and safety of the client. Someone more inclined to precaution and less obsessed with solutions may be a better choice, for those who value their lives more highly than precise answers.

(As a separate criticism, Holmes sometimes allows murderers to go free because he personally approves of the murder they undertook most recently, for instance in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” and “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”. This may not be so commendable from a public safety standpoint.)

Two more books

Unable to help myself, I have added two volumes to my substantial assortment of unread and partially read books.

I got the biography of Graham Chapman, of Monty Python fame: A Liar’s Autobiography: Volume VI.

Intrigued by an ongoing series of discussions on iTunes University, I also got a book on ‘mindfulness’ as a means for reducing anxiety: Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. The approach is apparently related to cognitive behavioural therapy.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

I read The Hound of the Baskervilles as a bit of post-GRE brain decompression. Most of the books I am reading at the moment are related to my doctoral research proposal and are thus rather heavy. Also, because Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel is out of copyright, I was able to read it for free on my iPhone during a couple of my lengthy daily commutes. Previously, I had used similar bits of unallocated time to listen to the many recordings of Sherlock Holmes short stories that are available through iTunes University.

The Hound of the Baskervilles was the first novel-length Sherlock Holmes story I have been exposed to. While it did a nice job of letting me celebrate liberation from special triangles and the peculiar vocabulary favoured by GRE-writers, it wasn’t especially satisfying as a piece of fiction. I found most of the plot elements predictable, uninteresting, or both. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes as a character is better suited to the vehicle of a short story, in which he can make some clever deductions, unravel a mystery, and be done with things within a reasonably short span of the reader’s time. When extended out to novel length, readers will tend to see his deductions well in advance of when they are revealed, somewhat diminishing our admiration for the character’s intellect.

The novel including an annoying tendency to have Holmes go on about how this particularly case is singularly more complicated and important than his previous work. This claim doesn’t stand up very well, when you consider that some of his previous adventures included involvement in matters where war threatened between great powers or where sinister conspiracies had to be unravelled. Without revealing too much about the plot, it seems fair to say that the matter at hand here is of relatively minor significance and the mystery is not so unfathomable. Even Watson – the reliable narrator who primarily plays the role of being astonished by Holmes’ insights – nearly figures the whole thing out for himself.

The Wordy Shipmates

I was first exposed to Sarah Vowell through her entertaining contributions to This American Life and The Daily Show. In addition to being rather charming, she comes across as expressive and very nerdy. Those qualities are also evident in her short and engaging book on Puritan settlers in North America in the 17th century.

Vowell is an American patriot who is nonetheless acutely aware of the injustices in America’s history, from the earliest days of European contact to the present. Thrown in with the discussion of the founding of Rhode Island is a sophisticated conceptual criticism of Ronald Reagan and a moving expression of pure disgust about Abu Ghraib and the use of torture by the Bush administration. She is also delighted to celebrate the achievements of people she admires, and skilled at showing why what they did was important and people in the present should care.

While the book is written in an entertaining and informal style, the subject matter is serious. Vowell pokes some fun at the theological quirks of the Puritans, but she takes their disagreements and positions seriously. Even I found myself caring about the disputes of 17th century theologians. The book is also forthright about the brutality involved in European colonization – from smallpox epidemics that killed 90% of some native tribes to massacres in which men, women, and children are burned alive.

Vowell colours her work in with anecdotes and personal asides. The final result reminds me a bit of Monty Python – clever, funny work that demonstrates a real interest and knowledge about the sometimes-obscure subject matter behind it and a willingness to engage with challenging and controversial topics. One passage of analysis on a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. struck me as illustrative of her way of writing:

I happen to be with King in proclaiming the Sermon on the Mount’s call for love to be at the heart of Christian behaviour, and one of us got a Ph.D. in systematic theology.

I suspect Vowell is one of those authors whose entire canon I will eventually read.

Harperland: The Politics of Control

Lawrence Martin’s 275-page account of the political life of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is useful reading for those who want to more fully understand how Canadian politics reached the arrangement it is now in, as well as those who wish to speculate more effectively about what the years ahead will involve. While Martin’s account is fairly hostile to Harper, the claims included within it are generally quite focused and backed by evidence. It is definitely written in the style of a journalist: opinionated, but with an awareness that everything will be fact checked. The book is packed with illuminating little details, from the way former Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion first arrived to work in Ottawa by bus to how the election-prompting decision to cut per-vote funding to political parties arrived was conveyed by unexpected BlackBerry message.

At times, Martin is sharply critical of Harper and the decisions of the Harper government. For instance, he objects strongly to the treatment of underage terrorist suspect Omar Khadr, the suppression of information on the torture of detainees in Afghanistan, as well as the fiscal record of the Conservative government. Martin argues that on many different policy files, the Harper government is driven by ideology and actively hostile to evidence. These include minimum sentences, drug policy, the long-form census, and others. The Harper government is also portrayed as obsessed with power for its own sake, rather than for the advancement of a well-articulated philosophy, as well as irrationally hostile to their political adversaries and those who disagree on policy grounds. In addition, the Harper government is portrayed as ignoring Canada’s constitutional conventions on matters like the supremacy of parliament, weakening government overall while strengthening the executive.

At many points, the book touches upon climate change and environmental topics. It probably won’t be too illuminating for people who have been following the file, but the details included strengthen the argument that the Harper government has largely seen climate change as a public relations problem to be managed, rather than a real-world issue of any importance to Canadians.

Written by someone who obviously has a great deal of personal experience with the various recent eras of Canadian politics, Harperland may be an especially worthwhile read for younger citizens who dimly remember the Chretien era that took place when they were children and who do not have any personal basis for comparing the recent Conservative governments to those earlier in Canadian history. The book also provides some personal details and character insights on Harper himself and those closely associated with him. It is interesting to read about how despair often precedes the re-emergence of resolution for him after a setback, or to have some examples of his documented vindictive streak provided. Matin quotes Charlie Angus in describing Harper’s “fundamental flaw” as “a mean streak, a level of viciousness that comes out”.

The book contains many references to the interactions between the political and bureaucratic sides of government, particularly on issues like access to information. There are also detailed accounts of the fates of various ministers and high-level advisors.

At times, Martin’s account is rather passionate – particularly concerning the near-emergence of a Liberal-NDP coalition. Particularly when describing this time period, the author seems to be shouting after-the-fact advice to journalists and the opposition. I haven’t been keeping track of his journalistic contributions elsewhere, so it is possible that he is simply re-asserting claims of his own that he feels have been vindicated by future events.

One thing that annoyed me a bit about the book is Martin’s habit of using ‘the West’ as a synonym for ‘Alberta’. It may look that way to someone who sees Ontario and Quebec as the centre of the political universe, but it looks awfully different from British Columbia.

Harperland does praise some successes of the Conservative government. In the ‘achievement log’ he places “the granting of nation status to the Quebecois, the apology to the Native peoples on residential schools, corporate tax reductions, the softwood lumber accord, and the Haitian earthquake rescue effort”. In the end, however, Martin’s verdict is fairly strongly negative:

As a strongman prime minister, [Harper] was beyond compare. He made previous alleged dictators like Jean Chretien look like welterweights. It was no small wonder that Canadians feared what he might do with a majority government. With that kind of power he could establish a hegemony the likes of which Canadians could not imagine.

Martin will have to provide an update in four years or so.

A Venomous Life: The Autobiography of Straun Sutherland

One of the more entertaining segments in Douglas Adams’ extremely entertaining book Last Chance to See concerns Straun Sutherland, an Australian doctor who counselled Adams on the dangers associated with venomous wildlife in the region Adams was visiting. While definitely entertaining overall, Sutherland’s autobiography could have used more aggressive editing, particularly when it comes to deciding which accounts will be of interest to readers.

In particular, Sutherland devotes far, far too much time to giving his account of various bureaucratic disagreements at the laboratories where he mostly worked. About half the book consists of this. It may have been satisfying for him to lay out his version of events and settle some scores, but aside from the people directly involved in the incidents described, I doubt anyone in the world cared. If I ever write an autobiography, please insist on me removing all such material.

While he speaks at enormous length about bureaucratic squabbles, Sutherland generally only alludes to the more important personal aspects of his life. Dissolving marriages get brushed upon for one sentence, before he moves back to discussing bureaucratic politics at length. Similarly, his references toward the end of the book to his own neurological condition are somewhat unclear.

One frustrating thing about this book is Sutherland’s sometimes-playful-sometimes-maddening fondness for making improbable but possible claims. It may be harmless enough to claim that as a child he made one cinderblock bomb powerful enough to send another cinderblock bomb high enough to be “a little black dot high in the sky” (I suspect any explosion that powerful would have seriously injured or killed the child who initiated it). Similarly, to tell a story about a fellow sailor buying a watch that turned out to be powered by a cockroach attached to the machinery (surely more difficult and costly for a watch counterfeiter than just using a spring or motor). When he talks nonchalantly about a man about an aircraft carrier getting sucked into a jet engine, it isn’t clear if he is giving an honest account in a spectacularly understated way or whether he is telling a very dark sort of joke. In many parts of the book, it is hard to assess the reliability of the narrator, even about serious matters.

That story does connect to one of the more interesting things about the book – the accounts of deaths. It’s not something that happens to anywhere near the same extent in your ordinary autobiography. Characters are introduced and promptly die. Of course, doctors witness the deaths of many more people than members of the population at large. Venom doctors particularly, I expect. The descriptions of death did give me a better sense of what a life as a doctor might be like, and what kind of temperament is suited to it. While the subject matter is often morbid, Sutherland maintains a jovial tone. That is also what made the account of him so entertaining in Adams’ book.

One last quibble is that some of the science and medicine in the book could stand to be a bit more clearly and elaborately explained. Sometimes specialist terms are used as though the reader should already be familiar – which is a bit of a stretch, when the subject matter is venom chemistry or obscure aspects of human or animal anatomy.

The things I enjoyed most about the book are Sutherland’s account of his time in the navy, as well as his descriptions of menial jobs he took while in medical school. There are also some entertaining and enlightening accounts of the practice of medicine in various contexts, from a navy ship to a small community to a research laboratory. Sutherland is quite a character and an entertaining writer. It would have been nice if he had been a touch clearer about when he was being completely serious, and less focused on writing an account of the bureaucratic structure and history of the labs where he worked.

The Rebel Angels

Robertson Davies’ The Rebel Angels is a novel about a beautiful young gypsy graduate student who has two middle aged professors fall in love with her, but decides to marry a rich young banker. There is also a somewhat perverse ex-monk who kills a third middle-aged professor, also somewhat perverse.

Intermixed is a lot of philosophy and speculation which is convincing and compelling to varying degrees. The much-elaborated theory that personality is closely linked to digestive function doesn’t reek of plausibility, and I am in no position to judge theological speculations. Still, the overall feeling of the book was that the factual claims within cannot be fully trusted – that they are meant to provide a plausible framework for the action, rather than withstand scrutiny on their own. As someone who prefers to read non-fiction (and generally reads fiction for the benefit of the factual elements) this was frustrating.

I also have a dislike of novels in which the narrator varies from chapter to chapter, particularly when they are not identified at the outset. To me, this seems like the sign of an author who is trying to be a bit too clever. Usually, it produces mild frustration and muddles together the various characters, who often do not end up seeming terribly different. For the most part, the characters are easy to become frustrated with – they take themselves much too seriously, and see all their mundane dealings as reflections of essential matters of philosophy.

The book certainly contains some interesting arguments and convincing observations, however. There are some nice little phrases about the common quirks of academics and universities: “Whatever people outside universities may think, professors are busy people, made even more busy by the fact that they are often unbusinesslike by nature and thus complicate small matters” (p.246 paperback). There are also some acute observations about people who are especially prideful about their own capabilities and intellects.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who I am hoping to understand better, so part of the process of reading it was trying to experience it from her perspective. Not only her perspective, but the perspective she had when she first read it. I don’t think I have especially succeeded in that, and I feel a bit embarrassed about responding to the book critically. Still, it seems better to write something honest than falsely claim to have understood the appeal and genius of the book.

There are plenty of books that have affected me in significant ways, but which I think others would be hard placed to trace in me as I am now. Particularly for the young, books that seem really special are often those that serve some acute current need. Even once the need has been filled, there is an enduring gratitude to the book and the author for having filled the gap during the time when it was present. As such, the books that have been important in a person’s life are a bit like the scaffolding used to construct a building. They aren’t visibly present in the final form of the structure, but they affected the way in which it emerged in important ways.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Recently, I found John Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to be an entertaining distraction from less accessible books I am working on. A couple of days ago, driven by the desire to read something a bit zippier than my many books on environmental economics, I picked up Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. All told, I would say it is a somewhat better book than the one I read before. It includes a few interesting bits of tradecraft, and somewhat more commentary on the business of espionage itself. Le Carré has a talent for writing plausible observations on human character, and expressing them well. This is also clearly a fairly personal book for him.

It’s a decent choice for a summer read, especially if you are a politics and/or security nerd. As a tract on the amorality of the intelligence services, it is also a potentially useful counter to their moral glamorous portrayal in other fiction.