"The Man in the White Linen Suit"

Sydney M. Williams

burrowingintobooks.blogspot.com

Burrowing into Books

“The Man in the White Linen Suit,” David Handler

September 19, 2019

“It was 1993 now. No one makes a witty remark unless they’re getting paid to, preferably on

 their own nationally syndicated TV talk show. And nine times out of ten, they’re not even witty.”

                                                                                                David Handler (1970-)

                                                                                                The Man in the White Linen Suit, 2019

David Handler is a local writer of mysteries – local, that is to me, as he lives across the River in Old Lyme, where we once lived. While I have met him once or twice at book signings, he would know me from Eve but not from Adam. He has created two series, which reflect his wit and his humor. One is about Berger and Mitry, a series that takes place in Dorset (Old Lyme), a lily-white Connecticut village. Mitch Berger is an aging Jewish New York film critic and Desiree Mitry is a beautiful African American State Trooper. The other series, the one into which this book falls, involves Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag, a sophisticated New York City author, who finds himself embroiled in murders. He is a fortyish Harvard graduate, hoping to get his second novel published. He wears a fedora and is always accompanied by his sidekick Lucy, a basset hound. 

Mr. Handler, a writer of scripts for TV and the movies, is obviously a fan of the “Thin Man” series, as Hoagy resembles William Powell’s depiction of Nick Charles, while Lucy is an elongated version of Asta; though Lulu has a unique partiality for anchovies. We meet, albeit too briefly, Hoagy’s estranged (not divorced) wife, the movie starlet Merilee Nash, who would be beautifully portrayed by Myrna Loy. 

The story centers around the theft of a manuscript from an aging superstar writer Addison James and the disappearance of James’ assistant and co-author, Tommy O’Brien. There is more than a suggestion that Addison may not have written his last two historical novels. The world of agents, editors and publishers is exposed in an unflattering manner. There is mystery, mayhem, murder…and amusement.

Through this melee wanders the dapper, observant Stewart Hoag, with Lucy, whose distinctive nose uncovers clues undetected by detectives. David Handler’s humor is ever-present. In one instance, with Hoagy speaking, he takes a crack at my home: “Yvette smelled of fruity perfume, the kind I associated with the old ladies at Essex Meadows, the assisted living home where my parents were not enjoying their golden years.” But, I ask myself, if we cannot laugh at ourselves, where would we be? In another scene, Hoagy visits the offices of a publisher and encounters a young man: “He was dressed in Brooks Brothers from head to toe, minus his suit jacket. He wore his striped repp tie tucked in between the second and third button of his white shirt so as to keep it from getting caught in his typewriter. That’s a Dartmouth thing. My idea of lame, but it’s better than the way Princetonians oh-so-casually throw their tie over their shoulder.”

As an author, Handler has Stewart Hoag, his fictional counterpart, express some of the traits of a scribbler: “Writers are a peculiar breed, like I said. We’re obsessed. And we’re never, ever satisfied.” As a writer of essays, I understand. As a reader that makes me happy, for it says that Hoagy, Berger and Mitry will continue to make their unconventional but witty appearances unraveling mysteries.

Burrowing Into Books - "The Inner Life of Animals"

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selective Readings

                                                                                                                                    August 14, 2018

“The Inner Life of Animals”

Peter Wohlleben

“The goal is not to anthropomorphize animals,

but to help us understand them better.”

As a reminder to new readers, these scribblings are not reviews and certainly not critical ones. That’s left to those far more qualified. These essays are less an analysis and more a celebration of the pleasure of reading and learning.

Peter Wohlleben is a forester in Germany. In 1987, at age 23, he took a job as a forest ranger for the Rhineland-Palatinate state which includes the largest coherent forest in middle Europe. A few years ago he began to manage five square kilometers of forests in Hummel where he was free to experiment with eco-friendly forestry methods. Off those experiences, he wrote his first book, The Hidden Life of Trees, which was discussed in this series last year.

In The Inner Life of Animals, Mr. Wohlleben writes of the complexity and intelligence of animals: From the fruit fly, which in microseconds can dart back and forth, because their eyes are made up of “about 600 individual facets;” to crows who have been seen sliding off the roofs of houses, with deliberate pleasure: and to pigs that, according to researchers at Dresden University of Technology, can recognize distant relations. The reader marvels at life, nature and the extraordinary fact of evolution.

He writes of myriad emotions displayed: Maternal love, common to all species; instinctual fear that is endemic to all wild animals, and which keeps them alive. He writes of swallows who pursue sexual dalliances and Billy goats who take obvious pleasure in mating. He tells of the compassion of elephants for those that died, and the shame shown by dogs who have misbehaved. Mr. Wohlleben once observed a magpie who deliberately tried to deceive him, as to where he (she) had hidden an acorn.

From a personal perspective, having grown up with horses, goats, chickens, ducks, dogs and cats and having had, at different times during married life many of the same animals, I can attest to the accuracy of his assurance that animals are curious, smart and sensitive.

The author shares his knowledge and experiences. Many animals are both predator and prey. They kill and are killed. The Osprey feeds on menhaden, which, in turn, eats phytoplankton. Others are parasitic, like the tapeworm inhabiting the intestine of a cow. The planet is shared, and its inhabitants are, in fact, symbiotic. Over thousands of years, we, and they, have evolved, gaining knowledge and perfecting features and instincts. There are an estimated 8.7 million species that inhabit the Earth, many of whom have been around for millions – in some cases billions – of years. For most (perhaps all except man, domesticated animals and those we protect and provide for, like suburban herds of deer and city-dwelling racoons) it is the fittest that survive. It is natures’ way of ensuring that the strongest and most adaptable produce future generations.   

Mr. Wohlleben writes, easily and knowingly, of animals communicating with each other and with other species, including man. Anyone with a dog knows it can be trained to let people know when it needs to go out. He writes of researchers at ETH Zurich who “discovered that whinnies contain two basic frequencies. The first…indicates whether the whinny is communicating a positive or negative emotion. The second frequency indicates the strength of that emotion.” And some of us thought horses were dumb! He raises the question: Why does man, the most intelligent of all species, try to teach animals – domesticated and wild – to understand what he says and wants, rather than trying to learn animal-speak, as did the fictional Dr. Doolittle?

Peter Wohlleben concludes on the understandable but mournful note that man, like all species that cannot photosynthesize nutrients, must consume living entities to survive, plant or animal. He hopes that readers will be more thoughtful about what and how much they eat – that such habits will lead to “happier horses, goats, chickens and pigs.” The book is fun, short and informative.

‘.

Review "On Grand Strategy" by John Lewis Gaddis

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selective Readings

                                                                                                                                      June 15, 2018

“On Grand Strategy”

John Lewis Gaddis

“Grand Strategy:The alignment of potentially infinite aspirations

 with necessarily limited capabilities.”

“This, then, is a book about the ‘mental’ Hellespont that divide such leadership,

on one shore, from common sense on the other. There ought to be free and 

frequent crossings between them, for it’s only with such exchanges that grand

strategies – alignments of means with ends – become possible.”

                                                                                                            John Lewis Gaddis

                                                                                                            On Grand Strategies

This is a short book (313 pages), with a large sweep of (mostly) Western Civilization, especially of its military leaders and observers. Professor Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale. As well, the book is, as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in a review for The New York Times, “…a thoughtful; validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice for Americans that lasting victory comes from winning what you can rather than all that you want.” 

In ten essays, Professor Gaddis carries us from Xerxes, Pericles and Octavian to the Founders, Napoleon and Bismarck. He juxtaposes Augustine with Machiavelli, Elizabeth I with Philip II and Clausewitz with Tolstoy. He focuses on three U.S. Presidents: Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, showing us why Lincoln and FDR were successful, while Wilson failed to realize his dream “to make the world safe for Democracy.”

He cites maxims. Isaiah Berlin quoting the Greek poet Archilochus of Paros: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Augustine: “The higher glory is to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with a sword.” Machiavelli: “…a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good.” Clausewitz, author of the unfinished On War: “war…must be subordinate to politics and therefore to policy.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said brilliance is the ability “to hold opposing ideas in [one’s]mind, while retaining the ability to function.” 

Professor Gaddis instructs us on Thucydides, who wrote of the distinction between resemblance and reflection – between patterns surviving across time and repetitions degraded by time. George Canning – the late 18^th-early 19^thCentury British statesman – who prophesied that the “new” world would one day correct the imbalances of the “old” world. Edmund Burke on proportionality, which leads to the conflict between what we would like to do set against what we can do. He writes of Sun Tzu, the 5^thCentury BC Chinese author of The Art of War, who “sets forth principles, selected for validity across time and space, and then connects them to practice, bound by time and space.” He describes Napoleon at Moscow being like the dog that caught the car. What do I do now? Lincoln who told us that power and liberty can co-exist. And 92-year-old Oliver Wendell Holmes who said of newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt: “A second class intellect. But a first-class temperament.”

This is a book one can read not only to learn of the successes and failures of famous and infamous military strategists, but one from which we can better understand today’s polarized politics. Isaiah Berlin, the Latvian born British historian and a hero to Professor Gaddis, came to see (in the 1950s) politics as a polarity, with “inequivalent” concepts of liberty at either end. “One,” Professor Gaddis writes, “offered freedom from the need to make choices by yielding them to some higher authority…The other the freedom to make such choices.” Taken to extremes, the first leads to tyranny, the second to anarchy.

One can also derive life-lessons, for we are all strategists (though mostly not grand), knowingly or unknowingly, in all the decisions and choices we make. We alternate between the focused but myopic hedgehog and the versatile but peripheral fox. We would be wise to periodically step back and conduct self-analysis. We may find ourselves changing from one animal to the other, as conditions warrant, so to lead more balanced, productive lives.

In an interview last Month with Brian Lamb on C-Span, Professor Gaddis spoke of the summer odysseys into small-town America he asks of his students: “…It is just our small effort to try to break down some of the isolation that somehow the elite universities have locked themselves into, the bubbles into which they have placed themselves.” His is a voice of reason. With many of us concerned as to what is happening on college campuses, Professor Gaddis restores a measure of confidence. However, since most of us cannot take his class, we can, at least, do the next best thing – read his book.

Burrowing into Books - "The Last Chronicles of Barset," Anthony Trollope

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selected Readings

                                                                                                                                        May 24, 2018

“The Last Chronicles of Barset”

Anthony Trollope

“But to me Barset has been a real county, and its city a real city,

 and the spires and towers have been before my eyes,

 and the voices of the people known to my ears,

 and the pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps.”

                                                                                                Anthony Trollope

                                                                                                The Last Chronicles of Barset

A good friend once suggested that story-tellers, such as Trollope, have an immortality that transcends time and place. The narrative, the creation of the author, replays in the reader’s consciousness, and can be done so long as the tale is allowed to be retrieved. Trollope’s characters and venues, figments of a 19^thCentury imagination, can be visited and discussed, as they file into the consciousness of 21^stCentury readers. “Last Chronicles” was written 152 years ago and Anthony Trollope is buried in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery, yet time and distance do not hinder its immersion into our minds.

As the title makes clear, this is the last of the six books that comprise the Barsetshire novels; the quote above comes from the final paragraph. This is the story of Josiah Crawley, the impoverished perpetual curate of Hogglestock parish. He is accused of a crime he did not commit. Crawley’s memory fails him – he cannot recall the circumstances as to how he came into possession of the questioned twenty pounds. He is also a man of his time, a gentleman who believes in honesty, fortitude and the need to be accountable for one’s actions. Mr. Crawley is indicted, and a trial is set for about four months hence. Loving her husband but in despair, Mrs. Crawley feels he derives a schadenfreude-like pleasure in his own misfortune. “A consciousness of undeserved woe produces a grandeur of its own,” she says to her friend Lucy Roberts. It is a story that pokes fun at the Church of England and displays the contrasts of wealth and poverty that reside perversely (but naturally) within it.

The plot is compounded when the Archdeacon of Barchester Theophilus Grantly’s son, Major Henry Grantly, falls in love with Grace Crawley, oldest daughter of the Crawley’s. Given Victorian standards, she feels she cannot accept him as long as her father is under suspicion. The plot thickens when we learn that the obnoxious Mrs. Proudie, wife of the milquetoast-like Bishop of Barchester, is determined to destroy the implacable Mr. Crawley. “Peace, woman,” Mr. Crawley counters her accusations. Trollope writes, surely with a smile on his face: “The bishop jumped out of his chair at hearing the wife of his bosom called a woman. But he jumped rather in admiration than in anger.”

There are plots within plots and subplots within sublots, as in all Trollope novels, like the unfortunate circumstances of his good friend Reverend Francis Arabin, Dean of the Cathedral at Barchester and his wife traveling abroad, when their witness would ease the travails of Mr. Crawley. We meet again characters we have known from earlier books, like the whimsical and frustrating Lily Dale, the eminent Dr. Thorne and the gentle Septimus Harding, former Warden of Hiram’s Hospital, whose death scene is among the most evocative I have read. “He has no suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause. Nature simply retires to rest.”

We live in a frenetic world, where style is more substantive than substance, where celebrity is celebrated more than character We live at a polarized time when identity politics divide our society and where violence, meanness and foul language permeate our culture. In this environment, a reader could do worse than escape into a Trollope novel, and the “spires and towers” of Barsetshire. Readers can become acquainted (or reacquainted) with “the voices of the people known to my ears.” Reading Trollope provides relief in a troubled and tempestuous time. He offers perspective when moral clarity is clouded by the exhalations of sanctimonious hypocrites, braggarts and nay-sayers.

Review: "A Legacy of Spies," by John le Carre

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selected Readings

                                                                                                                                 March 20, 2018

“A Legacy of Spies”

John le Carré

“A professional intelligence officer is no more immune

to human feelings than the rest of mankind.”

                                                                                                John le Carré

                                                                                                A Legacy of Spies

At 86, John le Carré has not lost his touch. Much of what we know about the “dark side” of the Cold War comes from Le Carré, particularly George Smiley. It is not always a pretty picture. Smiley first appeared in Call for the Dead (1961). We got to know him better in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). In A Legacy of Spies, he makes a cameo appearance – the first since The Secret Pilgrim, in 1990.

While we think of Le Carré as the chronicler of spies during the Cold War, twelve of his twenty-four novels were written after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. This story is told in the present through the eyes and memory of Peter Guillam (whom we first met in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold). Guillam was a former field agent and lieutenant to Smiley. He has been ordered back to England from the Brittany farm to which he has retired. It is because of events in the former book that make for the story in this one.

Guillame is interviewed by a pair of unsympathetically-portrayed, current employees of the “Circus,” as MI6 is known. Like intelligence services in the U.S. today, MI6 is under attack. Two individuals – now middle-aged – are seeking answers to questions as to how their parents died. The story reflects the conflict between two cultures: today’s, where youth have lived lives protected from the harshness of reality, harbored in cocoons of “safe spaces;” and, yesterday’s when spy-warriors encountered physical risks (and moral dilemmas), while working for the defense of their country. The Cold War was real for those who lived and fought it. But because that shadowy war used deception and was fought under cover, the younger generation has little knowledge of how it was fought or understanding as to why. The young professionals in the story can’t comprehend the mind-set of grizzled veterans, like Peter Guillam. What makes the novel compelling is that the reader knows that the success of “Windfall” (the mission in question) came at the expense of individual lives – and, while the young interviewers are not sympathetically rendered, we recognize there is some legitimacy to the truth they seek.

Nevertheless, our sympathies lie with Peter Guillame, even though we know, in his younger days, he could be merciless and was a womanizer. We watch his memory recall the good and seal off the bad. We also witness him, at times, be intentionally deceptive to those interviewing him. Age and years of retirement have not provided him trust or caused him to shed the shell that protected him for so many years. The story is told through interviews, the re-reading of memos written “to file” at the time, flashbacks and encounters with the children of those with whom Guillame had worked, and who died.

Mr. le Carré (real name David Cornwell) spent six years in intelligence, becoming a full-time author in 1964, which lends realism to his stories. This one will encourage you to re-read some of your past favorites.