Tuesday, June 25, 2019

the last book I read

The End Of Vandalism by Tom Drury.

We're in some loosely-identified mid-west location (generally accepted to be Iowa, though I don't think it's ever explicitly identified), in the small town of Grafton in Grouse County. A place where not much happens, and such stuff as does happen is benignly overseen by laid-back sheriff Dan Norman. It's a small town, where everyone knows everyone, everyone's parents knew everyone's parents, and everyone knows everyone's business, which can be comforting and friendly, but can also be stifling and frustrating.

Some drama does crop up occasionally: Dan rescues an abandoned baby from a cardboard box in a supermarket parking lot and there is a brief flurry of excitement over who the mother is and whether she can be found. Meanwhile Louise Darling is finally tiring of her husband Tiny's petty criminal lifestyle and occasional violent outbursts, and after she sends him on his way she and Dan strike up a tentative relationship.

Tiny, meanwhile strikes off for various out-of-state locations where he does occasional manual work and gets involved with some slightly shady self-help group. Tiring of all this he eventually returns to Grafton, where he finds that Dan and Louise have moved in together, got engaged and subsequently married. It hasn't been all plain sailing for them, though: Dan has been suffering from insomnia, sleeping apart from Louise, and has engaged a therapist, although she finds him largely unreadable.

Eventually Dan and Louise get pregnant, and make all the usual preparations for having a baby, only for Louise to suffer a stillbirth at thirty-six weeks and nearly die in the process. As part of her recovery process she spends some time at a camp run by some friends in Minnesota, takes on some administrative duties to keep her busy and repeatedly extends her stay, seemingly to avoid having to return to her life in Grafton. Meanwhile Dan is up for re-election as sheriff, normally a formality but this time he's got an opponent with some serious money behind him and a willingness to wage a dirty-tricks campaign, masterminded by none other than the returned Tiny Darling. Needless to say Dan's problems are compounded by his mind not being fully on the job, what with one thing and another.

Eventually, as winter sets in, Dan makes the trip north to rescue Louise from her self-imposed exile, and on their return they effect a dramatic rescue of local teenager Albert Robeshaw and his girlfriend Lu Chiang who have got lost in a snowdrift. Louise returns to her job at the photography shop and when spring eventually rolls around everyone is all about the new beginnings and putting the past behind them.

As was the case with both A Stone Boat and The Leaves On Grey my perceptions of this book are probably skewed by the contrast with the book that immediately preceded it in this list, in this case Beloved. Just to be clear, I enjoyed The End Of Vandalism very much, but the story meanders along  very benignly, with the central characters bimbling along in their own slightly aimless way. Dan and Louise are the heart of the story here, and both are very endearing (and endearingly flawed) characters, though we don't actually learn very much about either of them. The only proper sense of danger or excitement is provided by the big set-piece where Louise and Dan lose the baby and Louise nearly dies, which provide a slightly incongruous contrast with the rest of the book. I suppose the starkest contrast with Beloved is that despite the majority of the action happening only a couple of states (and, to be fair, a hundred years) away, there are no discernible black characters here.

There are, it seems, a lot of people who would have The End Of Vandalism in their Great Novels Of The 1990s lists. I suppose I would respond to that by saying that I concur with the sentiment expressed in this review:
There's an awful lot here to like: the dialogue, the sly humor, the feather-light touch, the clean drive of the prose. All Drury needs is a plot for his work to really take off.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

I cunt believe it's not jeremy

There was nothing more inevitable than Jeremy Hunt's throwing his hat into the ring at the Tory leadership election resulting in yet more people calling him a cunt. The only question was: who would crack first under the unbearable pressure of an internal monologue yammering "DON'T SAY IT DON'T SAY IT DON'T SAY IT" relentlessly at them?

It turned out to be Victoria Derbyshire, on her daily BBC news and current affairs programme, with a full and unashamed rendering, not the wishy-washy "Cu...Hunt" that some people come out with.



As we know, this particular verbal gaffe has a long and glorious history, some of it documented here on this blog but inevitably some of it slipping by unnoticed, by me anyway. The mashups/compilations included in these two tweets provide a good potted summary. The prospect of this becoming a global phenomenon and international heads of state bellowing CUNT at each other across the table at the United Nations is a delightful one, but must be tempered by the realisation that there is absolutely zero chance of Hunt winning the Tory leadership contest, and therefore becoming Prime Minister.

Sunday, June 02, 2019

kerr-ching

A couple of thoughts on the death of Judith Kerr, venerable (she was 95) and celebrated children's author and illustrator:
  • If you had asked me to express an opinion on whether Kerr's Mog books were the origin of the general words "mog" and "moggie" to describe a cat (usually of a nondescript non-pedigree variety), I would probably have said that on balance I imagined that the expression pre-dated the books, but that I wouldn't want to stake my or anyone else's life on it. It turns out that the word does indeed pre-date the books, the first of which was published in 1970, the year I was born, and includes a character called Mr. Thomas (coincidence, or IS IT, etc etc). It apparently used to be a pet name for a cow and by some mysterious trans-species etymological osmosis became subsequently used for cats.
  • Kerr is one of those annoying names which can be pronounced in one of two ways and where there's absolutely no clue to which is the correct one from seeing it written down. In this case it can be "Kurr" (or, more correctly given its Scottish origins, "Kairr") or "Karr". Judith Kerr pronounced it the second way, as far as I can gather. Other examples include Sara/Sarah, which can be "Sair-rah" or "Sah-rah" with no chance of deciding which it is without advance knowledge, and the only advance knowledge you can have is that if you guess you'll choose the wrong one. And don't get me started on the whole Ralph/Rafe thing.
  • Kerr's most famous book is almost certainly The Tiger Who Came To Tea, which we, in common with most parents of young kids, have a copy of. It's always struck me that the tiger is a fairly obvious metaphor for sex, and in particular that an obvious subtextual interpretation of the surface story is that Sophie's Mum has been having a ferociously sexual extra-marital relationship, involving much smashing of crockery, urgent food-smeared couplings on the kitchen table and leaving her in a sweaty, sore, jism-festooned heap on the kitchen floor. The subsequent trip out to the cafe with Dad can be seen as him forgiving her for her infidelity and her settling back into the sausage-and-chips, half-a-pint-of-mild, once-a-week-with-the-lights-off regime with wistful regret but also a slight sense of relief. Needless to say I'm not the first person to think of this, as it's alluded to in this Guardian obituary, and was put to her a few times in interviews, where she played it with an impeccably straight bat.


  • I should point out that the first scurrilous image above is my own work; the second is stolen from this perhaps slightly ill-judged humorous tweet by the good people at Foyles Bookshop.
  • Judith Kerr was married to writer Nigel Kneale, probably most famous for his work on the various Quatermass serials and films. The only piece of his writing that I own, as far as I know, is the absurdly over-the-top (but absurdly entertaining) haunted-house story Minuke which I have in an anthology of supernatural stories published by, slightly bizarrely, Marks & Spencer. I got this as a present from my parents when I must have been about 16 and it's got some pretty serious heavyweight stuff in it. Minuke is based on an age-old and much-used premise: a house built on top of some old stones that conceal Unquiet Things that don't take kindly to being disturbed. It's basically the same plot as the South Park episode with the accursed pet store, not to mention Pet Sematary and Poltergeist.
  • Stan: So you just built your store on top of an Indian burial ground?!
    Shop Owner: Oh, hell no! First, I dug up all the bodies, pissed on 'em, and then buried them again upside-down.
    Kyle: Why?
    Shop Owner: Why? I don't know. I was drunk.

  • Kerr and Kneale's son Matthew is best known for his 2000 novel English Passengers, which I own and recommend to you highly. I see I mentioned this previously (and Kerr, in passing) here.