January 2021 – Ink-Stained Wretches

I Am Not a Moral Pauper

by Kathy Waller

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world.
I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”
~ Mark Twain
(or possibly W. C. Fields, or . . . )

It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn’t any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw over lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. ~ Mark Twain, Following the Equator

So I decide to write about New Years’ Resolutions, and some I’ve made and why I don’t make them any more, and of course, to write about that, I must quote Mark Twain’s remark about smoking, and while searching for the quotation I wonder whether Mark Twain really said it, so I check other [more reliable] sources and learn that he probably didn’t, and now I’m so fired up about errors in attribution–and errors in everything else–flying around the globe even as I type, that I’m too emotionally jangled to settle down and write about resolutions.

Isn’t that just the way?

Well, whatever. Back to resolutions.

I don’t smoke, never have, so I can’t give it up–well, when I was ten, I did try to smoke a section of mustang grapevine, which my grandfather had warned me would make my tongue sore, but I was afraid of holding a lighted match so close to my face–one could get burned that way–so I gave up.

And another time, three cousins and I–we were eleven or twelve years old–lit one of their mother’s Winstons and each took one puff. Then we decided we’d done something entirely too daring, and their mother was probably already on her way home from town, less than a mile away, so we put the cigarette out, placed the butt on a piece of shingle one of them dug up from somewhere, carried it with great ceremony and a lot of giggling to their burn barrel, and disposed of it.

I guess that means I have smoked but resolved to give it up. One resolution kept.

I am not, however, a moral pauper. I have not neglected my habits. I have plenty of freight I could throw overboard. And I’ve tried, how I’ve tried. But what I intend as jetsam floats back and attaches like barnacles, as it were, to my hull.

I’ve never lost ten, twenty, thirty-five, forty, or any set number of pounds; or completed grad school papers (or blog posts) with more than a few hours to spare; or abstained from chocolate; or organized my purse, office, car, house, or self; or left my keys, reading glasses, or shoes where I could find them; or reached any other goal listed on a December 31st contract.

I know I’m not alone. A proper Victorian girl, Louisa May Alcott was taught to strive for self-improvement but had difficulty following through. At ten years of age, she wrote in her journal “A Sample of Our Lessons”:

‘What virtues do you wish more of?’ asks Mr.L. I answer:—
Patience, Love, Silence,
Obedience, Generosity, Perseverance,
Industry, Respect, Self-denial.
‘What vices less of?’
Idleness, Wilfulness, Vanity,
Impatience, Impudence, Pride,
Selfishnes, Activity, Love of cats.

Alcott is famous for her industry, perseverance, and generosity, but also for wilfulness, impatience, and activity–and thank goodness she retained those “negative” characteristics. American literature would be in a sad state without them.*

Does breaking resolutions bother me? It used to. I have a broad streak of Puritanism. I want to do better. To get it right. When the Methodist minister inquired about me one Sunday morning and my mother told him I was at home trying to finish a grad school paper before slamming into the deadline, he asked, “Is she a perfectionist?” My mother said yes. “I thought so,” he said.

But that was then, and this is 2021. I’ve been at this resolution thing for a long time. A woman at my age and weight** knows how things work.

Contracts can be renegotiated. And when I’m the only party, I’m allowed to set new terms to suit myself. Or to say, “So what?”

Award-winning columnist Ellen Goodman*** wrote something about resolutions that has stayed with me for over ten years:

We spend January walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives … not looking for flaws, but for potential.

I like that. I think Alcott would have liked it, too. In fact, maybe that’s what she did all those years. She saw her own potential, got down to business, and didn’t let up.

That’s the trouble with potential–once you’ve found it, you have to do something about it. Like work.

I suppose the trick is to learn to love the work. Alcott and Twain must have loved what they did. Even when they hated it, they loved it.

Well. What got me thinking about resolutions that I don’t believe in making?

Anthony Trollope. I binge-watched the miniseries adaptation of his The Way We Live Now a couple of weeks ago, for the fourth time. And then I watched the adaptation of Dr. Thorne. And I’m looking for the adaptation of The Pallisers series–I believe it’s seventeen episodes, and I’ve seen it at least three times, but I’d love to watch it again. And The Barchester Chronicles, which is so funny, and I’ve watched it so many times, I’ve practically memorized the dialogue . . .

I love Trollope. I decided to marry my husband when he told me he’d read many of Trollope’s novels. He hadn’t asked me to marry him, but I decided. If he’d read Dickens, I might not have been so impressed. But any man who’d read that many of Trollope’s novels just because he wanted to had to be a man of substance.

If you look at the reviews of The Warden on Amazon, for example, you find, “boring… boring… boring… boring… long and boring…” And, “I couldn’t get into it.” (Good grief, people, it’s a Victorian novel. What did you expect?)

But that is a matter of taste. Some of us think his novels delightful. Satirical. At times, drop-dead funny. The Eustace Diamonds, in The Pallisers series, is a murder mystery.

Trollope wrote forty-seven novels, plus short stories, plus a ton of travel books. He set a writing goal for each day. When he finished one book, he immediately began another. In an autobiography published posthumously, he admitted to writing for money rather than for a Muse. (The admission led to a decrease in sales, because writing for money was considered crass. I don’t know what readers thought Dickens was writing for.)

And Trollope was a civil servant, worked for the British postal service, where he invented the mailbox.

Now. My dirty little secret is that I’ve never read The Warden. I’ve read its sequel, Barchester Towers. But that’s the only Trollopian novel I’ve read. I have, like many writers of high school book reports, seen the movies.

So I made a resolution: In 2021, I’m going to read all the novels of Anthony Trollope.

If I read one novel a week, I’ll finish with two weeks to spare. My Kindle initially said I could read The Warden in 3 hours and 53 minutes, but a few pages later, it said I could be finished in 4 hours and 15 minutes. Beats me.

In the two weeks left over, I plan to read Brian Doyle’s Martin Marten, which was recommended by a former student, and something by Ann Patchett.

Furthermore, after looking for potential, I’ve resolved to finish writing my own novel. It’s been in the works for a while. Bits and pieces are stored in approximately 3, 508 files on my hard drive (and in the cloud).

I worked on it today, revising an ancient scene for the umpteenth time, and was stuck on whether an Afghan hound named Katie Couric should wear eau de lavender or eau de peppermint when I remembered I had to write this post.

By this time tomorrow I expect to have that issue solved and to have moved on to the next, which will probably involve a goat and a climbing rose.

I don’t write as fast as Trollope.

***

* I’m sure that if Louisa May Alcott stopped loving cats, she had to do it thousands of times.

** The phrase “A woman at my age and weight” is an allusion to Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels, a little book in which a thirty-nine-year-old woman gets tired of taking care of her bachelor brother and takes off with the owner of a horse-drawn bookstore who made a door-to-door stop by the farm and invites her to come along. When the brother catches up with them, he blesses her out:

“Look here, Helen,” said Andrew, “do you think I propose to have my
sister careering around the State with a strolling vagabond? Upon my
soul you ought to have better sense–and at your age and weight!…” ~ Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels

I read Parnassus about fifty years ago and thought that phrase funny, and have waited all this time for an opportunity to use it.

***I know Ellen Goodman said this because it read it myself in her column in The Austin American-Statesman. She was one of my favorite columnists.

****

Images of authors from Wikipedia, public domain
Image of notepad by USA-Reiseblogger from Pixabay
Image of book cover from Amazon

MURDER, MAYHEM, CRIME AND THE GRANDE DAMES OF MYSTERY

By Francine Paino

Overall, fiction provides a brief respite from the realities in our lives. In those few precious hours of distraction, we shut off the conscious minds’ worries and efforts to find solutions to problems or imagining worst-case scenarios. In the face of real-life crises, the subconscious needs to see an issue with fresh eyes and a different perspective, perhaps even finding a new approach. It seems that the most popular category for that escape in the U.S., as revealed by the Nielson Bookscan Services, is the mystery/thriller/crime novels, which beat all others by two to one. But if we seek to escape from real-life problems, why is this genre more popular than romance or comedy?

Explanations are offered everywhere, even in psychology periodical. One reason for the popularity of murder, mayhem, and crime is that they allow a safe way to immerse oneself in high drama without the destructive aftermath touching the reader in reality. Another is that it is exciting to be emotionally flung about as if on an amusement park ride. Then there is the experience of entering the mind of the criminal—oh, horror—something we don’t get to see in real life—at least not before the evil deed is done. Readers can also figure out, see or at least suspect what will happen before it happens, and hopefully, by the end, there is the satisfaction of Yes. Makes sense. It was in the clues all along. Most often, that is not the case in life. These reasons help explain why this genre is the most popular, but why are stories with elderly sleuths so well-liked?

Unlike the many Mediterranean, Native American Indian, and Asian cultures, and despite the growing economic difficulties and stresses on those societies’ families, their elderly are respected; their knowledge and wisdom are put to good use, whereas in the U.S., youth has become a preoccupation. It has the mind of younger people so entrapped in worrying about maintaining youthful looks that they often miss the grace, wisdom, and knowledge acquired with age and experience. Aging in a culture that puts enormous emphasis on being young or appearing to be youthful creates a constant struggle for those susceptible to that fetish, and yet—interest in stories employing older people in mysteries is widespread.

In mystery fiction, older protagonists have already made the mistakes that younger detectives haven’t yet experienced. Senior detectives, whether professional or amateur, see the world through more experienced and seasoned eyes. Thus, their mistakes are different and perhaps even more interesting.

Neha Patel, writing for Book Riot, suggests several mystery thriller books starring older women, starting with the Grande Dame of Mystery, Miss Marple, who at age 70 solved the first of her 13 mysteries in Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie.

Before She Was Helen, by Caroline B. Cooney, explores the dangers of confronting your own past life.

In Three Things About Elsie, by Joanna Cannon, the sleuth is 84-years-old, and in Partners In Crime, by Gallagher Gray, Lil is a feisty woman of 84, who considers herself “84-years-young,” and has a love of playing detective and Bloody Marys. (My kinda-gal!)

A metaphysical mystery/thriller, Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh, has a 72-year-old widow coming across a haunting. The only clue is a note saying, “Her name was Magda.”

Writing for Early Bird Books, Paul Wargelin offers a list of feisty, intelligent, and frequently underestimated amateur sleuths over the age of 60, beginning with Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth, about a retired governess. Written two years before Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple novel, Ms. Wentworth went on to write 32 Miss Silver mysteries.

In Tish Plays the Game, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Tish Carberry isn’t suited for retirement activities, preferring to use her idle hands and mind to solve mysteries.

Stephanie Matteson’s Murder at the Spa introduces Charlotte Graham, a successful actress who, after four-decades of screen and stage success, takes on the role of a sleuth in real life.

“Does age really bring wisdom?” asks Rochelle Melander. She writes, “Recent studies affirm this adage. Older adults…recover quickly after making a mistake and use their brains more efficiently than younger adults.” In Melander’s article Crime Fiction: Savvy Sleuths Over 50, she offers some fascinating crime stories featuring elderly sleuths.

Celine, by Peter Heller. Celine is an artist and P.I. in her late 60s. In Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman, a 59-year-old ex-FBI agent is haunted by the unsolved murder of her protégé. After an attempt on her life, she feels the need to unearth the truth.

Not to be accused of gender discrimination, here are two books starring elderly gentlemen. Don’t Ever Get Old, by Daniel Friedman, about an 87-year-old retired Memphis police officer, Buck Schatz, who learns that a Nazi officer who’d tortured him might still be alive with a stash of hidden gold. He teams up with his grandson, and together, they get more than they bargained for.

Summer of the Big Bachi, by Naomi Hirahara, is set in L.A. and Hiroshima. Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai, age 69, is hiding a secret. He finds himself facing bachi—the spirit of retribution when a stranger shows up asking about his old gambling buddy Joji Haneda. Joji is murdered, and Mas must try to make things right.

Perhaps one of the qualities that fascinate readers, and they may not even realize it, is that often the elderly almost disappear, even standing in plain sight. They are overlooked, leaving them free to move about, observe, listen, eavesdrop, and study circumstances without anyone even realizing what they’re doing.

These, and many other senior Grande Dames and Grands Hommes of mystery, show how being older does not mean life stops. There is still inquisitiveness, a desire for adventure, and the need to use one’s brain. There are still mysteries and crimes to be solved—and they do it with humor, grace, and aplomb.

Grab a bunch and enjoy!

For more on the subject of older sleuths, go to:

Wargelin, Paul. 16 Cozy Mysteries Starring Female Detectives http://earlybirdbooks.com/16-cozy-mysteries-starring-female-detectives 1/17/21

Patel, Neha, 10 Mystery and Thriller Books Starring Older Women. http://bookriot.com/mystery-and-thriller-books-starring-older-women/ 1/17/21

Melander, Rochelle. Crime Fiction: Savvy Sleuths Over 50. http://www.nextavenue.org/crime-fiction-savvy-sleuths-over-50 1/16/21

Evans, David. Do you Love Murder Mysteries? You’re Not Alone. Here’s Why. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/can-t-we-all-just-get-along/201904/do-you-love-murder-mysteries-youre-not-alone-heres-why 1/16/21

Bourbon, Melissa. Why Do We Enjoy Mysteries So Much? https://melissabourbon.com/for-writers/why-do-we-enjoy-mysteries-so-much/#:~:text=We%20learn%20about%20how%20others,world%20that’s%20captivated%20our%20imagination 1/17/21.

Ray Bradbury on Writing and Life

by Renee Kimball

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”

― Ray Bradbury

“. . . And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for reward back because it has favored us with animation…Secondly, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course is that. Not to write, for many of us, is to die…”
Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

In 1994 , Ray Bradbury published Zen in the Art of Writing; he was 74 years old. Bradbury began his writing life at twelve years of age and committed the rest of his life to writing one thousand words a day, if not more.

Only 176 pages, Zen is a succinct and instructive work. The book deftly uses autobiographical material to lay the groundwork as a guidebook for writers; but more, it is an instructional manual for creating a rich, productive, and happy life.

Finding Bradbury’s Zen was an unexpected pleasure. It is doubtful I would have known of it if it had only been available in hardback. Because the electronic edition just “happened” to come up on my E-reader, I downloaded and began reading. (Photo Courtesy of Amazon).

Zen’s language is reminiscent of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but that takes nothing away from his message. In an interview with Futurism Magazine five years before his death in 2012, Bradbury had reached a pinnacle of success known by “living authors.” Some critics have named him the “greatest science fiction author of all time” but he was more than a science fiction author; he was also a “humanist-philosopher” (Futurism).

Bradbury’s career began as a short story writer during the 50s. He became a novelist, evolved into writing poems, as well as theatre and movie screenplays.

A collection of Bradbury’s short stories became the basis of his first novel, The Martian Chronicles. The Illustrated Man followed in 1951, and Fahrenheit 451 in 1954, both still read in high school English classes today. Bradbury is credited with bringing the science fiction genre into mainstream literature. The move to writing television screen plays was a natural progression. Gene Roddenberry, Bradbury’s friend and the creator of Star Trek, invited Bradbury to write for the popular show. Bradbury became the primary writer for the show for many years; the series became a monumental success, spawning sub-culture worship status still going today.

Engaging thoughts found in the slim volume of Zen:

The need to write every day. . .

“I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. . .An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet running in circles. . . Zen (p. ixx).

On writing with enthusiasm, and finding ideas:

“. . .If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer.” (p.4).

. . .But I wanted to show what we all have in us, that it has always been there, and so few of us bother to notice. When people ask me where I get my ideas I laugh. How strange—we’re so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in.” (p. 35.

Bradbury’s “formula for writing”. . .

“. . .So, simply then, here is my formula. . .

“What do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate?

“Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders. Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. The character, in his great love, or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story. . .” (p. 6).

When he was twenty-two, after ten years of struggling, Bradley finally wrote what he believed was his first good short story, “The Lake.” He earned twenty dollars. For years afterwards, “The Lake” was continuously published in a variety of magazines; while he was surprised, Bradbury was infinitely pleased.

President George W. Bush, Ray Bradbury, and Laura Bush at Bradbury’s acceptance of the National Medal of Arts , 2004. Wikipedia.

When reading Zen, if you are a certain age, the reader can believe that being with Ray Bradbury would be comfortable, undemanding, enjoyable—he is the model for a “good friend.” Bradbury is the ultimate family man, devoted to his wife and four daughters. He had strong life-time friendships —not only in business, but in life. He writes about his gratefulness to his wife and his daughters and joy they brought him and the loving home they shared. He never shies away from sentimental feelings of family and friends that seem to escape modern writing, he acknowledges his missteps and successes with humor and truth.

Bradbuy’s Wisdom

“Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. . .” (p. 36).

. . .

“You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day… (p. 37).”

. . . “Read those authors who write the way you hope to write, those who think the way you would like to think. . .” (p. 38).

“. . . The constant remains: the search, the finding, the admiration, the love, the honest response to materials at hand, no matter how shabby they one day seem, when looked back on…” (p. 41).

“. . . By living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing as you read, you have Your Most Original Self.” (p. 43).

In Zen, the reader will find a template for a full life, a joyful life. Bradbury did not just give advice, he lived what he told others to do: work with passion and creativity, write every day with enthusiasm, find joy in whatever you do, and nourish your inner self, your inner muse. Read everything, and experience the wonder of the people in your life, the world around you, and most importantly sprinkle everything you do and say with Love—success will follow.

“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

― Ray Bradbury

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REFERENCES

Bradbury, Ray. Zen in the Art of Writing.
Bradbury, Ray. 1990. Zen in the art of writing. Santa Barbara, Calif: Joshua Odell Editions, electronic publication 2012, Amazon.com Kindle Edition.

Ray Bradbury. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ray-Bradbury

Full Cycle Publications. Interview with Ray Bradbury. 07.20.2019. https://www.fullcyclepublications.com/interview-with-ray-bradbury/

Goodreads. Bradbury Quotes. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1630.Ray_Bradbury

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A former paralegal, Renee Kimball has a master’s degree in criminal justice. Among her interests are reading and writing. She is an active Animal Advocate and fosters both dogs and cats and works with various organizations to find them forever homes.