Storm – George R Stewart

On February 26, 2019November 18, 2019 By bookramblings142In Book TalesLeave a comment

Way out here they got a name
For rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe
And they call the wind Maria

Maria blows the stars around
And sends the clouds a-flyin’
Maria makes the mountain sound
Like folks were up there dyin’

Maria, Maria
They call the wind Maria

Lyrics from probably the best known song from Paint your Wagon, the 1951 musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and the song was inspired by the book that is the subject of this review. For Stewart names his storm Maria and gave rise to the whole idea of naming cyclones and hurricanes. In a later edition Stewart addresses the issue of how to pronounce Maria, originally he was thinking of Ma-Ree-Ah but changed his mind as he though she needed the harder sound of Ma-Rye-Ah so Lerner and Loewe were correct in rhyming the name with ‘fire’. Maria is very much the heroine of the book, to such an extent that the usual disclaimer at the start of a novel is in this case:-

The characters of this book – including Maria – are imaginary.

The book was first published in 1941 by Random House in the US, my copy is the Fighting Forces Penguin Special numbered S238 printed in June 1944 part of a series of books printed for American troops during WWII in a collaboration between The American Infantry Journal and the British Penguin Books. Almost all of the titles from this joint venture were factual and dealt with aspects of the war such as aircraft recognition, army handbooks, military history and exploits during the conflict. There were a total of three novels included though

S211 The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek
S219 The Moon is down by John Steinbeck
S238 Storm by George R Stewart

An excellent selection of titles and one I will probably come back to in future articles for this site.

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The structure of the novel is unusual, there are twelve chapters, one for each day of the storm and within the chapters there are numbered sections each of which follow a particular group of characters. These range from the meteorologists, to the telephone company repair crews, the dispatcher at air traffic control, railway workers and for myself the most interesting group which is the snow plough crews charged with keeping route 40 over the Donner Pass clear of snow. Theirs is probably the best written story in the book and you really get to feel for their struggle to keep the road open. There are also various groups of travellers on roads, ships and trains that we keep track of and sometimes a section just deals with one incident on one day so we never hear of the characters involved again. Some of these people survive the storm, some don’t, but we follow their story in their own episodes as the book progresses, it’s like watching numerous daily soap operas before the days of binge-watching where you have to wait until the next day to find out what happens but meantime here is another story to keep track of. At the peak of the storm, through days six to nine, there are fourteen or fifteen separate stories being told in this manner for each day.

Stewart casually mentions small incidents at the beginning of the book that later become major hazards like a piece of wood falling off the back of a lorry, or somebody shooting at a junction box for a bit of fun and these later on are shown to have consequences far beyond their initial triviality. Likewise we follow Maria from a small squall off the coast of Japan across the Pacific and see her interacting with other weather systems some of which divert her route others of which strengthen and then after twelve days ultimately destroy her. During the time she gives birth to other storms and affects places right across North and Central America. One issue with the book is that in order to make sense of it you really do need a good functional knowledge of the geography of the US to follow what is going on and this may be one reason for the apparent lack of an edition in print at the moment. Fortunately I have travelled extensively across America so do know the relationship between most of the places mentioned but it could be confusing if you don’t have that knowledge. The book was a best seller in the 1940’s and 50’s so it’s a pity that it is now largely forgotten especially considering its two influences on contemprary culture beyond the books own boundaries.

As stated at the start of this blog when Stewart decided to have one of his characters (the Junior Meteorologist) name the storm this was not something that was done at the time. The JM, as he is referred to throughout the book, is somewhat ashamed of his habit of naming storms and when halfway through the story he accidentally calls the storm Maria whilst talking to his boss he is mortified. His boss however quite likes the idea and the book is cited as the main influence on the decision of the United States Weather Bureau to start naming storms using women’s names in 1953. Maria was not part of the original series of names but was added in tribute to the book and is now officially retired after Hurricane Maria killed over 3000 people in 2017.

As for its impact on music you can hear Bryn Terfel singing They Call the Wind Maria by clicking here.

The Art of Asking – Amanda Palmer

On February 19, 2019February 26, 2019 By bookramblings142In ReviewsLeave a comment

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So begins Amanda Palmer’s autobiographical self help book, but lets think about that statement. Is it an autobiography? Well sort of, it certainly tells you a lot about her life so far from childhood, to performance art (a lot of time as a living statue and what happened next) to having her own band(s) and marriage to the best selling author Neil Gaiman. So is it a self help book? It starts out like that certainly, but drifts somewhat from the premise of the title as the book progresses, so what is it? A cracking good read that is what it is… You will laugh, you will cry; boy will you cry; there are heart wrenching passages that make you wonder where the tissues are and then sections that make you laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation she finds herself in. Please also be aware there is strong language in the extracts selected from this book. Well actually there is strong language throughout the book which is why I couldn’t avoid it.

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The single flower she is holding in the cover photo harks back to her time as the ‘eight foot bride’ actually she only stood 7½ feet on top of the milk crates but why ruin a good title. This was her first venture into public performance art and as a living statue she earned more than the job in the ice-cream parlour could ever pay, simply for standing still and when somebody gave her money she would give them a flower. The gift of the flower was vital, this she saw as a transaction, yes she was asking (albeit silently) for people to give her money but they did get a physical product in return, it was not a simple one way process.

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Through the book Amanda explores not just the idea of ‘asking’ but also the basis of relationships both personal and public. The relationship that she has with the fans of her band is clearly key to her existence and it is also obviously two way. There is a definite element of family, especially amongst the long standing fans, they know one another and look after one another and this is incredibly important and not only do the fans support one another but they support her and she supports them. It was one of the things that her one time label really didn’t understand. Outreach was for promotion of specific marketable products not for touchy feely bonding, but it was just this sort of direct contact that had built the band up n the first place. The email lists that she had built up over years became a not just a contact point but a meeting place for like minded souls.

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One thing explored at length in the book is how they came to be the first band to raise $1 million through crowd-sourcing to fund an album after they split with their existing label. The story of how they managed to get out of a notoriously complex and exploitative contact is also a tale of joy. She asked for money to record the album and the fans responded and then she hit a major personal problem which impacted her ability to fulfil the obligations of the money raised. A lifelong friend and confidant was unexpectedly very ill and she felt she couldn’t do what she needed to do for kickstarter and still be around for Anthony. This is where the book really gets hold of you and won’t let go, you become so involved in the drama of Anthony’s story which is just so unexpected from the book up to that point. But mixed up in this was her relationship with her husband Neil Gaiman and her inability to ask HIM for help.

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The amount of money involved whilst significant was not a major issue for a writer with the earning capacity of Neil Gaiman, but that was not the point for Amanda. As somebody who had valued her independence since a child this was just one step too far, or so it seemed at the time. There is then a long section where she comes to terms with the issue and whilst not resolving it comes to realise that there is only one logical way to progress, to get commitments not just to the crowd funded record but to the fans and to Anthony and to Neil sorted out. She has to ask, even though it is the most difficult (yet paradoxically the easiest because she knows the answer will be yes) for the money to cover her gap in finances. It should be explained here that that Neil and Amanda run completely separate financial positions, although married they have separate accounts, their own homes (in the case of Neil Gaiman several) and this independence is essential at least for Amanda, we cannot tell Neil’s position from the book.

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That last line in the image above reflects back to a passage early on in the book from a conversation between Anthony and Amanda. In an allegorical statement there is a dog howling outside and Amanda asks what the problem is. Anthony explains that the dog is sitting on a nail and whilst uncomfortable is still not driven to over-ride a natural laziness to move because it doesn’t hurt enough yet.

There is one section of the book that felt personally relevant to me and that was a short part dealing with an aspect of Amanda’s relationship with her mother. She was a top computer programmer, technical and systems analyst and that was also my background. Nobody outside my circle understood that this is an art and what’s more in can be a beautiful art, you can approach it as a technical problem and come up with a working methodology but treating it as an art you will produce a beautiful and probably more resilient and better result. You are composing a solution but nobody can see it or even if they could most would not appreciate the beauty of the resolution that you craft. This was something that Amanda had also not appreciated as teenager

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But to return to Anthony as the book repeatedly does, she needed money so that she could stay with Anthony as he continued his ever more debilitating medical treatments and this time she went straight to Neil

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Epilogue

The book ends with Anthony sort of recovering and sort of not, the book was published in 2014, I wanted to know more and found the following, don’t read it until you have read the book.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2015/06/existing-in-pause.html

Brother Cadfael – Ellis Peters

On February 12, 2019April 29, 2019 By bookramblings142In Reviews1 Comment

Finding myself abroad last week, but having fallen and badly sprained my ankle so forced into inactivity, I picked up a copy of the Brother Cadfael Omnibus volume two which my host owned. I chose this because I have the Cadfael stories in their individual volumes at home so if I didn’t finish a book then I could do so on my return. Omnibus volume two consists of books four to six of the series i.e. Saint Peters Fair, The Leper of Saint Giles and The Virgin in the Ice and I finished the first two and got most of the way through The Virgin in the Ice which I have now completed. I have read all twenty one of the books in the series several times so knew I was in for a fun time even though I could remember most of the plots.

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For those people unfamiliar with the stories Brother Cadfael (the name is Welsh and pronounced Kad-vile) is a monk at the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Shrewsbury, Shropshire and the books are almost all set from 1137 to 1145 during the civil war between King Stephen and his cousin Empress Maud for control of the English crown. The one exception is A Rare Benedictine which is actually a collection of three short stories exploring Cadfael’s life before the first book going back as far as 1120 when he was a crusader. This book is also not included in the standard numbering of the series, it should be number sixteen but is skipped in the sequence by most publishers and when the omnibus editions were put together it was assigned the final place in volume seven further emphasising that it is not really part of the story arc. Apart from that the books follow on from each other so this is one series where it really does pay to read them in order. The character is a herbalist within the monastery and is seen by his superiors as a useful link to the secular powers such as the sheriff and especially his deputy Hugh Beringer due to the long time he spent in the world before withdrawing to the monastic life. His knowledge of herbs and remedies is also very useful both within the abbey and to the town and the surrounding area and this leads him to be involved in poisonings and murders as the basis of a lot of the plots.

I would be very surprised if the Estonian medieval detective tales of Apothecary Melchior tales by Indrek Hargla were not heavily influenced by the Cadfael stories as although they are set a couple of hundred years later the two characters are very similar in skills and ways of approaching crime.

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Ellis Peters was one of the pseudonyms used by Edith Pargeter for her in excess of seventy five books along with dozens of short stories written between 1936 and her death in 1995. She lived almost her entire life within 5 miles of where I now reside being born in the small village of Horsehay and dying just 3½ miles from there in the town of Madeley at the age of eighty two, so she was very much a local celebrity round here. There is even a window dedicated to her memory in Shrewsbury abbey (about fifteen miles from here) and the Cadfael trails around Shrewsbury are still a popular tourist draw to the town. As well as a novelist she was a historian and translator and it is her historical interests that adds so much character to the books. Numerous real people are mentioned including the two abbots and the prior of the abbey who were indeed there when she says they were

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The covers I have included are from my own copies, there are numerous sets of covers that you can get the books in, I particularly like this version although it is mildly annoying as you cannot get all the books in exactly the same format as the publishers (Futura) decided to change it to include the book number on the cover near the end of the series which messed up the design. However the ‘parchment’ background with decorated lettering I think is very satisfying for books set in a medieval monastery. The books have fallen out of popularity since Pargeter’s death and the TV series which ran in the late 1990’s but they are well worth a read and you will also learn quite a but about ‘The Anarchy’, a period of English history that also doesn’t seem to be known about in modern times.

Sourcery (book proof) – Terry Pratchett

On February 5, 2019December 3, 2019 By bookramblings142In Reviews2 Comments

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The fifth Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett was published on 26th May 1988, before that however Gollanz released a sample for book reviewers and this was the only time that the book proof of one of Terry’s works was not the complete book. Instead what you got was just the first 61 pages and an essay from Terry explaining Discworld as it was still not well known. It is this short essay that makes this book so interesting as it has never been reprinted so you can only read it is you are one of the lucky few people that own a copy. It is not known exactly how many were printed but the proofs of books four and six in the series were both only of circa 100 copies produced so it is not unreasonable to assume that it is also the case for this example. The poor production value of what is basically a pamphlet with what looks like a bad black and white photocopy of the cover for an author who was not then famous would also suggest that not all of the printed editions were kept.

When Sourcery was printed for real the first edition (see below) ran to 7,600 copies, ten years later Carpe Jugulum (printed 5th November 1998) would have a first edition print run of 160,000 in the UK alone although the proof for that book was still only 148 examples. Pratchett UK book proof collecting takes a lot of looking to find copies and they are all rare.

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But back to the sample book proof, the essay inside describes how Terry saw the Discworld at the time, over the years this evolved and it is fascinating to read his views then, just four and a half years after the first book in a series that would eventually run to forty two novels, along with numerous other books, maps, plays etc. that added to the Discworld universe. The essay is headed

An Introduction to the series, composed by the Author, and included to make this special preview sample of Sourcery even more valuable as a collector’s item

In it he gives this description of why he invented Discworld in the first place

It was created as an antidote to all those trilogies whose worthy heroes stagger across three volumes in order to do whatever it is that the fates have decreed that a hero must do. But fairy tales and folklore and all the feedstocks of fantasy have been dragged into it, and the humour gently teased out of them by the simple process of taking them seriously and staffing them with real people. This is very unfair on them, because it is like turning loose a large herd of cows in a small pottery.

This was indeed the case in the early Discworld books, the story is played for laughs and there is a strong sense of parody about the writing particularly in the ones up to and including Sourcery. The name of the novel by the way is also a joke and is deliberately spelled that way rather than Sorcery. The concept is that the eighth son of an eighth son is automatically a wizard of power but if he then goes on to have children each son would be as powerful as any existing wizard and if he has an eighth son then he would be a wizard squared and be all powerful with access to the source of all raw magic on the Disc hence a Sourcerer rather than a sorcerer. This duly happens and wizards start building towers to fight with one another, laying waste to the lands and peoples between; does this remind you of any three volume series by any chance? Pratchett specifically mentions Tolkien a little later.

Thus on the Discworld, wizards smoke. Nothing new about this Tolkien revealed to the world that wizards smoke. But on the Disc they really smoke, you can tell a wizard by his golden fingers, stained beard, tendency to cough when walking upstairs and, in the dark, by his little red glow.

The book goes on the amplify to the ridiculous numerous tropes of the fantasy novels up until then, barbarian heroes that are either like Cohen at 87 years old and sometimes needs to be carried off by the young maidens he has just rescued from sacrifice or patently unsuited for the role they have chosen such as Nijel who is far too polite for this sort of thing with his battle cry of “Erm, excuse me”. The book is very funny especially if you are well read in the sort of books that Pratchett is mercilessly parodying.

People keep asking for maps of the Disc, on the basis that all fantasy world have to have a map, but I retreat into my Somerset bunker and refuse on the ground that I may decide to move places around a bit if it makes a better joke.

As stated above there are now maps not just of the Disc itself but also specific regions but they weren’t created by Terry, instead Stephen Briggs eventually convinced him that it could be mapped, starting with the city of Ankh-Morpork and eventually the whole world and yes it did prove difficult because there wasn’t a map when the books were written and the lost continent of XXXX had to have a huge extension added just so that one of the books worked. The later books are also less parody of fantasy novels and more a humorous parody of life on Earth, back then Pratchett could never have seen where his work would take him and the millions of books he would sell, indeed he was somewhat bemused that it was as popular as it was even then.