Matt Calkins joined The Seattle Times in August 2015 as a sports columnist after three years at the San Diego Union Tribune.
Never afraid to take a stand or go off the beaten path, Matt enjoys writing about the human condition every bit as much as walk-offs or buzzer-beaters.
His mom reads the comments so take it easy on him.
view from the narrow window was dreary lonely inexpressibly
From Chapter 1, Page 1 of The Crime atBlack Dudley by Margery Allingham (1904-1966) (published by William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1929).
How you start writing a novel when in your first line, you admit the view was dreary and inexpressibly lonely is beyond my poor power to add or detract.
I have to admire any author who describes a scene with the word ‘inexpressibly’ and then goes on to describe it.
I love and enjoy the writing of the 1930s.
That those writers thought, wrote and inexpressibly expressed themselves like this, leaves me grasping for the now non existent thesaurus.
I came across the writing of Margery Allingham in a search for something to read.
What you say?
Nothing to read?
Let me explain.
Something happened to writing or maybe editing or something over the years.
The influence of TV.
The rise of the word processor.
I miss the lack of narrative.
Watch TV and the narrative is visual but all over the place.
A segment opens with a plane landing or a car driving down a road and words appear on the screen like ‘London’ or ‘Monday 3AM’ or the ever popular ‘3 Days Later. (the first three years of Sponge Bob are the best)’
Without these ‘establishing’ shots, the viewer has NO CLUE as to where they are.
It seems this has become the style in modern American fiction.
Thinking of Tom Clancy here of course but without his section headings, you would never know where you were.
You go from section heading to section heading, sometimes paragraphs at a time are broken up.
I also blame the word processor for some of this as it is so easy to save any short burst of prose and then hammer it by shear force of will somewhere, anywhere, into the narrative and then add the section heading to help the reader understand why this ugly plank is sticking up in the floor.
Read Gone with the Wind (Very Very politically incorrect but for this argument) and NOT ONCE is the setting set by anything but the narrative.
If you know the history of the WRITING of Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell dumped two suitcases of manila envelopes filled with stories and an editor, a very capable editor, transformed Ms. Mitchell’s pages into one long story.
If you get a chance, watch the little watched movie, GENIUS.
Its a great period piece about the author, Thomas Wolfe and his editor, Max Perkins and how the book, Look Homeward Angel was created.
ANYWAY, I guess what I am saying is, they don’t write ’em like this anymore.
And I know there are those who will say, THANK GOODNESS.
For me.
I do like reading writing as much for HOW it is written as for what is written.
I have three or four devices FILLED with the latest fiction.
For me, I can click on a book, read or start reading the first pages and say outloud, ‘NOPE.’
And that’s that for that one.
Sometimes I will have hope and push on through the first pages.
But folks, I know when reading becomes a salmon swimming upstream.
Sometimes no problem.
Sometimes the current the other way is swift.
Sometimes there is dam (what did the salmon say when it hit a concrete wall? DAMN!)
AND SOMETIMES THE RIVER IS BLOCKED BY NIAGRA FALLS.
My point is that I feel I give these authors a fair chance, but I can tell, fairly quickly, when its a no go.
A Canadian website where books, whose CANADIAN copyright has expired, have been scanned and put online for download for FREE!
Got to love those Canadians.
Browsing through this website, I came across the writing of Margery Allingham and the Albert Campion Mystery series.
Ms. Allingham starts the first book with :
The view from the narrow window was dreary and inexpressibly lonely.
Miles of neglected park-land stretched in an unbroken plain to the horizon and the sea beyond. On all sides it was the same.
The grey-green stretches were hayed once a year, perhaps, but otherwise uncropped save by the herd of heavy-shouldered black cattle who wandered about them, their huge forms immense and grotesque in the fast-thickening twilight.
In the centre of this desolation, standing in a thousand acres of its own land, was the mansion, Black Dudley; a great grey building, bare and ugly as a fortress. No creepers hid its nakedness, and the long narrow windows were dark-curtained and uninviting.
The man in the old-fashioned bedroom turned away from the window and went on with his dressing.
‘Gloomy old place,’ he remarked to his reflection in the mirror. ‘Thank God it’s not mine.’
For me, reading this is like watching a skilled piano player.
Fingers on keys, almost effortlessly calling notes out of the piano.
Fingers on keys almost effortlessly calling words out of typewriter.
our history’s parts only way can be lost is we choose to lose them
I am not sure when I became aware of the actor Stanley Tucci.
Much like Ward Bond and Thomas Mitchell, Mr. Tucci seems to have been in everything and nothing at the same time.
He is always there.
I am not sure when it was but I do recall looking him up to find out who he was, and I think this was back in the days of if you wanted to look up a movie you grabbed a paper back (possibly the thickest regularly sold paper book in the store) copy of ‘Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide’, a copy of which was always laying around the TV in my house, and you looked up the movie and hoped you could figure out who was who from the short cast listing.
My Dad was a minor movie buff and he loved that book.
“4 stars for that?”, he would yell or “COME ON MIKE, it’s FOUR STARs with Clark Gable!”
He also loved to read the description of the 1962 remake of State Fair with Pat Boone, pause then yell, “BOMB.”
He would laugh and laugh.
It is amazing that back in the days of over the air three channel TV’s to remember how often movies were on TV.
TV shows cost money to make.
Movies were already made.
Television was flooded with movies.
The movies of the 40’s and 50’s.
The black and white era.
Every station had a block where an old movie could be run.
Bill Kennedy at the Movies from Detroit.
WGN’s Movie Night from Chicago.
My Dad also liked to listen to the CUBS on WGN radio from Chicago.
If there was a good movie on the night before, Lou Boudreau and Vince Lloyd would talk about it during the basbell game.
There wasn’t much else to watch and everybody watched the same thing.
Wait you say, if this is before cable TV, how did we watch WGN in Grand Rapids where we lived?
You caught me.
This didn’t happen in Grand Rapids.
We were one of those lucky family’s that had a summer place in Grand Haven, Michigan.
We lived right on the shore of Lake Michigan.
The first thing my Dad would do each spring was hook up a TV antenna high enough to pull in the stations from Chicago.
I watched the late movies from WGN all summer long.
If you watched old movies and you wanted more information the only source you had was that Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide.
And at some point, I looked up Stanley Tucci.
I remember doing this as I can see the book in my hands and hear myself saying ‘Stanly Tuckee – touchi – ha whaaa??’.
If I look Mr. Tucci up in the Wikipedia and read through his list of movies or his ‘Filmography’ nothing really pops out at me until you get to The Big Night in 1996.
If you haven’t seen, it is worth the effort to pirate to watch and enjoy and hear about the dish called timpano.
Since the Big Night, Mr. Tucci, for me, entered into that ‘Ward Bond, Thomas Mitchell’ phase I mentioned and now he seems to be in everything and everywhere.
And Mr. Tucci has published a book.
Actually he has a couple of books to his credit but a new one has just come out.
When I worked in a bookstore nothing, well, almost nothing, made me more angry that anytime a celebrity would bank on their name and publish anything but a bio.
Bill and HILARY Clinton have now published novels.
Sports figures who I would figure could not construct a basic English sentence to save their lives have published novels.
OH COME ON.
Quite a few celebrities can get around this by publishing cookbooks but again, oh come on.
Is that something the world needs?
After 20 years of working for a book seller, library and publisher let me tell you about cookbooks.
Any cookbook with ONE, that’s right, ONE good recipe in it is a good cookbook.
99% of the cookbooks in the world are BAD cookbooks.
Now Mr. Tucci has published Taste, My Life Through Food.
This way its a bio and a cookbook.
And it is a delight.
Mr. Tucci can turn a sentence or at least he can with his editors help.
But the book has a secret ingredient.
Readers all know that part of the mystery of reading is how did the author intend to have this read.
What sounds, what phrasing, what and where are the pauses.
For the most part, each reader makes up their own mind.
For example, take Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I have never been able to listen to any audio version of the Lord of the Rings because of the way Gollum is re-created.
One, the voice is nothing like what I imagined and I won’t waste my time.
Or, two, the voice is spot on and that is just tooooooooo creepy to be listened to..
And you never know when that Gollum will show up.
Plow your way through the book, “The Long Season: The Classic Inside Account of a Baseball Year” which is known for being one of the first, inside the locker room – tell it like it is – baseball books written back in 1959 and all of sudden the author-player tells how he went through a phase driving everyone nuts in the St. Louis Cardinals locker room by talking like Gollum.
“Has he got handses?”
“Can he hits baseballses?”
I pass over those film adaptations of Lord of the Rings except to say I really wish the filmmaker had taken the time to read the books as I am not sure what the movies were based on.
Another example is Charlotte’s Web.
If you like this book please try, just for a gift for yourself (let me know if you need it emailed to you) to find the audio version.
The audio version read by EB White.
There is a lot of magic and poetry in the sound of White’s voice and to hear his phrasing and pronunciation is the purest form of this book you can imagine.
Keep in mind that when the manuscript for Charlotte’s Web arrived at the publisher it needed NO editing of any kind.
So back to Mr. Tucci.
It must be because of his recent show on CNN that this works.
I watched that show with my wife and when I read his book, I can hear Mr. Tucci.
I can catch his phrashing and such.
Mr. Tucci also has one of those voices that is both distinct and yet doesn’t stand out except to say it is uncommonly common.
My reading of Taste: My Life Through Food is like listening to the audio version because I hear it in my head as I read.
Goofy I know but there it is.
I doubt I will try many of the recipes in the book at this time.
But I will read them.
I also will read about Mr. Tucci’s adventures growing up in America.
We are about the same age and I also can remember WANTING if not getting and eating a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich.
Also at this time I am spending a lot time thinking about food and families and culture and culture expressed through food and familys.
The Gullah Culture wants to presever its culture though food,
The SouthernFoodwaysAlliance documents, studies, and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
Mr. Tucci sums this up in an E PLURIBUS UNUM on food when he writes:
Losing a beloved family heirloom is a very real personal loss;
they’re things that cannot ever be replaced or re-created.
But perhaps the most precious heirlooms are family recipes.
Like a physical heirloom, they remind us from whom and where we came and give others, in a bite, the story of another people from another place and another time.
Yet unlike a lost physical heirloom, recipes are a part of our history that can be re-created over and over again.
The only way they can be lost is if we choose to lose them.”
I want to eat it all.
My Mom’s Thanksgiving Stuffing Recipe … how it reads…This is what the recipe says ….
It is the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, a fugitive today from the PC police I am sure, who famously said that Great Britain and the United States were, “two nations divided by a common language.”
On Mr. Shaw I have always wondered about his name.
I have so often heard him referred to as Bernard Shaw that I came to beleive that he had one of those hypnnated names, thusly George Bernard-Shaw.
Checking the Wikipedia this morning, come to learn, he was known as Bernard Shaw, “at his insistence”.
So there it is.
Now if I could take the time to look Ralph Vaughn Williams (Rafe?? Vaughn-Williams), BUT I DIGRESS.
Also, going online this morning I see that there is some question of attribution of the quote with some folks leaning towards Oscar Wilde and some to Winston Churchill.
I never had any doubt.
I knew it was George Bernard Shaw because George C. Scott, in the title role, in the movie, Patton, quotes BGS.
I am sure you all know the scene.
The old British lady’s lap dog scares Patton’s pit bull, Willie.
I endorse the sentiment that we here in the States and the Brits both speak English of a sort.
Of a sort.
I knew a news director who always demanded that when we showed video of Prince Charles, he should be closed captioned.
But today I want to expand the thought.
Not only separated by a common language but by a common desire to eat.
Readers of this blog will not be surprised when on a Sunday Morning I again turn to one of my weekend checkmarks of reading the Guardian’s Blind Date feature.
Two people are set up on a Blind Date at a London Restaurant and then fill out a questionaries’ on their experience.
It is a harmless bit of fun in a dark world.
Along with a review of the date is a link to the Restaurant where the couple met.
It is worth the click to check out the restaurant and look at a London menu.
I have to ask, WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE EATING?
Today’s blind date met a a place called Sidechick.
It’s a chicken place.
Too bad one of today’s daters was vegetarian.
But not too worry as Sidechick’s website states, “We specialise in the juiciest, most delicious cuts of Roast Chicken & freshly cooked vegetables.”
Pretty safe here.
No worries.
Chicken and veggies.
Could there be anything easier?
I mean lets call the Colonel!
But keep reading the menu.
Under starters you could order bitter leaves.
Bitter leaves with ricotta, pickled pumpkin, walnuts!
NUMMIE NUMMIE as my grandson Jaxon might say.
Lets order up some bitter leaves MOM!
Then there is the chicken.
Half or whole chicken with choice of marinade.
Chimichurri, Piri Piri or Za’atar.
MMMMMMMMM.
Finger lickin good!
And finally, the vegetables.
The vegetable dishes at Sidechicks are a mix of Aubergine, tomato compote, labneh, breadcrumbs, pecorino cheese, Pearl barley, wild mushroom, bone marrow, Grilled celeriac, salsify, trompette, kale, Braised courgettes, freekeh and tahini.
Words or foods I recognize seem to jump out of this list as if they were written in neon.
Other words or foods have the aura of being written on a chalk board.
Some faux fancy faux food designed to make me realize how un-faux I am.
I know I know, you say tomato I say tomato.
It brings to mind the old Andy Griffith Show episode where Deputy Barney Fife is mystifeid by a menu so he just points at various items.
The gag is revealed when he is brought a plate of snails.
The thing is Ol ‘Barn was looking at a menu in French.
This menu is in English.
I might order braised courgettes with freekeh and tahini just because it would be so much fun just to say that out loud in a restaurant.
Ahhhhhhhhh well, we all got to eat.
I remember an interview with the wonderful Julia Child.
She was asked, “Do you ever go out and just get a Big Mac?”
Ms. Child hesitated and smiled, tucked in her chin and said in that marvelous accent that can only be described as Julia Child’s accent, “Well … I prefer the Quarter Pounder.”
welcome or threat, a sympathy for the future hankering for past
What will tomorrow bring.
Why did yesterday have to be left behind?
Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Maybe yesterday was as good as it gets.
I like to read the books of Bernard Cornwell.
His Sharpe Series is a great way to learn about the war in Spain against Napoleon.
I have reread these books several times.
The Last Kingdom or Saxon Stories are absorbing enough though after 13 books its hard to not start flipping through the battle scenes to get to the character narrative.
Not meant as a criticism but I find myself reading through the books and hitting some passages and that scene from the movie, ‘Amadeus’ comes to mind when Mozart plays a short piece of music written by Antonio Salieri after just one hearing.
Young Mozart picks his way through the first couple of bars, squints off into the middle distance and mutters, ‘The rest is just the same, isn’t it?”
Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles are an interesting take on the Arthurian Legends and Arthur as a reluctant hero.
I think Mr. Cornwell is a bit hard on Christians but I think I can discern between his take on Christians as portrayed in the life Galahad and professional organized religion as portrayed by everything else church related in the three novels.
Also the in depth examination of the old ‘norse’ ways does tend to make me uncomfortable but I take the long road here as I know who historically wins this argument.
Some of the best scenes are the also repeated in the Saxon Series, where the folks come across Roman ruins of villas, baths and bridges.
They look over the ruins and say, “how did they do this?”
Knowledge can be lost so easily.
I hate to think what happens to the modern library without electricty.
The great libraries prior to 1900, those wonderful, vast reading rooms like you see in Univ of Michigan Hatcher Library or even the Grand Rapids Michigan Main building were all designed to use natural lighting from windows.
The roofs were giant skylights.
The floors were thick translucent glass.
Then came Tom Edison and electric light.
Much like how it took the Wright Brothers 3 hours to get the engine on the first Wright Flyer running the morning they invented flight so they actually invented flight delay first, Tom Edison wired America with power but he also invented the power outage.
ANYWAY, the three books tell the story of Arthur once again.
And you can’t tell the story of Arthur with telling the story of Merlin.
Throughout the three novels, Merlin has a line.
Wyrd bið ful āræd.
Fate is inexorable.
Tomorrow is coming.
Yesterday is gone.
Time and tide sweeps the beaches twice a day here.
How can anything not be new?
That might be welcome news.
That might be a threat.
We ate out last night ate one of our favorite local restaurants.
We like it as it good, local and somehow holds the line against charging resort area prices.
I would say its cheap or at least cheaper.
Last night they had new menus.
Not only new menus, but new dishes.
We searched the menu for our favorites and with the help of the waitress we came close.
Close but not the same.
Throughly enjoyed our dinner.
Wistfully, a little part of our brain, wanted our favorites back.
We understood the need for a fresh menu.
We had sympathy for the future.
We had a hankering for the past.
Wow.
All we wanted was dinner.
Wyrd bið ful āræd.
######
Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:
However, there might be a way to surmount this state of sterile relativism with the help of John Ruskin’s provocative remark about the eloquence of architecture.
The remark focuses our minds on the idea that buildings are not simply visual objects without any connection to concepts which we can analyse and then evaluate.
Buildings speak – and on topics which can readily be discerned.
They speak of democracy or aristocracy, openness or arrogance, welcome or threat, a sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past.
What Ruskin is quoted as saying is:
‘A day never passes without our hearing our architects called upon to be original and to invent a new style,’ observed John Ruskin in 1849, bewildered by the sudden loss of visual harmony.
What could be more harmful, he asked, than to believe that a ‘new architecture is to be invented fresh every time we build a workhouse or parish church?
According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”
What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.
I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.
No Haiku For You 