Number 17
I was watching a 1946 movie called One More Tomorrow when I realized that it was a remake of the 1932 movie The Animal Kingdom, with a slightly modified storyline. The description in Channel Guide Magazine said, "A playboy marries a gold digger instead of the left-wing photographer he loves." The photographer is not exactly "left wing," as far as I could see, though as an artist she is rather bohemian. She writes an expose of a company selling defective materials to the government ~ treasonous during (1946) wartime. The synopsis of One More Tomorrow on www.allmovie.com is inaccurate (they got the plot wrong); perhaps the Channel Guide writer read it ("liberal, social reformist photographer") and garbled it, instead of watching the movie. But my first thought was that the writer was casting "left wing" as an opposing position to big business, even though in this story, big business is subverting the government and the nation by selling defective airplane parts during World War II. This would be a twist to some popular opinion, placing government interests to the left of something else. But very likely that wasn't the intended meaning, and the writer simply didn't pay attention.
This use of "left" shows not just that "left" and "right" are unclear concepts in the Channel Guide writer's head, but also that these words are changeable and have been since they were first applied in this sense (French National Assembly, 1789). Best to avoid this sort of labeling altogether, I think. "Just the facts, ma'am," as we learned from TV.
From now on I'll spare you extra mass e-mails correcting errors, and instead will include corrections in the next issue, as well as correcting the newsletter on the web site.
A reader noticed that in Parvum Opus 16, Tension, the second sentence should have read:
". . .Her English is excellent, often better than that of those she works with in court. . ."
Another reader queried whether the use of "nor" was correct, without being paired with "neither," here in PO 16: "No one, not the judge nor the defendant's lawyer, objected to this during the trial."
My online dictionary (www.yourdictionary.com) says this:
"Nor, conj. [OE. nor, contr. from nother. See Neither.] A negative connective or particle, introducing the second member or clause of a negative proposition, following neither, or not, in the first member or clause (as or in affirmative propositions follows either). Nor is also used sometimes in the first member for neither, and sometimes the neither is omitted and implied by the use of nor."
Example: "I love him not, nor fear him." ~ Shakespeare
In the Tension edition, I referred to Sharyn McCrumb as a "mystery" writer and when I e-mailed her the piece, she let me know that I must never, never, NEVER do that again, suggesting that it was akin to an ethnic slur. She said she did not give me permission to quote from her e-mails, so I'm paraphrasing in order to retract my careless reference: She's worked hard to cultivate a reputation as a Southern writer of fiction, period, and anyone who thinks she's merely a mystery writer is reading in low gear ~ oops, "low gear" was a quote. (I believe by low-gear she meant slow, simple-minded, stupid, shallow, superficial, some "S" word like that; but let us remember that low gear is necessary for climbing hills or negotiating tricky surfaces. Just try driving all the time in high gear.) She is sick of having to rebut the "mystery" slur again and again. And again. At length.
Since I'd written a review of her books a few years ago for a newsletter called Mysterious Women with no complaints, I had no idea that being thought of as a genre writer would be so insulting. Her books and short stories often ~ though not always and not entirely ~ contain crimes, contemporary or in the past, and are often to be found in the Mystery section of bookstores, thus my mistake. Nowadays she strenuously objects to being shelved in the Mystery section of bookstores, and says she won't do book-signings in those stores. (So if you find her books in the Mystery section, don't buy them; complain to the management; and inform her so she can send the store a firmly, not to say furiously, worded letter.) Like a successful actress who prefers not to be reminded of her early career in X-rated movies, she wishes to shuck the categorization attached to the (quite amusing) earlier novels. McCrumb also notes, emphatically and repeatedly, that her work is now taught in college classes and has been the subject of several master's theses, no doubt because of her solid research in Appalachian history and culture.
Like many readers of mysteries, crime fiction, suspense stories, what have you, I started out with the Nancy Drew series as a kid, along with Shakespeare and other kinds of literature. In college and grad school, I concentrated in twentieth-century fiction, but after years of reading the good stuff, I couldn't bear any more to read novels about "people who are vaguely unhappy in Connecticut," as one writer put it (no, not McC) ~ and often unhappy in the eternal present tense. Mysteries, the good ones and the bad ones, unlike much modern "literary" fiction, not only have action and excitement and plot, but also have a moral base, a point of view, a concept of justice, and plot resolution. Fiction is mostly about good and evil, suffering and redemption (even in Jane Austen, who said she wrote only about love and money), and crime is one way (as well as love and marriage) humans act out their confusion on these issues. The story of Cain and Abel, Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, Othello ~ these are crime stories. Not just crime stories, but never the less. . .
The English novel itself isn't an ancient form, only about 400 years old. The "mystery" as such is a relatively new genre that has branched out into many sub-categories. Good writers in this very broad genre write about a culture and its values. Some contemporary women mystery writers have put women characters into interesting roles seldom or never before found in fiction. Other writers, like Tony Hillerman, depict an intimate knowledge of a particular American subculture. Hillerman writes about the Navajos, using the substructure of a crime and its solution to explicate contemporary Navajo life and traditional beliefs through the characters of two Navajo tribal policemen. He also brings the physical landscape into his stories almost as another character; the Southwest, its beauty and spiritual dimension, are always important to the plot, as well as to the Navajos.
Some musician said there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. It may be reductionist to refer to certain books as "mysteries" but it's not an insult, at least not when it comes from me. Some genre fiction is good, some is bad. Much "literary" fiction is bad and dull. Any labels, like the political tags mentioned above, are always an oversimplification, but they are a convenience. Like language.
Someone sent me the "angry-hungry" riddle that's been going around in different versions. I won't repeat it here, but I'd seen it before, and also found it referred to on a web site about language or grammar (don't remember which one), where the web site author said "Don't write to me about –gry!" I decided not even to try to figure it out, but sure enough, there are quite a few web sites out there on the –gry riddle. The riddle as we've been seeing it is not worded as it was originally, which makes it pretty much impossible to guess. Here are two URLs with explanations:
If you're interested in history, genealogy, or 20th century Americana, check out my web site, the 1939 Calhoun County (West Virginia) High School Yearbook. My dad (Gordon Keith) graduated that year, just before he enlisted in the Navy, and my mom (Ruth Douglas) was a freshman.
Copyright Rhonda Keith 2003. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.
Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services (www.keithops.us).
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