Wednesday, April 29: Tune It Or Die!
COMFORT FOOD
by Rob Lopresti
I am at the start of what appears to be my fourth cold of 2009, and don’t get me started on what a treat that has been. But when I was home sick with number 3, and cranking up a can of chicken noodle soup and breaking out a box of OTC Oyster Crackers (yum!) I started thinking about comfort food.
You know what I mean. Your go-to comestibles for when you are too sick to eat well, or too depressed to hear the word “cholesterol” one more time. I think we all have them.
But what I found myself pondering was the literary equivalent of this culinary stand-by. When I have a fever and moving my eyeballs from the left side of the page to the right causes an ache I am not in any condition to absorb new reading matter. I want to reread something I love and half know by heart.
I lean toward humor, not surprisingly. Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder novels. The great essayists: Benchley, Barry, Thurber, and so on. Twain’s travel books (open to a random chapter of Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, or the first half of Life On The Mississippi.)
And while I am not a fan of graphic novels in general I have been known to pull out one of the Tintin books by Herge and review the adventures of the intrepid boy reporter. I’ll give him a full column one of these days.
Voting myself onto the Island
And speaking of full columns, I need to say more about Thomas Perry some time – I see I did give him a plug last November. The Perry book I like to reread when I’m ill is Island. This novel barely qualifies as a mystery. It is a sort of utopian world as designed by con men.
The book begins with Harry and Emma, a husband and wife team of con artists ripping off a wealthy and very dangerous crook. They head to the Caribbean for safety and look for a place to invest the money. Harry notices that there are a lot of islands so tiny that no country has claimed them. Hmm… What if you stole some bulky stuff — like a load of junk cars — and dumped it on the tiny island to make it bigger? And then stole some soil and put it on top? Eventually you would have a place large enough to call a country and start creating some really innovative banking laws …
Sounds simple enough, but the problem is, creating a country is complicated. What do you do when refugees from less successful countries start arriving, for instance? And how do you deal with criminals, seeing that you are one yourself? And most annoying, what do you do when your fellow residents insist on thinking that your con game is a real country and start getting patriotic about it?
Moving pictures
Years ago when I got sick I would often pull out one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books and reread it, but I find that doesn’t happen anymore. Now I take out a video of A&E’s wonderful Nero Wolfe series and let it flow by when I’m too dizzy to read at all. Part of the fun is thinking about which actors are perfect for their parts (Murray Chaykin’s Wolfe, Saul Rubinek’s Lon Cohen, and Conrad Dunn’s Saul Panzer, despite Dunn’s bearing little physical resemblance to the character), those who are adequate (Timothy Hutton’s Archie), and those who are just wrong (Bill Smitrovich as Cramer, but I have never seen a filmed Inspector Cramer I liked).
And now I’m going to take two aspirin and a nap. But do you have literary comfort food? Fill me in.
Psssst! Swine flu!
Catcher in the Rye or anything by Mark Twain makes me happy when I’m sick. Or something written by Celia Rivenbark who always makes me laugh out loud makes me feel better.
Since the arrival of the mailman yesterday I have found comfort in the July-August double issue of AHMM. First came one of the nicest cover I have seen. It could be the canal towpath in the National Park that begins in the town where I live.
Then on the contents page I discovered a story by Rob and another by John Floyd. Criminal Brief hit the trifecta because by turning one more page to the brief bios of contributors I found a photo of JLW himself at a black tie affair.
As it was first in line I read Rob’s SHANKS ON MISDIRECTION. Not only did Shanks solve a crime, he obeyed an order given by his wife. A remarkable man.
Next came John’s THE POWDER ROOM, a chilling story set in Arkansas. It will keep any reader on the edge of his seat to the very last sentence.
Then I searched for something by JLW. I did this by leafing through the pages because nothing was mentioned in the contents. Once again I found nothing, so I repeated the process. In doing so I read many things I normally would skip right over. Ads for science fiction magazines, advice on how to solve an acrostic, tips on silencing telemarketers, stuff like that. Still nothing.
I want to make it perfectly clear that there is not a jealous bone in my old body, yet it should be pointed out that not once in 30 years has my picture appeared in AHMM. Is this a new trend? Is it possible that in the next issue without a story of mine, and there are many of them, that readers will find my photo? After all, fair is fair.
Thanks, Velma sweetheart. Keep a good thought.
Dick, I had no idea my new story would be in this issue and still haven’t seen it. And now you tell me how the story ends!
I’ll forgive you, but only because I just finished your book NORMANDY 1944. Amazing piece of work. I learned a hell of a lot. The story about the arrogant lieutenant was chilling…
Dick, I’ve not yet seen that AHMM issue either — thanks for letting us know our stories are in there.
Rob, great column! I don’t even have to be sick to enjoy that kind of comfort food.
I gave away the ending? That’s unforgivable.
Well, you said Shanks solved the crime. But I suspect most readers were expecting that.
I certainly was.
My comfort food when I was a kid included the spookier scenes in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and a lot of (so help me!) Thorne Smith! “Island” sounds almost like something Leonard Wibberly would have come up with! Get Well Soon!