BANDERSNATCHES

by Steve Steinbock

So Many Stories

My nightstand is creaking under the pressure. I keep adding to the weight it’s bearing, and seldom do I find the time to sit down and read. A week or so back, Rob Lopresti wrote about Jorge Luis Borges in his Tune It or Die. That prompted me to out my two collections of his stories, Labyrinths and The Aleph and Other Stories. They are now keeping company with an Everyman’s Library edition of the collected stories of Somerset Maugham. An unusual (and unusually attractive in its stark, dark simplicity) book called 20th Century Ghosts arrived a month or so back. It is a collection of stories by Joe Hill (The Heart-Shaped Box). I’ve been able to read the first two stories so far. I’ve never read Zora Neale Hurston, and I’ve got an urge to try her out. (I figured I’d read some of her short fiction before Their Eyes Were Watching God). And with all that, today’s mail brought new issue of Ellery Queen, with integrated Black Mask material, with a Hammett story. (For more on EQMM and Black Mask, have a look at JLW’s column from October 22). I need a month on a deserted island.

Why Do We Read?

Last week I mentioned the audio lecture series I’ve been listening to in the car, Way with Words II: Approaches to Literature, delivered by Professor Michael Drout of Wheaton College. Among the many questions he’s gotten me thinking about is, why do we read, anyhow?

It’s not a rhetorical question. Nor am I preaching the importance of reading. But Mike Drout brings up what I find to be a deep question that is more in the realm of anthropology or neurobiology than of literary criticism. Drout points out that most people get pleasure from reading, maybe not every time we read, but often enough. Is there something about our hard-wiring that gives us pleasure to read stories, poems, or well-constructed sentences?

Homo sapiens is a pattern-seeking animal. We look for order, even in randomness. Perhaps this is the key. It might explain why some musical prodigies can get pleasure looking at a series of notes on sheet music, or why David Krumholtz’ character on Numb3rs can find equations on a white board better than sex. I suppose it also might account, at least in part, for why the rest of us who aren’t musical or mathematical geniuses can have our pleasure centers triggered when we read or hear words put together in elegant patterns.

Tell me what you think.

A Mysterious Canon

I’m often known to kvetch about how most mystery fans today are ignorant of the great mystery writers of eighty or fifty, or even twenty years ago. I know, it’s priggish of me. But I find it a shame that people who wouldn’t miss a volume of Cornwell or Grisholm have never read Stout or Gardner or Christie, and have never even heard of H.C. Bailey or R. Austin Freeman.

Perhaps “canon” is too strong a word for what I mean. It would be kind of tyrannical for me or anyone else to establish a list of Essential Mysteries to be maintained for all time. (But then, canonization of Saints has proven to be less permanent than was once thought).

I do think that it’s up to mystery lovers, writers, and publishers to remember where the genre came from, and how far it’s come, and to periodically revisit the greats of the past. I’m resisting the temptation to create my own list, my syllabus of Detective Fiction.

(If I did create such a syllabus, it would surely include Chandler, Freeman, Carr, Christie, Hammett, Marsh, Bailey, Berkeley, and the three Macdonalds (sic): Philip, Ross, and John D, and of course Doyle and Poe. But I’ve already said too much. I see names I left out, and am already regretting it).

Over the years a lot of lists have been compiled. The Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones is the most important list to be put together, even though the case could be made that it’s dated. Queen’s Quorum is an important list of short story collections, begun by Fred Dannay (half of Ellery Queen) and continued by Doug Greene. My personal favorite list is Harry (HRF) Keating’s “100 Best Crime and Mystery Books.” If you, dear reader, want to peruse any of these lists, here’s a good site which lists them: www.classiccrimefiction.com/awards.htm. Also check out Kate Stine’s The Armchair Detective Book of Lists.

Happy Reading.