Sunday Sundries, 273

1. HBsOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: Is there any question? This week? Any week? Every week? HEALTH CARE WORKERS.

2, I finished three books this week: one on Kindle, one that's on my nightstand and gets attention every night or so for about ten pages, one that I read during the week.

     - The first was A White Arrest, 1998, by Ken Bruen, whose novels about Jack Taylor I devoured after streaming the TV series about him (called, oddly, Jack Taylor).  (A "white arrest," by the way is cop slang for a great one--an important one.)

This volume is part of a series about London Detective Sergeant Tom Brant, a crude and violent fellow who may, perhaps, be one of the most un-PC of heroes. This book is part of a trilogy (The White Trilogy)--and, yes, I'm going to start the second one tonight. This story is about some brutal murders of the English cricket team by ... ain't tellin'.

Features of Bruen's style: short chapters, lots of space breaks, dark humor, much dialogue, literary allusions (Brant loves Ed McBain novels--I ate them myself quite a few years ago). I would say one of the principal characters in his novels is Mr. Unexpected.

The books ends with a grim surprise--also characteristic of the Taylor novels--but we'll assume the best because Brant returns in the next book, Taming the Alien.

     - The second I finished was Heart and Science (1882), a late novel by Wilkie Collins (1824-89), whose complete novels I've almost ... completed. (He is probably best known for The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868).)

This one is very dark (most of the way) and involves a young physician (who is ill himself), Ovid, and a young woman, Carmina, with whom he's fallen in love. (Complication: She is his first cousin--though that was not the problem then that it is now.) They pledge their love, plan to marry--but Carmina's mother (and Ovid's aunt) is horrified, and, believing a foul story about Carmina's mother, refuses to sanction the marriage.

Meanwhile, Ovid has left for Canada to recover his health, and Carmina, stunned by her aunt's behavior, swoons and seems near death.

Another physician in the story, Benjulia, is a heartless man, experimenting cruelly on animals and (as we later learn) on people. He is watching Carmina--not really to heal her but to see how her illness progresses! There's also a creepy piano teacher (who gets his).

The resolution arrives ... Ovid returns ... and Carmina ...? Ain't sayin'.

Anyhow, I love this paragraph about vanity--has some contemporary relevance, wouldn't you say?

The general opinion which ranks vanity among the lighter failings of humanity, commits a serious mistake. Vanity wants nothing but the motive power to develop into absolute wickedness. Vanity can be savagely suspicious and diabolically cruel. What are the two typical names which stand revealed in history as the names of the two vainest men that ever lived? Nero and Robespierre (204 in Broadview Press edition).

I've got only four Collins' novels left!

     - The third is The Egyptologist, 2004, by Arthur Phillips, whose complete novels I've been reading (thank goodness, he's not in the same prolific group as Dickens, Trollope, Collins).

This story--told entirely in letters, journals, and interviews--is about a young man Ralph Trilipush, whose name I learned elsewhere, is an anagram for Arthur Phillips! (Wish I had figured that out; I didn't.)

Trilipush believes that there is a previously unknown Egyptian king, Atum-hadu. And in the early 1920s, as Howard Carter is about to discover the tomb of King Tut, Trilipush raises money from some wealthy investors (one has a daughter whom Trilipush successfully courts). And off he goes in the search.

Oh, and he's also self-published translations of some poems supposedly written by the mysterious king and discovered in the desert. Throughout the book he's continually giving signed copies of the book to other characters (in a sometimes vain hope to impress them).

Trilipush's back story--WW I, Oxford University, his status as a Harvard adjunct--comes into question--as does the entire Atrum-hadu business.

We jump ahead in time, too, to the 1950s when an old private detective, now in a nursing home, is telling the story, via letters,  to another investigator.

Well, Trilipush finds a tomb (or does he)--and inside, lots of ...

This is a powerful novel about obsession, about self-delusion, about how arrogance and outsized ambition can lead to lots of trouble.

I like this: A small scrap of words can yield as many interpretations as there are interpreters (334).

Phillips is astonishing. I've read five of his books now, and each is so different from the others--in subject matter, time period, style, narrative technique. Oh, the research this guy must do!

3. It was a sad moment last night when Joyce and I streamed the final episode of the two-season series The Detectorists, about some English metal-detecting folks. Gentle and wise and moving and funny and sad and ... you-name-it. It's available on Amazon Prime. Thanks to friend Chris for pointing us toward this one.

4. But we've started the new season (6) of Bosch on Amazon Prime (based on the LA detective created by Michael Connelly, who produces here). One difficulty: trying to remember what happened last season!

5. We finished the latest Netflix comedy special by Chris D'Elia, who has an incredibly expressive face and body. Definitely not PG-13 (or PC), but we both laugh a lot when watching him. It's his 3rd special, I think.

6. I've been able to get back on our exercise bike. My dizziness--so constant now--allows it, and I handle it better than walking.

I haven't worked out at all really in the past month or so, except some mile-walks with Joyce during the quarantine, but I'm riding 10 minutes now (burning about 100 cal) and will slowly increase the time as my breathing and leg strength allow.

7. Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from The Oxford English Dictionary

Henriad, n. With the and capital initial, as the Henriad: Shakespeare's four historical plays, Richard II , Henry IV, Pt. 1 , Henry IV, Pt. 2 , and Henry V , considered as a group or performed as a cycle.

Origin: From a proper name, combined with an English element. Etymons: proper name Henry, -ad suffix1.

Etymology: <  Henry, the name of two Lancastrian kings of England who ruled between 1399 and 1422 (as Henry IV and Henry V) + -ad suffix.

 

1935 Observer  31 Mar. 17/3 It was a good idea to supplement the first part of the ‘Henriad’, now on view at His Majesty's, with its even greater sequel.

1944  J. Gielgud Let.  14 Aug. in Life in Lett.(2004) 76 I wanted to do the Henriad—Richard II-Henry V—at the beginning of this year.

1975 Criticism  17 195 Throughout the Henriad such concepts as ‘legitimacy’, ‘divine right’, and ‘divine justice’ are evoked and examined.

2004  A. F. Kinney Shakespeare's Webs  iv. 109 The Henriad is, finally, a tribute to Henry V's ability…to restore firm rule.