Is Satire Set in Time?

I finished Babbitt two States ago and have found it difficult to review. It is set in 1920 and is obviously a satire about aspiring middle class men with commonplace pretensions. Babbitt is a realtor in Zenith, a midsized town in the mid-West. His house looks like everyone else's in his neighborhood; he attends the same clubs as his peers; he espouses political views only after reading about them on the editorial page.

Sinclair Lewis over-draws Babbitt and his family and friends to ridicule the pettiness of their lives. Even when Babbitt has his mid-life crisis, commits adultery with a radical widow and imbibes of bootleg booze, it is all seen as a farce. Babbitt's return to the fold of conservatism and boosterism at the book's end is equally derided.

When I started the book, the word "jaunty" kept popping up in my mind. So did the style remind me of Thurber, Woodhouse, or even Kingsley Ames ... not Swift or Pope. Yes, Babbitt's foibles are human but his predicament is too time-dependent to come across as universal.

Lewis is sharp in his ear for dialogue. He replicates banality perfectly. There is only so much of this that is tolerable. After a while, it is like Ed TV or too much My Space. Sorry, Slackers. You can't even get an idea that this is Minnesota, or make-believe Minnesota.

Oh, That Sharon McCrumb?

I'm bad with names. This seems illogical for an English major who had to be able to identify an author from a brief extract. Could do it then, but even then, there were hints that faces would impress me more than last names. So, I was extremely surprised after finishing The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and reading about Sharon McCrumb to realize I had already read two of her previous award-winning books: Bimbos of the Death Sun and If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O. I don't remember especially liking them, especially the first, but maybe because I read it when I was recuperating, received as a distraction from one of the Slackers. Another Slacker recommended Hangman's Daughter. This time I was seduced into the story after a paragraph or two.

McCrumb populates Dark Hollow, Tennessee with eccentric but believable people. The story is complicated in the interweaving of community lives, history, folklore, classical Shakespearean parallel plots, and myth. All pulled off quite readily and unobtrusively. The characters are contemporary archetypes: wives separated from their husbands off at war; veterans still lost in mental battlefields; rejoined childhood friends; and a wise woman who foresees the future.

The hangman referred to is the name of a mountain not the trade of a local citizen, and as such it very well could be that Nora Bonestell, the woman with insight, need not be the only beautiful daughter in town. Certainly the minister's wife, Laura Bruce has characteristics that shine. So does the heroic Tammy Robsart has qualities that are heroic beyond her young age. Even Maggie Underhill, the most tested of all the female characters, is sympathetically tragic.

This is not to say that McCrumb portrays women better than she describes the men who populate this small village in Appalachia. Tavy and Taw are champions of their town and keeping it as they remember from boyhood. The sheriff and his assistant have offbeat personal quirks and demons.

Besides all this powerful storyline and characterization, the book evokes a place. McCrumb often alludes to the pull of the hollers and mountains, calling prodigals back from big cities and compelling residents to rebuild on the same lot after each flood. There is no forced dialect, no reference to local food. Only a cycle of changing landscape, by season and by time. The isolation and simplicity of the community stands out by contrasting it with the war in the Middle East and how long it still takes to drive to North Carolina.

Comparing it to The Red Helmet, the Slacker selection for Kentucky, which also has a female lead trying to come to terms with her marriage causing her relocation into a new place, Hangman's, despite it's being classified in the mystery genre, is a more peaceful, real but illusionary State.

I will remember Sharon McCrumb's name now and seek out more of her stories.

Organized Crime -- A Year of Homicides in Baltimore

I fancy myself as a compulsive organizer: I recently cleaned out my dressers and arranged my sweaters first by season/weight and then by color. Did the same with my bras, reminiscent of displays at Victoria's Secret. When I need to fall asleep on a restless night, I mentally go through the plants in my perennial garden alphabetically. And then, of course, there is the "logic" of this year's reading resolution to plow through a book about each state in the union. So, the idea of writing a chronological book about the Baltimore homicide detectives by a newspaper reporter who embedded himself into their division in 1988 appealed to me. Unfortunately, this mechanism doesn't work for me.

David Simon, writing the police beat for the Baltimore Sun, shadowed the city's detectives for a year of 234 murders. Despite listening a cast of characters in the front of the book, not many of them emerge with dimensions other than those of a cop. They, like the days and the deaths and perpetrators, with few exceptions, all merge together. Standing out only is an internal investigation of a detective who might have been shot by another officer and the never-ending interrogation of a suspected child murderer. Their efforts drone on with a "killing" daily rhythm. Crimes appear to be solved by a streak of luck. Doggedness and excellent crime solving skills are meaningless when district attorneys acknowledge the evidence is too complicated for the typical sub-par jury.

It is only when Simon pulls back to interpret what's going on that insights prevail: his analysis of how the cops use Miranda to their advantage. His recitation of rule number nine on the impossible odds of winning a prosecution is succinct: 9A "to a jury, any doubt is reasonable" 9B "the better the case, the worse the jury" and 9C "a good man is hard to find, but twelve of them, gathered together in one place, is a miracle." Given the time period covered, the squads are all male and Simon describes the bounding and lack of personal privacy that is cultivated in this camaraderie.

When I gave my reading list for the year to my boss to introduce him to my other life as an avid reader and blogger, the only book that appealed to him, the only one he read and enjoyed was Homicide. So maybe, like the western cowboy story I chose to represent North Dakota, this must be a genre that is more masculine than what I typically enjoy. Juxtaposed against the upper Michigan peninsula murder mystery, this true crime story emphasizes the mundane, boring work of policemen. It also does not give a unique sense of locality. Baltimore could be any big crime ridden city. It demarks a time, rather than a place. Subtitled, "a year on the killing streets" seemed almost to be composed in "real time" -- I had to renew the book several times to get through its almost 600 pages. I think I need to come up with an alternate for Maryland for the Slackers.

Hippee for Yoopers – Geocaching in the Upper Peninsula

Yes, I am running on empty. I have left my tour of the fifty states by the side of the road as I concentrated on affairs of the hearth and, when time permitted, got a head start on the books selected for the upcoming year for my face-to-face book club. Actually, I’ve just been unfocused and really needing a break.

But occasionally I have plowed through another day or two with the homicide cops in Baltimore, put them in pending again, and headed off for an easy murder mystery read set in Michigan.

Henry Kisor’s third book in his series about a small town sheriff’s office is Cache of Corpses. Herein I read about geocaching, a sport previously unbeknownst to me: sort of like a scavenger hunt but without collecting trinkets. Kisor takes the sport to its XTREME level where the searchers come upon headless and handless bodies.

The story follows a predictable murder-mystery recipe: interesting main character, Steve Martinez; complicated personal life; quirky fellow policemen; quaint townspeople suspicious of outsiders; serial killer profiler; tension between local and federal law enforcement. (By George, I think I could write one of these.) But Kisor is an engaging writer, if not shockingly original … I mean in terms of style not subject. Only once, and admittedly in a critical development, does the story not hang together and that is when the investigators come to suspect geocaching in the first place.

And so, what makes this story quintessentially Michigan Upper Peninsula? There is a respect for the unique features of the land and the locals’ devotion to keeping them from becoming mere tourist attractions. There is plenty of reflection on native American and first Scandinavian settlers. There is regional slang … never heard of a Yooper before (think UP, duh).

But after so many states, I have distilled from each a more comprehensive appreciation of America per se. It is through several almost innate qualities that Americans express themselves in whatever home the book's characters come from: their identification and appreciation of local history; their struggle to fit in to their surroundings and not be perceived as an outsider; the importance of being able to array the social structure of the community and understand each person’s supporting role in it. Maybe if I were to read a book about every county in Ireland or every province in Canada, I would discover the same humanity.

Kisor will not enter the ranks of my favorite murder mystery writers, but it was a quick escape to an isolated part of a state far from home.

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