K is for Key, as in the Key to the Cipher

Today’s Post is brought to you by the letter

Where K is for Key. As in cipher key.

I like books about codes. As in secret codes, not writing code as in computer programming. There are some similarities between coding and encoding, but for now, let’s leave it at I like books about secret codes.

I’ve mentioned Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson before in this blog. I called it twisted history at the time. Cryptonomicon is mostly about codes, as in secret codes and encryption systems. I really like this aspect of the book. Enigma by Robert Harris also includes a lot of secret code stuff in it, as the action centres around Bletchley Park, home of English and Allied code-breaking operations. Bletchley Park also features in Cryptonomicon. I’m sure there are other books that feature WW2 code breaking, but those are the two I know about and enjoyed reading.

Codes also feature in Have His Carcass, by Dorothy L. Sayers. HHC features Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane finding bodies and solving murder mysteries. It comes after Strong Poison, and before Gaudy Night. If you like the characters, HHC has them, PLUS, as an added bonus, it has secret codes. And spies. And all kinds of cool stuff. You should check it out.

I’ve got A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar on my shelf to read. It is also about cryptography. I’m interested in the subject, and think the book looks fascinating, so I’m not quite sure why I haven’t read it yet. So many lovely things to read though, that could be part of it. I get distracted by other shiny books.

Update: You may remember that I thought I might read Fifth Business by Robertson Davies but wasn’t sure because of the person who recommended it. I’m almost finished and totally hooked on Robertson Davies. Now I can say I’ve read Davies!

True Confessions about Poetry

I mentioned in a previous post that I once had a dim view of poetry — something about it all being pretentious hipster blather. I have modified my opinion, partially because James Sire and Eugene Peterson convinced me that Poetry was worth reading. I’m still not a big poetry reader, though I am learning to read it better. With that in mind I have acquired some books (big surprise) so I can have poetry to read.

I started trying to read more poetry because I realized that I couldn’t understand poems that I liked that my friends wrote. I got bits of the poem, but I’m sure I’m not plumbing its depths. I have smart, well-read, articulate friends who write interesting things, but if I can’t understand them, possibly I should become better read. Anyhow, there are still lots of poetry books on my to-be-read list. Here is a smattering of what I’ve not read.

1. John Donne – most of his oeuvre. I’ve read some of his Holy Sonnets, but not many. I’m still working on it. I’ve got a book of Donne’s poetry that I dip into now and again. One thing I’m learning is that poems cannot be read quickly, nor does it seem that books of poetry are necessarily meant to be read cover to cover.

2. Danté, The Divine Comedy. I realize this is rather a long work, in three parts, but I do intend to read it. All of it. I have Dorothy Sayers’s translation which I hunted down for years, and only found one volume at a time in used book shops scattered throughout Ontario. In this search I also found a copy of Sayers’s translation of The Song of Roland. That is also on my to-be-read list.

3. Milton, Paradise Lost. I do research on women who interpreted the Bible in the 18th and 19th centuries. They all read Milton. I figure I’d better get on that.

4. The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I’ve got the collected poetry in the Penguin volume on my shelf. These poems have made the recently published list 25 Books Every Christian Should Read. This reinforces my inclusion of Hopkins on my list.

5. As mentioned above, I do research on 18th and 19th century women who interpret the Bible. These well-read women often read poetry. I’ve acquired 2 volumes of 18th Century Verse — one the New Oxford collection and the other a smaller collection by Penguin. I need to read those poems to understand the women I research.

I’ve got other books of poetry lurking on my shelves. I know I’ll read more. Soon.

Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night

Since I quoted from Dorothy Sayers yesterday when I introduced Mystery Week on the Backlist, it seems best to continue with DLS. I think Gaudy Night is at the top of my Preferred Mysteries list. It might be a tie at the top with Val McDermid’s Killing the Shadows, which I will discuss here tomorrow. But on with Gaudy Night and the general wonder of DLS.

Sayers was a very interesting person. She wrote all kinds of things including essays (two are now published in a small book entitled Are Women Human?, a lovely feminist piece), plays, short stories, and detective fiction. She also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy, though she died before completing Paradiso. I worked very hard to acquire my set of the DLS translation of Dante. Of course I haven’t read it yet, but it is there, on my shelf, waiting for me to get up the courage to start.

I think Gaudy Night is one of the best Lord Peter Wimsey novels Sayers wrote. It doesn’t even have Wimsey as the main character. The key point of view character is Harriet Vane. Of course Lord Peter shows up from time to time, and even aids in the solution of the mystery, but most of the work is done by Harriet. I like Harriet’s character slightly better than Peter’s character, so this is possibly one reason I like this book. The other reason is the female academics who populate the book, as it is set in a women’s college in Oxford. Sigh. Oxford, the dream-land of academics. Sayers wrote the book in the 1930s with a contemporary setting. It is very interesting to read the book as a feminist work — which it is, I don’t think it can help being that — from the present time and see how far we’ve come. Or not in some cases.

GN has a large collection of very strong and interesting female characters, something that doesn’t often happen in fiction. I like it for the academic setting (places I wish I could live and work) as well as the interesting cast of characters. And, of course, Miss Vane. You should totally read it. If you’ve already read it, you should read it again.

Agatha and the World of Mysteries

USA Today reported today that, despite being dead, Agatha Christie remains a best-selling author. This is not mysterious — people like mystery stories, and Christie is one of the best-known mystery writers in the English-speaking world. Why do people like mysteries you might ask. Well, let me tell you. Or at least let me give you a theory or two about why people like reading detective stories.

Eugene Peterson lists some mysteries in his extended book-form reading list Take and Read. In the introduction to his list of ten he suggests that one reason people might read mysteries is “that right and wrong, so often obscured in the ambiguities of everyday living, are cleanly delineated in the murder mystery.” We thus read these stories because they provide us with “moral and intellectual breathing room” in the confusing ethical stew in which we live. Hmm. I’m not sure I buy this argument as Peterson presents it. Lets see what else is out there.

Dorothy L. Sayers, a writer of great detective fiction, had a slightly different theory on the popularity of the detective novel. In her really interesting essay The Mind of the Maker she noted that people like to think that life is like a problem that can be neatly solved. This, she argued, is not true. Life is not like a problem to be solved, rather it is like a medium for artistic creation. However, scientific methods have given people the illusion that life is like a problem and it can be solved, and people want be convinced that this is true. This, Sayers argued, is precisely why detective fiction is so popular. Here is the complete paragraph where she makes this point:

“The desire of being persuaded that all human experience may be presented in terms of a problem having a predictable, final, complete and sole possible solution accounts, to a great extent, for the late extraordinary popularity of detective fiction. This, we feel, is the concept of life which we want the artist to show us. It is significant that readers should so often welcome the detective-story as a way of escape from the problems of existence. It ‘takes their minds off their troubles.’ Of course it does; for it softly persuades them that love and hatred, poverty and unemployment, finance and international politics, are problems capable of being dealt with and solved in the same manner as the Death in the Library. The beautiful finality with which the curtain rings down on the close of the investigation conceals from the reader that no part of the ‘problem’ has been ‘solved’ except that part which was presented in problematic terms. The murderer’s motive has been detected, but nothing at all has been said about the healing of his murderous soul. Indeed, a major technical necessity of the writing is to prevent this aspect of the matter from ever presenting itself to the reader’s mind.”

With Peterson, Sayers argued that detective fiction simplifies things. Contra Peterson she did not think this gives us “intellectual and moral breathing room;” rather, she argued it provides the reader with a comforting illusion that life problems can be solved. Sayers then explained one of her detective novels and showed how in that book she’d presented readers with three problems based in the main idea, one solved, one partially solved, and the third insoluble. Good mystery novels can thus present the realities of life, not just comforting illusions.

Why do you read mysteries? Or why don’t you? (Interesting point: C.S. Lewis didn’t read mysteries, even though he and Sayers were friends, he didn’t think much of her detective stories.)