To Sicily via the page

 ADDIO SALVO

The primary perk of the pensioner period in life is, at least in theory, time. Lots and lots of time. Even if you still don't know where it goes to. Which, to me, means time to read. All those books I've bought over the decades (because I really needed them...) but never got hold of one of those 'round tooit' thingies you need to get going on reducing the great pile of the unread. But I've been able to find my reading 'tooit' (many others continue to go missing).

One of the great joys of having the freedom to read and read, day after day, is immersing oneself in a series of novels so that, for a period of weeks or months the characters become a part of your family. I'm particularly fond of consuming detective series in this fashion. And so, in the past few years, I have become friendly with the likes of Rebus, Wallander, Beck, Van der Valk and, my personal favourite, Castang.

Salvo Montalbano, Commissario of police in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata, achieved some fame in the UK throuigh the regular showings of his eponymous series (and the prequel Young Montalbano) on BBC4. It appears to be a cheap filler for them when there's nothing better to hand. And cheap it is. This is one of those "so bad it's good" TV programmes. At times the acting is risible, direction predictable and the settings devoid of real life. But it was a fun watch, sometimes funny in unintended ways, and the basic storylines were usually well worked out. Because the stories themselves closely followed the plots of the original books, from the hands of Andrea Camilleri.

Those books have gathered a lot of critical praise, and a large readership, in part due to the screen versions no doubt. I picked one up a while back, liked what I read, and decided I would wait to acquire the complete set before setting off to spend a few weeks in a fictional Sicily.

I began with a book that was out of sequence chronologiocally, but made sense in setting the scene.  This was a book of short stories which opened with Montalbano's First Case, which explains how Salvo got to become the Chief Inspector of Vigata.  This would later become the basis for the first episode of TV's Young Montalbano.

Then into the novels.  All twenty eight of them.  It is soon apparent that this is vastly superior to the TV version.  While most of the main characters are broadly similar, Salvo has a much richer inner life.  The books are very funny (Intentionally!).  Like Mankell and Sjöwall&Wahlöö, Camilleri uses the genre to make comments on the political and social situations of the day (he has a lot of fun highlighting the idiocies of the Berlusconi period, rather less showing up how badly cross-Med migrants are treated).  

There's an interesting development about half way through the series.  By then the TV programme has taken off, and the name of Montalbano was much better known in Italy.  Which the Salvo of the page resents, complaining that the TV version is a decade younger, and often sharper of thought, than he is.  Although at least he's still got a decent head of hair.  But his obsession with the ageing process becomes a permanent theme from then on.  

The credit for conveying so much of Camilleri's Sicilian authenticity goes to translator Stephen Sartarelli, who does an excellent job of conveying the idiomatic sense of the originals (which were written in a mix of Italian and Sicilian), and providing footnotes to help the reader understand references that would otherwise pass the them by.  He's also helpful in explaining much about the food that Montalbano consumes so much of - the gourmand of the page is there on the screen, but without the loving descriptions of the dishes being enjoyed.  Reading has never made me feel so hungry, or given me so many recipe ideas to try out.     

Much as I'd enjoyed the series throughout, by the begining of book 27 it was good to know the end was not far off.  And yet.  27 contained a surprise, turning into more of a full blown thriller than the others.  And 28 breaks the mould.  To begin with, it was written out of sequence, several years before publication, and was given to the publisher with the instruction not to make it public until after the author's death.  The title, Riicardino, is at odds with the rest of the series.  And the story takes the meta laspects of the fictional Montalbano mentioning his own (more fictional?!) TV alter ego, and raises it with phone conversations between the character and his own author.  This final volume is a much more literary effort than the others, more philosophical, and a reminder of the essential humanity of these books.  

And isn't a policeman who cares about his fellow human beings what we all want?  Along with convoluted plots, unlikely but logical explanations, and a cast of familiars that are recognisably flawed people.  On the debit side women get a raw deal, little more than adjuncts, or provocations, most of the time, although in part that's a reflection of Sicilian patriarchal culture.  And in Ingrid Sjöström, Salvo's Swedish friend, there is one female character who is strong and highly competent, although it's a shame she dfoesn't crop up more frequently.  But I will still miss Mimi, Fazio, Cat, Livia, Enzo, Pasquale, Adelina and, most of all, the main man.  He was always as entertaining as I could have wished for, no mean compliment over so many volumes (and 2 months dead from 1 to 28).

Now... has anyone got a complete set of Simenon to hand?

[The photo shows the late Andrea Camilleri with Luca Zingaretti, who plays Montalbano in the RAI TV series.]

America or Gilead?

 

ATWOOD'S WARNING

If you read one of Ian Rankin's most famous series of novels what does Rebus look like in your head?  Chances are, if you've watched many of the TV programmes, it's Ken Stott's face that you see chasing Edinburgh's criminals.  Fair enough, for Rankin doesn't provide many clues to the inspector's physical appearance.  Except that he's at least six or more inches taller than the actor who's become so synonymous with the role.  But overcoming the visual image from screen is, for most of us, hard to do.

It's the same with Wallander books, although there it depends if you're a fan of Sweden's Henriksson or Ireland's Branagh (I'm in the Krister camp).  And if you read any Sherlock Holmes tales the choice of screen faces you can 'use' is near endless (Jeremy Brett for me).  My point being that for most of us the visual image is hard to overcome, no matter what the page says, no matter that the written character is usually the original.

I've just finished rereading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale after a gap of more than twenty years.  Maybe even thirty.  But in recent years I've watched the three TV series based on and derived from the book, the fictional Gilead turned into images that had existed only in my imagination before.  I was prompted to return to the original text because I'm now reading Atwood's long awaited follow-up, The Testaments, and it seemed sensible to re-immerse myself in that world, one that inevitably had some differences from the one I'd seen more recently.

In fact the differences aren't all that great, the first TV series staying fairly faithful to the original storyline and the culture it described.  The most striking exceptions being, you've guessed it, the descriptions of the characters versus their appearance on the screen.  Top of that list being Fred and Serena Joy who are far from the beautiful people we saw in Fiennes and Strahovski.  These things matter when they can affect the dynamics of the relationships being portrayed.  

I got through the book in a couple of days.  Still as riveting, thought provoking and frightening as it was.  No, make that more frightening, for this is 2020.  Reading that book now is a different experience from my first experience of it those decades ago.  For three main reasons.

One I've already mentioned.  Being faithful to the author meant trying to ditch the TV faces, forming my own pictures of the protagonists.

And I was back into a familiar world, with no need to try and begin understanding the Gileadian societal roles and hierarchy.  That first reading has always retained a powerful impact, back up by the Elisabeth Moss shows, so there was no need to puzzle over the Handmaids and Marthas and Aunts and Wives and Commanders and Guardians and Eyes and all the other narrowly defined constrictions of that brutalised country.  Although it was interesting to be reminded of how fundamentally racist the author's Gilead is, something there's less stress on in the TV series, where it's the patriarchal and fascistic elements that dominate.

Finally, the times we live in.  Tomorrow, and perhaps in the next couple of months, we'll all be watching to see how robust US democracy is.  Have enough Americans recognised what a monster they have in the White House?  Aren't the totalitarian instincts of the orange manbaby clear enough?  One of the clear lessons of Atwood's theocracy is how easy it is for democracy to slip away, bit by bit, until finally it's no longer there.  I'm voraciously consuming The Testaments now and it clearly shows how people can be manipulated into supporting the new regime.  Succumbing to fascism is a banal process, and many of the most brutal functionaries of the regime are not the ideologues, but the conscientious citizens who think that doing their 'duty' to their country overrides any moral qualms (a theme portrayed even more powerfully in the newer book).  Trump's America is already a far more racist and misogynistic place than it was four years ago.  Where would another four years of the same take them to?  The steps to Gilead are there to see.

And in the UK?  Ever since we were forced to swallow The Fairytale of Barnard Castle it's clear there's some kind of hard right coup in process.  If even the suggestion of someone like Dacre at Ofcom doesn't ring your alarm bells then maybe you're not paying enough attention.  It won't get too serious with Doris, who's only concerned about himself and already looks like he's had enough of a game he's found he's not very good at.  But the possibility of bespectacled slug Gove taking over is a more alarming direction of travel.  And yet another reason why Scotland needs out of this broken state asap.

Footnote - The dominant aspect of Gilead is the patriarchy, the total subjugation of women.  So I wanted to make sure I put women first in this post.  With one exception.  I wrote 'Fred and Serena Joy', not the other way round.  Why?  Because when I say it in my head it simply sounds better, rolls out more naturally.  In the same way that 'Diane and Bartholomew' works best.  And that matters too.  Gilead suppresses almost all forms of art, knowing that art is the enemy of tyranny.  So I'll stick with putting Fred first on this occasion, because art should always trump (sorry...) ideology.  Art reaches the humanity in us, it's about thinking for ourselves, about sharing, about imagination.  Art is the anti-Gilead.

Please, please, please let it be Biden....

When reality's better than fiction

NOTHING DATES LIKE THE FUTURE

The curse of science fiction writers is their lack of a functioning crystal ball, and the knowledge that predictions for the technology of the future will sound totally out of touch in the decades that follow.  As a child growing up in the sixties I was led to believe we'd all have our own jetpacks by now....

I recently reread Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, widely regarded as a seminal sci-fi work.  Set several millennia into the future, when human beings have colonised the galaxy, and written in the early fifties, I first read it about twenty years after publication.  I don't recall at the time thinking that any of the tech used in the stories was highly improbable.  But this was well before the internet had achieved the ubiquity it has now, indeed most people had no contact with computers in their daily lives.  Asimov's imagination still felt futuristic.

More than forty years later that view has changed dramatically.  Data stored on tape?  Nuclear power used for almost everything, even kitchen gadgets?  Paper still a key means of disseminating information?  The notion of 'the cloud' doesn't really appear.  There are no touchscreens, and voice activation, now one of the fastest expanding technologies, plays only a minor role.  Sixty five years on that future is already very, very dated.

But even more jarring than the scientific faux pas was the number of social attitudes that were stuck in their 1950s origins.  Most characters smoked (but hey, they had atomic ashtrays....).  Societies were ruled by hereditary monarchies, complete with the whole aristocracy thing - and democracy hardly gets a look in.  Mind you, with some of the things going on in the world at the moment maybe that one isn't so far fetched.

But the most striking anomaly, that jumped off the pages time after time, was the position of women in this 'advanced' society.  They cook.  They do housework.  They don't fight.  They are 1950s homemaker woman spread across the galaxy.  There are only two female protagonists of any significance.  One is a fourteen year old schoolgirl, whose importance to events is in part accidental.  And the nearest thing there is to a powerful female character is first introduced to the reader as "a young bride".  Which says it all.

Oh, and not a single reference to anyone in the three books being from the LGBT community.  It's a very straight galaxy.

We might not have those jetpacks, but at least our progress in social attitudes makes these predictions of the future look backward.

A Hitch Hiker's Guide to Miss Brodie

COINCIDENCES

Many decades ago, when I was but a slender yoof, I read a short article in a magazine that has  remained at the back of my mind ever since.  Atop the piece was a small circle, the size of a button badge, with a single 5 letter word - 2 't's, 2'o's and an i.  The text promised that, if you cut out the circle, added a spot of glue, stuck it to an appropriately sized badge, and wore it constantly, your levels of productivity and success would soar.  Because, as everyone knows, to achieve anything in life you really need to get a round tooit.

I never did cut that badge out, so, forty years or so later, I remain encumbered with a long, long list of "one day I must get around to" items.  This includes several books lurking on my shelves, mocking me, teasing me to pick them up and have a go.  In most cases they sit there, unread, not because they are particularly challenging reads, but on grounds of physical size.

Reading has always been a passion, and I rarely venture out without a book of some sort about my person.  There's always chances to read just a wee bit more, on a bus, train or tram, waiting for someone, in a cafe or pub, taking the sun on a park bench, anywhere I have five minutes to spare.  I've read books on my phone before now, but find the small screen a bit hard going on the old eyes nowadays, so that means either my ebook reader, or a good old fashioned bit of tree pulp.  But 700 plus page volumes don't fit readily in the pocket, weigh down a bag.

New tactics are called for, new year resolution made.  I will get into some of those bigger books by keeping them at home, where I do most of my reading, but also starting a series of smaller books for taking about with me, ideally something I'm already familiar with and will be easy to pick up in small doses and irregular intervals.

My 1st January starting point for the home-based volumes were the Muriel Spark omnibuses I bought back in the eighties.  There were two of them, each containing five novels, each close to 700 pages, and they provided the bulk of my reading through January and into mid February.  And very enjoyable they were.  I'd only read a couple of Sparks before - Jean Brodie, of course, and The Mandelbaum Gate - but confess my main memory of the author was through watching Maggie Smith in her Prime.  The sparse, direct prose, the memorable characters, innovative plots and the occasional nod towards the surreal all drew me in.

What I hadn't realised is that this is a Spark year.  The centenary of her birth has been marked in various ways, including a BBC documentary fronted by Kirsty Wark, and an exhibition of her letters, notebooks and other artifacts in the National Library, only a mile or so from where I sit typing. So my timing was fortuitous, and entirely coincidental, giving added value to my reading, something I'd have missed out on if I'd actually got around to it years ago.

My choice of carry-around-with-me books was an easy one.  It was a long time since I'd read all five volumes of Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide trilogy, while the sixth episode, not by Adams, sat calling me to add it to my knowledge of the Universe.  Six books as slender as the teenage me, and perfect for pockets.  Characters I already knew and loved, daftness, philosophy, improbability and so many memories.

What I hadn't realised is that this is Hitch Hiker's year.  Forty years since the original incarnations of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin exploded on to Radio 4.  And to mark the occasion a new radio series, featuring many of the original actors, started last week, this time based on the non-Douglas book, And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer.  Very promising it seems too, based on listening to the first episode, full of very stupid throwaway lines, and the voice of Stephen Hawking.

That I should start two series of books, both of which were to be marked by significant anniversaries, does seem a bit too coincidental.  Or maybe just highly improbable - which, if you know your Hitch Hiker's Guide, could not be more highly appropriate.

"All mystical experience is coincidence; and vice versa, of course."  - Tom Stoppard

Think I'll forget about the tooit and stick with serendipity.

PS  The above is 100% true.  If you notice any factual inaccuracies that's entirely the fault of reality.