David Murdock Column: On spring cleaning with sleuths and stories
As I write the column this week, it’s still “officially” winter, but not for long. The weather reminds me that winter is having its last blast, though — it’s cold outside this morning, about 28 degrees. Tonight, it’ll be spring.
So, I want to do some metaphorical spring cleaning. There are a few items that I’ve jotted into my notebook lately that really aren’t long enough for a standalone column, but I’m going to address them here.
First of all, some observations on my recent reading. I generally read non-fiction in the early morning and fiction in the evening. “Genre fiction” is a favorite ― detective stories, science fiction, Westerns, spy thrillers, historical novels, etc. Always has been.
For about the last year, with some exceptions, I’ve leaned heavily on detective fiction, favorites both old and new. The pace intensified with my picking up what has to be my favorite detective novel back in December — "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett – and reading it straight through in about three hours.
But the detective fiction streak had actually started long before that, once I think about it; I’d picked up a favorite Agatha Christie about a year ago and re-read it. That re-read set me off on re-reading most of my favorites by Christie. It was inspired by watching the recent movie versions of three of her “Hercule Poirot” novels by the actor and director Kenneth Branagh. I’d missed the first two in theaters and saw them on streaming, so I was playing catch-up.
Anyway, I also read a few “new-to-me” Christie novels. And then, after blitzing through my favorite American “hard-boiled detective” favorites – Hammett and Raymond Chandler — I started reading some of Dorothy Sayers’ “Lord Peter Wimsey” novels. A few columns back, I mentioned that I was reading them, but there was one little thing that I didn’t mention, a phrase that stuck in my head from Sayers’ 1931 novel, "The Five Red Herrings."
That novel is set in Galloway, a region of Scotland, and features some Scots dialect. Even normally, Sayers exercises my vocabulary knowledge. Some of her novels find me Googling words and phrases that don’t show up in the dictionary; "The Five Red Herrings" was no exception. At one point, Lord Peter remarks, “Let the fellow dree his own weird.” What? I knew that “weird” has an older sense of meaning “fate,” but “dree”?
To the internet! In the "Online Dictionaries of the Scots Language," I found the phrase. It means “to endure one's fate, submit to one's destiny; to suffer the consequences of any act.” “Dree” can be a verb meaning “to endure” or it can be a noun meaning “Trouble, misfortune, suffering; a struggle, hard task.” The noun has a secondary meaning of “A long-drawn-out melody.” What a perfect phrase!
Anyway, after I finished all of Sayers’ “Wimsey” novels, I started in on other detective writers I’d missed over the years — I’ve really been enjoying the British writer Josephine Tey, for example, and her “Inspector Alan Grant” novels. However, I always gravitate back to the American “hard-boiled” detective, and there’s one major writer that I missed: Ross Macdonald. He penned a series about the private investigator Lew Archer. I’ve just started that series, and I am impressed.
Detective fiction writers are generally masters of descriptive writing; Macdonald is extraordinary, even by those standards. For example, in the second Lew Archer novel, "The Drowning Pool" from 1950, “Chapter 9” describes Archer’s visit to a nightclub named the “Romp Room.” (By the way, I checked; the children’s TV show "Romper Room" did not premiere until 1953.)
That chapter is one of the most masterful descriptions of a place and the people in it that I have ever read. It’s magnificent. Macdonald starts with a brief description of the exterior and the door, then a quick overview of the interior so readers can get their bearings. Then, he dives straightaway into a paragraph describing the jazz band which is so wonderful that I can almost hear the music.
Macdonald goes on to describe the dancers, the people in general, and then — once his scene is set ― narrates the conversations Archer has with those people. That dialogue slows down the chapter a bit, but the scene-setting leading up to the dialogue is absolutely astounding.
I’ll admit, there are some difficult-to-follow passages in Macdonald’s writing, but those are more than made up for with his descriptions. Another snippet: I read Macdonald’s biography on Wikipedia, and he earned a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Michigan. That’s unusual enough for a writer of detective fiction, but Wikipedia says that he studied under the Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden, which might explain Macdonald’s poetic prose.
It’s been a winter of detective fiction, but the tide may be turning. I recently saw "Dune: Part Two," which prompted me to haul out my copy of Frank Herbert’s novel, "Dune," on which the movie is based. So there’s likely some science fiction ahead. Also, Hulu has recently begun airing their adaptation of James Clavell’s historical novel "Shogun" — a longtime favorite — so I’m sure that brick of a book is in my future. However, there’s a big difference between detective novels — which are generally “quick reads” of a few hours or days — and those giant novels that take a couple of weeks, at least.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock on spring cleaning with sleuths, stories and more
