Todd Klein's Blog, page 17

And Then I Read: DUNKIRK SUMMER by Philip Turner

Cover art by Graham Humphreys

This is the only book in Turner’s Darnley Mills series I hadn’t read, so I recently paid too much for it to complete the series. The final book, Skull Island, was reviewed here some time ago. There are two intertwined threads in the Darnley Mills books, this is the final one in the historical series, taking place during World War Two.

Andy Birch has been evacuated from his London home, where he lives with his mother, to board with an elderly woman in Darnley Mills. He likes it pretty well, and his friend from school in London, Archie, is there too. Archie gets them into trouble at school, but that leads to Andy finding a girlfriend in Pat, the daughter of the rector in a nearby church. The war has everyone on edge, and Andy hopes to join the Navy when he’s out of school, which will be soon. In the meantime he’s in the Sea Cadets, Navy trainees, who help out on the ancient retired trawler Painted Lady. When Andy finds out the ship has been ordered to join the large fleet of British ships heading for Dunkirk, France, to rescue the British army trapped there, he’s determined to go along, and he stows away in the ship’s lifeboat. Commander Thomson is not amused, and puts him ashore and on his way home where the ships are gathered in Harwich.

Back in Darnley Mills, Andy and Archie have been expelled from school, but still need to study to pass their Higher Schooling exams. Mrs. Maydew, who took in Andy, wants him out, but Andy’s girlfriend Pat gets him a new home in the attic of the rectory, which he actually likes better. As the war spreads north toward Darnley Mills, Andy, Archie, and Pat take on the job of protecting the church from firebombs, and it proves a dangerous task after a bombing raid. Can they put out the fires and save the ancient building?

Excellent read, and this one does not wrap things up in a happy ending, leaving the reader to wonder if the main characters survived the war, but I found that uncertainty made it all the more real. Recommended.

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Rereading: THE FABULOUS FLIGHT by Robert Lawson

Lawson came up with some odd story ideas, but this may be the oddest. Peter Pepperell lives with his parents outside Washington DC, where his father works for the State Department. He’s a normal boy until age seven, and then an accident causes him to begin growing smaller rather than larger. A specialist says it’s due to a malfunctioning gland, and a symptom unknown to science, but Peter seems fine otherwise, and he and his family soon get used to the idea of him gradually shrinking. Eventually he’s only four inches tall, and he makes friends with the local animals in his yard, and trains a rabbit to be ridden, and other animals to pull wagons and march in formation.

Peter’s father’s hobby is building models, and he builds a sailing ship that Peter can sail on their pond. While doing that, he meets a seagull named Gus who can talk, and they become friends. Gus invites Peter to go flying with him on the gull’s back, and they have a fine time doing that. Meanwhile, Peter’s father is worried about intelligence reports of an extremely powerful explosive created by a rogue scientist in Europe. A test is made with a small amount the size of a grain of sugar, and it makes such a large explosion in the desert that it causes an earthquake. After that, the scientist holds the world at ransome from his isolated castle home, demanding large payments of gold, or he will use his invention to cause more havoc.

When Peter learns of this, he offers to fly to Europe on Gus and try to capture the explosive. At first his parents are against the dangerous plan, but eventually they agree, and Peter’s father builds a light-weight cabin to be strapped to Gus’s back that will hold supplies and a bed, while a chair in the front can be used when Peter is awake. Peter and Gus set out for a tour of Europe that will take them to the home of the scientist, but will they be able to steal the explosive?

As unlikely as all this sounds, Lawson’s excellent realistic illustrations help make it plausible, and the story is an exciting read. Recommended.

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My Music: LET US REMEMBER and RONDO

Above are two new friends I made in Kansas City, more about them soon. First, an update on things in New Jersey. My friend high school Mike was attending the University of Missouri in Kansas City, living with relatives there, and he returned to his family home in Bernardsville, NJ for the summer of 1970. A friend he’d made at college, Karen, decided to join him for the summer break, also staying at Mike’s family home. Karen was introduced to all of Mike’s friends, and she dated a few of them, including myself. She was my first girlfriend, and things moved along quickly. By the end of the summer I was in love, and made plans to visit her in Kansas City in the fall. My second year at the School of Visual Arts began in September 1970, and I had enrolled in an experimental program. It was fun, but I wasn’t learning a lot. When I visited Karen I looked into transferring to the Kansas City Art Institute, and was accepted for the second semester beginning in January. My family wasn’t thrilled about this, as the school was considerably more expensive, but I could rent a room somewhere with Mike to save costs, and when I went out in January, we found one in an old farmhouse, conveniently mid way between Mike’s school and mine, being rented by the Miller family. Tom Miller was a garrulous 1950s beatnik who had become a house painter, and he and his family rented out all the rooms they weren’t using. Mike and I fit in well there.

Though Karen had enjoyed my fall visit, when I arrived in Kansas City in January, she chose to avoid me, I’m not sure why. Perhaps I was putting too much weight on our relationship for her. I was sad, but Mike and I went to our schools and enjoyed the atmosphere at our rental house. Also living there was John Taylor, above, and we became friends. John played guitar, and we often had jam sessions in either his or my room, augmented perhaps by a few puffs of illicit substances. John’s girlfriend Sue had studied violin growing up, and she sometimes joined us. I think we did some interesting work, John’s lead steel guitar blended well with my nylon string picking, and while Sue was hesitant about jamming, her smooth long notes added a lot to the mix. At the end of the school semester I came back to New Jersey and worked full time, but in January 1972 I returned to KC, though I didn’t have enough funds for art school, so I just roomed with Mike again and had fun for a few months on the money I’d saved. I brought my first Teac reel-to-reel deck and Electrovoice micophones with me, and John, Sue and I recorded a few hours of music, mostly improvised jams. I wrote one song, originally called simply “John’s Song,” later retitled. It had lyrics, but the recording I made of the sung version didn’t turn out well. Another recording of just the instruments was better, so in 2001, when I was going through all my reel tapes and transferring the best parts to digital files, I recorded a new double vocal track and put it over that version. Here it is: Let Us Remember.

Above are the lyrics from my notebook, about 1972. The other tracks I recorded were improvised, and/or covers, so I can’t really claim them as my music, but there was one track that qualifies, my attempt to write a short classical piece for Sue and I. Here it is: Rondo for Guitar and Violin.

To fill out the personal story, when I returned to Kansas City in 1972, Karen was also rooming at the farm house. Our relationship was revived, but somehow it was not as strong for me this time. After a few months, out of money, I broke up with Karen and again returned to New Jersey and the job I had there at my friend Randy’s father’s company, where I stayed for a few years, not going back to art school. During the summer and fall of 1970, when first with Karen, I wrote some poems, but no songs, or at least none I finished. I would return to writing songs in the summer of 1971, they’re up next.

Let Us Remember and Rondo for Guitar and Violin are © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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Rereading: BEYOND LIFE by James Branch Cabell

Second edition from The Modern Library, 1923

I discovered the books of Cabell (rhymes with rabble) in the 1970s when several were issued in paperback as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I became a fan of those fantasy novels, and learned that Cabell’s master work was a long series of about 20 books, depending on how you count them, written over many years, and with some later rewritten to fit into the series called “The Biography of Manuel.” Over the next 20 years or so I collected all the books in the series, one at a time, and enjoyed most of them, but always thought I should read them in the order Cabell suggested. I’ve begun that with this one, and it was a difficult and challenging read. I didn’t recall anything about it, I may not actually have read it before.

Unlike most of the series, it’s not a story, more of a series of essays or arguments in the form of the main character, author John Charteris, lecturing to a visitor in his home library. The library will be of interest to Sandman fans, as it contains such things as “the cream of the unwritten books—the masterpieces that were planned and never carried through.” Also, somehow, famous books that are not the published version, but the one the author intended to write, sort of like today’s “preferred text” editions. In essence, this is the Library of Dream, and Neil Gaiman is a fan of Cabell, so that fits.

If the book had gone further with that, I would have liked it better, but it soon turns to Charteris’ opinions and theories about literature and writing. His main argument is that romance is what lasts, and what makes books stand the test of time, rather than realism, a trend beginning to dominate in his time, as it still often does. By romance he means humans striving to be “as they ought to be,” rather than as they often are in real life. Characters that are noble, heroic, chivalrous, gallant, caring, even possessing superhuman strength and abilities. Comics fit right into this idea, as do many fantasy and science fiction books, but Cabell explains it’s always been there, from the ancient Greek classics by Homer, through Roman and medieval authors, folk and fairy tales, and up to authors of the book’s present (written in 1919). Even religion he sees as romance. In fact, since apes descended from trees, he says they have been telling stories about themselves that yearn toward romance rather than the grim reality of their actual lives.

From these initial arguments, much of the book is literary criticism, both pro and con, of authors and their works, focusing largely on those in English beginning in Shakespeare’s time, and working forward to Cabell’s contemporaries. This was a slog for me, having not read many of those authors, and the writing style is florid and complex, with a very large vocabulary. There were words on most pages I didn’t know and had to look up or infer from context, and I know a lot of words. Further, Charteris, and therefore Cabell, comes across as rather cranky and snobbish about some of the subjects, I thought, though he has kind words to say about a few contemporaries I also like.

I anticipate with more interest continuing with the titles containing real stories going forward. This book is not one I can really recommend, though I did enjoy parts of it, and as Cabell intended, completists must read it.

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Rereading: THE FOSSIL SNAKE by L. M. Boston

Illustrated by Peter Boston

This is a short book of prose, 54 pages, with fine illustrations by Boston’s son. Rob’s father has a load of stones delivered to their home with which to build a wall, but one cracks open revealing a perfectly preserved fossil of a snake. Rob is allowed to keep it, even though a local museum would like to have it, and Rob puts the fossil under the radiator in his room. The warmth somehow brings the snake back to life, and it becomes almost a friend to Rob, first feeding on mice in the walls, then on other things outside as it grows. Rob is fearful it will be taken away if discovered, but until then he and the snake have some interesting adventures.

Recommended.

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Incoming: DC FINEST, GREEN ARROW THE LONGBOW HUNTERS

When I received this from DC, my first thought was, “I didn’t letter that.” Looking inside, I realized what I lettered was the linked Annuals for Green Arrow, Detective Comics, and The Question. This new reprint series of thick trade paperbacks (542 pages here) is an interesting idea: chronological collections across a few titles where appropriate. I know I enjoyed reading Longbow Hunters when it came out, nice to see it in print again. Retail price is $39.99, release date is January 25 on Amazon.

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My Music: THE TARRYTOWN POET AND THE ENGLEWOOD BARD

Photo by Chris Stein, 1971, Washington Square Park, NYC

This is a story song perhaps suggested by some of the street musicians I saw around lower midtown Manhattan when I was going to art school there in 1969-70, the photo above, found online, reminds me of some of those folks. Here’s the song: The Tarrytown Poet and the Englewood Bard.

Street music in New York City had a long history, in the 1920s it was often organ grinders, but in 1936 it was banned. It still went on, but buskers were liable to fines if they were caught by the police. Busking was given more leniency in some areas, in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park, it was allowed until 1961, when a ban led to a riot there. In 1970 the street music ban was lifted, but was still in effect on the subways. Buskers continued to play there, taking their chances, and that ban was also lifted in the 1980s. I don’t remember any specific buskers in my commute from the PATH station at West 23rd Street to The School of Visual Arts on East 23rd, or in my wanderings around that area, but I know I heard some, and as a musician myself, I was with them in spirit. My song has a sarcastic and humorous side, but I like to think it ends well for the couple. It’s the longest song I’d done to this point, and in fact I made it shorter here by removing two repeats of the chorus.

The Tarrytown Poet and the Englewood Bard is © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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Rereading: TAMSIN by Peter S. Beagle

Cover art by Paul Youll

As the story opens, Jenny and her mother, a music teacher, are living in a New York City apartment with Jenny’s cat Mister Cat, and she is struggling with the challenges of adolescence, but their lives are about to change. Jenny’s mother Sally has fallen in love with Ewan, from Britain, and they plan to marry. Ewan and Sally want to relocate to London, which Jenny is dead set against, but eventually she has to comply, even though Mister Cat must spend six months in quarantine. Before they even settle in London, Ewan is offered a new well-paid job on an estate in Dorset, and the family, along with Ewan’s two sons Tony and Julian, are soon moving into a terribly run-down mansion on an equally run-down farm that Ewan, an agricultural specialist, has taken on to rehabilitate and make into a working business again.

At first Jenny finds little joy in Dorset, but becomes intrigued by local legends and things she sees and hears in the house and on the grounds, ancient creatures and spirits from pre-Christian times that have somehow survived in the Dorset night, from bogles to pookas to the wild hunt. Then things get more interesting when Jenny finds a secret room on the third floor that has a ghost. Tamsin is that ghost, daughter of the first owner of the house, and against all odds, Jenny and Tamsin become friends, and explore the farm nights together, as Tamsin gradually reveals her story. It’s a story with a dark side, and another ghost of a man that stalked her in life, and continues to do so in death.

I had completely forgotten this 1999 book, so it was like reading it for the first time, and as with most of Beagle’s work, it’s excellent. Great, very real characters, wonderfully imaginative plot and setting, fine writing. Highly recommended.

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Rereading: TIK-TOK OF OZ by L. Frank Baum

Cover and illustrations by John R. Neill

The eighth Oz book by Baum has little to do with his mechanical man, though it was partially based on a play about Tik-Tok that Baum produced the previous year. The character doesn’t even show up until well into the story, and proves largely ineffective, though he tries hard.

The book begins in the small, remote Oz area called Oogaboo, with only a handful of inhabitants. Its king has left, and Queen Ann is tired of doing all the chores, so she decides to form an army to conquer the world, echoing one of the plots of “The Land of Oz.” Her conscripted army has one real soldier, and lots of timid officers, but they set out on their mission. Soon, they are lost, and not even in Oz anymore. Along the way they meet up with Betsy Bobbin, from America, who has been shipwrecked along with her donkey, Hank. Those two have been joined by a Rose Princess, who they picked from a rose bush themselves, and later by the Shaggy Man and Polychrome, the Rainbow’s daughter. Shaggy Man is a resident of Oz, but is on a quest to find his lost brother, who he believes is a prisoner of the Nomes and their irritable and dangerous King Ruggedo. Tik-Tok had also tried to find the missing man, and made it to Ruggedo’s court, but then was dumped into a well, where he couldn’t get out. The group rescues him, and once they meet Queen Ann and her army, Tik-Tok agrees to fight for her if they will attack the Nomes.

There are many more twists and turns in the story, including a large dragon, and a visit to the other side of the earth, a place where gods and goddesses live. Once the story enters the Nome caverns, the group must face one obstacle after another. Can they ever find Shaggy Man’s missing brother and rescue him?

I enjoyed this one, the plot and characters are interesting, and it moves along well. Recommended.

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Rereading: THE NEST OF THE SCARECROW by M. E. Atkinson

Cover and illustrations by Stuart Tresilian

The ninth book in Atkinson’s Lockett series finds the three Locketts, Oliver, Jane, and Bill, involved in an elaborate contrived adventure that, as usual, goes wrong and puts them on their own.

The children are introduced by an aunt to two older cousins, Mervyn and Gillian, young adults with their own car, also staying with Aunt Margaret, the one who “helps” them with the books about their adventures. A letter comes from three Dwight children who are fans of those books, asking if the Locketts could join them on a walking tour toward the south coast that will take several days. It’s very short notice, and the Locketts have to decline, but Mervyn and Gillian come up with a plan to surprise the Dwights by taking the Locketts to meet them on their tour and give them an adventure. Mervyn won’t tell them what that adventure is, or that their frenemy Fenella is involved, but Oliver, Jane, and Bill are all for it anyway.

The first part of the plan works well, with Oliver disguised as a gypsy, meeting Humphrey, Doris, and Julian Dwight on the road and giving them an ominous fortune about a scarecrow. But then Mervyn and Gillian must leave the Locketts on their own while going to help Gillian’s boyfriend, who has been in a railroad accident, but the Locketts have no idea what the rest of the plan is, so must make it up themselves. A strong storm blowing in from the ocean complicates things, and the Locketts are not prepared for it. When they reach a lonely coast cottage named The Scarecrow’s Nest, things get really complicated.

I felt this one was trying too hard, but it does have its moments, and is still a fun read. Recommended.

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