Sidekicks in Buffalo Girls
March 9, 2007 at 11:51 am | In sidekicks, western | Leave a CommentM
cMurtry, L. (1990).Buffalo Girls. NY: Simon and Schuster.
This western novel offers an eccentric array of sidekick characters to discuss. The book’s central figure is the real-life Western scout and frontierswoman Calamity Jane. The novel is set in the 1890’s stretching from Missouri to 
Deadwood, South Dakota. The book focuses on Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show with his motley cast of “Western legends”.
At the novel’s start, Calamity Jane is in her 40’s, swearing, drinking and fighting up a storm as she searches for her “old gang” with her dog Cody and horse Satan. This gang includes mountainmen, an Indian, Bill Cody, and a retired madam.
Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone have been together for decades as stagecoach drivers, scouts, and now as solitary mountainmen scratching out a tenuous life in the wilderness. Ragg and Bone have complementary temperaments to amplify parts of Calamity Jane’s ornery persona. Note McMurtry’s sardonic wit in these character names. The expression “rag and bone” is a British term for the shop where the worst castoffs end up. I suspect this is McMurtry’s commentary on how civilized society has treated the vestiges of the old West’s land and people.
Ragg is morose and stoic, a crack-shot hunter and skillful wilderness guide. Bone is cheerful, garrulous and sociable, enjoying the company of prostitutes when in town. Bone is competitive and considers himself exceptional at everything though he’s average at best. His boasting is just like Calamity’s exaggerated retelling of her exploits. Ragg and Bone join Cody’s show only because Ragg wants to earn money to repopulate the Missouri River with beavers. Ragg wants to atone for his years of animal slaughter as a trapper.
Calamity Jane considered Ragg and Bone her family because they befriended her as a teenager, teaching her how to scout and drive a coach. Ragg and Bone, as rugged individualists, could accept Jane’s aberrations. Like “Ragg and Bone”, Calamity is a misfit and castoff. She was scorned and marginalized because she violated society’s ideas of feminity by acting and dressing like a frontiersman.
No Ears , an Ogala Indian in his 50s, is another sidekick and my favorite character. No Ears was so dubbed at age 10, after French traders shot him, cut off his ears and left him for dead . Inasumuch as No Ears and Calamity have rescued each other during terrible storms, the Indian’s secret nickname for Jane is Helpful. No Ears can hear, but he uses his disability as a cloak, while communing with animals or tapping into his mystical senses (regrettably narrated in a heavy-handed, stereotypical way by McMurtry).
Dora DuFran is the former madam and big-hearted saloon owner who befriends her Martha Jane. Her role as sidekick is to bring out the nurturing, feminine dimensions of Calamity Jane’s character. As Dora lays dying after childbirth, however, Calamity is unable to comfort her friend or to help raise the orphan baby, revealing her inadequacies lurking beneath her scout bravado.
In 1995, Buffalo Girls was faithfully translated into a TV movie starring Angelica Huston as Calamity Jane with dead-on casting of sidekicks such as Jack Palance for Bartle Bone. Buffalo Girls movie (IMDB summary).
McMurtry Western
March 9, 2007 at 7:46 am | In awards, postmodern, western | Leave a CommentMcMurtry, L. (1990).Buffalo Girls.New York: Simon and Schuster.
Award Winning Author If you want to read a recent (1990+) western, Larry McMurtry’s Buffalo Girls (Winner of the Western Heritage Award) is a natural choice. McMurtry is an iconic contemporary writer in the Western genre, author to more than 20 books, 2 essay collections and over 30 screenplays, Clad in jeans and cowboy hat, Texan McMurtry accepted the 2006 Golden Globe and Academy Awards as co-author of the screenplay Brokeback Mountain, a breakout Western about Montana sheepwranglers who are secret gay lovers. McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove won Western’s Spur Award (1985) and the 1986 Pulitzer Prize.
BygoneWest McMurtry is a masterful storyteller, weaving memorable characters into a narrative rich in authentic details about a bygone West. He is an unusual author of this genre because he uses satire and black humor to debunk myths of the romantic West. That said, my reading experience of McMurtry’s Buffalo Girls, was like showing up at a rowdy wedding reception when all that’s left are cake crumbs, strewn confetti and maudlin drunks. I did not enjoy reading the book, and would not recommend it because of its relentlessly depressing plot. However, for students of popular culture, I feel it accurately captured the frontiersmen’s delight conquering the wild unknown and despair fighting loneliness, poverty and hostile elements.
In Buffalo Girls, McMurtry tells the story of the last days of the rough-n-ready West, combining characters who are real aging Western legends –Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody– with a fictional ensemble of Western stock types including mountain men and Indians. It is a sad, meandering tale about the characters’ roles as actors touring in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show sprinkled with reminiscences about “the good old days” of the open frontier.
Post-Modern Western I’ve dubbed Buffalo Girls a “post-modern” Western, for several reasons. The protagonist, Calamity Jane is an androgynous anti-hero. She’s an incorrigible drunk with a propensity for starting fights and exaggerating about past feats. Unlike the classic Western hero, Jane is a poor shot, inept camper, failed wife and mother whose glory days as a scout and solder’s nurse are long gone. Secondly, it’s hard to map this work into Western plot variations as defined by Berger (Popular Culture Genres, 1992). Since it falls beyond the “professional–hired gunfighter” stage, I’d propose to add a “professional celebrity or icon” stage. The characters are now Western stars re-enacting roles as sureshots or Indian fighters for an urban paying audience.
Another post-modern motif is the sense of loss or passage. The frontiersmen ruefully regret their decimation of wildlife, so now a trapper has to visit a London zoo to see live beaver. A final post-modern element is McMurtry’s unvarnished descriptions of the grit, privations and stresses of mundane Western life. No romantic night under the stars for his cowboys. Instead, they wake up with spittle-frozen beards to roast a prairie dog with meat so tough it takes an hour per piece to chew.
Reading the Romance
March 6, 2007 at 4:56 am | In genre fiction, pop culture, romance | Leave a CommentRadway. J. A. (1984). Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill,NC:Univ.of North Carolina Press.
Berger, A.A. (1992) Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts. NY: Sage Press.
Why do women read romantic fiction?
How is the romance narrative structure defined ?
What makes a romance a success or a “garbage dump” candidate?
Professor Radway (Faculty, UNC and Duke ) explored these questions in a provocative 1984 field study of reading “motives, habits, rewards” for 42 Midwestern romance readers. Radway approached the research first as an ethnography of reading: how different communities interpret text. However, Radway soon realized that it was necessary to examine the text’s meaning within the context of the reader’s response to the event or behavior of reading. Her approach reflects a multi-disciplinary approach combining social science methodology with anthropology as well as literary and sociocultural analysis. Radway’s research attempts to address both feminist and psychoanalytic interpretations of romance’s lure.
Reader Motives: Most of Radway’s subjects expended significant energy nurturing their families, receiving minimal appreciation in return. For these self-sacrificing souls, romance reading provided a critical outlet for escape, relaxation and security (p 60-61). “We read books so we won’t cry” is how one subject explained her habit. These women viewed the solitary, deliberate act of reading as a “declaration of independence” –It is my time. In the context of 1970-90s popular culture, this sentiment is summed up by the bath salts ad: “Calgon take me away!”
While Radway’s interviewees stressed they were happily married, their comments revealed that romance novels fulfilled needs and desires their bona fide male partner did not. I was fascinated by Radway’s interpretation of romance readers’ drive as an “ongoing search for the mother” as feelings of love, acceptance and security are vicariously consummated in the man-woman relationship. I remain skeptical concerningRadway’s application of Chodorow’s feminist interpretation (Chapter 3) with her contention that romance novels help women resolve their ambivalence and fear of male/paternal dominance.
Narrative Structure Radway (p 67) summarizes reader feedback on the 3 most important ingredients in romance. The narrative begins with tension created of clashing, binary character traits between the heroine and hero. The classic heroine is virginal, unconcerned/unaware of her beauty, intelligent and yearning for love and commitment. In contrast, the classic romantic hero is sexually experienced, emotionally detached, and aware of his devastating good looks.
Radway’s discussion of binary traits (p 132) echoes Berger’s (1992) discussion of bipolarity in popular culture genres, such as the battle of “good vs. evil” in Dr. No. Moreover, Radway employs a variant of Propp’s analytical method by determining that the ideal romances follows a 13 narrative structure (p 134) from 1) destruction of heroine’s social identity (loss, poverty, disgrace,,,) through antagonism to physical separation of protagonists to 12) heroine responds emotionally, physically and 13) heroine’s identity is restored.
Ideal vs Failed Romance A true romance focuses on the one man-one woman relationship. If there is a rape scene, it arises from the hero’s misunderstanding about the heroine’s past and results in aggrieved repentance and hero reformation. There must be a happy ending, culminating in a committed relationship if not a marriage.
Once these narrative guidelines were revealed in reader responses, one can readily discern the “failed romances”. Readers rejected romances that emphasized sex and physical attraction divorced from love (p 74). Equally unacceptable were novels with promiscuious heroines juggling more than one love interest or narratives containing physical violence and brutality against the main characters. While many of the failures proferred a “happy ending”, readers felt the ending lacked credibility because no true resolution and character bonding had occurred prior to the afterthought ending.
Sidekicks: Neuromancer
February 26, 2007 at 6:47 pm | In cyberpunk, science fiction, sidekicks | Leave a Comment
Berger, A.A. (1992) Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts. NY: Sage. 
Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. NY: Ace Books.
As the quintessential example of science fiction cyberpunk, Neuromancer’s characters and plot structure are the antithesis of classic science fiction defined by Berger (1992). The protagonist Case is not a heroic spaceman but a selfish, drug-addicted cybercowboy (computer hacker) with the morality of a street hustler on the make.
Molly- Case’s first sidekick is a bioengineered “razorgirl” named Molly who’s assigned by Case’s employer to keep him off drugs and on task. Molly sounds like a cyborg because of her flat affect, superhuman reflexes and optically enhanced eyes protected by mirrored shades. However, Molly reveals her humanity by confessing that she’s helping Case to capture one sleaze who murdered her boyfriend and another who made her commit degrading acts in her former life as a prostitute. Molly herself paid for the painful razorblade finger modifications. Molly is elevated from sidekick to heroine but is certainly neither the helpless nor plucky spacegal prototypes of classic SF. Molly is incredibly tough, dragging broken limbs through the Matrix with nary a whimper.
Although Molly protects Case, has sex with him, and watches his back, you never sense that Molly has “feelings” for Case. Case, on the other hand, uses the “SymStyn” to get inside Molly’s head while she’s battling the villains, and to make sure Molly is okay.
Dixie Flatline – The second major sidekick is a technician, consistent with SF secondary character roles outlined in Berger. Dixie Flatline is a computer AI with the speech patterns of a 20th century flyboy or astronaut.Dixie is a computer ROM so he lacks emotional capacity, even though he is a computer replica of a human cybercowboy, McCoy Pauley. Pauley survived three brain deaths (flatlines) while hacking the Matrix and was then reduced to being “on call” for hackers like Case.
Dixie foreshadows Case’s likely fate, and AI Dixie sounds a bit like HAL in Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike HAL, all Dixie wants is to complete his mission and to be permanently deleted. Dixie appears to get his wish at the end of the novel.
Maelcum - The third sidekick is also a technician, responsible for keeping Case’s hired ship operational. Maelcum is a member of Zion, a Rastafarian space station community, and he speaks a stereotypical Jamaican patois, blasts reggae music and affably smokes dope while working on machinery. He spoke like a stoned Scotty (Star Trek) minus Scotty’s perennial agita over whether he could get the ship going. Maelcum serves Case well but is clearly a hired helper, rather than a friend or confidante for Case.
Science Fiction Subgenres
February 25, 2007 at 5:20 pm | In fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, subgenres | Leave a Comment
Berger, A.A. (1992) Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts. NY: Sage.
Herald, D.T.& Wiegand, W.A.(Ed.)(2006). Genreflecting A Guide to Popular Reading Interests (6th ed.).Westport,CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Saricks, Joyce G (2001). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction. Chicago: ALA Press.
The science fiction and fantasy genres encompass a rich variety of themes, and both may be subsumed under the category of ”speculative fiction”. Berger (1992) identified 8 science fiction subgenres: aliens, alternate history, dystopia/utopia, postcastrophe (apocalyptic), sword & sorcery (fantasy), space travel (technology), time travel and unknown worlds.
Below are recommended online resources which define and give examples of popular SF subgenres. Although the lists differ, most distinguish between “hard” technology or science driven works vs. “soft” works focusing on psychological or social aspects of the “what if?” question.
Fiction Factor: Science Fiction sub-genres Concise descriptions of more than a dozen SF sub-genres, including a few missing from other sites: dystopia, extrasensory perception, and religious SF. (Accessed 2/24/07) http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/sfsubgenre.html
Genreflecting.com Science Fiction Good list of themes, but no explanation or examples provided. Genreflecting observes that SciFi genres are numerous because they’re based on content rather than being driven by plot or structure differences. Subgenre themes include: aliens, alternate history ,bleak future, cybernetics, high tech (hard), humorous ,militaristic, parallel worlds, shared worlds, space opera, time travel, and cross- genres (detective, fantasy or romance Sci Fi). (Accessed 2/24/07). http://www.genreflecting.com/Science02.html
CT Readers Advisory Intro to SF Good overview of style and content characteristics of the SF genre. Discusses Joyce Saricks’ model of two major SF subgenres: Storyteller Focus and Philosophical Focus. Fascinating discussion of which works example each type and why. (Accessed 2/24/07) http://www.conknet.com/~fullerlibrary/ReadersAdvisory/SCIENCE%20FICTION%20READER/Introduction.htm
SF Site: Science Fiction & Fantasy: A Genre with Many Faces Defines and lists representative books for seven science fiction subgenres: alternate universe, cyberpunk, military, hard, space opera, speculative and science fantasy as a cross-genre. (Accessed 2/24/07) http://www.sfsite.com/columns/amy26.htm
Writing-World.com : Sci Fi Sub genres Overview for potential science fiction writers on alternate history, apocalyptic, cyberpunk cross-genre, first contact, Hard SF, militaristic, humorous, near future, future fantasy, time travel, slipstream, sociological and space opera. Doesn’t address “speculative”. (Accessed 2/24/07) http://www.writing-world.com/sf/genres.shtml
Cyberpunk Sci Fi
February 23, 2007 at 4:05 pm | In SCI FI, SF, awards, cyberpunk, science fiction, sidekicks | Leave a CommentGibson, W. (1984.) Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.
Neuromancer achieved both instant critical acclaim and cult status, earning Book of the Year, the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1984 and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award in 1985. It is credited with launching a new SF subgenre, termed “cyberpunk” and remains a SF classic today. In 1982, Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” in his story. “Burning Chrome”. In Neuromancer he delineates his concept for “The Matrix”, a global information network which is today’s internet.
“Cyberpunk” merges the amoral, urban anarchy of 1980’s punk music and drug culture with “cybernetics” exploration of the human-machine interface. Cyberpunk’s bleak, dystopian vision of the corrupted near future is typified by the disturbing film Blade Runner. For more info, see Cyberpunk as a SciFi genre.
Synopsis: The protagonist, Case, is a drugged-out “cyberspace cowboy” (hacker), who is banished from the Matrix and close to death after stealing from a client. Desperate, Case agrees to hack the network for a shadowy militaristic figure, Armitage, in exchange for renewed health and wealth. Case works with and fights against a parade of unsavory characters from Tokyo to Paris, aided by Armitage’s razor girl assassin Molly, and an Artficial Intelligence (AI) cybercowboy named Dixie, plus other shifty sidekicks.
Throughout the novel, humans are portrayed as weak, flawed beings incapable of intimacy or honest personal relationships. At the start, Case’s prostitute girlfriend Linda Lee betrays him to get drug money; shortly thereafter, Case fails to intervene when Linda is murdered (though he agonizes and has a few nightmares about his indifference throughout the book).
As Case penetrates the Matrix “ice” (security layers), he discovers his real client is an AI called Wintermute, whose goal is to merge with another AI, Neuromancer, to exponentially grow in power and psychosocial awareness (cyberspeak for “take over the world”) The only hope for human intervention is from threeJane, the brilliant but emotionally bereft teenage heiress in a dysfunctional family of capitalists. Her father is a pedophile and necrophiliac.
The novel fizzles out after the AI components unite, with Case back to his old cowboy and body-abusing habits, and his sidekicks scattered around the world. The lack of full resolution is understandable, not just because it’s cyberpunk. Author Gibson wrote Neuromancer as the first of a cyberpunk trilogy, followed by Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988).
SCI FI Online Resources
February 22, 2007 at 4:09 am | In SCI FI, SF, fantasy, science fiction, websites | Leave a Comment
Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase (ISFDB) A respected, top -five site for SF fiction bibliographies, author biographies and myriad links to SF resources, maintained by Texas A&M University. ISFDB includes 38,327 authors and 92,750 publications. They have added a community, editable wiki link. (Accessed 2/21/07). http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Locus Online Since 1997, online version of award-winning SF magazine Locus . Daily news updates (blinks) about science fiction publishing ,plus interviews, reviews, and new releases coverage. (Accessed 2/21/07). http://www.locusmag.com/
SciFan Site for fans and readers of science fiction and fantasy. Fo
cuses on reviews, bibliographies and biographies of authors, with entries searchable by series and themes. Searchable database includes 58,000 books, 15,000 writers and 3600 web links. (Accessed 2/21/07). http://www.scifan.com/
Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database Searchable index of 76,000 articles, news clippings, movie reviews and other print material from 1878-1991 devoted to science fiction and fantasy, with some coverage of horror, gothic and utopian literature .Excludes book reviews, and SF fiction. Index maintained by Texas A&M. (Accessed 2/21/07). http://lib-edit.tamu.edu/cushing/sffrd/
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Founded in 1965, writers’ organization responsible for annual Nebula Awards. Links for bestseller lists and awards, press releases, industry and publisher news, and site of the week. (Accessed 2/21/07) http://www.sfwa.org/
Science Fiction Bibliography Excellent resource for SF research project, with extensive list of reference print resources available in public and academic libraries. Last updated 11/06 by Washington State University, it recommends encyclopedias, critical analyses, and SCI FI literature review indexes. (Accessed 2/21/07). http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/sfresearch.html
SF-Lovers Since 1979, dedicated to SF-fandom and updated by fan S. Jaffe. Archive of SF- Digest, Convention lists, WorldCon history, Resource Guide and info on SF TV and movies. (Accessed 2/21/07) http://www.noreascon.org/users/sflovers/u1/web/
SF Site A mainstay on “top 5 links” lists for science fiction and fantasy, this website offers biweekly reviews, interviews, fiction excerpts, lists, news and previews with a searchable archive spanning more than a decade. It covers print, online (zines), TV, and movie SF works, with links to fan tribute sites, conventions, publishers and writer resources. (Accessed 2/21/07). http://www.sfsite.com/
Uchronia The Alternate History List is an annotated bibliography of over 2800 novels, stories, essays and material involving the “what ifs” of history. (Accessed 2/21/07) http://www.uchronia.net/
Ultimate SF Web Guide Text-heavy and last updated in 2004, but over 6000 links to SF web resources and unique features: SF readlikes by themes, SF timeline by decade, pages on aliens, time travel, games (Accessed 2/21/07) http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/SF-Index.html
Sidekicks: The Bone Vault
February 13, 2007 at 4:54 am | In Bone Vault, crime fiction, sidekicks | Leave a CommentFairstein, L. (2003). The Bone Vault. NY: Scribner.
Alex Cooper is a savvy, quick-witted Manhattan DA cum detective and protagonist in Linda Fairstein’s crime fiction series (1996-2007). Alex delivers an energetic, no-nonsense first person narration that relishes the forensic details and detective banter. To soften Alex’s intensity and reveal her endearing quirks, Fairstein features the same two sidekicks in every Cooper novel.
The sidekicks are NY detectives Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman. Mercer is a forty-something, married, African-American detective in NY’s Special Victims Squad. The power of his great height and physical stature are countered by his quiet intelligence and compassionate manner. Mercer as sidekick serves the role of protector, sounding board, and voice of reason for Alex. In this novel, Mercer has jitters over impending first-time fatherhood, which allows Alex to gently tease her normally calm sidekick while revealing a rarely seen nuturing maternal instinct.
Alex describes homicide detective, Mike Chapman, as her longest and closest friend. He is the stereotypical macho, wise-cracking, street-smart, working class cop made good. His tough exterior conceals a mensch inside. Fairstein describes in slightly overwrought prose Mike’s unsung heroism on 9/11. Mike gently asserts his peer status with Alex by calling her “Blondie” and being first to discover the real clues and connections in the case. Throughout the book, Chapman surprises the reader (and sometimes Alex) with his razor intelligence and expertise on arcane subjects from Egyptian burial rights to poisons. It’s obvious to the reader that Alex and Chapman are romantically meant for each other. Alex demurs commenting “I had never imagined him as a lover or husband”-(Let’s see what develops in the sequels!)
It was not surprising that heroic sidekick Mike is the one to rescue Alex when the killer traps her in a museum vault. However, I was somewhat taken aback when Fairstein allows Mike to identify the killer and later attempt to tie up the messy loose ends of the murder case. Rather than calling the shots, Alex seems to be going along for the ride with the reader. Mike Chapman, though he lacks Alex’s credentials and official power is really functioning as an intellectual equal–her de-facto partner and colleague,
Mystery: The Bone Vault
February 12, 2007 at 9:27 pm | In Bone Vault, Dove, Fairstein, mystery | Leave a Comment
Dove, G. (1997). The Reader and the Detective. OH :Bowling Green State University Press. Fairstein, L. (2003). The Bone Vault. NY: Scribner. 
I read The Bone Vault (2003) by Linda Fairstein as a recent example of a mystery/detective series narrative. The detective, Manhattan Assistant DA, Alexandra Cooper, is the alter-ego of the author, who served 25 years as a DA in the NYC sex crimes unit. Like Fairstein, Alex or “Coop” is a blonde divorced workaholic in her mid 30s, who is endearingly relentless, funny, a devoted friend and smart (as evidenced by her Jeopardy bets with two detective sidekicks).
The Bone Vault is the fifth of nine Cooper procedural mysteries, linked by their metro NY settings and exploration of the seamy underbelly of the city’s cultural elite maneuvering through the worlds of art, theater,medicine and anthropology. Their narrative strength lies in the author’s compelling descriptions of legal and forensic puzzles. In contrast, the author’s interweaving of clues into the plot is often heavy-handed as are her descriptive passages designed to offer glimpses into the psychological machinations of the main characters.
Dove’s (1997) typology describes a 7-step basic plot for detective fiction: problem, first solution, complication, period of gloom, dawning light, solution, explanation.
1.The Problem in The Bone Vault is the discovery of a miraculously preserved woman’s body in an Egyptian sarcophagus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The victim was a South African woman in her 20’s, a medieval art scholar employed by the Met who apparently died from arsenic poisoning.
2.The first solution leads the reader to suspect the French Met Director Thibodaux of the murder, inferring it was to conceal an affair. The Director initially claims ignorance of the victim’s identity, though he had worked with her in Paris and at the Met. He abruptly resigns his position and presents a lame explanation for why the victim was wearing his dead wife’s cashmere sweater.
3. The Complication is introduced when the victim’s friend and museum colleague Clem discloses that the two women were on a secret mission to reclaim human Inuit bones awarded to the museum by plundering European explorers.
4. The Period of Gloom occurs when the detectives go down many literal dead ends (secret corridors and vaults at the museums) and figurative dead ends as they interview a parade of employees at the Met and its exhibit partner, the Museum of Natural History. There are long tedious sequences and the detectives are about to be freezed out of access to the museum.
5. Dawning Light occurs when they use Clem as bait at the Met to flush out the killer. When Clem disappears, the detectives realize she’s been kidnapped by the killer.
6. Solution Coop’s sidekick Chapman is the one who identifies the murderer as museum curator Poste or Van de Poste : the South African son of one of the infamous bone-snatching explorers.).
7. Explanation The sketchy explanation is that the victim was being slowly poisoned by Poste to force her to abandon her pursuit of the human bones and return to South Africa. When Katrina discovers humiliating details about the explorer in a diary, Van de Poste kills and stuffs her in a Met sarcophagus (details unspecified).
There is an ironic connection between the first puzzle and the focal mystery, It is revealed that Met Director Thibodaux resigned because he illegally procured museum artifacts, relying on unscrupulous black market traders. His behavior mirrors Van de Poste’s reprehensible treatment of native artifacts and their sacred remains.
A Reading Life
January 31, 2007 at 3:56 pm | In Alberto Manuel, Anna Quindlen, reading life | Leave a CommentManguel, A. (1996). A History of Reading. NY: Viking Press.
Quindlen, A. (1998). How Reading Changed My Life. NY: Ballantine Books.
To understand the reader’s perspective on genres, it’s useful to explore the historical and cultural context of reading. In doing so, I was transported for hours browsing my library’s surprisingly large selection of books about books, reading and readers. There was a missionary zeal in these works, especially those penned by noted authors. These memoir-style accounts were lush with anecdotes detailing how both the simple act of reading and what they read transformed their lives.
Anna Quindlen’s best seller How Reading Changed My Life (1998) is my favorite book on this subject. In her free-flowing, engaging essay style, Quindlen describes her discovery of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and its revelation of possibilities. She discovered that reading could offer freedom, sustenance and companionship. She deftly interweaves her personal stories with comments on attitudes toward reading expressed in American popular culture. She observes (p 9) “a certain hale and heartiness that is suspicious of reading as anything more than a tool for advancement”. Her comments about reading groups , about censorship and about women reading resonated with me.
My reactions to another best-selling reading memoir, Alberto Manuel’s A History of Reading (1996) are decidedly mixed by comparison. I enjoyed dipping into Manuel’s chapters and sampling his historical anecdotes. However, I feel the title is a vast overpromise versus the wandering, idiosyncratic text he delivers. What Manuel does best is discuss how previous experience will influence how each reader interprets a text. Manuel’s book is similar to Quindlen’s in that it celebrates the intimacy and the reader’s freedom to create and recreate meaning . Another highlight was his chapter “Reading within Walls” which explores genre reading stereotypes, personalized by his embarrassment at buying “the pink covered book”.
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