3AM Reading
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Adjusting to a ten-hour time difference keeps me up at night, or what my brain thinks is day.
I turn to e-books to bring on a doze, but to no avail.
In the process I come across some mighty good writing. Most recently, several mysteries by A. Fielding*.
Who was he/she? No one knows. Some suggest an Agatha Christie connection, but no literary detective has yet to lift the veil.
At one time A. Fielding was as popular as Dame Christie, but over time has faded into obscurity.
Regardless, here is a bit I came across at 3AM that is purely lyrical, as keen as something written by that master scene setter, P.G. Wodehouse:
“Pointer (the chief inspector and lead detective) and Wilmot (a crime journalist) walked to the house. The sun was shining.
A rather apologetic sun, as though begging spectators not to ask
too much.
To remember that this was November—and England.
His rays, faint and pale, seemed to cool rather than warm.
Yet their touch spelled beauty. They brought out the thrushes' song.
They lifted the lark.
They set free the strain of wren and robin in a clump of
evergreen beside Richmond Bridge.
Plaintive and sweet notes.
Joyous and pearly.
A blind man might have thought it spring, so mild was the day.
But the trees knew better.
They were only waiting for the coming of a wind with which to wrestle.
Like giants stripped for a fight, their old clothes, the withered
leaves, lying in tumbled heaps below them, they could now give
back as good as they got.
Beautiful to look at, fine and firm, they swayed aloft.
Concerned solely with their own affairs, till
the burden of giving shade and shelter should….”
And, then in the midst of all the clue sifting and red herring laying, A. Fielding offers up an author’s rationale for reading mysteries, why people can’t get enough:
“It's the charm of the word, of course,” mused Wilmot, “that's why people read detective stories. For that and—the love of the chase."
"The love of justice," Pointer spoke for once with real
warmth, "it's because they satisfy that—I suppose the
deepest passion of every one's heart, but a criminal's—that
people read, and write, detective novels."
"I read 'em for facts, helpful facts," Haviland (an assistant to Pointer) volunteered.
"Really, some of the dodges these writers get hold of—"
"You're wrong. Both of you." Wilmot, as usual, spoke with
certainty (as absolute as any Chat-Bot spewing derived conclusions). "The same thing makes people read, that makes you, Haviland, a policeman, and you, Pointer, a detective. And that is for the sake of the thrill. Of the manhunt. There's nothing else in the world quite like it.
Why, even I begin to get the whiff of it in my nostrils."
Pointer was silent. Only his friends knew the Chief
Inspector's dislike of that common phrase, and point of view.
To himself, Pointer was but a keen, impartial keeper of the open
road, the path of law and order. The only path by which
civilisation, to his mind, could march on. (Emphasis added.)
*Both excerpts From A. Fielding, "The Footsteps That Stopped," American edition, James A. Knopf, New York, 1926
I turn to e-books to bring on a doze, but to no avail.
In the process I come across some mighty good writing. Most recently, several mysteries by A. Fielding*.
Who was he/she? No one knows. Some suggest an Agatha Christie connection, but no literary detective has yet to lift the veil.
At one time A. Fielding was as popular as Dame Christie, but over time has faded into obscurity.
Regardless, here is a bit I came across at 3AM that is purely lyrical, as keen as something written by that master scene setter, P.G. Wodehouse:
“Pointer (the chief inspector and lead detective) and Wilmot (a crime journalist) walked to the house. The sun was shining.
A rather apologetic sun, as though begging spectators not to ask
too much.
To remember that this was November—and England.
His rays, faint and pale, seemed to cool rather than warm.
Yet their touch spelled beauty. They brought out the thrushes' song.
They lifted the lark.
They set free the strain of wren and robin in a clump of
evergreen beside Richmond Bridge.
Plaintive and sweet notes.
Joyous and pearly.
A blind man might have thought it spring, so mild was the day.
But the trees knew better.
They were only waiting for the coming of a wind with which to wrestle.
Like giants stripped for a fight, their old clothes, the withered
leaves, lying in tumbled heaps below them, they could now give
back as good as they got.
Beautiful to look at, fine and firm, they swayed aloft.
Concerned solely with their own affairs, till
the burden of giving shade and shelter should….”
And, then in the midst of all the clue sifting and red herring laying, A. Fielding offers up an author’s rationale for reading mysteries, why people can’t get enough:
“It's the charm of the word, of course,” mused Wilmot, “that's why people read detective stories. For that and—the love of the chase."
"The love of justice," Pointer spoke for once with real
warmth, "it's because they satisfy that—I suppose the
deepest passion of every one's heart, but a criminal's—that
people read, and write, detective novels."
"I read 'em for facts, helpful facts," Haviland (an assistant to Pointer) volunteered.
"Really, some of the dodges these writers get hold of—"
"You're wrong. Both of you." Wilmot, as usual, spoke with
certainty (as absolute as any Chat-Bot spewing derived conclusions). "The same thing makes people read, that makes you, Haviland, a policeman, and you, Pointer, a detective. And that is for the sake of the thrill. Of the manhunt. There's nothing else in the world quite like it.
Why, even I begin to get the whiff of it in my nostrils."
Pointer was silent. Only his friends knew the Chief
Inspector's dislike of that common phrase, and point of view.
To himself, Pointer was but a keen, impartial keeper of the open
road, the path of law and order. The only path by which
civilisation, to his mind, could march on. (Emphasis added.)
*Both excerpts From A. Fielding, "The Footsteps That Stopped," American edition, James A. Knopf, New York, 1926
John Lubans - portrait by WSJ