[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/4/2025]
First off: Unit 5751 is second in the meal rotation schedule for the second week in a row. Mr. Dixon's inspection/harassment did not cause this achievement. Those ranking came about before Dixon got sicced on us. Still, I really need emptying my locker of books.
I gave up on Drama in the Modern World (D. C. Heath and Co.). I did this week before last; wanting prose, my Best European Fiction 2010.
I do not know if Jim Holt's Why Does The World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (Liveright Publishing Corp, 2012) caused or only accelerated my current depressive mood. I got to say I thought it a brilliant explanation of scientific, religious, and philosophical explanations of why we are here and so is our universe. I noticed no one really argued that we cannot really determine why the world exists with life but that since it appears life does go on "bra" we need to get to doing a better job of living. And that is all for Mr. Holt quoting William James.
Maybe the bad mood comes from not writing. During much of my reading of Why Does The World Exist?, I had "Mike Devlin's Homecoming" in mind. Holt's book sharpened my wits on a theme. I kept seeing my dialog in my second section re-written, re-ordered. The world exists so I can try my hand at writing! LOL
How bad of a mood? I got thinking about cancer and euthanasia. How it will be to die and be dead. I cannot see, but maybe three or four people talking me out of this decision. One has not spoken to me in over four years and will not again in this life. One I have never spoken to in my life. The other two keep shifting about. I see myself forgotten. I cannot hear my name spoken. My writings go into a dumpster. I become a name on a grave marker, that's actually a cypher. I feel peacefulness with these thoughts. With my current situation, I feel annoyance with a farce that has gone on too long.
Julian Gough contributed a story to Best European Fiction 2010. In his author's statement, he suggests the-world-as-comedy and world-as-tragedy. No one in Why Does The World Exist make a similar suggestion. I cannot fit Christ's crucifixion into a comedic universe, but maybe someone else can do so. Maybe the inexplicability of General relativity to the quantum world is a universe at play?
Then I read Jill Paton Walsh's The Attenbury Diamonds: A Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mystery (Minotaur, 2010). What is it about these subtitles? We make fun of the book titles from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries which almost summarize the book, but here is the subtitle as every bit the marketing tool. Even though I read Ms. Walsh's completion of Dorothy L. Sayers's Thrones, Dominations with enjoyment (it may have been the only mystery novel I read in years), I would not have snatched The Attenbury Emeralds from the discard pile of our prison's leisure library without that subtitle.
I am not so sure how much The Attenbury Emeralds contributed to my melancholia. I thought the prose competent, albeit drab. Yet, it is 1952 and the Wimsey's are as hard hit by winning World War II as anyone. Lord Peter is now 60. So a little drabness seems appropriate. But what bothered me more was the novel's organization, its action. Lord Peter recites his first case with help from Bunter, and that that old case re-enters their current life with a tale I thought Wilkie Collins would have used. That left a whodunit that worked well enough. Not as well as the subplot about Lord Pete becoming Duke of Denver; I read that fitfully.
I guess Ms. Walsh wrote another Lord Peter novel, A Presumption of Death. I heard nothing of it, but I was probably not listening when it appeared on the scene. Maybe she has written more with Peter Wimsey as Duke of Denver. I realize there can be a problem reading a series out of turn. I gave Joel C. Rex Stout's Murder by the Book, and he hated Wolfe and thought Archie a fool. So, it may be a similar fault on my part for this series.
I also must admit I do not think highly of these literary resurrections. I abhorred Robert Goldsborough's Nero Wolfe stories. - competent but tone-deaf is my recollection. I avoid Robert B. Parker's working on Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow. I did like John Gardner's revival of James Bond - but Gardner was generally a better writer than Fleming. I also liked Colonel Son (Wish the movies would look to these for their continuations). I think Ms. Walsh, a good writer with an idea of her characters. That she wrote with the approval of the original writer's estate is the only black mark against her. Updating, quieting Wimsey seems the logical thing to do - one only needs to look at what Margery Allingham did with her Mr. Campion after WWII. Involving Harriet as a sleuth was already done by Sayers herself in Have His Carcass (one I never went back to read) and Gaudy Night (Vane did not appear in Nine Tailors, Murder Must Advertise, and The Dawson Pedigree; all of which I may have read more than once.)
Why go on about a character that long predated my birth? Dorothy Sayers and Lord Peter taught me how to hide behind a facetious exterior. How to talk without giving myself away. He never quite fit into his world, regardless of his birth or talents or money. He always wanted to be useful when usefulness seemed quite unlikely. I first met him in the person of Ian Carmichael on Masterpiece Theatre. Then I began reading the novels. I must admit to not finishing Five Red Herrings. I read all the short stories collected in Lord Peter. I think Dorothy L. Sayers a subtle genius who played with the form (see Gaudy Night), and the content of the whodunit (Gaudy Night, Murder Must Advertise, The Dawson Pedigree, and the short stories). I see now I should have questioned myself when I stopped reading Sayers.
One last thing about The Attenbury Emeralds: I kept recurring to Remains of the Day while reading it.
Next: John Irving's In One Person, and a book on political decision-making.
Tomorrow, I have a call-out to see Dr. Gomez, one of our three psychologists. I was thinking last night about asking for anti-depressants. I'm not so sure now.
sch
7/4/2025:
One thing missing from prison is information. No Google. I would have liked to see what others thought about the books I noted above. Well, I got that chance now, and you can decide if I am a moron or not.
Jim Holt's compelling 'Why Does the World Exist?': Book review (Los Angeles Times)
The most compelling answer comes from Weinberg, whom Holt visits, fittingly, at the halfway point of the book. Weinberg disdains the theological option: “With or without religion,” he avers, “you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Yet he also questions the ability of theoretical physics to explain not just the mechanism of the universe but also its animating impulse.
The trouble with cosmological conjectures, he tells Holt, “is that we have no way, at present, of deciding whether they’re true or not. It’s not just that we don’t have the observational data — we don’t even have the theory.”
Equally problematic, even a so-called “final theory” (“one that would tie up all the forces of nature…into a single neat mathematical package”) may never answer the question of why. This may well continue to be the case even with the announcement last week that the Higgs boson, otherwise known as the “God particle,” almost certainly exists. “The more the universe seems comprehensible,” Weinberg has written, “the more it also seems pointless.” This is the paradox, not only for Weinberg but for Holt too.
Why Does the World Exist?: Jim Holt's "Existential Detective Story" (Los Angeles Review of Books)
During the interview, I asked Holt if he thought defining nothing was a futile task. After all, any definition would be confined by language and any name given to nothing would inevitably turn it into something. “Trying to envisage nothingness defeated a lot of great thinkers,” Holt said....
"The Attenbury Emeralds" by Jill Paton Walsh (Dave's Book Blog)
Paton Walsh has done all this admirably; I scarcely noticed the join. There are other moments when I could enjoy her craft: I especially loved the two cockney sisters who had an understated but characteristic grammatical style of their type.
What I didn't like was the plot! You may argue that some of the original plots were massively far-fetched but this one was especially difficult to believe in and the solution and the villain were not especially credible.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book, galloping through it in a couple of days, and I am looking forward to reading the next.
Book Review: Jill Paton Walsh's Attenbury Emeralds (KD Did It)
This was a sad tale, partly because it doesn’t even feel like a Dorothy Sayers and partly because there is so much loss.
You may also want to follow the links provided in the text.
sch
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