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John Mortimer, the creator of Horace Rumpole, Rumpole of the Bailey, the British Perry Mason, has died at the age of 85. PBS nerds will recall the defining performance of the Rumpole character delivered by Leo McKern in several seasons on Mystery, but Mortimer was a really good writer who worked in other forms, especially writing plays. His autobiography, Clinging to the Wreckage is a good read on its own. And, he seems to have been a genuinely nice guy who didn’t take himself too seriously, but he was a very sharp observer. He was trained in the law, was a fierce defender of personal liberty against intrusions, and despite his easy manner, no push-over in court. He knew his stuff. If the State wants to take away a guy’s liberties, make ‘em justify it and prove everything. Rumpole’s motto, “Never Plead Guilty!” was in fact his own. Mortimer also had a sincere affection for his father, apparently a remarkably well-read man, patient and kind. Mortimer had been ailing a long while and at the end, lost his sight. Still, he worked everyday, dictating when he could no longer “write”, pushing out 1,000 well-crafted words per day, every day. Hmmm. Maybe that’s the secret.
Here’s the link to Arts and Letters Daily. The Mortimer story…I almost wrote “Rumpole”… is in the left column, close to the top.
Mortimer

John Updike, prolific American writer of novels, short stories, poetry, art criticism and other genres is dead at a hospice outside Boston, of cancer. He was 76. There is a very long obit and appreciation on the front page of The New York Times, and the link is provided, but you may not be able to reach it. Wait for the story in Arts and Letters Daily, probably tomorrow.

Updike

The Amazon! They don’t come any bigger, and a giant no matter how you tackle it. A new book explores what might best be called the cultural anthropology of exploration of the Amazon basin by Europeans. Exploration is often a handy euphemism for destructive exploitation. The first guys to hit the big river were a pretty rough bunch, intent on enriching themselves, devil take the hindmost and woe to those who got in their way. There was plenty of woe to go around and the effects of it continue to this day. It’s all spelled out in a new book, which I stumbled on in trawling for items to put into this blog.

TREE OF RIVERS; the story of the Amazon , by John Hemming
368pp. Thames and Hudson. £20 (US $39.95).

I don’t think a reader should expect too much on the hydrology, or geochemistry, or climatology of the region. The slant here is on how Europeans reacted to the stunning immensity of the region. One brighter spot amid all the oppression and terror inflicted on the inhabitants was the courageous efforts of some naturalists to incorporate the amazing plants and animals they encountered into our understanding of the natural world. Some famous names pop, floatin’ down the river. Alfred Russell Wallace is one, and Alexander von Humboldt another. Hemming describes the work of two fellow Brits (there they are again, those annoying Islanders, about to stun us once more with feats of daring, endurance, energy, accomplishment that makes us wonder if we’ve been swallowing stupid pills since first grade). I mean Walter Bates and Richard Spruce, the latter of whom was of feeble health and expected to check out very soon. Well, he found Amazonia so fascinating that he didn’t get around to dying until many years later, and after a long period of achievement and robust health, both in Brazil and in India. Go figure. Moreover, the three guys actually met up, in Manaus in what surely must be a billion to one shot. It’s like one of those episodes from The Young Indiana Jones in which the youthful Indy runs into a passel of famous folk: Lenin, Somerset Maugham, Woodrow Wilson, etc. Yeah, right. But this actually happened. As Casey Stengel used to say: “you can look it up.”
Here’s the link to the review in the London Times:
River

It really is an ill-wind that blows nobody something good. So, even in this gloomy period of what is politely referred to as an economic “down-turn”, there are a few bright spots. One of these is the great increase in the traffic at public libraries. People are going there to use the computers to create, adjust or transmit resumes, check email, borrow music, video, and even books. Who knows, it may make at least half of these orphans of the storm into regular library users. Many local libraries however are facing tough times of their own, and are closing branches or reducing hours and staff. In places like California, it’s bad and will worsen as the state tries to deal with a budget shortfall that is bigger than the GDPs of many nations. The Journal has the story.
Libraries

Jen Cheney offers an NPR piece on the books of LOST, the television drama featuring a group of air crash survivors on a mysterious Pacific island. Three books that the author has in mind are: Watership Down, The Turn of the Screw, and Slaughterhouse Five by Richard Adams, Henry James and Kurt Vonnegut respectively. Read why at:
Lost books
PS. NPR has a recurring feature called Three Books, in which an invited writer pens a short appraisal of , well, three books on some particular theme…politics, China, dogs, ghosts, etc. Look for it at: www. npr.org

Ricardo Montalban, movie star and despite that, not a bad actor died recently at the age of 88, and Patrick McGoohan, British actor and star of the long running, super-weird TV series The Prisoner (sometimes described as “the thinking man’s spy-drama”) is dead at the age of 80. Old Timers will be pleased, or horrified, to learn that there are plans to re-shoot The Prisoner. Hhmmmmm. I have to say I never cared much for it. It was too Kafka-esque, rather like Lost, if you come to think of it. I guess I’m just showing my old, linear, two-state logic cast of mind.

Prof. Judith A. Little has edited a collection of writings by major SciFi authors, such as Ursula K. LeGuinn, James Tiptree, Margaret Atwood, under the title Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction. The book is grouped around the exploration of basic themes, such as what is human nature, exactly? What constitutes a Utopia, or a Dystopia? It was published by Prometheus Books in 2007.

Wired magazine offered its Top Ten Gadget breakthroughs of 2008. The tenth item was a story about advances in flexible displays, which, if they pan out, could lead to some serious progress in things we’ve been hearing about for a while: “digital paper:”, for one thing. It also seems possible to create products on flexible displays by a kind of printing process, and that is important because of the implications for lower cost.
Some of the other choices didn’t impress me too much, such as the Speedo super-swimsuit, but to each his own.

Gadgets for ‘08

Finally, Donald E. Westlake, author of many, funny caper-crime novels featuring the Dortmunder Mob, died on New Year’s Eve. He was 75. Westlake penned over 90 novels, at times writing under other names. John Dortmunder is a criminal mastermind, who contrives absolutely ingenious scams, break-ins, thefts and other crimes, only to see them fall apart because the Universe is a cruel place and Fortune is fickle. Also, the other guys in the mob are often not up to playing on Dortmunder’s crime Stradivarius. A tin kazoo is more in their league. So, tiny breakdowns, incidents, accidents and other interruptions shatter the Prussian efficiency. For Dortmunder, the plans, no matter how well laid, will always go agley, with comic results. Westlake also wrote screenplays, television scripts and straight crime fiction. Several of his stories were made into films, but it was hard to catch the tone in a movie version. He seems to never have stopped writing. If you’re down in the dumps, go try a Westlake novel…preferably one of the Dortmunder series.