JUST AFTER SUNSET, By Stephen King

JUST AFTER SUNSET, By Stephen King

Little Bites of Horror
A book review by CHARLES TAYLOR

November 23, 2008
JUST AFTER SUNSET
Stories
By Stephen King
367 pp. Scribner. $28

If the prospect of a collection of stories by Stephen King isn’t as inviting as a new King novel, it’s not just because the writer’s recent novels — “Duma Key,” “Lisey’s Story” and especially “Cell” and “From a Buick 8” — have been so good. It’s because King continues to be dedicated to giving his readers a luxuriant experience, the basic pleasure of getting lost in a book.
In his introduction to the new collection “Just After Sunset,” King explains that as a young almost-poor schoolteacher trying to get a writing career started, stories, many of them published in men’s magazines like Dude and Cavalier, were a way to a much needed check when the car needed a muffler or his wife’s birthday was coming up. King says the stories simply came out, and he wasn’t too concerned with learning what constituted good structure. “I was flying entirely by the seat of my pants,” he writes, “running on nothing but intuition and a kid’s self-confidence.”
King goes on to say that getting a chance to edit the 2007 edition of “The Best Ameri­can Short Stories” gave him an excuse to read a bunch of stories. It also, he says, inspired him to try to recapture the knack for writing stories that, along the way, had given way to the more expansive pursuit of writing novels.
“Just After Sunset” suggests why. It’s an uneven collection, in both tone and execution, and it often reminds you of how King’s writing has moved beyond its genre roots. That’s not to affirm the critics who’ve reduced King’s writing to penny dreadfuls that have no bearing on the real world. Good writing of the fantastic and the macabre is always based in recognizable emotion. Noting the detail and empathy that have long made him one of the most observant chroniclers of American middle-class life, the critic Laura Miller shrewdly observed that King should accurately be judged “a realist.”
In “Just After Sunset,” there are only flashes of the kind of recognition that King the novelist provides, and the short-story form does not allow him the space to turn his plot devices into metaphors. For me, that was most apparent in “N.” The tale has a tricky story-within-a-story structure. A woman whose psychiatrist brother has committed suicide forwards his notes to a boyhood friend who is now a television doctor. The notes tell of the shrink’s sessions with a patient who has come upon an odd patch of Maine woods where something evil and powerful lurks. The story showcases King’s almost unholy talent for making the natural world seem like something not of this world. But just when you’re ready for whatever is lurking in those woods to fully reveal itself and the power it wields, the story ends — granted, on an unsettling and clever note. But King seems to be just warming up, and the story feels like a sketch for one of his novel-length freakouts.
Other stories range from the delirious bad taste of “The Cat From Hell” to the just plain bad taste of “A Very Tight Place,” from the gloppily inspirational “Ayana” to the botched brilliance of “The Things They Left Behind.” I have a special fondness for “The Cat From Hell.” Little furry creatures are often the victims in horror stories. King’s tale is revenge for every fictional house pet ever perfunctorily slaughtered in the name of thrills. It’s disgusting, and I mean that as a compliment.
“The Things They Left Behind” proceeds to a tidy, too heartwarming ending. Imperfect though it is, it’s also the most affecting and scary story here. The narrator is an office worker who, in order to savor a late-summer day, called in sick on Sept. 11. About a year later, artifacts that belonged to his murdered co-workers begin turning up in his apartment. And that’s not all. At night, they begin whispering to each other, often in the voices of their dead owners.
So much hand-wringing has already been expended over the question of how art should deal with 9/11. No fiction that has attempted the subject has, to my mind, been as effective (or as affecting) as King’s “From a Buick 8” and “Cell.” Both novels were direct and oblique, not mentioning 9/11 but addressing the question of how you retain your humanity after the unthinkable has entered your life. (In “Cell,” the characters’ reaction to the numbers 9-1-1 determines whether they remain human or become monsters.) There’s nothing oblique in “The Things They Left Behind.” King employs a simple, unnerving device to address the way the presence of the dead was palpable in the city following 9/11.
Despite the disappointments of “Just After Sunset,” and the sense that these stories remain, at some level, an exercise, a stopgap for the next full-fledged King project, the book also feels like the work of a writer who, even in less than top form, wouldn’t dream of breaking faith with his readers.
Part of what I respect about Stephen King — and I suspect it’s part of what drives some of his fellow writers and some critics crazy — is the honesty of that admission, in this book’s introduction, that he churned out stories for money. There’s no pretense that he was “honing his craft” or “perfecting the form,” no attempt to disguise the fact that any writer who is honest enough admits to doing some time on Grub Street. Which is why, in books like “The Dark Half” and “The Shining,” King has been so witheringly accurate about the vanity and pettiness of writers.
King’s critical reputation has by now had more corrections than the Dow. He has been both Horror Hack and Underrated Littérateur. Every few years, usually in the name of what Terry Southern called the “quality lit game,” somebody decides he’s taken too seriously and needs to be put back in the drugstore racks where they think he belongs. And any critical defense of King is usually good for a round of claims that said critic is decrying literature or assuming that book sales equal quality.
So let’s be clear. King isn’t good because he’s popular. But any critic who puts King’s popularity down to the dreadful taste of the masses (cue Harold Bloom) has failed to do the basic work of a critic, which is to understand and probe and not simply to judge. King gets to readers because he renders everyday life so exactly and because he understands it is always ready to rupture.
The literary critic Leslie Fiedler, in an interview given a few weeks before he died, recalled telling a group of postmodern fiction writers, “Look, let’s be frank with each other: When all of us are forgotten, people will still be remembering Stephen King.” Anyone who claims to be interested in contemporary American literature needs to understand what he’ll be remembered for.

Charles Taylor is a columnist for The Newark Star-Ledger and Bloomberg News.

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THE PRIVATE PATIENT By P. D. James

THE PRIVATE PATIENT By P. D. James

Despite a Ghastly Murder, Remember Your Manners
A book review byJanet Maslin

November 20, 2008

Books of The Times

THE PRIVATE PATIENT, By P. D. James
352 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95.

“The Private Patient,” P. D. James’s latest exercise in impeccable detection, begins with a woman named Rhoda Gradwyn. She is something of a muckraking London journalist. But she sounds like one of Ms. James’s patricians just the same. Miss Gradwyn (Ms. James does not put her readers on a comfortable first-name basis with characters) is soon to enter an elite clinic where a top-flight plastic surgeon with a hyphenated name, Mr. George H. Chandler-Powell, will at long last remove a scar from her face.
“Why now, Miss Gradwyn?” the doctor inquires. “Because I no longer have need of it,” she answers, offering no further explanation. Hm.
Several weeks later the surgery is performed at the doctor’s picturesque clinic, which is located in the grand old Cheverell Manor in Dorset. The operation is a success. And then Miss Gradwyn is throttled in the middle of the night by a mysterious person who wears latex gloves to do the deed. This is dreadful news, not only for the victim but for her renowned doctor, too.
“The clinic could hardly continue after Miss Gradwyn’s murder,” one of the book’s many characters surmises. “Only patients with a pathologically morbid fascination with death and horror would book in at the Manor now.” And only aficionados of tales of detection in grand English country houses will want to know more about this story.
As usual Ms. James nestles her tale of malice in a seductively tony setting. “The Private Patient” does this particularly well. First of all there is a deceased Uncle Peregrine, and the disposition of his fortune will affect members of the clinic’s staff. Second, the woman whose family had to sell Cheverell Manor to the wealthy doctor is still hanging on as part of the household, perhaps peacefully and perhaps tacitly boiling with rage.
And third, as the book’s title indicates, the place proudly treats its patients with the utmost discretion. Should the fact that an investigative journalist has wormed her way into it raise any eyebrows among those investigating the murder? Along comes Commander Adam Dalgliesh, Ms. James’s specialist in elegant country house crimes, with an answer: most assuredly yes.
When Ms. James, the best-selling 88-year-old Baroness James of Holland Park, is not complaining about taxes (taxpayers are “the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue,” or “it will come to you in time, what’s left after a rapacious government has extracted its loot”), she is wringing as many questions as possible from Rhoda Gradwyn’s death. Why was her gold-digging young male friend, himself distantly linked to poor old Uncle Peregrine, on the premises when this patient died? Why were midnight lights seen at the circle of 12 Cheverell Stones near the manor house, a spooky outdoor spot once associated with witch-burning?
In a story that explicitly reminds one of its characters of Agatha Christie’s classic manor-house mystery “And Then There Were None,” Ms. James spends time luxuriantly introducing each member of the clinic’s elaborate household and signaling their status by means of tweeds, physiognomy (“That face is pure Plantagenet”), ability to quote Thomas Hardy’s poetry, fondness for long country walks and the use of words like “chatelaine.”
The provenance of Cheverell Manor also gets its due. (“The long gallery. Sir Walter Raleigh danced there when he visited the Manor.”) And it goes without saying that Dalgliesh’s major holdings-forth are conducted in the elegantly appointed library, with staff and suspects all gathered ’round.
The killer, who attacked just before midnight, is given a suitably lofty name. (“How about Noctis — by or from the night?”) And the incidental conversation runs to remarks like this: “While Father was ill, I became obsessive about making marmalade. God knows why. He liked home-made preserves but not that much.”
All of this goes to show that Ms. James sets her mystery on comfortably familiar terrain and makes the most of its atmospherics. But the plotting of “The Private Patient” is not up to this author’s diabolical best. True, the book’s array of red herrings is choice. And its characters have ample motives and opportunities to do wrong. And the isolated setting yields its strokes of ingenuity, as with the news that latex gloves like those used by the killer were readily available at the clinic. Nobody outside Cheverell Manor would have known that. Everyone on the premises did.
If Dalgliesh’s deductions are not at their Holmesian sharpest this time, it’s true that he has other matters on his mind. “The Private Patient” inches him closer to both retirement and to Emma, the woman who brings out the poet in him and the atypically cumbersome wordsmith in Ms. James. “All that Dalgliesh knew of Emma’s childhood had been told in those desultory snatches of conversation in which each explored with tentative footsteps the hinterland of the other’s past,” the reader is told. Happily, Emma has a father who sounds like Oscar Wilde and who gives Dalgliesh license to be even more smitten with Emma in the future.
Somewhere along the way to its denouement “The Private Patient” loses both track of and interest in its title character. Rhoda Gradwyn’s past is of great interest to some of the book’s characters but not to the reader. And her scar, the book’s original detective-ready detail? The scar has a story but not a great one. Sometimes plastic surgery is just plastic surgery, after all.

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‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ by DAVID WROBLEWSKI, 1st chapter

‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ by DAVID WROBLEWSKI
FIRST CHAPTER

A Handful of Leaves
In the year 1919, Edgar's grandfather, who was born with an extra share of whimsy, bought their land and all the buildings on it from a man he'd never met, a man named Schultz, who in his turn had walked away from a logging team half a decade earlier after seeing the chains on a fully loaded timber sled let go. Twenty tons of rolling maple buried a man where Schultz had stood the moment before. As he helped unpile logs to extract the wretched man's remains, Schultz remembered a pretty parcel of land he'd spied north and west of Mellen. The morning he signed the papers he rode one of his ponies along the logging road to his new property and picked out a spot in a clearing below a hill and by nightfall a workable pole stable stood on that ground. The next day he fetched the other pony and filled a yoked cart with supplies and the three of them walked back to his crude homestead, Schultz on foot, reins in hand, and the ponies in harness behind as they drew the cart along and listened to the creak of the dry axle. For the first few months he and the ponies slept side by side in the pole shed and quite often in his dreams Schultz heard the snap when the chains on that load of maple broke.
He tried his best to make a living there as a dairy farmer. In the five years he worked the land, he cleared one twenty-five-acre field and drained another, and he used the lumber from the trees he cut to build an out-house, a barn, and a house, in that order. So that he wouldn't need to go outside to tote water, he dug his well in the hole that would become the basement of the house. He helped raise barns all the way from Tannery Town to Park Falls so there'd be plenty of help when his time came.
And day and night he pulled stumps. That first year he raked and harrowed the south field a dozen times until even his ponies seemed tired of it. He stacked rocks at the edges of the fields in long humped piles and burned stumps in bonfires that could be seen all the way from Popcorn Corners — the closest town, if you called that a town — and even Mellen. He managed to build a small stone-and-concrete silo taller than the barn, but he never got around to capping it. He mixed milk and linseed oil and rust and blood and used the concoction to paint the barn and outhouse red. In the south field he planted hay, and in the west, corn, because the west field was wet and the corn would grow faster there. During his last summer on the farm he even hired two men from town. But when autumn was on the horizon, something happened — no one knew just what — and he took a meager early harvest, auctioned off his livestock and farm implements, and moved away, all in the space of a few weeks.
At the time, John Sawtelle was traveling up north with no thought or intention of buying a farm. In fact, he'd put his fishing tackle into the Kissel and told Mary, his wife, he was delivering a puppy to a man he'd met on his last trip. Which was true, as far as it went. What he didn't mention was that he carried a spare collar in his pocket.
That spring their dog, Violet, who was good but wild-hearted, had dug a hole under the fence when she was in heat and run the streets with romance on her mind. They'd ended up chasing a litter of seven around the backyard. He could have given all the pups away to strangers, and he suspected he was going to have to, but the thing was, he liked having those pups around. Liked it in a primal, obsessive way. Violet was the first dog he'd ever owned, and the pups were the first pups he'd ever spent time with, and they yapped and chewed on his shoelaces and looked him in the eye. At night he found himself listening to records and sitting on the grass behind the house and teaching the pups odd little tricks they soon forgot while he and Mary talked. They were newlyweds, or almost. They sat there for hours and hours, and it was the finest time so far in his life. On those nights, he felt connected to something ancient and important that he couldn't name.
But he didn't like the idea of a stranger neglecting one of Vi's pups. The best thing would be if he could place them all in the neighborhood so he could keep tabs on them, watch them grow up, even if from a distance. Surely there were half a dozen kids within an easy walk who wanted a dog. People might think it peculiar, but they wouldn't mind if he asked to see the pups once in while.
Then he and a buddy had gone up to the Chequamegon, a long drive but worth it for the fishing. Plus, the Anti-Saloon League hadn't yet penetrated the north woods, and wasn't likely to, which was another thing he admired about the area. They'd stopped at The Hollow, in Mellen, and ordered a beer, and as they talked a man walked in followed by a dog, a big dog, gray and white with brown patches, some mix of husky and shepherd or something of that kind, a deep-chested beast with a regal bearing and a joyful, jaunty carriage. Every person in the bar seemed to know the dog, who trotted around greeting the patrons.
"That's a fine looking animal," John Sawtelle remarked, watching it work the crowd for peanuts and jerky. He offered to buy the dog's owner a beer for the pleasure of an introduction.
"Name's Captain," the man said, flagging down the bartender to collect. With beer in hand he gave a quick whistle and the dog trotted over. "Cappy, say hello to the man."
Captain looked up. He lifted a paw to shake.
That he was a massive dog was the first thing that impressed Edgar's grandfather. The second thing was less tangible — something about his eyes, the way the dog met his gaze. And, gripping Captain's paw, John Sawtelle was visited by an idea. A vision. He'd spent so much time with pups lately he imagined Captain himself as a pup. Then he thought about Vi — who was the best dog he'd ever known until then — and about Captain and Vi combined into one dog, one pup, which was a crazy thought because he had far too many dogs on his hands already. He released Captain's paw and the dog trotted off and he turned back to the bar and tried to put that vision out of his mind by asking where to find muskie. They weren't hitting out on Clam Lake. And there were so many little lakes around.
The next morning, they drove back into town for breakfast. The diner was situated across the street from the Mellen town hall, a large squarish building with an unlikely looking cupola facing the road. In front stood a white, three-tiered drinking fountain with one bowl at person height, another lower, for horses, and a small dish near the ground whose purpose was not immediately clear. They were about to walk into the diner when a dog rounded the corner and trotted nonchalantly past. It was Captain. He was moving in a strangely light-footed way for such a solidly constructed dog, lifting and dropping his paws as if suspended by invisible strings and merely paddling along for steering. Edgar's grandfather stopped in the diner's doorway and watched. When Captain reached the front of the town hall, he veered to the fountain and lapped from the bowl nearest the ground.
"Come on," his buddy said. "I'm starving."
From along the alley beside the town hall came another dog, trailing a half-dozen pups behind. She and Captain performed an elaborate sashay, sniffing backsides and pressing noses into ruffs, while the pups bumbled about their feet. Captain bent to the little ones and shoved his nose under their bellies and one by one rolled them. Then he dashed down the street and turned and barked. The pups scrambled after him. In a few minutes, he'd coaxed them back to the fountain, spinning around in circles with the youngsters in hot pursuit while the mother dog stretched out on the lawn and watched, panting.
A woman in an apron walked out the door of the diner, squeezed past the two men, and looked on.
"That's Captain and his lady," she said. "They've been meeting there with the kids every morning for the last week. Ever since Violet's babies got old enough to get around."
"Whose babies?" Edgar's grandfather said.
"Why, Violet's." The woman looked at him as if he were an idiot. "The mama dog. That dog right there."
"I've got a dog named Violet," he said. "And she has a litter about that age right this moment back home."
"Well, what do you know," the woman said, without the slightest note of interest.
"I mean, don't you think that's sort of a coincidence? That I'd run into a dog with my own dog's name, and with a litter the same age?"
"I couldn't say. Could be that sort of thing happens all the time."
"Here's a coincidence happens every morning," his buddy interjected. "I wake up, I get hungry, I eat breakfast. Amazing."
"You go ahead," John Sawtelle said. "I'm not all that hungry anyway." And with that, he stepped into the dusty street and crossed to the town hall.
When he finally sat down for breakfast, the waitress appeared at their table with coffee. "If you're so interested in those pups, Billy might sell you one," she said. "He can't hardly give 'em away, there's so many dogs around here."
"Who's Billy?"
She turned and gestured in the direction of the sit-down counter. There, on one of the stools, sat Captain's owner, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the Sentinel. Edgar's grandfather invited the man to join them. When they were seated, he asked Billy if the pups were indeed his.
"Some of them," Billy said. "Cappy got old Violet in a fix. I've got to find a place for half the litter. But what I really think I'll do is keep 'em. Cap dotes on 'em, and ever since my Scout ran off last summer I've only had the one dog. He gets lonely."
Edgar's grandfather explained about his own litter, and about Vi, expanding on her qualities, and then he offered to trade a pup for a pup. He told Billy he could have the pick of Vi's litter, and furthermore could pick which of Captain's litter he'd trade for, though a male was preferable if it was all the same. Then he thought for a moment and revised his request: he'd take the smartest pup Billy was willing to part with, and he didn't care if it was male or female.
"Isn't the idea to reduce the total number of dogs at your place?" his buddy said.
"I said I'd find the pups a home. That's not exactly the same thing."
"I don't think Mary is going to see it that way. Just a guess there."
Billy sipped his coffee and suggested that, while interested, he had reservations about traveling practically the length of Wisconsin just to pick out a pup. Their table was near the big front window and, from there, John Sawtelle could see Captain and his offspring rolling around on the grass. He watched them awhile, then turned to Billy and promised he'd pick out the best of Vi's litter and drive it up — male or female, Billy's choice. And if Billy didn't like it, then no trade, and that was a fair deal.
Which was how John Sawtelle found himself driving to Mellen that September with a pup in a box and a fishing rod in the back seat, whistling "Shine On, Harvest Moon." He'd already decided to name the new pup Gus if the name fit.
Billy and Captain took to Vi's pup at once. The two men walked into Billy's backyard to discuss the merits of each of the pups in Captain's litter and after a while one came bumbling over and that decided things. John Sawtelle put the spare collar on the pup and they spent the afternoon parked by a lake, shore fishing. Gus ate bits of sunfish roasted on a stick and they slept there in front of a fire, tethered collar to belt by a length of string.
The next day, before heading home, Edgar's grandfather thought he'd drive around a bit. The area was an interesting mix: the logged-off parts were ugly as sin, but the pretty parts were especially pretty. Like the falls. And some of the farm country to the west. Most especially, the hilly woods north of town. Besides, there were few things he liked better than steering the Kissel along those old back roads.
Late in the morning he found himself navigating along a heavily washboarded dirt road. The limbs of the trees meshed overhead. Left and right, thick underbrush obscured everything farther than twenty yards into the woods. When the road finally topped out at a clearing, he was presented with a view of the Penokee range rolling out to the west, and an unbroken emerald forest stretching to the north — all the way, it seemed, to the granite rim of Lake Superior. At the bottom of the hill stood a little white farmhouse and a gigantic red barn. A milk house was huddled up near the front of the barn. An untopped stone silo stood behind. By the road, a crudely lettered sign read, "For Sale."
He pulled into the rutted drive. He parked and got out and peered through the living room windows. No one was home. The house looked barely finished inside. He stomped through the fields with Gus in his arms and when he got back he plunked himself down on the running board of the Kissel and watched the autumn clouds soar above.
John Sawtelle was a tremendous reader and letter writer. He especially loved newspapers from faraway cities. He'd recently happened across an article describing a man named Gregor Mendel — a Czechoslovakian monk, of all things — who had done some very interesting experiments with peas. Had demonstrated, for starters, that he could predict how the offspring of his plants would look — the colors of their flowers and so on. Mendelism, this was being called: the scientific study of heredity. The article had dwelt upon the stupendous implications for the breeding of livestock. Edgar's grandfather had been so fascinated that he'd gone to the library and located a book on Mendel and read it cover to cover. What he'd learned occupied his mind in odd moments. He thought back on the vision (if he could call it that) that had descended upon him as he shook Captain's paw at The Hollow. It was one of those rare days when everything in a person's life feels connected. He was twenty-five years old, but over the course of the last year his hair had turned steely gray. The same thing had happened to his grandfather, yet his father was edging up on seventy with a jet black mane. Nothing of the kind had happened to either of his elder brothers, though one was bald as an egg. Nowadays when John Sawtelle looked into the mirror he felt a little like a Mendelian pea himself.
He sat in the sun and watched Gus, thick-legged and clumsy, pin a grasshopper to the ground, mouth it, then shake his head with disgust and lick his chops. He'd begun smothering the hopper with the side of his neck when he suddenly noticed Edgar's grandfather looking on, heels set in the dirt driveway, toes pointed skyward. The pup bucked in mock surprise, as if he'd never seen this man before. He scrambled forward to investigate, twice going tail over teakettle as he closed the gap.
It was, John Sawtelle thought, a lovely little place.
Explaining Gus to his wife was going to be the least of his worries.
In fact, it didn't take long for the fuss to die down. When he wanted to, Edgar's grandfather could radiate a charming enthusiasm, one of the reasons Mary had been attracted to him in the first place. He could tell a good story about the way things were going to be. Besides, they had been living in her parents' house for over a year and she was as eager as he to get out on her own. They completed the purchase of the land by mail and telegram.
This the boy Edgar would come to know because his parents kept their most important documents in an ammunition box at the back of their bedroom closet. The box was military gray, with a big clasp on the side, and it was metal, and therefore mouseproof. When they weren't around he'd sneak it out and dig through the contents. Their birth certificates were in there, along with a marriage certificate and the deed and history of ownership of their land. But the telegram was what interested him most — a thick, yellowing sheet of paper with a Western Union legend across the top, its message consisting of just six words, glued to the backing in strips: OFFER ACCEPTED SEE ADAMSKI RE PAPERS. Adamski was Mr. Schultz's lawyer; his signature appeared on several documents in the box. The glue holding those words to the telegram had dried over the years, and each time Edgar snuck it out, another word dropped off. The first to go was PAPERS, then RE, then see. Eventually Edgar stopped taking the telegram out at all, fearing that when ACCEPTED fluttered into his lap, his family's claim to the land would be reversed.
He didn't know what to do with the liberated words. It seemed wrong to throw them away, so he dropped them into the ammo box and hoped no one would notice.
(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski Copyright © 2008 by David Wroblewski. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by David Wroblewski

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE By David Wroblewski.

The Dog Whisperer, A Review By MIKE PEED
August 3, 2008


THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, By David Wroblewski., 562 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $25.95.

Near the beginning of the fifth act of “Hamlet,” just a few lines after he fondles Yorick’s skull, the Prince of Denmark grows distraught at the sight of Ophelia’s burial and avows he’ll do anything to avenge the death of his love — including eat a crocodile. When his boasts are taken for psychosis, Hamlet threatens, “Let Hercules himself do what he may, / The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.” Here, David Wroblewski, in his ambitious first novel, uses the framework of Shakespeare’s tragedy to grant that patient dog its day.
“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is not alone, of course, in its reanimation of “Hamlet” (see Matt Haig’s recent novel “The Dead Fathers Club,” for example), but it is surely the first to populate it with so many hounds. Set chiefly in the early 1970s, near the Chequamegon National Forest in Wisconsin, the novel tells the story of the Sawtelle family, which over the generations has strived to establish, through an experimental amalgam of breeding, training and mysticism, the ne plus ultra of the companion dog. The goal is to produce free-willed, “choice making” creatures, ones that, having “learned that a certain expression on a person’s face meant that something interesting lay behind them, or in another room,” will pursue the action best for both themselves and their owners. Wroblewski, who grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm and until recently worked as a software engineer, wrote his novel over the course of a decade, and he takes as much inspiration from Darwin and Mendel as he does from Kipling and London. The result is a sprawling, uneven work, at times brilliant but elsewhere sentimental and tedious.

After several miscarriages, Trudy Sawtelle gives birth to Edgar, a boy who, like the family’s dogs, can hear but cannot speak. The source of Edgar’s disability is never understood — it is one of the book’s many mysteries — but the muteness enables an almost supernatural connection between him and the animals. Edgar is smart, adamantly curious about both the natural and human world, and the language he creates is a resourceful patchwork of learned and invented signs. (With striking effect, Wroblewski renders Edgar’s statements without quotation marks.)
In the book’s early sections, Wroblewski presents an idyll — Edgar and his father stroll serenely through the early morning woods, Edgar fumbles through the care of his first litter — that can seem mawkish and superficial. Edgar’s father, Gar, is a vague sketch of benevolence and probity, and the outside world exists only in periodic pop culture references — Roger Miller, a man on the moon. Yet how can paradise be destroyed if it doesn’t first exist?
The destroyer enters in the form of Edgar’s uncle, Claude, who, if a more complex character than his brother, is nonetheless depicted with a disconcerting number of clichés. The night Claude arrives, Edgar has a nightmare: “Claude spoke in a voice low and quiet, his face divided by a rippling line of cigarette smoke, his words a senseless jumble. But when Edgar looked down, he found himself standing in a whelping pen surrounded by a dozen pups, wrestling and chewing one another; and then, just as he lapsed into deep, blank sleep, they stood by the creek and one by one the pups waded into the shallow water and were swept away.” The stream of words is graceful, but it amounts to the most obvious foreshadowing. After the “ferociously solitary” Claude repeatedly bickers with Gar, and Gar abruptly dies, Edgar knows but cannot prove Claude murdered his father.
Wroblewski’s literary skill is most apparent in his intoxicating descriptions of the bucolic setting. “The sapphire sky above floated a small, lone cloud made orange by the sunrise,” he writes in one dreamlike sequence. “Sparrows cartwheeled over the wet field like glazier’s points against the sky, and the swallows nesting in the eaves plunged into the morning air.” Similarly, Wroblewski’s handling of the ghost scene (“His head, his torso. Arms held away from his body. All formed by raindrops suspended and instantly replaced”) and his transformation of “the play’s the thing” into an ingenious skit of syringe-clenching dogs display a delightful legerdemain. The book’s climax is a high-voltage ride of multiple perspectives and shifting time frames.
Wroblewski seems aware of the two outsize risks he has undertaken — not merely deciding to retell “Hamlet,” but combining it with a near categorically twee subject: slobbering, tail-wagging dogs. He handles his task with impressive subtlety, even when allowing the narrative a dog’s-eye view. But while sections of this book achieve a piercing elegance, the novel too often slides into the torpid mode of field guides and breeding manuals, with Wroblewski’s penchant for detail getting in the way of a full exploration of his characters’ emotional cores. This concern with the exterior frequently eclipses his attention to the interior, a self-indulgence that the first-time author may well outgrow. Even Shakespeare had to first produce “Titus Andronicus.”

Mike Peed is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker.

www.nytimes.com

A VIOLÊNCIA COTIDIANA, por Francisco Vaz Brasil

A VIOLÊNCIA COTIDIANA
Francisco Vaz Brasil

“Enquanto a miséria cobre de cadáveres vossas ruas, de ladrões e assassinos vossas prisões, que vemos da parte dos escroques da fina sociedade? ... os exemplos mais corruptores, o mais revoltante cinismo, o banditismo mais desavergonhado... Não receais que o pobre que é citado ao banco dos criminosos por ter arrancado um pedaço de pão pelas grades de uma padaria se indigne o bastante, algum dia, para demolir pedra por pedra a Bolsa, um antro selvagem onde se roubam impunemente os tesouros do Estado, a fortuna das famílias.”
FOUCAULT, Michel. Vigiar e punir – História da violência nas prisões.

Petrópolis, RJ:Ed. Vozes, 17 ed. p.253

A violência domina o teu cotidiano. Não passas uma semana sem que assistas, leias ou ouças pelos meios de comunicação notícias de assaltos, assassinatos, seqüestros e atentados. O perigo de morte violenta está em todos os lugares. Não raro, a vítima é um dos teus amigos, vizinhos ou conhecidos. Aos poucos, o círculo parece se fechar à tua volta e, revoltado, sem perceber passas a alimentar, com os teus próprios sentimentos, as vibrações de agressividade que permeiam o mundo: queres vingança, sonhas em fazer justiça com as próprias mãos – acrescentas raiva na fogueira da agressão.
Convives com a violência, algumas vezes em casa, mas a violência está mesmo nas ruas. A insegurança é geral. Balas entre a polícia e os bandidos cruzam à tua frente. Com a violência escolas têm as aulas paralisadas. O comércio fecha e sofre os prejuízos. Todos se escondem e correm. E é privilégio das populações em quase todo o país. Convives com os assaltos à mão armada nos ônibus, nas casas comerciais, nas ruas e agora, a invasão de casas e apartamentos residenciais. Convives, pois, com seqüestros, com homicídios por vingança e assaltos por toda parte.
Estás inseguro, à mercê da criminalidade. E como transformar essa situação, aparentemente incontrolável? Já que és responsável apenas pelos teus pensamentos, desejos e ações, o primeiro passo é tomar consciência do teu próprio instinto de agressividade e, direcioná-lo para atividades criativas: o trabalho, a arte, os esportes, etc. Assim, serás um agressor a menos no mundo.
Já sabes que a violência é um fenômeno social muito perigoso, sabes que dezenas de pessoas morrem por causa de tiros e golpes, e sabes que deves te cuidar. Hás que ter muito em conta que deves tratar de reduzir a violência. O primeiro passo é saber como te controlar, saber manejar teus impulsos negativos que tanto dano te fazem. Ao mesmo tempo, precisas aprender a te colocar no lugar do outro e tentar entender o que o levou a atos tão insanos. Por fim, resta-te desenvolver o dom de perdoar – única maneira de libertar-te da mágoa e da dor que atingem as vítimas da violência.
Deves procurar uma autêntica educação, com o desenvolvimento integral da pessoa, proporcionando-te além de conhecimentos, valores, crenças e atitudes frente a distintas situações. Necessitas aprender a respeitar ao outro, possibilitando-te a capacidade de aceitar o erro como incentivo para a busca de outras alternativas válidas, superando as dificuldades que se apresentem.
A receita é também válida para aqueles casos em que a agressão manifesta-se de forma mais sutil, limitando-se a danos emocionais – nem por isso menos insignificantes –, como numa briga de casal ou na discussão com um amigo ou com um desconhecido.
Seja como for, a situação é muito complexa e exige de nós, seres tão incompletos e inconstantes, o reflexivo exercício da boa vontade, da tolerância e do amor ao próximo – de preferência, incondicional. Precisamos inventar uma vacina em nosso íntimo laboratório.
Vês que a violência não é um fenômeno novo na sociedade brasileira e os crimes, à medida que não são resolvidos, vão se acumulando nos porões da história, comprometendo o Estado de direito, em sua dimensão pública e privada. Os horrores se sucedem no dia-a-dia, mas a violência não é somente aquela que produz cadáveres, que mutila corpos e que destrói a materialidade, ela é também aterradora, quando se reveste de desrespeito à dignidade humana.
Nesse universo, inúmeras violações aos direitos dos seres humanos mais fundamentais são cometidas no cumprimento das penas, maculando o entorno cultural da sociedade contemporânea, sobretudo em razão de suas desigualdades, uma vez que, dentre outros indicadores, o grau de civilização de um país é medido pelo respeito dispensado aos seres humanos, livres e presos.
Vives um dos piores momentos da história, com a deflagração das mais variadas crises, seja de mercado ou de mercadoria humana, onde impera uma totalidade de problemas que passa pelo desemprego, decadência das instituições responsáveis pela educação, saúde e moradia; corrupção generalizada, descrédito nas ideologias, desrespeito ao meio ambiente e crime organizado, apenas para citar alguns.
Isso tudo gera o aumento da criminalidade, que se não for tratada de maneira adequada, volta-se contra a própria sociedade, que passa a viver sob o signo do medo e da insegurança. Na busca desesperada de uma suposta tranqüilidade social, advoga-se por medidas repressivas de extrema severidade e a sanção penal passou a ser considerada como indispensável para a solução dos conflitos sociais.
Segundo estudo realizado pela Unesco, a violência estaria classificada em três níveis:
1. Violência “dura”: golpes, ferimentos, violência sexual, roubos, crimes, vandalismos;
2. Incivilidades: agressões, humilhações, palavras grosseiras, desordens, falta de respeito, discriminação;
3. Violência simbólica ou institucional: refere-se ao abuso do poder baseado no consentimento que se estabelece e se impõe mediante o uso de símbolos de autoridade e que dissimula as relações de força e poder. Ela fere e não necessariamente se utiliza de força física.
O que está acontecendo no Brasil é que cristalizou-se a ideia de que a punição generalizada virou "remédio para todos os males" que afligem os homens bons. Para chegar a esse ponto, os meios de comunicação tiveram grande influência, pois como a violência atrai público, vendendo jornais e audiência, deu-se enorme publicidade aos delitos de maior gravidade, como assaltos, seqüestros, homicídios, estupros, etc. A insistência do noticiário desses crimes criou a síndrome da vitimização. Tu passas a crer que a qualquer momento podes ser vítima de um ataque criminoso
O delito sempre existiu e sempre existirá. Ocorre em todos os países, em todas as civilizações, sejam quais forem os seus costumes. É impossível extingui-lo, não quer dizer que o aceitas, podes, entretanto, senti-lo reduzido, em escalas razoáveis e toleráveis.
As lamentáveis condições de vida em nossas prisões, não são segredo para ninguém, tu bem o sabes. O sistema carcerário brasileiro não tem cumprido seu principal objetivo, que é reintegrar o condenado ao convívio social, de modo que não volte a delinqüir.
Como causas principais da violência, podes enumerar o alcoolismo como o primeiro. As drogas: as mais diversas, que levam ao delírio os seus consumidores e ao enriquecimento os seus traficantes. Se a uns a droga torna ricos, a outros, as drogas levam à desgraça e até a morte. O ciúme. O ciúme é causa de muitas mortes, principalmente de mulheres, devido à falta de entendimento entre casais.
Furtos e Roubos: aparentemente é a forma mais fácil obter dinheiro e bens é roubando aplicando golpes, sequestrando.
A violência é uma ação exercida por uma ou várias pessoas que submetem outra ou outras pessoas de maneira intencional ao maltrato, pressão, sofrimento, manipulação e ações que atentam contra a integridade física, psicológica e moral do indivíduo ou grupo de pessoas. A violência é a pressão psíquica ou abuso da força exercida contra uma pessoa com o propósito de obter fins contra a vontade da vítima. Assim, podes presenciar a violência de várias formas:
Violência familiar: No seio familiar, onde mulheres e crianças são maltratadas e submetidas a tratamentos desumanos pelos homens. Logo na família, onde os direitos de todos deveriam ser respeitados, onde a infância deveria ser protegida, pois, daí se originam a delinqüência infanto-juvenil, a entrada para o mundo das drogas e da prostituição. O maltrato físico, com lesões leves ou graves, como fratura de ossos, hemorragias, lesões internas, queimaduras, envenenamento, hematomas.
Violência sexual: É um crime muito comum praticado contra mulheres, crianças e adolescentes. Às vezes a vítima oculta ter sido vítima por vergonha, isolando-se. Ao ocultar tal fato, a vítima está favorecendo ao agressor e ajudando-o a cometer novos delitos. É uma experiência muito traumática.
Violência cotidiana: É a que sofres diariamente e se caracteriza pelo desrespeito às regras sociais, ao péssimo transporte público, a não atendimento e a longa espera pelos doentes em hospitais. A indiferença ao sofrimento humano. Insegurança Acidentes de trânsito. És vítima e parte de uma luta cujo cenário se converte em uma selva urbana..
Violência econômica: refletida pela pobreza e marginalidade de grandes grupos da população, o desemprego, o subemprego, informalidade, tudo isto basicamente refletido na falta ou desigualdade de oportunidade de acesso à educação e saúde.
Violência delinquencial: Roubos, fraudes, narcotráfico, quer dizer, condutas que assumem meios ilegítimos para alcançar bens materiais. Milhares de menores se organizam em grupos para roubar, para fumar maconha, cheirar crack e se prostituir.
Milhares de pessoas vivem em casas comerciais ou particulares protegidas por grades. As crianças de hoje já não podem brincar nas calçadas.
Violência policial: Esta é caracterizada por homens despreparados, inescrupulosos que usam a farda para extorquir pessoas, empresas e praticam toda a forma de crimes contra inocentes, os desprotegidos. Maus policiais agem em benefício próprio, rapinando os cidadãos de bem. Muitos foram demitidos das instituições. Muitos continuam agindo e por falta de provas não recebem o julgamento justo. Muitos foram os que formaram grupos de extermínio. Invadem tua casa sem licença, sem mandado de busca, sem respeito a velhos e crianças. É preciso mudar. Muita coisa, inclusive o homem.
Outras formas de Violência: A violência contra a pessoa está banalizada. E parece que vale a pena cometer crimes, pois a impunidade impera. Ficas triste ao ver juízes indiciados por vendas de sentenças, soltarem presos perigosos e nunca mandar para a prisão pessoas que metem a mão nos cofres públicos. Liberação de presos perigosos que a polícia jamais recapturará.. Juízes afastados mas continuarão recebendo seu alto salário como aposentado. A propina corre solta. E viva o Brasil, terra da contravenção, da corrupção, onde o crime compensa e só vai para a cadeia ladrão de galinha e vendedor de CD e filme pirata. Ver cadáveres é coisa banal. Saber que um amigo ou vizinho foi assaltado banal. A impunidade impera. Aliado a isso há a violência no trânsito, onde a imprudência adicionada ao álcool e às drogas, deixam vítimas e os infratores ficam, na maioria dos casos, impunes. A indústria do seqüestro cresce e atinge principalmente as família de classe média e alta. Os seqüestradores mantém os reféns e, lugares lúgubres e cobram verdadeiras fortunas pelo resgate. A polícia age com muito sigilo e muitos cativeiros são desmantelados e os membros das quadrilhas são presos. Há resgates pagos mas o refém não é encontrado com vida. É comum hoje os bandidos comandarem seqüestros de dentro das prisões, graças à presença de aparelhos telefônicos dentro das penitenciárias. Os falsos seqüestros têm feito muitas vítimas a pessoas incautas, que não atentam ao que realmente está ocorrendo ao seu redor. O seqüestro é, também, considerado crime hediondo e está ao alcance das autoridades policiais a solução. Basta querer realmente eliminar as várias formas de entrada de celulares nas prisões. E por falar em segurança ou vigilância carcerária, como é que entram nas celas armas, facas, punhais, estiletes, cordas e outros objetos que são utilizados em fugas, e em rebeliões nos presídios? Por que será, hein? Por que deixaram uma escada para o Champinha fugir? Ah, é bom não esquecer da água mineral e do cigarrinho do Fernandinho Beira Mar! Tratem bem do homem porque o 1º PCC pode voltar a agir a qualquer reclamação dele. Ele pode mandar explodir o mundo, com tudo quanto é Raimundo...

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

A Mercy by Toni Morrison
A book review by Erin Collazo Miller, About.com

A Mercy by Toni Morrison is a short novel, and can be appreciated best when read in one or a couple sittings. Indeed, the the simple story is told in several voices, but reading these voices in succession weaves a tapestry that tells a larger story about America's history of slavery and the extermination of Native Americans. A Mercy is not plot or character driven -- it is about the voice of the past and what it means to be human.

Pros
'A Mercy' is a simple story, but Morrison uses it to point toward a bigger story
Morrison writes a variety of voices well
It is a quick but thought provoking gift

Cons
There is not much plot to draw you back to the book if you put it down

Description
'A Mercy' was published in November 2008
Publisher: Knopf
176 Pages

Guide Review - 'A Mercy' by Toni Morrison - Book Review
The main character in A Mercy is Florens, a slave whose mother gives her away in 1690. Florens is haunted by her mother's decision. She is also driven by love for a free, African-American blacksmith. She is sent on an errand to fetch the blacksmith in hopes that he will be able to heal her mistress of smallpox.
The plot of A Mercy is relatively simple, but each chapter contains a different voice -- Florens, the Mistress, the Native American woman in their household, another slave, some neighboring servants. The variety of perspectives shines light on all the forces at play in the family. This family, in turn, points to how life was in America at this moment in history.
A Mercy is the first Toni Morrison book I have read, so I am unable to compare it to her previous novels, such as Beloved. Even from the small sample of Morrison's writing that I experienced in A Mercy, it was clear to me that she is a very skilled author. She is able to capture a variety of voices and emotions with her words. I would guess, however, that this is not her best work. It contained skill and depth, but I had trouble connecting to the novel. It was not difficult for me to put it down.
I would, however, recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction that deals with slavery in America. It is a quick, thought-provoking read.

http://bestsellers.about.com/od/fictionreviews/gr/a_mercy.htm

Judeu diz ter sofrido humilhações em cadeia de SP

Judeu diz ter sofrido humilhações em cadeia de SP
Americano foi preso e afirma que acabou obrigado a tirar barba. Governo nega humilhações e informa que vai apurar o caso.

Do G1, com informações do Fantástico
23/08/09 - 22h12 - Atualizado em 23/08/09 - 22h30
http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/SaoPaulo/0,,MUL1277481-5605,00.html

Causou-me indignação a atitude de alguns policiais paulistas em relação ao tratamento dado a esse judeu. E se ele afirma que sofreu tais humilhações, é porque as sofreu. Não podemos admitir comportamentos tão grosseiros e tanta intolerância. Estes policiais não merecem usar a farda ou o nome da instituição que representam, e, muito menos alguns de seus superiores, porque acataram o que fizeram e, por conta de certos regulamentos, aceitaram com benevolência tal comportamento. O delegado e os policiais responsáveis por tais atos devem ser demitidos da polícia, para o bem do Estado de São Paulo e de seus cidadãos.
Por outro lado, prender o homem apenas porque carregava consigo alguns objetos de alto valor, não são provas suficientes para tais atos. Pergunto: Quantos brasileiros já saíram daqui com pedras preciosas para vender lá fora, para pagar suas despesas de passagem e estadia e jamais foram presos pelas polícias alemãs ou de outros países europeus?

E não reclamem quando brasileiros são maltratados nas alfândegas de outros países. Estão sendo tratados por pessoas de mesma índole dos nossos agentes. Não estamos nos campos de concentração alemães. Estamos no Brasil. Um Brasil civilizado e de cidadãos educados.
Estes policiais, são, na verdade, mais uma vergonha nacional. Não são policiais, são Moleques!
Agora, vamos à notícia veiculada pelo programa Fantástico, da Globo:

Corte de barba feito à força, ofensas à crença religiosa e até insultos nazistas: um judeu ortodoxo denuncia que sofreu humilhações em uma cadeia de São Paulo. O homem, de 56 anos, se diz traumatizado. “Eu fiquei muito mal, pensando no que os alemães fizeram com os judeus 60 anos atrás. Isso é o que eles fizeram comigo agora no Brasil”, desabafa.
Engenheiro elétrico com passaporte americano, ele afirma ter saído da Alemanha no dia 6 de julho, para visitar amigos em São Paulo. Assim que passou pelo desembarque no Aeroporto Internacional de Guarulhos, na Grande São Paulo, foi preso.
A polícia descobriu que ele carregava no casaco e no colete itens valiosos não declarados, como joias, diamantes e relógios caros. O engenheiro passou três dias detido na Polícia Federal, no Aeroporto de Guarulhos, e foi levado depois para um Centro de Detenção Provisória (CDP). Nele, segundo o judeu, depois de passar por uma triagem, ele teria sido vítima de intolerância religiosa. Ele diz que um carcereiro atirou no chão a quipá - um pequeno chapéu obrigatório para todo judeu ortodoxo. "Ele, então, começou a falar com um colega que estava ao lado, rindo de mim. Depois, eles falaram ‘heil Hitler’", conta. "Heil Hitler", "salve Hitler", é a mais conhecida saudação nazista da época do holocausto. O engenheiro diz que, depois da insultá-lo, os carcereiros encontraram em sua bagagem dois objetos religiosos, o talit e o tefilin, e os atiraram no chão. Os acessórios são sagrados. “Quando uma pessoa se envolve com o talit, nessa hora, ele está lembrando que tem que cumprir os 613 mandamentos de Deus. Quando um judeu coloca o tefilin de manhã, é a conexão dele com Deus”, explica.
Sem barba
Mas o pior ainda estava por vir. “O carcereiro me perguntou há quanto tempo eu tinha a barba. Eu disse que tinha desde que ela começou a crescer. Ele respondeu, então, que a partir daquele dia, eu não ia ter mais barba”, lembra. O engenheiro diz que o puseram em uma cadeira, algemado nas mãos e nos pés. Em seguida, sua barba foi complemente raspada. “Consta na nossa Torá, que é a nossa Bíblia, que é proibido você destruir parte de sua barba. De acordo com a cabala, a parte mística do judaísmo, através da barba, nós recebemos as benções divinas”, explica um rabino. Também foram cortados os cachos que ele mantinha desde que nasceu e que simbolizam devoção a Deus. “Em alguns campos de concentração, o tipo de humilhação que fizeram com os judeus ortodoxos foi cortar a barba e zombar dessas pessoas. Eu vejo isso como um ato antissemita, um ato isolado, mas um ato de desrespeito e humilhação”, afirma o rabino.
Outro lado
A Secretaria de Administração Penitenciária disse em nota que não houve agressões físicas, morais ou psicológicas, mas que vai apurar devidamente o caso. Segundo a secretaria, os presos são tratados de forma padronizada e têm a barba e o cabelo cortados. Com relação ao americano, a secretaria alega ainda que a barba dele era muito longa, na altura do umbigo. “É um procedimento padrão, mas que comporta exceções. Estes agentes praticaram alguns crimes, como abuso de autoridade e certamente o crime de racismo, ao incitar e praticar o preconceito contra a religião, contra a crença e a etnia”, destaca o advogado Augusto de Arruda Botelho. É a mesma opinião do juiz Sergio Mazina Martins, especialista em direitos humanos e presidente do Instituto Brasileiro de Ciências Criminais (IBCCRIM). “Você quer impedir o indivíduo de ter determinada barba, determinado cabelo, quando, na verdade, isso para ele faz parte da sua cultura e da sua própria crença religiosa”, aponta. Agora solto, o engenheiro usa barba postiça. Ele espera a Justiça decidir se poderá aguardar o andamento do processo na Alemanha, onde diz viver. E não vê a hora de ir embora. “Quero ir para casa. Espero que eles não façam mais isso com judeus que querem manter sua barba”, diz.