A Hoax of a Ghost Hoax

On March 29, 2013, R. T. gave us a good look at fools and their history, especially on April's Fool's Day, which happens to be today.  He sent me looking on the Internet for famous hoaxes.  One that intrigued me was the Cardiff Giant Petrified Man in the 1860's. Here's what Wikipedia had to say about the Cardiff Giant.

The Cardiff Giant

Creation and discovery

The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about the passage in Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth.

The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. In 1858 the newspaper Alta California had published a bogus letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode. Some other newspapers also had published stories of supposedly petrified people.


The much publicized the discovery of the Petrified Giant.

Hull hired men to carve out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long (3.2 m) block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he hired Edward Burghardt, a German stonecutter, to carve it into the likeness of a man and swore him to secrecy.

Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered, and the giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. In November 1868, Hull transported the giant by rail to the farm of William Newell, his cousin. By then, he had spent US$2,600 on the hoax.

Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869 they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"

Exhibition and exposure as fraud

Newell set up a tent over the giant and charged 25¢ for people who wanted to see it. Two days later he increased the price to 50¢. People came by the wagon load.

Archaeological scholars pronounced the giant a fake and some geologists even noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found. Yale palaeontologist Othniel C. Marsh called it "a most decided humbug". Some Christian fundamentalists and preachers, however, defended its authenticity.

The Cardiff Giant on display

Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest for $23,000 (equivalent to $423,000 in 2013) to a syndicate of five men headed by David Hannum. They moved it to Syracuse, New York, for exhibition. The giant drew such crowds that showman P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for the giant. When the syndicate turned him down, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a plaster replica. He put his giant on display in New York, claiming that his was the real giant and the Cardiff Giant was a fake.

As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to spectators paying to see Barnum's giant. Over time, the quotation has been misattributed to Barnum himself.

Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a fake, but the judge told him to get his giant to swear on his own genuineness in court if he wanted a favorable injunction.

On December 10, Hull confessed to the press. On February 2, 1870 both giants were revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake.

Ten feet "sounds" tall, but seeing the Giant with normal
sized women really illustrates how large it is.

Current resting place

The Cardiff Giant appeared in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, but did not attract much attention.

An Iowa publisher bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947 he sold it to the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still on display.

Why did this fascinate me?  Mark Twain captured me with Huckleberry Finn the summer between second and third grade, and I still love to read his works.  His short story, "A Ghost Story," was familiar to me, but never having heard of the Cardiff Giant before R.T. sent me seeking famous hoaxes, I'd always assumed the story was ALL fiction.  We frequently discuss origins of story ideas, and many authors suggest their stories spin off from news items. Before you read this story, may I remind you that Mark Twain was born in 1835 and died in 1910.  He would have been thirty-four years old when the Cardiff Giant was "discovered" and thirty-five when the hoax was revealed. Twain wrote this story in 1903.

Since the story is now public domain, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you "A Ghost Story."  Enjoy! 

A Ghost Story

by Mark Twain

     I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.

     I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half- forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance and left no sound behind.

     The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.

     I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. All but my own heart--I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again.

     At last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain--it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room--the step of an elephant, it seemed to me--it was not like anything human. But it was moving from me--there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door-- pass out without moving bolt or lock--and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed--and then silence reigned once more.

     When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream--simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when-down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained.

     I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long time, peering into the darkness, and listening.--Then I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs.

     Sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer--while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded--that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped --two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had--turned to gouts of blood as they fell--I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air--floating a moment and then disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, anal a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment it seemed to pass to the door and go out.

     When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused--the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape--an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!

     All my misery vanished--for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said:

     "Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair--Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing--"

     But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him and down he went--I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.

     "Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--"

     Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements.

     "Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at' all? Do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"

     But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin.

     "Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better."

Mark Twain

     "Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his eyes.

     "Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here--nothing else can stand your weight--and besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." So he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.

     "What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?"

     "Infernal chilblains--I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there."

     We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired, and spoke of it.

     "Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am tired out--entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some hope!" I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:

     "This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur! Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing-- you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself--the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!--[A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine" Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum is Albany,]--Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"


Even after the hoax was exposed,
shows at fairs and carnivals advertised
their giants as the Cardiff Giant.

     I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before.

     The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly, is that true?"

     "As true as I am sitting here."

     He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast); and finally said:
"Well-I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself."

     I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow-- and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath-tub.

                                                                         THE END

What about you?  Does the morning coffee and newspaper trigger story ideas?

Until we meet again. take care of you!

Surrounded by Bigfoots

In my November 2012 post on Bigfoot, I discussed the upcoming search for the legendary and elusive creature in the Great Smoky Mountains by the team of Bigfoot hunters from the TV program “Finding Bigfoot” on the Animal Planet channel. The episode aired on Sunday, February 24, 2013. Since I’m in bed at 10:00 PM, I DVRed it (okay, made up the word with hope of earning a place in the history of new words coined).

The hunters came to Knoxville because, according to them, East Tennessee has a history of Bigfoots, and Knoxville and the surrounding areas are Bigfoot haven. Bigfoots like the terrain, especially the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, a quick and easy way for them to travel north and south without coming in contact with “human civilization.”

The lady on the team is the skeptic. The team couldn’t verify that the creature in a picture an interviewee took was Bigfoot because of the blurred image. The skeptic explained that people sometimes see what they want to see, like seeing images in clouds. She had a name for this phenomenon but I couldn’t spell it, so couldn’t look it up.

On the Animal Plant website are two 2-minute videos of the team’s visit to East Tennessee. In the first video, “Peek-a-Boo in Tennessee,” a man claims he woke up in the middle of the night and saw a face looking at him through his bedroom window. He got up, went to the window and made faces at the creature. The creature mimicked his facial expressions and finally walked away. The team skeptic suggested the man was looking at his own reflection and thought he saw the creature. I like her explanation. His claim put him on TV for his 15 minutes of fame.

Apparently, the hunters have never themselves seen a Bigfoot. Their evidence, other than stories from people who claim to have seen one, is the sound of trees falling in the woods. In their first attempt to attract Bigfoot, the team placed several Payday candy bars on a fallen tree trunk. When they returned later, the candy bars were still there. So, they decided to do what they do on every hunt, make weird sounds. On key, everybody stopped making sounds and in the silence they supposedly heard a tree falling. Yippee, Bigfoot responded by knocking down a tree. I didn’t hear the tree fall.

The “Hog Calling” video is my favorite of the two. Since Bigfoots like deer and hog meat, the team employed two of the best hog callers in East Tennessee, a man and a woman. The man did his hog calling thing, and next the woman did her pig calling thing. Again, the hunters heard a tree crashing. More joy, for Bigfoot had knocked down another tree. The hog callers agreed but didn’t seem convinced.

The hunters didn’t go toward the tree crashing sound because it was over a mile away, and they’d have had to cross a ravine and climb a steep hill. How could they tell how far away the sound was? No one said and no one asked.

Farmers in these parts don’t take kindly to creatures stealing their hogs. It’s likely that had a Bigfoot raided a farmer’s hog pen, the farmer wouldn’t have come to the door with a digital camera. No sir, he would have had a shotgun in his hands, and Bigfoot would’ve gotten a taste of buckshot.

What puzzles me is why, if East Tennessee has a history of Bigfoots and there’re so many of them here, didn’t the team ask the Native Americans in Cherokee, NC about Native American legends and possible Bigfoot sightings? The hunt, of course, was on the Tennessee side of the mountains, but the Cherokees lived on both sides before the “Trail of Tears” removed some of them to Oklahoma.

For more information, see Leigh’s November 29, 2012, comment on my Bigfoot post in which he posted the story about a veterinarian claiming to have DNA evidence of Bigfoot’s existence. I leave it to my fellow SleuthSayers using their detective skills to decide if the veterinarian is pulling our legs.

My dog is barking. A Bigfoot may be inviting himself to Easter dinner. If you don’t see my next post, send for the Bigfoot hunters.

Happy Easter!

From FARGO to ARGO

by John M. Floyd

Question: What does it take for a movie to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture? If I were doing the selecting, the main requirement--maybe the only requirement--would be entertainment value. But that is of course not enough; any of us who follow movies know that Best Picture contenders should also have at least some of what we might call "literary" merit. In other words, they should be illuminating as well as entertaining. (Sometimes they apparently only have to be illuminating, period--but I won't go down that road today.)

A requirement for actually winning Best Picture is usually that the film has already, several minutes earlier in the ceremony, also captured the Oscar for Best Director. The two awards often go hand in hand, and only four times--including the Oscar ceremony held earlier this year--has a film won Best Picture when it was not even nominated for Best Director.

And the winner is . . .

What I'm leading up to here is that the other night I finally watched, for the first time, the movie Argo, and saw what all the fuss was about. And let me say right now, I thought it deserved its Best Picture Oscar. In my opinion, Ben Affleck should also have won for Best Director. I have no idea why he wasn't even nominated, but--again--that's a different matter.

Another question. Assuming some of you would agree with me that Argo was a good film, what was it that made it so good? There are many possible answers here: the script, the performances, the cinematography--all of those were extremely well done. But I think its strongest point was its level of suspense. (Which, to me, translates into "entertainment.")

How to do a howdunit

Argo is not a mystery/crime story. It's a story about a plot to rescue a group of embassy staff members from a foreign country, under the very nose of a hostile government, by pretending that they are members of a film crew planning to shoot a fictitious movie. That premise itself was fascinating: Hollywood working undercover with the CIA? But what made the story great was the tension, the anticipation, the fear that these people might be discovered and captured. Failure in this case would have meant certain death--probably death by torture--and there were many, many different ways that what they were attempting could fail. The final twenty minutes of the movie involved some of the best armrest-gripping, sphincter-tightening suspense I've seen in a long time.

Part of this was the old "ticking clock" technique. At one point the escapees were at the airport and their plane was about to leave, and if it left without them they would die. They realized it, and we as viewers realized it. If the ticket agent at the counter couldn't find the reservations that the Washington folks had supposedly made for the group, the hero and all the people he was trying to rescue would die. If the telephone didn't get answered quickly enough in Hollywood when the Iranian security officer phoned the fake number to check the escapees' fake story, they would all die. If any of those being questioned about their phony identities/jobs/backgrounds didn't respond correctly and promptly and convincingly, they would all die.

Adding to this feeling of tension was the fact that we had come to know and understand and sympathize with the characters--especially those in the CIA who were risking everything to try to bring the good guys home. And the familiar setting didn't hurt. Few of us have been to Iran, but all of us have been in airports at one time or another, wondering if we'd make our plane.

Shoptalk

Another plus was that the writing was excellent. Here are a few (paraphrased) examples of the dialogue:

CIA guy: There are only bad options. It's about finding the best one.

Official: You don't have a better bad idea than this?

CIA boss: This is the best bad idea we have, sir.

Movie guy: So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot--

CIA guy: Yeah.

Movie guy: --without actually doing anything?

CIA guy: Yeah.

Movie guy: You'll fit right in.

CIA guy: Can you teach somebody to be a director in a day?

Movie guy: You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.

CIA boss: If you want applause, you should've joined the circus.

CIA employee: I thought I did.

Movie guy: Okay, you got six people hiding out in a town of what, four million people, all of whom chant "Death to America" all day. You want to set up a movie in a week. You want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lies for a living. Then you're going to sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you're going to walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world.
CIA guy: Past about a hundred militia at the airport. That's right.
Movie guy: Look, I gotta tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.

True Lies

One thing surprised me a bit. I was afraid that since this story was based on real events, and since most of the viewers already knew (via either media hype or a good memory) what would eventually happen… that could be a disadvantage. It turned out it wasn't. Prior knowledge of the outcome didn't hurt Titanic, Seabiscuit, The Perfect Storm, or The Day of the Jackal--and it didn't hurt Argo either. What kept it interesting was the storytelling process itself. Even so, it's no small feat for moviemakers to keep an audience properly worried for more than two hours about the ending when the audience already knows the ending.

My point, if there is one to be made, is that we mystery/suspense writers can learn a lot from movies like this. What did the writer and director do to make us care deeply about the characters? How did they make us want so badly for the protagonist to succeed? What did they do to make us so concerned that he might not? How did they manage to tell a humdinger of a suspense story without making it an "action" story?

Afflectations

I can't help mentioning here that for years it seemed that the two Good Will Hunting guys had gone off in separate directions: Matt Damon was making all the right career decisions (Saving Private Ryan, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ocean's Eleven, The Bourne Identity) and Ben Affleck was making all the wrong ones (Reindeer Games, Gigli, Paycheck, Jersey Girl). Then, somewhere along the way, Affleck started doing things like Hollywoodland and Gone Baby Gone and State of Play and The Town. Now, he's widely recognized as one of the best directors and actors around.

In closing, I would rank this movie right up there with other Best Picture "suspense" winners and nominees like No Country for Old Men, Fargo, L.A. Confidential, Mystic River, The Departed, The Green Mile, and The Silence of the Lambs.

My advice: Argo see it.

April's Fools

by R.T. Lawton

Charlie the 9th

Going back at least as far as the Romans, people have designated a certain day to celebrate fools and foolishness. The Romans called their celebration Hilaria. It's a short step to say this is where the term hilarious came from. Somebody must've had a funny thing happen to them on the way to the Forum and right away, it was party time. Back then, nobody could party like them Romans.

Other festivals celebrating fools can be found in several other countries and cultures, most of which go back for centuries and are obscure as to how or why they started. Not all of these celebrations fall on the exact same day, but it appears that most of humans liked to have a time when seriousness could be set aside and let foolishness reign. Many of these similar celebrations fell about the end of March when the seasons were changing from drab winter weather to the new life of Spring. In other words, people were fed up with cabin fever, they just wanted to go outside and let it all hang out, go a little crazy for a while. Maybe play some humorous tricks on their neighbor, so everyone else could have a few laughs at whoever ended up looking like the Fool.

Greg the 13th

Coincidentally, the new life of Spring was also the start of the calendar new year for most western countries many centuries ago. However, in 1564, after touring his kingdom, King Charles IX of France discovered that different cities under his control celebrated the New Year at different times, anywhere from January 1 to April 1. Preferring a common New Year date for all Frenchmen, 14-year old Charlie added an article to his Edit of Roussillon, which then moved the official start date of the New Year to January 1st. That took care of the Kingdom of France, yet still left their day of fools set at April 1.

Eighteen years later, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar which was actually invented by an Italian, but Greg liked the new calendar so much that he appended his own name to it. This new calendar also set the New Year date to the 1st of January. Of course Charlie and the French were already there. Not wishing to be seen as out of favor with the church, several European countries quickly signed on for the date change, thus April 1 continued its foolishness by itself.

There was one small problem for the masses. Due to a lack of social networking media at the time, it's possible that Charlie and Greg, being the fun loving guys they were, had played the largest April Fool's joke the Western World had seen. Since few people could read and there were no televisions, radios, e-mail systems or telephones with which to communicate the date change to the unwashed masses, naturally the educated elite got the word first. In this manner, the "smart ones" knew which day to celebrate the New Year, while the "fools" were left still welcoming in the New Year on April Fool's Day, three months behind the times. Chuck and Greg sure did like their laughs. If the Romans had still been around, they'd probably have gotten a kick out of them two guys.

For some more modern day Top 100 April Fool's jokes or hoaxes, go to: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

A Piece Missing

by Eve Fisher

• "I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.  Some you can see, misshapen and horrible...  And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born?  ...As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience." ...  "A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”           John Steinbeck, Chapter 8, "East of Eden"

This is a description of Cathy in Steinbeck's "East of Eden", which is imho one of the best portraits of a sociopath that's ever been written.  And it's easy (once you have experience) to recognize her from without (much of the time, but we've all been fooled) but, as he points out, what about from within?  Yes, we can figure out ways to recognize the problems, the missing pieces in others - but for us...  how can we tell?  Something is left out, and we will never know it until we're surrounded by people who have it.  And even when we recognize that we're missing something, we still might not "get it":  can a completely color-blind person really grasp Franz Marc's "Blue Horses"?  Can a completely deaf person really understand why I weep uncontrollably at "Un bel di"?



Now years ago, when I first read "East of Eden", I knew that Cathy was a true portrait, and that there are moral monsters.  But I also realized that there must be a whole range of possibilities, from the truly monstrous to the relatively minor.  I came to believe that, just as almost no one is born physically perfect and flawless, so almost no one is born morally, spiritually perfect and flawless.  We are all born with at least one piece missing, and our only hope is that it isn't a big one, and it is just one, and if not, that there aren't too many missing pieces. And I started to look around me, wondering, what's missing from him?  From her?  From them?  And, eventually, from myself?

The most obvious thing to me missing from me is a sense of home, of place, of rootedness.  Now I don't know if this is a missing piece, or something that was burned out of me when I was a child. I was born in Karditsa, Greece, to an unmarried teenaged mother who hoped the father would marry her.  He was rich, she was poor, it was (then) a small town, it was the 1950's, and there was no way in God's sweet green earth that he would ever marry her.  Instead, after a year of negotiations, (in which I am sure some money changed hands...) my father took me down to Athens, where he put me in an orphanage.  Move #1.  Within six months, it had been arranged for me to be adopted to a Greek-American couple in Alexandria, Virginia, but even back in the 1950's adoptions took a while, so I was put in a foster home for the duration.  Move #2.  A year later, the formalities completed, I was put on a plane, by myself, in Athens, with a note and a charm against the evil eye pinned to my dress, and shipped over to my parents in Alexandria.  (Side note:  doesn't that sum up a paradigm shift in treating children between the 1950's and today?)  Move #3. My parents and I lived in Alexandria for three years, and then we moved to southern California.  Move #4. 

Now each time, I was moved from everything and everyone I'd ever known, and I'm not whining, but I'm sure that has to be at least part of the reasons I don't get attached to places.  Or perhaps I was born that way, and all those moves just added to it...   It wasn't that noticeable in the cities I've lived in, where most people are wanderers, and we all share in our own version of "the unbearable lightness of being."  I didn't even realize it until I moved first down South, and then out here to South Dakota, where people are rooted in the land, and it strikes them as a bit odd that I don't seem to miss any place I've ever been.  I tell them what is true:  I save my attachments for people.  And for books.  And for music.  I look at all the people around me, rooted in their homes, their farms, their ranches, who cannot even think of moving, and I cannot grasp it, because that's a piece I'm missing.

And here comes the other side of it.  I don't really care, other than as observation.  I'm perfectly happy traveling, moving, living here, living there...  Which I think is normal for abnormality.  I'm not sure we care about any piece we're missing, for a variety of reasons.  So what if people claim to have pleasures, or abilities, or visions that we will never have?  They might be lying.  They might be wrong.  They might be self-deluded.  And does it matter?  We've done just fine as we are.  Perhaps better than they are.  What does it matter?

Unless you're a writer, in which case, it's fascinating to think that each of us occupies our own worlds.  I'll never forget when I first grasped that what I call orange and you call blue may actually be the same color, and we'll never know it because we cannot truly express what we see.  Or hear, taste, feel, experience...  All we have is words, and words are assigned so young that we never ask, well, what do they describe?

Years ago, I taught a creative writing class at a community center, and the first exercise I did was to ask each person to write down the image they saw in their head when I said a word.  "Apple."  And then I had everyone read aloud the image.  Red apples, green apples, golden delicious, Apple logo, Apple Records, Boone's Farm Apple Wine (it was a long time ago), almost everyone had seen a different image.  And then we wonder why it's so hard to communicate what we want to say, whether in poetry or prose.  What if I said "disappointment"?  "Joy"?  "Beauty"?  "Desire"?  No wonder Flaubert used to roll around on the floor for three days in agony, looking for the right word.  But he had a piece missing, too…

Left Coast Crime 2013

Left Coast Crime is an annual conference that gathers together writers, fans, agents, and editors, and runs for three-and-a-half days, with interviews and panels, and awards among other prizes the Rocky, for best mystery by a writer in the West---or west of the Mississippi. This year it was held in Colorado Springs.

LCC logo

I drove up from Santa Fe, not on the interstate but on Route 285, a road a friend of mine told me is called The Shotgun, because it runs straight as a bullet from Espanola up to Alamosa, just across the Colorado border, where you bump smack into the Rockies. It was a great ride, through wide-open ranch country, grazing beeves and horses, and lots of wildlife, pronghorn, mule deer, wild turkeys, and I even spotted a small herd of elk.

I got there Wednesday afternoon, and met up with Deborah Coonts, author of the Lucky O'Toole novels, and Chuck Greaves, nominated for a Rocky for his book HUSH MONEY. Deb took us out for dinner at the Broadmoor, a resort hotel dating back to the 19th century. Good time, good company.

Deborah

The conference and the panels started Thursday, but we played hooky. Along with Chuck Rosenberg, who's written a legal thriller called DEATH ON A HIGH FLOOR, Deb got us out of the hotel to drive up to the Garden of the Gods, a spectacular geological formation with Pike's Peak looming in the background at 14,000 feet. Then through Manitou Springs, and a short detour into the canyons. (I should mention that these three writers happen to be lawyers, for what it's worth, but Chuck Rosenberg is the only one with a still-active practice.

Pike's Peak from Garden of the Gods

Okay, enough of that. You want to hear about the trade show, and who was there. Among others, Margaret Coel, Ann Parker, Linda Joffe Hull, Manny Ramos, and Janet Rudolph---I'm leaving a lot of people out, go to the LCC website for the complete list, along with a couple of lesser lights, Craig Johnson and Laura Lippman.

There were of course some conflicts with the panels and workshops, i.e., you had to triage when two things you wanted to see were scheduled opposite each other. So it happens. There was a really interesting discussion, to me, about social commentary or politics in mysteries, or in fiction, generally, whether it's the financial crash, or poisoning the environment, or Mormon polygamy, or the drug war in Mexico, or whatever. The consensus was to tread lightly, one of the guys mentioning Samuel Goldwyn's quote, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." Another cool one was about the anti-hero, and during the Q&A, one of the questions from the audience was whether you could have a female anti-hero, the guys on the panel all men, to which the moderator, Simon Wood, popped right back with Charlie Fox (this is a shameless plug on my part for Zoe Sharp, of course). Then we had one on humor, that Deb Coonts moderated. Chuck Greaves, Rochelle Staab (a later winner of the Watson, for best sidekick), Brad Parks (winner of the Lefty, for best comic mystery), and Harley Jane Kozak. Deb wasn't able to moderate them much: a very funny and good-natured bunch who stepped on each other's laugh lines without apology.

Deb's panel

Deb's posse, by the by, had now grown in include Sally Anne Rosenberg, Chuck's wife, Paul Levine and his girlfriend Marcia Silvers (another pair of ambulance-chasers), as well as Rochelle. We had lunch Friday with Beth Groundwater, one of the other Rocky nominees, and Thomas Perry, somebody I've been queer for ever since he published THE BUTCHER'S BOY, thirty years ago. A very genuine and gracious guy, in no way full of himself.

Deb's posse

Saturday morning led off with a panel about writing other cultures, Margaret Coel and Craig Johnson in the mix. Murder in Hollywood, both the movies and the town itself, Harley Jane and Paul Levine among the participants. After the lunch break, Twist Phelan interviewing Laura Lippman, an utter hoot. Then a legal thrillers panel, Chuck Rosenberg, who was the script consultant on L.A. LAW, as well as other shows, holding his own. I got to moderate a panel myself, with Tom Perry and Mark Sullivan, both of them big guns in their own right, but talking about the collaborations with, respectively, Clive Cussler and James Patterson. The most interesting thing they said was that in spite of the many books they've each written on their own, working with those other guys was very much a learning experience. Old dogs, new tricks. The final panel I looked in was the Rocky nominees.

Rockies - Craig, Darrell James, Beth, Chuck, Margaret

At the awards banquet, there was the added suspense of Lou Diamond Phillips being among the missing. A winter storm had blown in, a real whiteout, closing the interstate south, and Lou had been sitting on the tarmac in Albuquerque since seven in the morning, waiting for clearance for take-off. In the end, he made it, about eight o'clock that night, to a standing ovation for being such a mensch. He interviewed Craig, finally, long after both their usual bedtimes.

Robert Taylor, Craig J, LDP - LONGMIRE wrap party, Santa Fe

Sunday morning was the finish line. I did get to see one last, and also very funny, panel, moderated by Catriona McPherson (who'd won the Bruce Alexander memorial award for best historical), about first breaking into the business. By this point, most of us were running on fumes. This kind of rodeo is, to put it gently, an endurance contest.

My takeaway? Well worth the trip. I'd have to say, though, it wasn't so much the big-ticket events, as the stuff that kind of fell through the cracks. My time with Deb and her gang, first and foremost. My lunch with Tom Perry. All-too-brief conversations with Clark Lohr, about place, and mining disasters, and with Leo Maloney, a former black ops guy who hails from the Boston area, so it was cool to hear that home-grown accent again, and not least, a chance encounter with our own R.T. Lawton, at the last minute. In other words---a nod to the lawyerly crew I hung with---it was all about the sidebars.

Stalker

                                          “I’m your number one fan.”
 
                                                     Stephen King 
                                                     Misery

    Last week The Washington Post ran an obituary of Ruth Ann Steinhagen.  Time can wrap layers of obscurity around events, and it is doubtful that many readers who first spotted that obituary actually remembered who Ruth Ann Steinhagen was, or what happened during her fifteen minutes of fame, on June 14, 1949.

    From when she was just 11 years old Ruth Ann was transfixed by a young Chicago Cubs player, Eddie Waitkus.  Waitkus was something to watch –  his defensive abilities at first base were among the best in baseball, and his offensive skills were increasing every year.  After finishing the 1948 season with a .295 batting average Waitkus, likely at the top of his game, was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies.

    Unbeknownst to Waitkus, Ruth Ann was watching his every move.  She attended many games in which he played, she began watching for him on the streets of Chicago.  She mourned that trade to Philly.  And slowly her fan interest turned into an obsession.  Ruth Ann established a shrine in her house, an area cluttered with pictures of Waitkus and other memorabilia, including canceled baseball tickets.  Learning that Waitkus was of Lithuanian descent Ruth Ann attempted to master Lithuanian, even going so far as to call in to late night Lithuanian radio talk shows, posing questions in her halting second language.  She became obsessed with the number 36, which Waitkus wore on his team jersey.  She began setting an empty place at the dinner table for her hero.  As her obsession grew, her parents, with whom she lived, became increasingly uneasy, eventually sending their daughter to a psychiatrist.  It didn’t help.  Ruth Ann began papering the ceiling of her bedroom with pictures of Waitkus.  Soon she quit her job as a typist so that she could devote more time to following Waitkus and tracking his career.

    On June 14, 1949 the Phillies traveled to Chicago to play Waitkus’ former team, the Cubs.  Ruth Ann, who was then 19 and still lived with her parents in Chicago, packed a suitcase full of Eddie Waitkus memorabilia, including pictures and canceled baseball tickets, and then checked in to the nearby Edgewater Hotel, where the Phillies were staying.  She left the following note for Eddie Waitkus on the door of his room:

Mr. Waitkus–
It's extremely important that I see you as soon as possible
We're not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about I think it would be to your advantage to let me explain to you
I realize this is a little out of the ordinary, but as I said, it's rather important
Please, come soon. I won't take up much of your time, I promise

Ruth Ann Steinhagen in prison, with a photo of Eddie Waitkus

The note was signed “Ruth Ann Burns.”

    Eddie, who had been dating a woman named “Ruth” while on the road, thinking the note must be from her, showed up at Ruth Ann Steinhagen’s room.  She invited him in, excused herself for a minute, and then came back into the room carrying a 22 gauge rifle she had purchased the week before.  According to the Associated Press Steinhagen then said “If I can’t have you no one can.”  The Chicago Tribune, by contrast, reported in a 2001 story that Steinhagen yelled at Waitkus, who she had never previously met, “you’re not going to bother me anymore.”  What is clear is that she then shot the Phillies' first base man in the chest, and that the bullet lodged just below Waitkus’ heart.

    Ruth Ann Steinhagen immediately called the front desk of the hotel to report the shooting, and was cradling Waitkus’ head when medics arrived a few minutes later.  Ironically, her speed in reporting her own crime likely saved Eddie Waitkus’ life.  He survived six operations, a grueling rehab and returned to the field in 1950. 

    Eddie Waitkus did not press charges, but Ruth Ann Steinhagen was nevertheless arrested, tried on the charge of attempted murder, and was found innocent by reason of insanity.  According to police reports her justification for shooting Eddie Waitkus was simply that she was “infatuated with him” and “wanted to feel the thrill of murdering him.”  After three years of electric shock treatments Ruth Ann was declared sane and released.  She returned to live with her parents, and then with her sister after their death.  

    The story of Ruth Ann Steinhagen is interesting not only for its intrinsic drama, but  more widely because it reportedly was one of the very first publicized instances of a  “stalker crime.”  Although the shooting of Eddie Waitkus would be illegal under any jurisprudential system, the stalking events that precede the violent act in such crimes have proven difficult to prosecute on their own, prior to the violence, since they often constitute, on their face, a series of otherwise innocent activities.  What is wrong with collecting pictures of someone you idolize?  What is wrong with saying hello to them on the street?  What is wrong with watching them at the ballpark (or stagedoor) exit?  The difficulty in defining a crime in stalking circumstances is that to do so requires an analysis not of random events, each innocent standing alone,  but rather of a congeries of events that collectively point to an obsession that threatens others.

   Stalking is now a Federal crime under the terms of the Violence Against Women Act, a fact not without irony in the context of today's article.  In support of the passage of the law, researchers Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes reported that 8% of all U.S. women and 2% of all U.S. men at some point will be the victims of a stalker.  We need not look very far to find evidence of this.  There are many other analogs to Ruth Ann Steihagen’s story, and they run the gamut – the woman who repeatedly broke into David Letterman’s house, at one end of the spectrum; the murder of John Lennon by his “fan” Mark David Chapman at the other.

    An obsessional crime perpetrated by an otherwise “adoring” fan provides the backbone of Stephen King’s Misery, quoted above. But there is an even more direct example of a novel inspired by the Steinhagen stalking crime and its aftermath.  The story of Ruth Ann Steihagen and Eddie Waitkus was the direct inspiration for the 1952 baseball novel The Natural by Bernard Malamud, which was made into the 1984 movie of the same name starring Robert Redford.

The story differs from reality in that the central character in Malamud’s novel was poised on the edge of greatness when he was shot, and in the arc of the story returns from near death to claim that greatness (although more so in the movie version than the book).  While Waitkus had just completed a personal-best season when he was shot, and while he returned to baseball in 1950, winning the Associate  Press award for best comeback player, he was not The Natural.  As Sports Illustrated recently concluded in an article prompted by Steinhagen’s death:

The timing of that peak season might prompt one to wonder if the shooting did dash his promise on the diamond, but, . . .  Waitkus was already past peak age by then. Malamud built his now-iconic character around what was by far the most interesting thing about Waitkus’s career, the shooting, but the similarities between fact and fiction ended with the last reverberation of that gunshot.

Eddie Waitkus played professional baseball through the 1955 season, after which he retired.  During that time, and following his retirement, he reportedly battled post-traumatic stress disorder related to the shooting, but re-gained his health and ended his days coaching little league with the Ted Williams baseball camp.  He died in 1972. 

    His assailant, who never came face to face with him again, lived on.  As is often the case, the tides of time slowly washed away from the beach the footprints of this 1949 cause célèbre.  Even Ruth Ann Steinhagen’s obsession proved ephemeral, fading as she aged.  Over the years she reportedly led a reclusive life, shunning all interviews.  Few today remember Eddie Waitkus; fewer still remember Ruth Ann Steinhagen. 

   Although her obituary appeared nationwide last week, prompting several retrospective articles, she in fact died at the end of December, shortly after her 83rd birthday.  Apparently no one even noticed until last week.

SleuthSayers, SleuthSayers

by Robert Lopresti



In today's advanced poetry class we are going to deviate from our continuing examination of post-Plutarchian limericks and contemplate, instead, the form of verse known as the double dactyl, or higgledy piggledy.   It is so rigidly structured that it makes a Shakespearean sonnet look like free verse, and so devoid of meaning that it makes a knock-knock joke look like bomb disposal instructions.

A double dactyl has eight lines; most of which consist of two dactyl feet (LONG-short-short, LONG-short-short).  LInes four and eight consist of one choriamb (LONG-short-short-LONG).  The first line is always nonsense.  The second is a proper name.  The sixth is a single word.  And the fourth and eighth lines rhyme.  Easy-peasy, no?

To make it more of a challenge each of the examples I created below relate to mystery fiction. I encourage you to put your own contributions in the comments. Unless... you're chicken.

Higglety Pigglety
President Kennedy
Told a reporter he
Liked to read Bond.
007 gained
Marketabiliy
Boosted by Camelot's
Magical wand.

Higglety Pigglety
Gilbert K. Chesterton,
Raised as an Anglican
Under the crown,
Made a conversion most
 Ecclesiastical
After inventing that
Clergyman, Brown.




Higglety Pigglety

Sitt Hakim Peabody
Solved all Elizabeth
Peters' wild schemes,
Murders and mysteries
Egyptological,
Aided by Emerson,
Man of her dreams.

Higglety Pigglety
Indianapolis,
Michael Z. Lewin writes
Books about you,
Starring a private eye,
Humanitarian,
One Albert Samson, un-
Lucky but true.

The Dame Herself

by Susan Isaacs,
    introduced by Leigh Lundin

I've long realized I read more women mystery writers than I do male writers, especially British authors. To make my favorites list, an author must meet either of two demands: Either the novelist must plot a puzzle as keenly as Arthur Conan Doyle or craft characterization so well we come to know and enjoy the characters.

Ellis Peters and Dorothy Sayers could do both, as well as the light of my life, Lindsey Davis. The mystery plots of Elizabeth Peters and Janet Evanovich are thinner than a felon's underwear, but they create the most amazing characters. Indeed, women consistently hold the edge over men in characterization, although a master like John Lutz certainly holds his own.

When it comes to SleuthSayers' own authors, I've read virtually everything Fran's written including works in progress. I do love Callie and Jane. I've been reading Jan's short stories, which shine with her wit and sharp eye.

I recently read my first story by Elizabeth, and I confess I enjoyed her humor and clever asides that tickle an awake and aware reader. And Janice's recent novel is underpinned by her cloaked intelligence and knack of observation.

Quality and quantity: Without women writers, the body of crime literature would be a small fraction of its size. Without women writers, our genre would be far less rich. The best list of female mystery writers I've stumbled across comes from Christchurch, New Zealand City Library, although it contains one stunning omission, New Zealand's own Queen of Crime, Ngaio Marsh, but perhaps their librarians considered she'd be taken for granted.

Returning to Agatha Christie, she's not merely the premier British author, she's most people's favorite, so much so that some readers like Yoshinori Todo study her with passion. Through Emma Pulitzer, we have a guest article from Susan Isaacs about Agatha. Susan’s most recent bestseller is Compromising Positions and she is currently at work on her next book, a mystery.

— Leigh

A Note on Racism

To understand if not defend Christie's use of the infamous n-word in a title, a reader must understand British Victorian and Edwardian use is not the same as current North American use, and sadly many Americans once used the word out of ignorance rather than racial hatred. That said, many British of the time regarded themselves with superiority, that any citizen of the Empire was a cut above anyone elsewhere in the rest of the world. Indeed, they thought of those outside the sophisticated sphere of Europe as savages. I recall an English tale in which an important American ate without fork or spoon, using only a huge knife to stab his food at a formal dinner.

But words that tripped casually off the white man's tongue and may have started out innocently enough have become verboten in today's world: The N-word in North America, the K-word in South Africa, the S-word in Germany, and the H-word amongst the Dutch. Sometimes people project or misconstrue: I heard a white person insist the words Oriental and Negro were just as offensive. That would be much more convincing should an Asian or person of color make that claim. In the most recent census, thousands wrote in those very words. People may innocently use words without intending offense, but it's incumbent upon everyone to be sensitive to what wounds and demeans.

Perhaps Agatha didn't intend offense. The absence of evidence is not evidence– we don't truly know. Like Yoshinori and Louis Willis have opined, I give Christie the benefit of the doubt. As our guest points out, one should focus on her writing. And now, Susan Isaacs.

The Dame Herself: Agatha Christie

God knows my admiration for Agatha Christie is not based on her character development. Her recurring protagonists, Jane Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Hercule Poirot, et al, are only slightly less thin than the paper they’re written on.

And I despise her biases. Frankly, I’d like to punch her in the snoot for the offhand anti-Semitism and racism she displays, especially in her earlier books. (And Then There Were None’s original title was Ten Little Niggers.)

But while I wouldn’t take tea with her, were she still around, I must acknowledge her virtuosity in plotting. Murder on the Orient Express has been read, filmed, and imitated so many times it now seems old hat. Yet she not only provides that gratifying narrative rush, but also shocking endings. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd broke one of the cardinal rules of the genre—a twist ending and a major no-no for any pedestrian writer. But Christie, with genius and hard work, pulled off that cheat with a brilliant casual audacity.

Her play The Mousetrap also twisted the standard rules of the whodunit forms: gasps, applause, stellar reviews. It’s been running steadily on the London stage since 1952. Her astonishing plotting made The Witness for the Prosecution a winner as a short story, play, film (should be #1 on your must-see list), and TV play.

So boo-hiss for Christie’s prejudice and many of her protagonists’ utter lack of depth. But yay for her skill in making a story not only hurtle along, but end with a big bang.

A Paradigm Shift in the Collective Unconscious

by Elizabeth Zelvin

I never understood the term “paradigm shift” until everything started changing, and I got it: a change in the general culture that’s so massive that nothing is ever the same. I don’t have to spell out the paradigm shift we’re going through today: the explosion of technology—and its miniaturization, which I consider its least anticipated aspect—that has made mysteries and even science fiction of the 1980s and 1990s utterly outdated. New inventions in both communication and transportation have changed everything about how we connect with one another on our shrinking planet.

For my parents, born shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, it was World War I. When they were born, there were no airplanes and few automobiles. People functioned without radios or telephones in the home. As those of us who love British mysteries and historical novels know, before the War, the hierarchical class structure separating Upstairs from Downstairs was intact. After the War, it started to crumble, and after World War II, it had essentially vanished.

For the generation just ahead of mine, the watershed was World War II and plastics. My ex-sister-in-law, twelve years older than I, was a teacher, and for some reason I have a vivid memory of her telling about a conversation with her class about the world before plastics. “What were picnic forks made of?”
“Wood.”
“What were raincoats made of?”
“Cloth.”
What were pens made of?”
“Metal.”
“What did people wrap things in?”
“Paper.”

It’s odd what memory latches onto: I remember my son, now in his early forties, telling me about a new development called the World Wide Web. “It’s going to revolutionize how people use computers,” he said, and so it did. A couple of years before the ubiquitous cell phone appeared on the streets of New York, I remember an online mental health professional colleague saying on an e-list, “The last two revolutions in the Philippines couldn’t have been conducted without cell phones.”

Until quite recently, as, once again, British novels bear witness, educated people had a cultural common ground based on literature that they could draw upon and refer to in a reasonable expectation of being understood. Everybody who read had read Shakespeare and Alice in Wonderland. Lord Peter Wimsey could quote from either, and we knew what he was talking about. We had even read Homer, if not in the original like Lord Peter (when I went to college, the Iliad and the Odyssey were required reading in Humanities 1), and could field a reference to Achilles or the Trojan War with ease. In contrast, I remember a conversation with a fourteen-year-old cousin in 2004 or so about the movie Troy, which reduced that epic conflict from ten years to three days and took many liberties with the plot. “Have you read the book?” she asked.

Nowadays, not only have our culture’s reading habits changed dramatically, but there’s too much to read. Politics have decreased the attention in the school curriculum that was once paid to “dead white males” like Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll. This is not all bad. I would have loved to be made to study Little Women or The Help instead of Silas Marner and Giants In the Earth, the two most stultifyingly boring novels I can remember being assigned in school.

As the fact that a billion people worldwide watched the Oscars this year attests, movies occupy the space in the collective unconscious that used to belong to books. Movies provide the material by which we communicate through common points of reference. Most people know The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind and The Godfather from the movies they became, rather than the books they were based on. Instead of “To be or not to be, that is the question,” “My kingdom for a horse,” “I can believe six impossible things before breakfast,” or “It was the best butter,” we all resonate with “We’re not in Kansas any more,” “Tomorrow is another day,” and “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” How many people nowadays know that Dorothy originally had silver shoes, not ruby slippers? Some of us have read the books. But the reason everybody knows these references with all their implications is that we’ve seen the movies.