ERIC'S BIT or CRYING OVER WERTHER
Although neither Mary nor I are big Goethe fans, old Mr Sturm und Drang has somehow insinuated himself into this edition of our newsletter, perhaps appropriately since his birthday is August 28, less than two weeks hence. I remember reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe's 1774 novel about a heartsick youth that had a huge influence on the later Romantic literary movement. I mention it only because it's been on my to-read pile for forty years. Figuratively speaking. What happened to the enticing trade paperback I bought for a "German Literature in Translation" class back in college, many changes in residence ago, I have no idea. Werther and the other books on the reading list sounded enticing to me, but as usual I found myself in a tiny minority. Only one or two other students signed up so the class was canceled.
The previous semester I had reveled in "French Literature in Translation" which covered authors ranging from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and Voltaire right up to New Novel proponent, and literary gadfly, Alain Robbe-Grillet. I've always been eager to read something which to me is new and exotic. So, I kept my class books rather than returning them for a refund.
But as an English Lit major I was too snowed under by actual English literature to get around to reading translated German. For the "Early English Novel" alone I ran through a marathon of twelve or fourteen books, mostly the size of Vanity Fair and Tristram Shandy. Luckily we were given a severely condensed version of Richardson's Clarissa, estimated to be the longest novel in English at 984,870 words. Even at that it was a monstrous tome, though not as monstrous as Lovelace who...well, I don't want to give anything away in case you plan on reading it soon!
Thus the years passed and Werther remained unread. I was reminded of him during a summer when I engaged in an orgy of nineteenth century French literature. One author after another expressed a debt to Goethe's protagonist. Though my class book was long vanished, the text is readily available on Gutenberg.
The question you're probably asking is whether the forty year wait was worth it? As an insight into literary history, yes. As a reading experience...well....
Not that it wasn't fascinating in its way. But I found it hard to believe that even a callow youth could be quite as obtuse, whining, and cruelly self-centered as Werther. Although, considering some of the poetry people have committed on the Internet, I might be wrong.
Maybe I would have felt more sympathy had I read about Werther's tragic crush when I originally intended to, when I was nearer Werther's age. Then again, I had enough sense to never write poetry.
I wonder what Goethe's attitude was while writing the novel? It was based on his own youthful infatuation with a woman already spoken for and he did not seem to stress Werther's abject stupidity. In his later years he claimed at least to regret airing so much autobiographical material in public, saying that "if Werther had been a brother he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by the vengeful ghost."
If only we could all be haunted by having written in our feckless youth one of the most influential books of all time, however embarrassing. When I was twenty four I was writing unpublishable science fiction like "The Blue Centipede of Happiness."
NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER
With the pandemic still raging there is probably enough evil loose in the world without our adding more, "necessary" or otherwise. However, in case, for a few hours, you would rather read about a different plague, long since conquered, we remind you that our mystery Five For Silver is set during the Justinianic plague.
As described on the Poisoned Pen Press website:
"In 542, Peter, John the Lord Chamberlain’s elderly servant, claims a heavenly visitor revealed a murder to him. It transpires that Peter’s old army friend has indeed been stabbed, but then John discovers that Gregory was not what he appeared to be.
"John’s quest for the truth leads him to churchmen and whores, lawyers and bear trainers. Suspects include a dealer in dubious antiquities, a resourceful bookseller, a court poet fixated on bereavement, and a holy fool who outrages the city by dancing with the dead and invading the empress’ private bath…."
https://poisonedpenpress.com/books/five-for-silver-a-john-the-lord-chamberlain-mystery-5/
MARY'S BIT or WHEN THE LIGHT FAILS
The other day Mr Maywrite came into the cubby-hole we are pleased to call an office. "I just opened the fridge and the little light didn't go on," he announced.
Bear in mind this is a fellow who hardly blinked when he happened to be looking out a Brooklyn window at the very time blackness suddenly descended as far as the eye could see. It was the start of New York City's massive 1977 power outage.
Lack of a fridge light is small beer compared to the crushing difficulties we all face these days, but it's just another part of a saga horribly reminiscent of poor HAL's slow motion breakdown in 2001. Samuel Johnson observed misfortunes are to be expected but in this case we were taken by surprise because things unraveled so quickly.
A couple of weeks ago in the middle of a heat wave the fridge door started creaking in an ominous fashion when opened or closed. It then developed an annoying habit of occasionally edging open, so at that point we held it shut with strategically placed lengths of duct and parcel tapes. It's a makeshift get-around we found useful when, as subscribers may recall, our cooker door took to falling open at odd times.
Last week the fridge door just up and fell off, missing said cooker and yours truly by a margin narrow enough to make me creak. Fortunately our newly purchased eggs had not been placed in the door's egg tray.
To be fair, we can't complain about the length of service the fridge had given us. It was here when we arrived and was already elderly even then, as shown when Sanyo was not able to sell us a new crisper drawer. The other indication: its freezer door was held on with wire, which we'd renewed more than once. Incidentally, this lead to the discovery stretchy hair bands are immensely useful in effecting freezer door repairs. Stock up now, just in case.
Ladies and gents, do we see a trend involving misbehaving appliance doors developing?
In the last 18 months or so we've replaced both cooker and washer, and most recently the water heater. It's wise to remember when Fortuna is sleeping it's best not to interrupt her slumbers, so let me whisper it quietly: this latest difficulty with household machinery leaves only the heating boiler to conk out.
At the time of the latest dramatic twist in the fridge saga, we were already searching for its replacement. Sounds simple, no? Ha! Because of the eccentric layout of Casa Maywrite, the only place a fridge can go is in the niche under the stairs. This in turn means a new appliance cannot be taller than 57", placing it in that truly awkward and largely untenanted space between a full sized fridge and a compact model.
The day after the door fell off we purchased a compact fridge as a temporary measure...and on arrival home found it needed an extension cord because the appropriate receptacle is placed a shade too far from the fridge for its power cord to reach. Another journey to town, and now the new arrival is purring away downstairs. Its capacity is smaller than we prefer, but as Goethe also observed the solution to every problem is another problem.
AND FINALLY
This now closes the door on another Orphan Scrivener, the next issue of which will arrive on subscribers' virtual doorsteps to stroll through the portals of their in-boxes on October 15th.
Stay safe, everyone, and see you then!
Mary R & Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. It also hosts the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog, largely devoted to reviews of Golden Age of Mystery fiction, lurks about at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in some time!
