Who are these tacky people?

I confess, I'm entirely transfixed by the idea of royalty. I'm most interested in what went on with powerful families of the past, especially when it came to their penchant for turning against each other, but the current incarnation of the reigning elite does hold a certain fascination. Jeremy Paxman, journalist with the BBC, has something of a royal hang up too. A familiar with some of the swankier circles of society, Paxman uses his access to navigate through the mystique to figure out just who these people are in his 'polite inquiry' On Royalty--and more importantly, whether the modern world really needs them.

Although he considers other nations' royal families (including the recently hired-yes, hired-royal family of Albania), Paxman, not surprisingly, pretty much sticks to The Royal Family: the Windors. The central premise about royalty is something of an oxymoron: how to appear constantly in the public eye, yet maintain enough of an exclusive aura so as not to clue the hoi polloi into the fact that really, there isn't that much that is terribly extraordinary about these people. To be sure, there have been some sovereigns who were gifted in statecraft or scholarship, but the relentless pursuit of hunting is a more accurate picture of a royal pasttime. In fact, they are terribly mundane in many ways (Paxman notes the heavily creased copies of Fredrick Forsyth novels in the Queen's library). But in describing Prince Charles, Paxman gets to the central tragedy of today's royalty: "The prince had consistently misunderstood or ignored a basic truth at the heart of the relationship between royalty and the people. He seemed to believe that his significance lay in what he believed and did. The truth was simply that his significance lay in who he was."

I use the word tragedy as that's the tone that finally emerges. It's perhaps odd to refer to a massively wealthy and priviledged group of people as tragic, but the added pressures of public scrutiny on an already disfunctional (and therefore normal) family, coupled with the expectation that they go through life without expressing the opinions that everyone else is entitled to makes for something of a tragic tale. On the public side, is the magic of royalty really worth the funds spent on maintaining their lifestyles? Paxman makes a well researched, readable argument, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.

Of course, the whole discussion of whether royalty is relevant today owes much of its origin to Princess Diana, possibly the most documented person of the latter twentieth century. Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, The New Yorker and various other high brow glossys, adds her take to an already crowded field of Diana bios. I found The Diana Chronicles to be a tremendously frustrating book, although I stuck with it to the bitter end. Brown's journalistic take on Diana's life not surprisingly focuses primarily on the princess's manipulation of the press in manipulating her image--an obsession so vital to her that the Wales's marriage was less a menage a trois but a duel between Camilla et al versus Di and the entire press corps. All the well-known details are here, but Brown's portrayal of Diana suggests a much more desperate woman who used downright mean tactics to achieve the sort of stable life that she had always been denied. A convincing argument? Brown bases some of her conclusions on her own conjectures and disclosures which may never be proven definitively, but with a subject like Diana, such sources are the norm. It's as good an argument as any of the other Diana bios out there, at least for now.

But for a book based on one of the most photographed woman in the world, the almost total lack of images or plates is an especially frustrating one. Brown bases much of her argument on the manner Diana manipulated her image on specific photos, yet only a few black and white photos are given in endpages. I have a hard time understanding why Brown and Doubleday opted not to include a set of plates (price couldn't have been an issue, given the sure bestseller status). It's an inexplicable omission and one that ought to be corrected in future editions. Also, The Diana Chronicles is very long, and I was never allowed to forget in the course of 400+ pages that Tina Brown is a fabulous person who lives a fabulous life. Luncheons at the Four Seasons with the princess and reminiscences of state dinners are all very well and good to Brown's research, but I think she wouldn't have hurt her argument by cutting out the name-dropping.

Maybe I've proven part of Paxman's argument about needing the magic of royalty--after all, I've just slogged through 800 pages about them. Will the Royal Family ever lose their status? Judging by the popularity of Diana and her story, it's a fair guess that they'll remain an object of fascination for generations to come.

One day, Death met a thief...

Of the books that I've read lately, Markus Zusak's unconventional 2005 novel The Book Thief has stood out for a couple of reasons. It's the only book that I've read twice in the same year, both being for book groups. I liked it the first time around, and the second go through didn't diminish my regard for it (a rare occurance, believe me). Secondly, I noticed that between the two groups, opinion was decidely divided. In the first group, all pretty much agreed that it was excellent. The second was considerably cooler, most choosing to skim parts that annoyed, and most weren't willing to pass it on to another reader.

Why the divide? On the surface, The Book Thief is something of a hard sell. It's a 500+ page teen novel about Germans during WWII, narrated by Death, relies on images to tells stories within the story, and oh, yes, you'll know from page one how everything is going to turn out. It seems a perfect recipe for a dark and depressing slog in the hands of a lesser writer, but Zusak, on the whole, makes it work. The story centers on Liesel, a gangly, neglected girl on the cusp of adolescence. She is on the way to her foster parents in a Munich suburb when our narrator first meets her, catching her stealing an abandoned book at the freshly dug gravesite of her brother. Her thievery continues as she grows up in the home of Rosa and Hans Hubermann, loving, if unconventional, parents who foster her love of reading. Liesel and her best friend, the Jesse Owens obsessed Rudy, seem to have as usual a childhood as most other kids, but the casual mention of Hitler youth meetings gives way to the images of Jews forced to march through town, pushing Liesel and those close to her to make a potentially life threatening choice between right and wrong.

With Death continually interrupting the story, there's little doubt as to the ending for at least some of the characters. Zusak, rightly, gives Death a wearily ironic tone (could he have any other?) and the narrator's constant interruption of the story can be grating for some. More jarring is Zusak's occassionally ungrammatical writing ('the horizon was beginning to charcoal') and his tendency towards forced descriptions ('cluttered breath', 'shrouded in his uniform as the graying light armwrestled the sky'). This strikes me as contrived, and it's hard to imagine any middle or high schooler keeping themselves from snickering at that florid stuff. But I kept thinking as I read that the effect of such language gives The Book Thief a cinematic sheen; like film, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to make it work. Then it's not too hard to conjure not just the images Zusak is portraying, but to feel what it would be like to live on Himmel Street with Liesel. It's an ambitious novel, and even if it sometimes it doesn't quite live up to its own expectations, I'd fall into the group that would pass it along. What other novel mixes the mundane and the magical, the worst of human nature with humorous moments, and appeals to both teens and adults?

Not so fantastic.

So there I was, at the library and absolutely thrilled to be holding a copy of the new Doctor Who Encyclopedia. I'm not a huge Whovian--those legions of fans who dissect every episode of the BBC's long running sci-fi series. But having fallen big time for the new series, I was eager to see if the Encyclopedia would help fill me in on all the lore and oddities of the original series going back to 1963, as well as give me some insight into the making of the show.

Alas, it was not to be. I got it home and soon realized, to my disappointment, that rather than being a history of the series, or even a guide to the individual episodes, the Encyclopedia was simply a collection of the most minute factoids of each episode--essentially a massive collection of trivia. Annoyingly, the book only covers the new series, from 2005 onward. Its arrangement of subjects in alphabetical order is helpful if memories need refreshing while watching episodes (in cases, I suppose, when one can't rest until the question of the Face of Boe's age is finally settled). But for the novice, it's t00 much information. To author Gary Russell's credit, each definition is exhaustively dealt with (Russell is involved with the show's script writing). The Encyclopedia is lavishly illustrated with stills from the series, some of which are better in quality than others. Each definition cites pertinent episode(s), and where applicable, which actor portrayed a character.

Still, it feels like a missed opportunity. It's really hard to imagine anyone other than the most diehard Whovians taking an interest in this particular format. Looking at Amazon, I see that there is a Doctor Who: The Inside Guide, which is probably more what I had in mind when I picked up the Encyclopedia. But that book also ignores the earlier series. Apparently it has to fall to some other entity or fan to write the definitive history of the show, as the BBC doesn't seem to be interested in doing it.

Regency lite, or Jane fix part II

It's not a secret that I've got a thing for Jane Austen's books (witness the links at right, or previous posts), but I haven't really gotten into reading any other Regency-era influenced social comedies. One name that kept popping up as a tolerable readalike author is Georgette Heyer, the historical novelist whose works usually end up in the romance section along with the ripped bodice covers of Christina Dodd, Kathleen Woodiwiss and the like. But since I've often mentioned Heyer's name when pressed for books like Austen's, I thought I might determine if her books leaned more towards the heaving bosoms of the romance novel, or if she captured the same battle of social customs as Austen.

Happily, Heyer gets the point behind Austen's novels: namely, her social satire. On the flip side, however, she has none of the subtlety that makes Austen's six novels so great. I randomly chose Cotillion from 1953, roughly from the middle of Heyer's writing career (she died in 1974). The elements of the story are fairly simple: a heroine of reduced circumstances stands to inherit a fortune from a querulous adopted grandfather--with the stipulation that she marry one of said grandfather's nephews in order to receive the money. The plucky heroine here is Kitty Charing, raised in general isolation by a governess overly fond of the romantic poets. Kitty is not in any mood to marry any of her potential suitors, except one: the rakish Jack. But when Jack doesn't show to claim Kitty's hand, she latches onto a plan: enter a sham betrothal with Freddy, the least objectionable of her choices, and get to London to work her charms on Jack. Once in London, a series of misunderstandings, pompous characters and secret engagements ensures that everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

There are scenes in ballrooms, social gaffes, clandestine meetings in shrubberies--basically everything that a Janeite would be familiar with. Heyer lampoons much of the musty social pretentiousness of the day (a Mr. Collins type would find many kindred spirits here). But here it all comes over very heavy handed. Part of this is due to the clumsy dialogue. The men use so much jargon are so preoccupied with their own preening, that it's hard to appreciate even the hero of the story. With the exception of Kitty, all the characters come across as very flat--and Kitty can't be called very deep either. The plot also takes awhile to get going, which makes the lack of well-drawn characters problematic at the beginning. I had to push to get through the first 50 pages.

Heyer has been praised for her attention to historical detail, and she does create a believeable world (Kitty and Freddy's reluctant tour of London? Classic). And I was grinning at various points throughout the story, as Heyer heightened the absurdity. By the end, I was enjoying myself, even if I had to skim over some of the more annoying bluster from some of the more unfortunate characters. Die-hard romantics might not be satisfied--there's no Darcy in a wet shirt moment or swoony letters from Wentworth. (In all honesty, the mental image I was getting of the hero was not so much Colin Firth but more Bertie Wooster). Would I recommend Heyer again? Yes, I think I would, in spite of the clunky dialogue. It's not quite on the same footing as Austen, but at least it's in the same orbit.