Random Thoughts on The Cat Who Went up the Creek
Warning: This piece contains spoilers for The Cat Who Went up the Creek, so please take appropriate precautions.
First up is the ceremonial judging of the book by its cover, which boasts a very strong, cheerful, and attractive color array - an orange-juice dust jacket with bold, happy primary-color binding. (I would've preferred a squirrel over the rather plain paddle for the embossed image on the cloth cover, but oh, well.) The title font has inexplicably been changed, and while I find it a bit capricious to up and break with twenty-three volumes' worth of tradition at this point, at least the new font is a sort of second cousin to the old, familiar one and suits the cover art well. Even the photos of the squirrels are sharp, bright, and cute, and they show how image cut-and-pasting has evolved significantly since the Saw Stars cover. I must ask, though - what is that at the feet of the squirrel on the right? A CG swirly pattern, I know, but I can't fathom what it's intended to mimic. Golden wood chips?
Continuing the book-jacket vein, I yield the floor to Crystal Wood:
"I just picked up my copy at the local bookheister and was eagerly thumbing it in the drive-through line at the bank. I read the flap copy and nearly threw the book out the window when I read that Qwill is working on a book entitled 'Tall and Short Tales.'"
"In how many volumes has he been working on a book entitled 'Short and Tall
Tales,' and how deep into the book would the blurb-writer have had to read
to find it (Answer: about 8 pages into chapter 1)? Your Honor, I submit to
you further evidence that the light is on at Putnam, but everybody went
home early!" Hey, the prosecution rests.
After reading the opening paean to the local "soil which grew such flavorful potatoes", I wondered when Moose County became the Idaho of the northeast central U.S. I was, however, soon informed by an expatriate Michiganian friend that Michigan does indeed have a homegrown potato-farming industry of which the local folk are apparently quite proud, eating their own spuds pretty much exclusively just to spite those self-impressed, uppity Idahoans - even though, according to my friend, the Michigan potatoes "taste like dirt". (Now might be a good time to insert a disclaimer that my friend's viewpoints are not necessarily those of this website, although considering how often they coincide, I'm inclined to take his word for it.)
In any case, I'm reminded here of a similar one-sided agricultural dispute back where I come from in upstate New York, a region boasting endless acres of deliciously productive apple orchards forming a cornerstone of the local economy, yet whose airwaves were inexplicably plagued with advertisements for apples from Washington state. Our local supermarkets never stocked Washington apples, of course - they'd be the proverbial coals to Newcastle - but, year after year, the commercial bombardment persisted. Now, I live in Montana, a state much closer geographically to Washington than New York is and certainly not offering nearly as much competition in the fruit-production department, and I've not seen a single promotion for Washington apples anywhere here. And you know what that means, don't you? Washington state was airing those commercials in New York just to taunt us.
I found the definition of "Down Below" as what "the locals called all states except Alaska" rather odd in a sense. Though the state is "disconnected" from the continental U.S., personifies the extreme end of the frozen climate associated with desolate northern locales, and is not populated or thoroughly industrialized enough to even remotely fit the image which "Down Below" conjures, these considerations presume that Moose Countians are taking into account the individual geographic and socioeconomic characteristics of each separate state in considering how to distinguish their own region from the rest of the country. I find it hard to believe that the subject of Alaska would even *cross* their "insular and inbred" minds, let alone that they would go out of their way to make an especial exception for it. To them, there's Moose County, the only sane and unspoiled place in all the land, and there's everywhere else; "Up Here" and "Down Below" have always reflected states of mind and (though they may have originated in reference to the northeast-central cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago that were the nearest personifications of urban evil) really nothing geographical at all. (Incidentally, if one did follow the book's literal assessment of the term to its logical end, the next northernmost state after Alaska is Minnesota, which only serves to complicate the "Where exactly is Moose County located?" matter and contradict an abundance of previous evidence. Again, geography is best regarded as completely beside the point in this matter.)
Best inside joke: the parenthetical "It was a long story" at the end of the rather flat perfunctory and declarative series of statements on page 2 performing the thankless, rote task of introducing Qwill as a journalist who'd run into a freak inheritance from an old friend of his mother's but had to move to the little 400-miles-north-of-everywhere towen of Pickax to claim it and who was now the richest man in the northeast central United States, which I took as a comment on what must be the tiring and endless hassle of trying to ferret out a different way of expositing the same information for almost twenty first chapters.
Why is Qwill driving a van? It's not as if he's giving lifts to the local softball team, and I wouldn't think our penny-pinching Scot'd take to springing for the extra gas such a bulky vehicle consumes. He was thriftily scooting around in the Purple Plum just fine a few years ago.
Qwill now writes on an "old electric typewriter". What happened to the yellow legal pads? I guess electric typewriters have now replaced pen and paper at the far end of the spectrum of what's considered "quaintly obsolete" nowadays, and it's rather sad that the series is buying into popular notions of trendiness and what's passé. Proposed rule of thumb: it's not quaint if a twenty-three-year-old can remember when its technology was cutting-edge.
(While we're at it, a list of further problems with Qwill using an electric typewriter:
a) Hearing Qwilleran and electric typewriters mentioned in combination unavoidably brings to mind the character railing against the Fluxion's unholy video display terminals at the start of Backwards, which does not evoke good associations for the latter.
b) I gather from the text that the electric is now Qwill's main writing instrument, yet I must say that any sort of typewriter would serve Qwilleran extraordinarily poorly in that capacity, as it would require one to compose one's entire article in a completely linear fashion, straight from start to finish - relying solely on a typewriter does not allow you to edit or reword text before committing it to paper, build the article gradually around your core ideas, or jot down good points or bits of sharp prose and mots exacts which suddenly come to you. I know Qwilleran prides himself on the mental organization and exceptional memory that allow him to interview subjects without the assistance of even a tape recorder, but I know of no one - no one - who can put together a composition completely in their heads and crank out a finished work beginning to end flat-out and uninterrupted.
c) Where is Qwill getting the necessary supply of ribbons? Manual ribbons are rather generic, but electrics use ribbon cartridges that're pretty brand-specific, and seeing as how electrics are by the book's own admission quite obsolete, I imagine the cartridges would be pretty much impossible to find, particularly in a place as presumably backwater (well, as *purportedly* backwater) as Moose County.
d) Above all: electrics, by and large, do not make the satisfying clacketa-clacketa sound during typing that manual typewriters do. I'm thinking too much about this issue.)
I must say that the child's portrait contest, both in the very conception of it and the Something's smartly-worded caption for the winning entry ("'Color my hair yellow. Color my eyes blue. Color my dress pink. Or visit the art center before June 30 and see for yourself why Lisa LaPorte's pastel won best of show.'"), was a remarkably canny gambit to lure families down to the Art Center.
One of the Bamba offspring is actually named "Lovey". I hope the kid has a respectable middle name, as her given name will cause her no end of grief when she enters school. (My family once knew someone who about ten years ago named her infant "Most Precious"; the mother had nothing but truly sweet intentions, but I assume the child's going by "Marie" now.)
"Doc Abernethy"? Isn't the Doc in the wrong genre? Isn't it every Western that features a "Doc Abernethy"? (It's usually spelled "Abernathy", though...) In any case, I ain't buyin' his "forest sprite" (or, more accurately, "flying German telepathic midget") Short and Tall Tales anecdote. Most supposedly-true tales of the earthbound supernatural, in order to be effective, are rooted enough in the real world to be at least somewhat plausible - enough so that we can let our imaginations and senses of wonder con us into thinking that maybe, just *maybe*, they might be true. This, on the other hand, sounds like an event out of a King's Quest computer game.
From "The Legend of the Rubbish Heap" - "One day, Karl [Klingenschoen] approached his partner with an idea for expanding their empire. They would add saloons, dance halls, and female entertainers of various kinds." Well, now we know where Fanny's whole give-up-the-inheritance-and-it-goes-to-some-red-light-district-in-Jersey stipulation came from. On a side note, in this light, it's amusing to remark that the latest incarnation of the "let's turn Moose County into a sleaze pit" would-be economic putsch - XYZ's campaign for legalized gambling in Smelled a Rat - was partially countered by an organization bearing the Klingenschoen name.
So, MCCC's Hotel and Restaurant Management majors work in local inns as "porters, servers, dishwashers and housekeepers - happy to get experience in their chosen fields and brimming with energy and enthusiasm"? Not bloody likely. Back when I was considering majoring in architecture, I was told that many colleges required architecture majors to work for free as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. on top of their regular courseload in order to get to know the ins and outs of buildings, and I remember in response being highly resentful - not at the prospect of having to work at such jobs, but at the idea of having to pay a college exorbitant sums of money for the privilege. College is outrageously expensive enough, and an institution which, in this arrangement, is doing nothing at all themselves to earn the landfills of cash their students shovel their way (or, for that matter, the goodwill and patience of the professionals who put up with babysitting amateurs in their rather dangerous lines of work) is just gleefully rubbing salt in the gaping wound where their customers' wallets once were and has no business presuming to teach anyone anything about the work ethic. I can't imagine those bellhops and dishwashers are any happier with their situation.
(Besides, while the idea of working an apprenticeship in the traditional manner, removed from the collegiate structure, is solid in theory, and of course one is supervised by skilled professionals, is it a good idea to let goofy and potentially disgruntled and vindictive college students play around piping, water and power lines, housing foundations, and whatever other complex, delicate, and dangerous fixtures are at hand in the first place?)
By the way, those MCCC students are everywhere nowadays, aren't they? I'm surprised Qwill doesn't complain more; my own experiences with college-age employees in the service industry have not been largely positive.
More about the inn - Lori the head innkeeper, Nick the handyman, Cathy the assistant manager, Bella the waitress, the vaunted Palm Springs chef, all the MCCC student porters and dishwashers and toothpick whittlers - how many employees does this inn need? The Nutcracker must charge a lot in order to support its staff (minus the MCCCers), but, if so, then how would a small-town newspaper like the Something be able to foot the bill on a suite for two whole weeks just for one of their staffers to nab a few columns' worth of copy? (Yes, there's the supplementary income the café, cabins, and canoe rentals provide, but those entail their own expenditures as well, and to keep out the riff-raff and safeguard the inn's image, prices must be kept up there regardless. The Nutcracker's revenue must be derived largely from high per-room cost rather than sheer volume, for, from its depiction in this and earlier books, though it may be somewhat of a mansion, I can't imagine that the Limburger residence is large enough to be divvied up into anything past, say, fifteen guest rooms - and space must be allotted for the café and kitchen, laundry room, linen room, supply storerooms, innkeepers' quarters, and other housekeeping necessities. (Now that I think of it, even fifteen guest rooms sounds generous.) I dunno. Though it operates a lot of tertiary enterprises, I'm still not convinced the Nutcracker is financially sound - but, then, with the K Fund's recently-adopted Santa-Claus mindset, I suppose no economic endeavor in Moose County has to fly completely on its own merits nowadays.)
Furthermore, if Black Creek is situated in such striking natural beauty and is such an attractive vacation and outdoor recreation spot that adjunct lodging can command such a high price, then why was the area previously completely overlooked for development in a region that has undergone what is, quite frankly, a giant economic expansion in the past few years?
Strange that I never before made the connection, but it was upon reading of the Nutcracker's coral-painted walls with the crushed walnut shells ground in for texture that it occurred to me how Braun's background in reporting on interior design is truly evident in her skills of interior description. That I found it quite a noticeable hole that there was no thorough description of Qwilleran's suite at the Nutcracker upon his entrance is a testament to how ingrained these evocative and elaborate pieces of mind's eye-candy prose have become.
The short version - the Something asking Qwilleran to review a high-school play? What're they gonna do next - send an art critic down to the Art Center to judge the grade-school portrait contest?
The long version - until he later apparently decided otherwise, I was going to applaud Qwill for sensibly refusing the no-win task of reviewing a high-school play. You can't criticize the play at all, for one - holding what is, when you come right down to it, a scholastic practice exercise for a bunch of teenage drama students to a traditional critical standard is nonsensical and pretty much outright bullying. The community attends to sit back and watch and react and comment with (and, in the case of the actors, attempt to entertain) their family, friends, and neighbors - it has more in common with a church pot-luck supper or a giant communal video party than a traditional "grown-up" play; if the performance is decent, then that's just a bonus, so criticism is also pretty irrelevant. (Plus, considering the particularly high turnout of relatives in Pickax, a single bad word about the work of anybody's kid - and, let's face it, with a production of adequate bad taste to promote red-black-and-green striped knee-socks as a trend-setting fashion accessory, it would be really tough to behave - would wreak an endless tide of grief and wrath upon both the newspaper and columnist.)
So - genuine criticism in this case is tasteless, useless, dangerous, and impractical. That leaves the option of a Harriet Klausner-esque puff piece - which would be (and always is, in my opinion) equally pointless as an earnest review. Now, it is worth noting that that what is expected of and deemed entertaining in a high-school play is pretty much what Qwilleran in Saw Stars decreed should be the proper focus of a "review" ("the crowd; the excitement; ...the audience reaction; ...the roar of laughter when the unexpected happened"), so perhaps the type of article he'd go with would indeed adhere to that definition. That brings us back to the "a review necessarily demands some sort of evaluation of the work" objection and still leaves us with a rather substanceless stand-alone piece. Honestly, I think the Something's best plan of action would've been to send a photographer over to the theatre and publish a photo spread. Relegate any commentary about the remarkable aspects of the production to the captions and forego a review (however it's defined) all together.
(On a tangental note, this mini-analysis gives me a fine opportunity to finagle in an overdue plug for the 4/27/95 episode of the NPR show This American Life, entitled "Fiasco!". Skip all the later segments of the show - however entertaining the other may sound to you, I assure you they are disappointing, and the less you hear of Ira Glass, the happier and healthier your brain will be - but hear the highly entertaining first part, about an overambitious school play that goes awry beyond the realm of mere mortal blame, which argues that these sort of affairs are actually more entertaining when they turn horribly wrong. The guest commentator also states some truths about the audience's mindset during a scholastic drama production much more astutely than I have.)
Now, a nitpick about the play itself - this high-school production employs a conspicuous amount of outside, adult talent. Firstly, roles that, for various reasons, cannot be performed by students are normally filled by teachers rather than complete outsiders - and, secondly, that's usually in elementary- and middle-school plays (due to age - one of the brothers in my Catholic elementary school had to be recruited to play Jesus for our munchkinly version of "Godspell", for instance), not high-school ones. Furthermore, taking away major leading roles from the students just plain defeats the scholastic point of a school play.
Despite the morass of issues concerning the coverage, casting, and quality of the high school Pirates of Penzance production, considering that The Mikado provided the namesakes for two out of three of our lead protagonists, I'd say that a Gilbert & Sullivan tribute in the vein of those Shakespeare and Mark Twain have received in previous books was long overdue.
Moose County has an official T-shirt? When did this happen? How can a geographical location - not a landmark or a tourist attraction, mind you, but a geographical location defined by nothing but the topographic boundaries recorded in the national registrar - even generate "official" merchandise - who'd be authorized to license it? Disney Inc. owns Disneyland; a large corporation like McDonald's or Citibank could print up T-shirts to foist on their put-upon employees; but (though the K Fund would have a pretty good claim to it at this point) no one legally "owns" Moose County. And even it you argue that the county government would be close enough to serve in an "ownership" capacity, the fact remains that "Moose County", as a geographical place name, is not a copyrightable name - and no copyright, no official merchandise.
And, of course, there's no need to expound on the sheer, desperate Members-Only ludicrosy of Moose County even having an "official T-shirt" in the first place, because, y'know, the humor's pretty much built right in there.
Considering how out there the actual articles are, I'd love to read the parody "Qwill Pen" fan letters Arch writes. I love it, too, that Arch finds the adulation his old friend receives absurd. (Actually, I love it that *any* character finds the adulation Qwilleran receives nowadays absurd.)
"On the dressing table, bureau and cheval glass there were spidery cracks radiating from a central hole. He could imagine Elsa's enraged father going from mirror to mirror and smashing it with the signet ring on his fist. It would be a large, ostentatious chunk of gold." I obliquely noted my admiration of the pg. 31 passage in my review, but I must stop to admire again here the way Qwilleran and the author are able to imagine an entire story crystallizing the emotional truth of the Limburger family situation just from a gaze at one of their antique possessions, how the text seems to follow Qwill's train of thought as the details of the tale unfold in his mind.
The old Qwill would have a healthy journalistic curiosity about the MCCC academic clique but wouldn't be so enamored of it as to want actually to join as he does here - indeed, I doubt he'd find anything appealing about such a snooty, pretentious institution. That said, though, Mrs. Abernathy's mean trick and flagrant abuse of the goodwill of the man who, in addition to being responsible for the existence of not only her own job but those of all her snobby, no-show academia colleagues, has (creeping sense of self-importance aside) done more good for Moose County than perhaps any other single person in its history, absolutely infuriated me. Whyncha just go park yourself in the hospital lobby with Misty Morghan and poke fun at the people with walking by with IVs and crutches, sister.
An image of sweetness to parallel Yum Yum innocently releasing a trapped hummingbird from the screen door in Saw Stars - the Siamese enrapt in innocent wonder at the clucks and tweets of the chickies and birdies in the Hans Christen Andersen fairy tales their moustached daddy reads to them before bedtime. We rarely are treated to such a child-like portrayal of the Siamese and such a directly parent-child relationship between them and Qwill (in fact, hasn't there been only one instance of the latter, with Qwill "tucking in" the cats at night last book?), so the rarity of these scenes does heighten their specialness - but, no matter the circumstances, the tone and the imagery is so delicate and charmingly perfect that even a bitter cynic like myself can't help but let slip a few "awww"s.
As the benefactor of few flickertails myself, I was quite intrigued by the bits of squirrel trivia interspersed throughout the book.
Like Qwilleran, though I've glimpsed just a couple youngish squirrels in a few years of fixed-station and extemperaneous park-feeding, mostly all I see are all older squirrels chasing each other rather than the hoped-for "mother squirrels carrying their babies". Squirrels overall don't seem to be ones for the gentle, calm domestic image. From past experience with "our" squirrels - including surprisingly loud and annoying rattling of the feeder covers whenever the sunflower seed runs out, a squirrel bite that resulted in a $55 tetanus shot, and ongoing teasing of our dogs and cats that involves the squirrels standing on the feeders and staring directly into our pets' faces two inches away through the window pane, flicking their tails at them like a red cape at a bull, and then calmly sitting down and gleefully snacking on seed while watching them go nuts inside - I will agree with the visitors' contention that their fluffy tails allow squirrels to get away with murder.
Contrary to what Qwilleran says, I (happily) don't see many dead squirrels on the roads in my particularly animal-unfriendly neck of the woods. They all instead delight in being narrowly missed by swerving cars and causing auto crashes as in the Geico insurance commercial. I haven't been able to watch closely enough to see if the "each squirrel scampers to its own special tree" theory holds; off the cuff, I'd say all the scampering looks pretty indiscriminate to me. As there's not much competition for food here, however (y'know, due to its unnatural abundance), perhaps territorial instincts are not as strong.
I appreciate the nod to continuity with Qwilleran poking around for the cuckoo clock promised to Aubrey Scotten by old man Limburger - Aubrey made a lot of awestruck hay about that clock in Cheese, and for a deeply decent (um, save for the bee murder) fellow to be slighted what little he asked for after long, loyal service to such an irascible miser makes the cuckoo clock a fine thread to touch upon and pick up. Additional points go for the casualness with which the fact of the search was treated - it wasn't a crusade conceived as a showcase for Qwilleran the Great Humanitarian, just a nice favor to an old friend - just one more happening in an ever-progressing story, as if the continutation and resumption of open plot threads and the old, durable web of relationships should be a matter of course.
Hannah's ingenuity and resourcefulness in crafting the props for use in her dollhouses - part of an aspirin tablet for a cake of soap, a postage stamp for a painting, a toothbrush bristle for a mouse tail - reminds me of the work of a certain other artist named Joan Steiner who's made an entire career out of crafting charming, cozy, and insanely-detailed miniature environments from everyday objects. Her tableaux were featured several times in the glory days of the now-sadly-shabby-but-once-sublimely-innovative GAMES magazine as stand-alone puzzles (the puzzle factor stemming from divining what items she used for what). Though the link above will guide you to the Amazon entry for one of Steiner's picture books, the sample pages there don't really give a sense of the intricacy of her work, so I've scanned the first of the GAMES puzzles here.
The utterly superfluous home-made computer-printed sign with a cornpone, punny adage adorning the nutcracker display at the inn epitomizes all such rudimentary efforts at desktop publishing. All the description lacks is the mention of the use of blocky clip-art and tractor-feed printer paper.
Gleaned from Qwill's squirrel-talk column - "'We'd rather have the squirrels.' 'We'd rather have the birds.' 'Well, that's what makes horse racing, isn't it?'" An odd yet oddly appealing idiom - is it an actual, "established" saying in some neck of the woods out there?
I've said I sort of liked the Underhills for how they were, for today's Moose County, surprisingly rather rough around the edges, and yet, on a flip-through of Creek to gather info for this article, it caught my attention that Wendy is well-versed enough in classical music to be able not only to recite word-for-word the complete and exact ümlaut-laden titles of the Schubert oeuvre but to also score various nature scenes with appropriate choice pieces. Ergh.
Y'know, it's gotten so that we now have an entire county populated with walking volumes of Bartlet's Quotations. Offhand mention of ridiculously specified knowledge is used as shorthand for "I'm smart and cultured", and I miss folks like, say, Inga Berry, an accomplished artist and a bastion of common sense and intuition, who nonetheless talked like an Okie, and whose intelligence consisted of more than an unconvincingly-employed memory bank of data. Had Wendy's interest in classical music been naturally expressed - had she just picked it up somewhere, in childhood or on the job, and talked about it with honest enthusiasm (yet not utter omniscience), as with Hannah's conversing about her own hobby (which was an effective communication of professional know-how) - it would have actually enhanced her character instead of detracting from it. The trend's gone beyond all credibility - we need a return to Real People. (I mention this gripe here and not in the review or Rules analysis because, while the above is a singularly bad instance of an ongoing problem in the series, it is the *only* notable instance of that problem is this specific book and thus not really germane to an overall analysis of Creek itself. (Don't worry - next C-pad, the whole photo-book incident is gonna get it but good.))
Qwilleran, the Underhills, and Hannah discussing Mrs. Truffle - "Hannah questioned the causes of the woman's crankiness, and the group suggested rotten childhood, lack of love life, hormonal imbalance, genes and so forth." What a cattily oblique way of referring the the exchange of popular vulgarities. I am disappointed with all involved for going so low. There's a difference between being "rough around the edges" and being outright nasty.
Mooseland "Confederated" High School? How does a high school become "confederated"? "Confederation" doesn't sound like it should have anything to do with schools. "Confederated" enterprises should be having their products traded on the commodities market.
I'm also skeptical of the necessity or even the validity of the "Mooseland" label, defined as "anything on the fringes of the county". The county's so spread out that nothing can really *count* as fringe. The whole county *is* fringe (or, in view of the mainstreaming & gentrification craze, at least it *should* be).
Though Qwilleran may be "amused...to talk like a man of the soil", I've never heard the "aggie" term used as slang for agriculture - just "ag". Perhaps it's different over his way; I can't say.
What is Fran doing with Dr. Prelligate? He's been characterized previously as being somewhat of a pretentious blowhard (in fact, that's pretty much all we've ever heard about him) - why would Fran want to go with him? (A creative, free-spirit type getting involved with a self-absorbed type - never a good combination.) And wasn't Prelligate after Polly before? What's the age disparity there? What's the personality disparity there?
Ronald Frobnitz's own "Ask Mrs. Gramma" column, advising Pickaxians, particularly busybody billionaires and their callous attorneys, on matters of grammar and etiquette: 1) Comforting a wife concerned about the safety of her husband who's overdue back from the depths of a dense, wildlife- and hunter-ridden forest by talking on about how worrying is useless because of all the "madmen with guns" out there nowadays who can shoot you dead at any time anyway is rarely effective. 2) In limerick-writing and elsewhere, "Cyril" does not rhyme with "squirrel" - on so many levels. 3) If your early-morning conference call begins with the exchange "...according to the grapevine, it's a homicide case." "Right. But don't spread it around", it would perhaps be advisable to hang up, go back to sleep, and resume the conversation at a later time when both parties are considerably more conscious. (And also - 4) Branding battered women as "loopy" is a quick way to alienate your audience. That was back in Birds, but such comments don't come with expiration dates, as far as I'm concerned.)
While we're speaking of the wit and wisdom of G. Allen Barter, Esquire, another gem of a quotation concerning the deaths of the inn guest and Doyle - "'Do you realize that two guests of an inn owned by the K Fund have been murdered in a conservancy owned by the K Fund?’” Ahhh, Barter - always concerned about image over people. You're on my list, buddy.
Lots of newspaper lingo used this time around. Rather curious, since there're next to no scenes set at the Something. I do adore Qwill's strategy for avoiding editorial interference, repeated here as a public service - "'If [the copy] arrives early some itchy-fingered editor with a blue pencil will get the urge to make a few changes. It's better for the copy to arrive when they're beginning to worry about the thousand-word hole on page two...'"
I don't quite understand what Qwilleran's motives were in acting so flagrantly nonchalant about both Polly's correspondence and the woman in general, as at the start of Chapter 7. Besides being a fundamentally jerky thing to do, after the inevitable local buzz about his dinner with Barb Ogilvie, one would think it a good idea for Qwill to look to publicly reaffirm his relationship with his significant other rather than to be so eyebrow-raisingly carefree in her absence.
Qwill hoping to pen "'not just a 'slender volume', as the reviews say'" - I assume, as with the "definition of a review" piece in Saw Stars, that this is a meta-reference to Braun's own experiences with criticism, and yet - have any of her books been called "slender volumes"? Some of the earlier ones clock in around 175 in paperback, but there's agreement, both fan and critical that they certainly get enough bang for the pages - to speak frankly, it hasn't been until recently, coinciding with an actual *increase* in page count, that the reviews have turned downward.
Qwilleran: "I disapprove of using a phone while operating a knife and fork." Lot of cell phone hatred in this book. Good.
(In fact, taken with the intro to Qwilleran's "The Mystery of the Three Cracked Mirrors" - "More than a century before the Age of Computer Millionaires, fortunes were made on the American frontier by hard-working, risk-taking pioneers" - Braun seems library card-burningly disgruntled here with recent technologically-enabled impudence. Though crackpot dot-com start-ups and obnoxious cell-phone gabbers are facile targets, their persistent ubiquity permits me to take (more than) a bit of smug comfort in Braun's stern disapproval.)
I did not find Thornton's Chapter 7 description of the upcoming hard-drinkin', card-playin', crap-shootin', wimminizin', cussin', Indian-wrasslin', whatever-else-in' "historical reenactment" of the logger tavern fight to be staged in the Black Bear Café an enticing sales pitch; why pay to attend when you can see most of that sort of behavior in any bar nowadays for free? Saturday Night Brawls haven't evolved much over the years. Brawling isn't an activity that lends itself much to evolving in the first place.
Then again, what sort of hard-drinkin', crap-shootin', etc. loggers stage a sing-along of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore"? Do they follow up with a chorus of "Kumbaya"?
When did Nasty Pasty claim the crown of "best pasties in the county"? From Brahms on, their pasties have always been branded as citified and rather disloyal, so to speak, to the traditional pasty recipe for the sake of catering to a homogenized, touristy palette. Qwilleran might believe Nasty Pasties are better - and, based upon the supposed dishwater taste of those from the traditional pasty champ, The FOO, he's in all probability right - but his personal opinion does not speak for the populace at large (at least, not yet officially).
Qwilleran's cycling gear - a "tight-fitting green-and-purple suit, spherical yellow helmet, large black sun goggles" that "always scared the cats"? Cripes, that outfit'd scare me! (I do, however, find it happily evocative of the get-up that Calvin's father wore in the Calvin & Hobbes strips Bill Watterson devoted to his own cycling hobby.)
Signs that Ernie Kemple and Janelle Van Roop are in way over their heads in the antique market - 1) Ernie's conviction that an antique barn is much more appealing than a flea market. Antiquers love flea markets - the gaggle of vendors, many specializing in specialized markets general antique shops leave largely unplumbed, and the informal "carnival" atmosphere that especially lends itself to the ever-enticing promise of haggling and, just maybe, scoring a big bargain under the noses of the dealers and your fellow collectors. They're great fun. An antique barn, on the other hand, is just an antique store in a ramshackle location featuring other dealers' castoffs. 2) Janelle's supposedly bright idea of "inviting dealers to show their personal treasures". Eh heh heh. Janelle, no dealer is going to lend the gems of their private collections out to a communal antique barn, with easily-duped salesclerks the only thing safeguarding them from accidental sale and their savvy, wily dealer colleagues slinking about the henhouse (especially considering that the barn is doing nothing at the moment to differentiate on-loan exhibits from merchandise, the promised labels still in the "being made up" stage). I also doubt that the antique *barn* is suitably equipped, or that its proprietors are knowledgeable enough, to provide suitable storage conditions for most of the donations they're soliciting.
Also on the antique front - how on earth is Qwilleran, he who sold a rolltop desk from The Junkery for ten times its actual value in On and Off, now qualified and authorized to appraise antique furniture - much less tell *Susan* what prices to assign in her own appraisals, no less?
I hate to break it to Hannah and Wendy about their friends the bears at the Mooseville dump, but when animals suddenly disappear from public land with no explanation offered from the pertinent officials until significant pressure is applied (and then, usually nothing beyond a curt "they've been moved"), it usually means they've been shot or poisoned - especially in the case of bears who've gotten too used to human eats and too unafraid of humans themselves through repeated food-bearing contact. I've seen too many "bear approaches camper/gets shot" TV news reports from Yellowstone down south, not to mention a local incident involving some geese who frequented a section of the Missouri River by the offices of the town newspaper and who would occasionally flock up onto the nearby road and block traffic, prompting a flurry of angry J. J. Hawkinfield-esque editorials about the sanitation problems the birds caused and culminating in the same sudden disappearence, official stonewalling, and fakey "relocation" cover-up sequence discussed above.
Qwilleran hands out business cards now, even though he has no full-fledged profession. I guess in Moose County that being the Qwilleran is a profession in itself.
During her travels, Polly sends Qwill a postcard from, the text specifies, "the Henry Ford Michigan in Dearborn, Michigan", which is near Detroit in the southeast portion of the state. I mention this not only to place its location relative to where in Michigan we believe Moose County lies (far enough removed from home, I suppose, to hit on a vacation road trip), but to note that the Henry Ford Museum is the type of attraction that has enough of a historical claim to draw visitors but is of pigeonholed-enough interest to be known offhand only by someone familiar with the area (a Detroit Free Press editor, say).
I'm sadly sure we all know somebody like the attention-grabbing mechanic in Lois's during the WPKX news broadcast, obliviously (and, yet, obnoxiously) talking over something everyone wants to hear in order to make them aware of his personal connection to or "insights" on the presentation. I’m glad at least one patron at Lois's told the mechanic to be quiet.
The hand-wringing and forlorn sighing about poor, poor Danny’s mother in the last chapter - argh! What is with this series as of late and its beatification of women who abandon their kids? Does their lack of education excuse them from having any sense of morality? Yes, I realize that Boze and Danny were better-off in households better-equipped to raise them than their strung-out, detached mothers, but how much credit can you give a parent who’s done such a miserable job of caring for their offspring that the only decent choice they can make for their children at this point is to not allow themselves to make any further choices for them at all?
Qwill loves Lois’s ”eggs-over-lightly with American fries”? What kind of dish is that? I’ve heard of eggs overeasy, but what’re “eggs over lightly”? What’re “American” fries? (that the "American" part would be pro forma. In a restaurant like Lois's, I'd think that the down-home "American" qualifier would be a given for *any* dish.) What’s with the dainty, sideways terminology?
I can’t buy that Brodie’s so out-of-touch that he has to refer to ”’[s]omething called Driving Miss Daisy.’”
I leave you with the following Zen koan: "'Only the females quack...the males go cluck-cluck.'"
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