Alexander McCall Smith's French Equivalent, Muriel Barbery

One of my favorite quotations of all time is this one, by Sigmund Freud, about the Irish: "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
You may take it to mean whatever you like. I take it to mean that they are already mentally healthy, and why would they not be? They have a fondness of enough drink to take the edge off, a fatalistic attitude about life itself (in short, they don't get their knickers in a twist about much at all, at all), and they have a great time turning words to their advantage.
Ireland has produced platoons of great writers, usually ones who can turn a phrase to make one cry, or laugh. Even day-to-day life is full of the use of language to turn something nasty on its ear. Irony was made for the Irish, or possibly by them.
Not enough to eat? Make Nothing Soup and serve it up with Garbage Salad. (Cute, but real, recipes from an uncle of mine who raised four children in Brooklyn in the 1950s.)
Bloody Brits doing something bloody stupid again? Who bloody cares? They've been the butt of Irish jokes since long before 1916, the start of Irish independence.
Ireland overrun with swarthy foreigners? OK, OK. The Irish have been a little less tolerant of what EU membership has landed them with. But think about it; if they hadn't gotten so prosperous, the disadvantaged hordes wouldn't be seeking Irish jobs. If they're upset about anything, I'd think it was that the middle Europeans lack the finely tuned sense of humor that prevents depression from becoming pathos.
But that's not what this is about. It's about the French equivalent of the 44 Scotland Street series written by Alexander McCall Smith, and starring little Bertie, his horribly pretentious mother, Irene, and his adversary, a shrink named Dr. Fairbairn.
The book in question, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, has been on French bestseller lists for a year. I haven't read it, but I must. I must read it if for no other reason than this: The 12-year-old protagonist, Paloma, is sent to a shrink by a mother not unlike Bertie's. Alone with the shrink, Paloma says, "Listen carefully, Mr. Permafrost Psychologist, you and I are going to strike a little bargain. You're going to leave me alone and in exchange I won't wreck your little trade in human suffering by spreading nasty rumors about you among the Parisian political and business elite."
He believes her, and leaves her alone.
If one author's fiction characters could meet another author's characters, I'd introduce Paloma to Bertie. Bertie is only six, and hasn't yet figured out how to get Dr. Fairbairn to leave him alone...and he's been working on it for four books already.
But Paloma could tell him. Bertie has already pointed out that his mother's pre-session sessions with Fairbairn are longer than his own. And Bertie has announced that his new baby brother looks a lot like Dr. Fairbairn. But Bertie hasn't yet gotten the chops to tell the faker off. (And he is a faker; Fairbairn's most famous case, the one that made his name, was all a bit bogus, as it turns out.)
One really hopes poor, sweet, smart little Bertie will last long enough to tell the big faker off. Bertie has managed, in one book, to get lost alone in Paris for a couple of days and did just fine.
Maybe he ran into Paloma!

Queen of the Universe

Dear Ms. Rowling,

Perhaps it is lost upon you that when people purposefully do things that make them rich and famous, they are no longer the same sort of "private citizen" they were when they were penniless weasels.

Bad enough that you and your shill, Warner Brothers, won your scurrilous lawsuit against a fan (he may be a little over the top in his admiration for your derivative works, but that's another story); now, it seems, a Scottish court has done what a sensible English court refused to do. It has found that indeed, it is a violation of your son's privacy for those fascinated by your inexplicable fame and wealth to take photographs of him. I wonder: Do you believe, like the hill people of Tibet, that taking his photograph will steal his soul? I doubt it. I think, rather, that you wish to take all the photos yourself and then sell them so you can....hmmmm....make more money, some half of one percent of which you will then vociferously give to charity.

I just read some headlines in which American college students opined that you are a "flash in the pan." I truly hope they are correct. Your books are not great literature; they are children's books, for crying out loud, and not in the Newbury Prize vein, either. Your books are probably popular because of the dumbing down of most populations, most places. In fact, it gave me a great deal of hope to note the U.S. college students have seen through you.

I also reread a blog posted by an author of a computer game whose work was widely disseminated as you were writing your own derivative tales. He noted that he had not gone after you, when it appears he might have done and won. He also pointed out that a female author had lost a copyright suit you brought against her. Her work about a wizard named Larry Potter was on the market first, so I don't know how you won that one. Perhaps she is a wizard, and picked your brain before even you knew what was in it, and you were magically able to prove that to the satisfaction of a judge not unlike Judge Patterson of New York. Or perhaps she simply hadn't had Warner Brothers' skirts to hide behind, nor treasury to use against you.

Your behavior has been, in a word, despicable. I have written at some length recently over the desirability of living in a nation where noblesse oblige is still in force, making it incumbent upon the 'haves' to at least pretend to value and care for the 'have nots.' That place was England. You have moved to Scotland. I think I can see why.

Sincerely,

Laura Harrison McBride

JK Rowling Railroads Potter Lexicographer

Stanford University Law Schools' Center for the Internet and Society was on the side of the publisher who wanted to issue a lexicon of the convoluted--and mainly stolen from the writings of antiquity--universe in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. A judge in New York City has now put another nail in the coffin of free speech and free enterprise in the United States. In addition, while avowing the opposite, his knee-jerk (and I'm being kind here) decision has put the screws to most commercial criticism, the kind real people and not just academics, might actually buy and read.

The judge, Robert Patterson, said that the RDR "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide". And he, I suppose, is the ultimate arbiter of how much is too much.

Even Rowling apparently has trouble with that concept. In 2004, Rowling herself had awarded the website on which the pre-empted lexicon was based an award for excellence. Worse yet, Rowling herself admitted that part of her reason for bringing suit (aided and abetted by Warner Brothers) was that now the author and publisher wanted to make money. When they ran the free website, of course, any money anyone wanted to spend went directly to Rowling, or perhaps Warner Brothers, which produced at least two totally execrable installments of the antiquities-laden supposedly original series.

It is, in a word, despicable. Here is a woman who, if you wish to believe her own backstory--and I'm not sure I do--was a welfare mom sitting in a cafe (Starbucks or similar, in which case what the heck on welfare was she using to pay for coffee there?) trying to pen a little story that would let her put better pablum in Junior Rowling's hungry little mug. So I guess she must have had all those classic writers committed to memory, or she'd probably have had to spend at least some of her time in a major academic library, stealing from the dead. The dead, one will note, cannot sue in a court in New York State, nor do they have the deep pockets and boundless greed of Warner Brothers to egg them on. They're dead. For a long time. But it's still their work. There was no such thing as copyright back then.

(To quote an old TV show, Car 54, Where Are You? "Oooh, oooh,oooh," what about writing a story about, for instance, Homer come back to life and pairing up with Warner Brothers to sue anyone who ever wrote any sort of story based, however loosely, on The Odyssey?)

Frankly, Ms. Rowling makes me sick. This former downtrodden welfare mom (snicker, snicker) has sold out so far that she now belongs to the "circle up those Cadillacs" crowd, using fair means and foul to prevent anyone profiting one nickel off her own ill-gotten gains. But then, honor among thieves is thin on the ground, still.

If I had ever entertained the thought of buying a Harry Potter book (and I hadn't; they are really sort of simplistic, a true dumbing-down of the material she used as reference material, although the better term might be template), I would not now. If I had entertained a thought of watching one of those "B" movies (particularly the buffoonery I admit to having watched once, directed by Chris Columbus), that is now firmly dead and buried.

I hope most writers are not cynical and rapacious; I hope, if I ever write anything with half the reach and income draw of the Potter books, that I will not begrudge someone else profiting by using my material as a base for their own, as long as they don't plagiarize.

I have been plagiarized, and it isn't fun. Maddening, really. My work for a niche publication was once lifted word for word by a national publication, and I had no recourse. But then, I also didn't have Warner Brothers to pay my bills and I hadn't based it on the classics. It was a story about bloodhounds.

But RDR and its writer did not plagiarize, at all. Even Rowling/Warner didn't try to send that balloon aloft. RDR and its writer simply researched Potter's work and wanted to issue a guidebook, if you will, to the world of Harry Potter. Such a work would be not unlike a Biblical concordance, although it pains me to put Ms. Rowling in the same sentence as the seminal religious work of the western world. I trust she will leave that work strictly alone, however; the Vatican is much more powerful than Warner Brothers and might have a go at her with Judge Patterson.

Christian behavior?

Most "good Christians" believe it is all right, apparently, to engage in very non-Christian acts in order to promote Christianity. This statement seems to defy logic.
Or does it, in today's old-time religion atmosphere? As far as I can tell, there are sufficient numbers of Christian clergy at least as virulent in their attacks on non-believers as there are Islamic idealogues of the same stripe. Often, they get at least some members of their congregations so agitated that they become the scourge of the unbeliever, the self-appointed "thought police" regarding any concepts not in accord with what they listen to on Sunday.
What got me started thinking about this was my inability to find Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, at my local Barnes & Noble. The in-store computer not only said the store had a copy or two; it pointed me to precisely where those copies should have been, in the Current Affairs section.
They were not there. They were not even in the Current Affairs section mis-alphabetized. That same branch is notorious, in my experience, for not knowing the alphabet, or at least, not knowing how to use it to shelve books. One day, I ransacked the place looking for Alexander McCall Smith's latest. When I looked under "M," I found it. Note: His name is not hyphenated. His name is Smith. "S" End of story. Well, end of that story. But mis-alphabetizing was not the case with the Hitchens book.
Anyway, I did the same sort of search for the Christopher Hitchens book, looking under "C". I even looked under K, for Kitchens, in case there was some dyslexia involved. Nada. Then I looked in Religion, then in Christianity, then in New Age. Again, I looked under C and K. Nada. I figure if I had looked in, perhaps, architecture or some other section few people frequent, I might have found it.
The reason I think it might have been moved to a spot no one would think to look is because, in that very store, copies of Science of Mind magazine are ALWAYS found stuck behind mainstream Christian magazines, and usually in some way that makes it incumbent on one who wants to read Science of Mind to have some minor acrobatic skills as well.
I do not for one minute think this is the policy of Barnes & Noble. I do think it might be the work of a zealot, on or off staff, who likes to hide information not approved of in his or her fundamentalist sect.
Which brings me to the point: Isn't it rather non-Christian to move other people's property because one disagrees with that person? This may not be the same as killing infidels because of one's interpretation (or some might say misinterpretation) of a sacred book, but I don't see it as much different. It is malicious by nature; unless such actions are those of a person of diminished capacity (intellectually or emotionally, although I think the latter is giving too much ground), then it is, pure and simple, theft. If you make something unavailable to a person that was formerly available, or meant to be available, then you have stolen from that person. In the case of moving products in stores, you've stolen from both the consumer and the merchant.
Is this Christian?

Speaking Ill of the Living

Ten days ago, my best friend's daughter's ex-boyfriend died. The young woman had dated the man for four years, and had only "moved on" about six months ago, remaining friends. Truly.
Worse yet, it is still not known whether the young man died by accident, or was murdered. He was found crushed to death under a service elevator in a parking garage a block from the White House.
No, he had nothing to do with the U.S. government, so it's useless looking to politics for an answer. Possibly it was gangs; the rise of indigenous gangs and branches of the Bloods and Crips has recently been well documented in Washington, DC.
The young man--who had danced at my own wedding three years ago, putting him slightly closer than "acquaintance" on two counts--was a legal alien from Peru, working as a manager at a major corporation, seeking U.S. citizenship. He had just gotten his master's degree, had decided to return to sports by joining a kickball team, and was altogether not someone who would ordinarily die as the result of misadventure. The D.C. police have, however, begun seriously to investigate and have made some noises that give hope that whoever did it will be caught.
Tomorrow night, the young man's interment service will be followed by a reception at his alma mater, and in lieu of flowers, the family has asked for donations to a scholarship established in his name.
I write this not by way of causing referred sadness. I write it as an introduction, sadly come to hand, for a discussion of appropriate and inappropriate memorials.
The memorial for this young man is completely appropriate. It will offend no one. It will allow those who must to grieve; it will allow friends to comfort the grief-stricken. It will remember the man in a useful and generous way, a giving way.
Bogus Grief
Inappropriate are the tawdry flowers, scrawled messages on warping wooden sticks and molding teddy bears placed where unfortunate humans have run off an American roadway. Just this morning, where a young man had died in a single-car accident two miles from my house last week, I noticed a dumpster's worth of already-fading teddy bears, hearts drawn on the trees, "We love you!" signs and other detritus that will remain for years, since superstitious humans are terrified to desecrate what someone claims, licitly or illicitly, as a sacred site. Eventually, the so-called tribute to the dead driver will become an eyesore, if it isn't indeed both an eyesore and a heart-sore already to his true friends and family.
The Diana Syndrome
This sort of bogus show of sympathy first caught my eye some considerable time after the death of Princess Diana. I happened to be in Paris in early November of 1998. Hurrying back to my hotel one Sunday morning after the winter rains had set in, I saw a crowd gathered at the end of a street I hadn't walked down before. The journalist in me got the best of me, and I walked toward the gathering. It was quite large, perhaps 100 people, some of them in tears, others snapping flash photos in the gloom. I elbowed in. What I saw astonished me. There, around an "eternal flame" erected above the tunnel in which Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed had suffered the fatal crash, were probably thousands of rain-soaked silk flowers, teddy bears, collages, notes...god-knows-what about four feet deep and a few feet high.
I thought Princess Diana's death was a tragedy for many reasons, not least of which is the pall it cast over the Royals. I'm not a Royals fanatic, far from it. But I realized that the controversy over their involvement or lack thereof would go on for years, if not decades (although it's getting to be decades about now), and compromise the Royals, the government and the British people in subtle ways, not unlike the way the tragic deaths of two Kennedy brothers has compromised the U.S.
It would certainly never occur to me to enrich greeting card companies, stuffed toy manufacturers or the local supermarket flower stall by using their offerings to diminish and cheapen a tragic event. If I were truly upset by Princess Diana's death, then the proper course of action would be to make a donation to one of her causes, finding and defusing land-mines in Eastern Europe and so on. Or I might even to do some serious volunteering of my own, if her example meant anything. I admit that I did nothing, except feel sorry for her sons. But that was enough. I didn't know the lady; I only knew of her.
A Greeting Card Way of Life and Death
But that's not what Americans do these days. They wail and tear at their garments, so to speak, over the deaths of people they did not know and could not have loved in any way except as a fanatic. What, one may ask, is wrong with our society when Americans young and old engage in the particularly egregious expression of store-bought emotion that results in eyesores and no help to anyone? Are they convinced that wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and thus forcing their issues (whatever those might be) on others is a desirable action? Or perhaps they are begging for sympathy; if they can't get it for their own failed efforts at life's tasks, then they'll take it by referral when someone they know of dies. Maybe it's the greeting card industry's fault: It is no longer necessary to write sympathy notes to the bereaved. It is only necessary to spend $3.50 and buy some sentiments. It's just as easy, then, to create a pseudo-tribute, most often to someone not even close enough to rate a daily thought before their death, never mind after. For instance, for those of us not suffering mental illness, Princess Diana.
Back to Reality
I have no idea how many times I will think about Fernando Molleda in days, weeks, months to come. I know I have thought of him often this past ten days, also thinking about how his death might affect my friend's daughter, and offering her any solace from me she can use. My husband and I will go to the visiting hours this evening, not a pleasant task at the best of times, and even less so when it means four hours of driving in nasty DC traffic in 97 degree heat. I am not complaining. I am happy to do it.
But I will not send the Molledas a pre-printed greeting card. I will send them a handwritten note, and in it, I will enclose a donation for the scholarship fund. I'm not bucking for sainthood; I'm simply making a point about grief and remembrance. Grief is best dealt with in person, or in personal notes if presence is impossible. Using nothing but commercial greeting cards cheapens death and grief, makes it into nothing more than menu choices:
"Oh, I think I'll have the sadness, with a dollop of heartfelt concern on the side."
Or, "I'll have the didn't-know-your-Uncle Jake-but-he-musta-been-swell" with a side order of "Call me when you've finished weeping and we'll do lunch."
Even if the greeting card industry offers no sentiment that expresses exactly what one wants to say to express one's self, or needs to say to comfort a friend or relative, people buy the cards anyway. They make do with them, as they make do with bogus displays of funereal angst instead of living real lives and grieving appropriately for people they actually know, or who were beloved of people they actually knew.
Or perhaps the epidemic of laziness and low self-esteem that grips this country has helped to make ordinarily decent people chary of spending the time and effort to write what they just know (convinced by the greeting card industry that has usurped the role for profit) will be an inadequate or ungrammatical, perhaps, expression of their sincere feelings.
In building the instant memorial gardens, planted with faded ribbons and sad-looking stuffed animals, perhaps they are looking for some way to feel good about themselves. This is not it. Self-esteem comes from within, not from within the greeting card store. Indeed, the deceased are dishonored when their passing is marked with displays of insincere grief that attempt to arouse the same bogus sentiment in strangers. Worse still, those displays are left to molder and create eyesores that continue to dishonor the life that was meant to be remembered.

All This for a Bottle of Shampoo

I didn't buy shampoo the last time I was close to Beauty Farm*, a store where the brand I use is less expensive than anywhere else. I just couldn't face it. I didn't want to be pursued all over the store by the manager (a man) or by the latest sales assistant. (They have all been women--young, old, over the top, mousey, you name it. They are never there very long. I've never encountered the same one twice.)
I also didn't want to have to hear and feel compelled to respond to the litany.
"Do you have a Beauty Farm card?"
"Yes."
"May I see it?"
"No."
"If you left it at home, I can put in your phone number and find it."
"That's all right."
"You know, after you spend $100, you get ten percent off your next purchase."
"That's all right."
"Ten percent is meaningful these days."
"I really just want to buy the shampoo and go next door to do my grocery shopping."
What I really, really want is to go into a store, select an item I desire (and, if I'm having trouble, beckon to knowledgeable sales help), pay for it, and leave.
I do not want to enter into a "relationship" even for a discount with someone I'll never see again (especially in this or any store where employment longevity seems to be about a minute and a half, hardly time to become knowledgeable in the first place.)
I do not want to waste so much time that any monetary savings are eaten up in the process.
I do not want to give my name, address, phone number, or any other information about myself. As far as I'm concerned, when they have my money--via cash, check or credit card--that's all they need to know.
In fact, the prevalence of collecting data about me in the guise of 'discount' or 'membership' cards is getting seriously aggravating, and I wonder, actually, if it is not an imposition thinking people ought not to tolerate.
I did succumb, I admit it, the first time I entered the Beauty Farm and the manager prevailed upon me to register for their card. I didn't care about the ten percent off on my first purchase after spending that first hundred. I just wanted him to be quiet and take my money so I could--you guessed it--go next door and buy groceries.
The store next door is Trader Joe's. Good value, and they collect NO information about you, no matter how you pay. They even accept checks. Granted, they will put the check through a handy machine to see if the customer is in the habit of writing rubber ones. But that's simply prudent, and I doubt that they store the information on the check themselves. It resides, if it is retained, at some processing company's computer somewhere in cyberspace, or maybe California since those two terms are, in some universes, interchangeable.
However, here's the point: At a time when it was possible for merchants to actually get to know their customers, there was some point to it. The merchant could then assess the sorts of items a customer or group of customers preferred, and stock those. There was no discount attached to it all; the customer kept returning because he or she found the products of good value, and the help knowledgeable and professional. Some sort of relationship might develop over time, but it was one based on mutual benefit. It might well have included passing the time of day--asking about the children or whatever--between a customer and merchant who had been doing business together for a long time. But it wouldn't have been a sense of faux-community based on offering the customer a discount in return for loyalty...loyalty which would, moreover, be transferred to the next similar emporium offering similar products at perhaps a slightly larger discount.
There is no honor among thieves. So, if a merchant steals your loyalty by useless blandishments (offering ten percent on a hundred dollar purchase, spread over time, certainly strikes me as useless since you might move away or change preferences in products before you reached the magic number), then he should expect no better from you, or from his competitors.
I miss Mrs. Krause. I even miss Gretchen, her humongous Alsatian that would leap over her grocery counter if you said the wrong word auf Deutsch. I had no clue about anything else in her life, except she opened the store for two hours on Sunday afternoon, just long enough for my grandmother to pop in and buy a couple of my very favorite little cups of custard. No discount was needed, no card, and no false "relationship." Mrs. Krause made custard and sold it. I liked custard. My grandmother thought it a fine treat and gladly bought it, for the price at which it was offered, until Mrs. Krause retired and the world turned into so many facsimilies of Beauty Farm.

* Store name changed to protect me from lawsuits in a litigious society.