Ringing the Changes

Dorothy L. Sayers’s mystery novels were once thought of as “literary” detective stories, as opposed, I suppose, to the – what? flaccid pulp? – of Agatha Christie’s offerings. I happen to like both authors quite a lot, although I can see why Sayers was once thought to be artistically better than Christie. The very qualities that earned her this reputation are probably responsible for her books appealing less (and to fewer) today than her counterpart’s, but if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably up for it. If you haven’t tried these out, start with Murder Must Advertise, and then, if you’re still happy, proceed right to The Nine Tailors.

The Nine Tailors! Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! If you didn’t know anything about change ringing before, you will by the time you’re finished with the book. But look up some articles while you’re reading the novel, and dig even deeper. (Here’s a good place to start.) Listen to some change ringing on Youtube. The topic is fascinating in itself, provides a pervasive atmosphere of activity and terminology throughout the book, and plays an important role in the solution of the mystery.

What is it, you ask? In short, change ringing is a practice of tolling a given set of bells one at a time over and over but changing the order each time. For instance, in a Plain Bob, a set of six bells would begin by ringing in order: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6. The line is then divided into three pairs, which change places: 2 - 1 - 4 - 3 - 6 - 5. Now the end bells retain their rhythmic placement while the four inner bells swap in pairs: 2 - 4 - 1 - 6 - 3 - 5. And so it goes. A complete peal, which takes several hours (more or less, depending on the number of bells involved), gets around to the performance of every ordered permutation. If you had heard this description before knowing it takes place in a mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, would you have guessed that such a mathematical practice was English? But if I told you that the methods for changing the order of the bells have such quaint names as Steadman’s Triples and Kent Treble Bob Major, would you have guessed any country other than England?

The performances require stamina, athleticism, and mental focus. Imagine going to a cold, windy bell tower and pulling on a rope that controls a massively heavy bell for nine, fifteen, perhaps twenty hours, all the time paying attention to the pattern and keeping track of when to dodge and when to hunt! The herculean feat is made possible by alternates who are ready to sub in when it’s time for a refreshment break and by a leader who helps by shouting the changes like a caller in a square-dance (another artistic form involving the reordering of the participants). The adjustment of the timing that makes the permutations come about is made possible by the method of swinging the bell all the way to its vertical position, where it hovers like a gymnast doing a handstand on the top of the high bar until called to descend and toll again.

I offer a couple of caveats before you go wading into The Nine Tailors and wonder why you let this weird blog writer lead you into a morass. First, it’s long. Mystery novels work best in about 250 pages: enough to hide the connections of the pertinent details but few enough that the reader doesn’t forget those details by day 6 of reading. The Nine Tailors comes in at around 400. Second, Sayers’s language (especially her slang) is just different enough from ours to make descriptions of some key events obscure. I’ve read the book twice, and both times I got bogged down on page 1 trying to figure out how Lord Peter’s car got bogged down in a ditch. The situation isn’t relevant to the mystery other than as a means of getting Lord Peter delayed long enough to get involved in the local intrigue. But let me help potential readers out by suggesting that “the road cresting the dyke” should be interpreted as “the road that ran along the crest of the dyke.” I’ll also point out that a “lag” is a convict and that it’s best just to assume that someone asking for “Paul who is a tailor” could be remembered as and taken as someone asking for Paul Taylor. (Perhaps the book was so long that even Sayers forgot her own details.)

At one point while reading the book, I was looking up what some other people thought about it and found that Upton Sinclair considered it one of four “essential” detective stories. Also on his list was Dickens’s Bleak House, which, it just so happens, was on my plan as the book to start on the day after I finished The Nine Tailors! So I’m reading half of all essential detective novels in one month. That’s an accomplishment almost as impressive as ringing a full peal of Bristol Surprise Major.

Journey to the Center of Two Questions

Given that one of my goals in this third decade of planned reading is to bring back some of the boyhood wonder and excitement of reading classic adventure stories, after rereading Journey to the Center of the Earth for the first time since about 1972, I have to say, “Mission Accomplished!” Of course, the experience isn’t the same this time; I approach this book this second time with almost fifty extra years of experience and understanding. But, wow! Did I have fun! The obsessed professor! The runes! The thrilling sensation of hearing and reading at desperate moments the adventurous name of Arne Saknussemm! Glorious!

Now let me bog down my notes with two annoying grown-up observations my sexagenarian mind can’t help making. First, I couldn’t help laughing at the supposedly seminal science-fiction author alternately praising and flouting science. Axel, in his narration, keeps the reader abreast of the latest scientific information about the structure of the earth, geological eons, and evolutionary strata. But then the plot he unfolds contradicts all of it. For instance, the most prominent indications of prehistoric life the group discovers are actual, living prehistoric beings, whose ancestors at some time long, long ago slid with their habitat down a hundred miles of a gaping chasm, only to survive and breed underground for millions of years without any evolutionary change whatsoever: the adventurers note that they match exactly the skeletons of supposedly extinct species they have seen in museums.

Geology? Oh, sure, the explorers pass through various types of rock that “prove” the latest theories of the formation of the earth. But this all happens in the first fifty miles or so of descent; the next few hundred miles take them through more and more identical tunnels of extinct volcanic action, all of which is assigned to a small molten core that occupies only the very center of the center of the earth. They mention the scientific belief that temperature will increase as they descend and then find that it really doesn’t – until, that is, they find themselves at last in an active volcanic zone. It seems actual science stands in the way of a journey to the center of the earth, so Verne, in order to make good on the promise of his title, has to reject it. The good professor who leads the expedition tries to preserve some kind of scientific authority by saying that Sir Humphrey Davy has an opinion about the inner parts of the earth different from that of all other scientists. But a lone opinion can’t make the premise of the book scientific. An unsupported opinion can’t make science scientific. Some might point to the contradiction as a flaw, as a cheat. I just enjoyed watching the precarious balancing act as Verne showed off both his passion for science and his utterly unscientific yet captivating imagination.

My second annoying observation is related to the first. The editor of the version I read offered occasional notes indicating passages in which she saw Verne’s scientific observations indicating a break with Christian doctrine and sometimes outright disdain for it. I don’t know anything about Verne’s religious views. I can only say that people – Jules Verne belonging to that distinguished society – fall into many more subtle positions regarding the relationship of faith and science than the two the editor seems to recognize. Verne sometimes speaks of the “antediluvian era.” Was he joking in referring to the biblical flood? Was he throwing a comforting blanket to his theologically more conservative readers? Or was the author (or his first-person narrator, Axel, actually) trying to reconcile the accounts of the first few chapters of Genesis with the expanded timeframe of recent geological science? These and twenty more variants were all views held by actual people at the time, and they all represent possible understandings of Axel’s (and possibly Verne’s) view, especially since Axel never says, “And so our journey to the center of the earth has disproved the book of Genesis.”

In any case, since Verne gleefully used his plot to throw out all the science he so carefully alludes to, how could his science possibly throw out any given theology?

The Play’s the Thing

Like a holiday whose meaning metamorphoses over the centuries, my tradition of starting each year of reading with some plays has origins from a bygone era – a previous millennium, in fact. My first ten-year reading plan, which came with the set of Britannica Great Books, started many years with Greek plays and then proceeded somewhat chronologically throughout any given year. Tom Stoppard is not an ancient playwright. He is, in fact, one of the most recent authors on my schedule for 2021. But playwright he is, so January he comes!

My reaction to the plays that I read isn’t fair, I know. Dramatic works should be seen, not read. But I don’t have the luxury of watching performances, and I’m interested in Stoppard’s wordplay and philosophical meanderings. Given that caveat, I’ll say that, while I enjoyed Jumpers and Travesties much more than I enjoyed the Stoppard plays I read three years ago, I still wish I liked them better. I want to love these plays; I really do. Let’s list the possible explanations for my disappointment:

(1) The plays aren’t very good, and their accolades come through an emperor’s-new-clothes dynamic.

(2) The plays are good, but I don’t know enough to see everything that’s good about them.

(3) I want something in a play that Stoppard, writing perfectly good plays, just doesn’t provide.

I think the truth includes elements of options 2 and 3, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find fans who secretly see the emperor as naked. But option 3 surged to the fore when I read one particular exchange in Travesties. This play consists entirely of recollections by the main character of meeting Lenin, James Joyce, and dadaist Tristan Tzara in Zurich in 1917. All are seeking ways to negotiate a world newly unmoored from traditional views of its coherence. Some character (I don’t remember which one) says something a little crazy (they all do), and after someone calls the utterance nonsense replies, “Yes, but at least it’s clever.” A page or two later, Tzara speaks the line, “Dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada.” Again someone says he’s speaking nonsense, but Tzara gives an extra turn to his reply: “Yes, but at least it’s not clever.”

Is my problem that I’m trying to find something clever in Stoppard’s word salad when he just wants me to enjoy the mixed greens? Maybe. But then, somebody in the play (yes, somebody – it would all be easier to keep track of if I could see performances) says words to the effect of “We can no longer believe in causation because of the war.” See, I think that’s pretty clever, and I want more of that. So I still have some money on option 2; I’m concerned that maybe Stoppard is clever all the time while I just don’t catch it all. On the other hand, I do like the tastes and textures of a random assortment of romaine, spinach, cherry tomatoes, red onions, croutons, and italian dressing, so I’ll be keeping this play in mind when, later this year, I tackle the greatest tossed salad of them all: Finnegan’s Wake.

I can’t sign off without a word about the third play I read in these last few days: Molière’s Tartuffe. This play didn’t make me question my habits of reading and thinking as Travesties did. It just invited me to read and think and enjoy and laugh. The religious hypocrite Tartuffe gets many people to parrot his nonsense while using a cover of piety to acquire donations and sexual favors, and it’s hilarious. What a relief it is to laugh at heretical chicanery! I don’t get any sense that Molière meant to label all of Christianity as Tartuffian; the character who restores order at the end is a good, reasonable, caring, sympathetic Christian man. I suppose it’s possible that the playwright simply put him in for the sake of appearances, as a screen behind which to hide his contempt for Christianity. But if so, the Church still saw the play as an attack on religion and banned it; so the supposed ploy didn’t work. In any case, I prefer to take Molière and his play at their surface-level word, and their patent message is that we cannot let true Christianity be defined by any person who self-announces his special favor with God, expects all good Christians to stay loyal to him, and then uses their support to gain power, money, and sex. Tartuffe, you deserve your downfall!

A post-scriptum: Blogspot's editor doesn't approve of the noncapitalization of "italian dressing." I guess it would want me also to capitalize "french fries" and "roman numerals." Well, now that I've typed those phrases into the editor, I can report that it has absolutely no problems with my formatting. By analogy, I stand by my lower-case "i." And may I also note that Blogspot's editor flags the word "Blogspot's"?