Is the cruellest month bringing the news of the sudden death of a favour writer just when I was joyfully settling in with his latest book.\u00a0\u00a0 Philip Kerr passed away at the very young age of 62. I met him at a party and we talked away happily though I was entirely ignorant it was him, one of my favourite writers.\u00a0 Fortunately for me another favourite writer Howard Jacobson told him what a fan I was of his Bernie Gunter novels.\u00a0 When I learned of his death I reached out to Howard and he kindly sent me this:<\/p>\n
I passed on your email to Jane Thynne, Philip’s widow.\u00a0 She has just written back –\u00a0<\/em> I also wrote to Tom Hanks who I\u2019m know was also a big fan of his, and he responded: I was crazy shocked.\u00a0 I had a dinner with him at his home in Wimbledon a few years ago – and have read every single one of the Bernie Gunther stories.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It is heart breaking we no longer have him, but at least we have his books.<\/p>\n My heart went out of the reading.\u00a0\u00a0 When death walks unbidden into a book it\u2019s hard to simply continue.\u00a0 \u00a0I shall return to this some other time.\u00a0 Bernie starts work in a morgue, gets a job with an Insurance Company and investigates a fraud in Greece\u2026<\/p>\n I turned for relief to my old standby favourite the latest translation of the life-saving series of newly translate Maigret\u2019s in paperback Penguin, which I hope never end.<\/p>\n Truly a master of dialogue, this makes his book brilliant.\u00a0 Totally readable.\u00a0 The characters are immediately alive.\u00a0 Set in the twenties in the windy city, around the mob and newspaper men, this is a big, broad wonderful book. You can\u2019t put it down.<\/p>\n Often Maigret\u2019s short novellas are simple tragedies, frequently in a large family linked together by silence.\u00a0 Often the family are set are against the local town, either above them socially, or beneath them through poverty, drink and disgrace.\u00a0 Maigret\u2019s arrival, here to visit an old friend on his way home, finds him greeted as well with fame, and the cautious respect due to the famous Parisian detective.\u00a0 He watches from the outside while others,\u00a0 less competent, pursue wrong leads, rival theories, and petty jealousies.\u00a0 He wanders around the bars, drinking, listening and watching.\u00a0 Simenon, like Maigret, is a fantastic observer of the ordinary lives of others, their jealousies, their sexual weaknesses, their alcoholism, their drugs.\u00a0 What makes his stories so particularly satisfying are the characters, especially the females, whom he draws accurately, precisely, and without sentiment.\u00a0 Their clothes, their laundry, their homes.\u00a0 That, the countryside and the weather, and the love of Paris in the springtime.\u00a0 In fact weather is vital in his writing: take two examples from this perfect short novel.\u00a0 This:<\/p>\n The weather was so contrary and fierce that the rain wasn\u2019t mere rain or the wind freezing wind – this was a conspiracy of the elements\u2026.There was no point trying to protect himself.\u00a0 Water wasn\u2019t just pelting down from the sky but was also dripping from the guttering, in fat, cold drops, streaming down the doors of the houses and racing along the gutters with the gurgling of a torrent; you had water all over your face and neck, in your shoes and even in the pockets of your clothes\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n And then this:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By around 5 p.m., the sky had become apocalyptically dark and it had been necessary for all the town\u2019s streetlamps to be lit.\u00a0 There had been two brief, dramatic rolls of thunder, and finally the heavens had opened, sending down not rain but hail.\u00a0 All the people in the street vanished, as if blown away by the wind, and white hailstones bounced off the cobbles like ping pong balls.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maigret, who at that moment had been in the Caf\u00e9 de la Poste, had jumped to his feet like everyone else, and they all stood at the window watching the street the way people watch a fireworks display.<\/em><\/p>\n This is masterful work.<\/p>\n I have to confess that while the new Julian Barnes is beautifully written, and while I picked up a signed edition at Vromans, I became strangely uninterested in the affair of the nineteen year old teenager for the tennis club siren in the home counties.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t quite decide why I cared so little.\u00a0 The fifties are elegantly described.\u00a0 The dull lives of the parents are precisely placed.\u00a0 We understand the local middle class disapproval, and the weird withdrawal of her older husband.\u00a0\u00a0 I think in the end it\u2019s in the bedroom the story falters.\u00a0 This is a sexual novel, and while it may be \u201ctrue\u201d to say, as the narrator does, I don\u2019t remember how it started, the love story is all and in the end it didn\u2019t come alive for me.\u00a0 It was too polite.\u00a0 I suppose in the end she doesn\u2019t come to life.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to read on because he is Julian Barnes, and I have also been known to be wrong!<\/p>\n I like this short novella.\u00a0 He is a terrific writer as we know.\u00a0 Zadie Smith describes his importance to her in her wonderful book of essays (q.v.)\u00a0 Here an old filmmaker, stuck in a wheelchair, plots an elaborate revenge on his betraying love.\u00a0 It\u2019s a Hitchcock plot, and probably deliberately, because there are film references throughout.\u00a0\u00a0 His skill keeps both the pacing and the twists of the plot coming at you.\u00a0 Short, sharp, sweet.<\/p>\n I always get to the same point in this book.\u00a0 About half way through.\u00a0 I have about three first editions, I think for the reason I keep thinking I haven\u2019t read it.\u00a0\u00a0 I either have to stop buying first editions or start half way through\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 This is the story of a funny\/wicked Uncle who pulls a neglected boy out of a dull boarding school, and then like his father, also disappears.<\/p>\n I came across this new book of Essays by this terrific novelist and fell in love.\u00a0 Not with just the book, with the author.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s alright, it happens at my age, and she is a Cambridge alum and lived in Willesden, and now lives in New York, writing fabulous essays.\u00a0\u00a0 I bought all her books again to read in the summer.\u00a0 I loved this one,.<\/p>\n I had a strong feeling I had read this before, but if I did I failed to note it.\u00a0 Perhaps in France.\u00a0 I also had the strong feeling I abandoned it at the same point.\u00a0 I only like some of his work.<\/p>\n Of course I bought this because of Patten.\u00a0 I was at her memorial and remember being impressed by the number of police who had turned up.\u00a0 The book is truly well written and fascinating, but I have a weakness.\u00a0 I confess to a horror of horror.\u00a0 I decided when I had to shut the curtains, and couldn\u2019t sleep that while I loved the book it was simply too terrifying for me to read. <\/em>\u00a0I cannot watch horror movies:\u00a0 the last I saw was Psycho!, so I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m a supporter, a sympathiser, but a dweeb.\u00a0\u00a0 What was brilliant is the recent arrest of the serial killer and she helped to keep the case alive, and even describes what will happen to him one day with the knock on the door and the arrest.\u00a0 How wonderful that it did. A bitter sweet triumph for Patten, who shepherded the publication of his late wife\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Talking to Ringo the other day, now Sir Ringo hooray, he told me once again the story of how Derek Taylor entered the lives of the Beatles, kicking in the door of their dressing room backstage at a concert.\u00a0 So impressed with such hutzpah where the Fabs that Derek, a Manchester reporter, immediately got the job of Beatles Press Officer.\u00a0 I was privileged to have him as a friend for many years, and even as an Executive on The Rutles, where Michael Palin played him (Eric Manchester) interviewed by George. \u00a0We exchanged lengthy and giggly correspondence until his untimely death.\u00a0 His books are being re-released and Apple sent me this one, which I loved before and love now.\u00a0\u00a0 More are promised.<\/p>\n He is some kind of wonderful.\u00a0\u00a0 Always readable, always entertaining. Always honest.<\/p>\n I bought all four volumes of this classic of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples in a nice first edition set at The Pasadena Book Fair.\u00a0\u00a0 I might quibble and say that in Volume One they speak mainly Anglo-Saxon and French, but his prose is so enjoyable that I settled in for an enjoyable trip through my peeps by the finest exponent of the English language.<\/p>\n I finished this fabulous novel.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps one of the greatest novels I have ever read.\u00a0 Simply the best.<\/p>\n Of course I prepare to binge\u2026and have bought everything else.\u00a0\u00a0 Read this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April Is the cruellest month bringing the news of the sudden death of a favour writer just when I was joyfully settling in with his latest book.\u00a0\u00a0 Philip Kerr passed away at the very young age of 62. I met him at a party and we talked away happily though I was entirely ignorant it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ‘Thank you for sending it. I know he was extremely chuffed that Eric Idle liked his books. Actually, beyond chuffed.’<\/em>
\n So there’s the title for your critical study of his novels – Beyond Chuffed.<\/em><\/p>\nGreeks Bearing Gifts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Philip Kerr<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
Maigret and the Headless Corpse\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
Chicago\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 David Mamet<\/h2>\n
Maigret is Afraid\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
The Only Story\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Julian Barnes<\/h2>\n
The Nothing\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hanif Kureishi<\/h2>\n
The Captain and the Enemy.\u00a0 \u00a0Graham Greene<\/h2>\n
March<\/u><\/h1>\n
Feel Free\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Zadie Smith<\/h2>\n
Zero K\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Don DeLillo<\/h2>\n
I\u2019ll be gone in the Dark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Michelle McNamara<\/h2>\n
As Time Goes By\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Derek Taylor<\/h2>\n
When The Light Goes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Larry McMurtry<\/h2>\n
The Birth of Britain.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Winston S. Churchill<\/h2>\n
The Adventures of Augie March\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saul Bellow<\/h2>\n