Day: April 10, 2013

This review is written in conjunction with Battenkill Books of Cambridge, N.Y., where I work as Recommender-In-Chief. If you are as tired as I am of the corporate takeover of our cultural, entertainment and political life, you can do something about it. Buy local. If you like this book please consider buying it from Battenkill Books. You can call them at 518 677-2515 or email them – [email protected] or visit their website. They take Paypal and ship anywhere in the world. If you don’t wish to do that, please consider you own local independent bookstore. Thanks.

__

I once wrote mysteries – six of them – while I struggled to find my footing as an author. My series was called “The Suburban Detective Mysteries,” and the got some nice reviews but never sold much and I moved on to other kinds of books and a different kind of writing life. I never liked the rigid format, I got sick of my hero. My publisher got sick of me. But I love reading mysteries.

Like all mystery readers – I think of mysteries as cheese popcorn for the mind – it is a big deal for me to find a series that is entertaining, intelligent and subtle. I am not comfortable with the pile-it-on plotting (reminds me of big movies with special effects) and the turn towards ever violent and disturbing sado-masochistic plots. Just not for me. These books never seem to end, their plots are ever more implausible and heavy-handed and I find those that feature the torture, imprisonment and  dismemberment of people, especially women, offensive.

I was very happy to come across Donna Leon’s very wonderful,  atmospheric “Commissario Guido Brunetti” series, set in Venice. Brunetti is an intuitive and honest investigator, a devoted father and husband, and a native Venetian, familiar with all of the canals, alleys, cracks and secrets of that mythic city, once a kingdom all its own. Venice is the star of this series as much as the Commissario. It is a credit to Donna Leon, who has lived in Venice for thirty years, that she is as unsparing about the city’s corruption, crime and environmental ruin as she is skilled at evoking it’s great beauty and wondrous history.

Leon writes with a skilled and delicate hand. “The Golden Egg” is typical of this series. Brunett’s strutting, chowder-headed boss Vice Questore Patta,  asks Brunetti to look into a minor shop-keeping violation committed by the mayor’s future daughter-in-law. Brunetti has no desire to help his boss win political favors with the mayor, but he doesn’t have much choice. At the same time, Brunetti’s strong-willed wife, a politically-correct professor, comes to him with a request of her own. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaner has died of a sleeping pill overdose and Paola is tormented by the idea that he lived and died with no one noticing him, helping him or understanding his life. Brunetti , who saw the man often at the dry cleaner’s, becomes obsessed with his story and the odd circumstances of his death as well.

The backdrop of these elegant books is a country and city in turmoil. Crime is soaring in Venice, the city is flooded with immigrants from China and Eastern Europe, most of the native Venetians have been driven out of their homes to the mainland and tourists clog the streets and restaurants. Corruption and bureaucracy is so pervasive that it is almost impossible to legally gather information and bring criminals to justice (in Venice, it takes nine years to appeal a court verdict). Brunetti’s bosses are venal, and Venice, like the rest of Itally, has so deep-seated a mistrust of the police that few people will even talk to the police. Brunetti doesn’t blame them. He and some colleagues run a kind of shadow police service, they show great ingenuity in manipulating computer networks to find out things that no one will tell them, and charm and guile at wheedling information out of reluctant people. Brunetti’s heroics come not from gunplay or the hunting of savage killers, but in maneuvering through the many obstacles he faces in his investigations.

His greatest fear is cynicism, his great struggle to keep faith in justice. The book is rich in atmosphere and character. I love Brunetti’s fussing about how to navigate the city’s dark waterways.

I also love the Commissario’s many forays through the canals, alleys, neighborhoods and buildings of the city. Food is important in this book, as it is in Italy, and Brunetti does not dare bring stale bread, a bad wine or limp vegetable home to lunch.  As often as he can, he comes home to eat and intersperses his detective work with stops to favorite bars and cafes, where he contemplates justice and his beloved city and drinks Calvados. While he stalls the suspicious Vice Questore, he unofficially digs into the life of the handicapped man, of whom there is absolutely no trace in all of the files and computers of a paperwork-obsessed city and country. As far as the Italian government is concerned, the dead man never existed. Brunetti’s search leads him to the suspect’s evasive mother and one of the city’s wealthiest and most aristocratic families.

This series is gentle, literary, but always compelling. Justice does not always mean jail and arrest.  Brunetti is a patient, observant and ethical hero in one of the strangest and most beautiful cities in the world. The truth is elusive in such a corrupt place, and even the good cops are overwhelmed by a culture honey-combed with bribes and corruption. Brunetti  finds his grounding in two or three colleagues as dedicated as he is, his great love of his wife and two children,  his passion for the truth, and for Venice. Wherever he can, he does good and makes a difference. His skill comes as much from handling the bureaucracies he sees as choking his city as it does from catching the bad guys. He does both with great style.

I highly recommend this series. One critic wrote that Leon’s books “shine in the grace of their setting.” They do.

Red at work today, in the rain and mud and manure. He does not notice rain or mud or manure. He is focused on his work, and reminds me to do the same.

I was drawn to this pose, the rooster and the chickens. It spoke to me of dignity and of family and there was something timeless about it.

I do not see myself as old, but getting older. In our culture, older people are not seen as sources of wisdom and guidance, but mostly as entitlement and health care issues and drains, aging being mostly about long-term insurance  problems and payments. Everywhere I go, every time I turn on the radio, I hear breathless programs about Medicaid, Medicare and the money it takes to grow old and die. Concerns about parenting, caretaking, medical technologies that prolong life but do not always improve it, insurance programs and premiums.

Yet I am finding something of a different path, and I hope to keep on it. The wonder of getting older is that you do learn things, you do know things, you do see things. You have made so many mistakes, gotten so many lessons, tried so many different things. I never offer my advice or experience to people, but I find that more and more, younger people find me, and sometimes I can help them – the true meaning of aging, even in our warped, anxious and greedy culture. Aging for me is not about being cared for or living forever, it is about entering a dignified, peaceful and meaningful time of life. I know things, I have a humor and perspective about the world now, I can offer something, be of real value beyond being cared for.

A young man I know told me he was suffocating in an awful job, his spirits and dreams being crushed daily. Could he change? Could he adapt? I am  young, he said, I it’s hard for people my age to change in an increasingly complicated world, and I am not an exception. Do I dare to change? I want to start my own business, work for myself. I have the money to try it, but it’s all I have and we will have to sacrifice for a good while..

I do not give advice easily. Smart people don’t need it, fools don’t take it. I told him he had to make his own decisions about life, I couldn’t make them for him. All I could say was that he ought not give his life away to the limitations and expectations of other people. Life is always filled with struggle and change, no matter what kind of job you have or who you work for. Life is complicated and the more complicated it gets, the more money they make. I have learned much from the world’s greatest educational system – life.

This man – he had done some work for me at Bedlam Farm – had asked me what a well-lived life is, and I said it was a life of self-determination. Of love and connection, dignity and freedom. Of courage, sometimes, it is never easy to buck the great system of fear that would dominate each phase of our lives – you need warnings to survive global warming and economic and environmental deprivation, you need health care, you need long-term health insurance, programs for disability, tests and pills for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, allergies, IRA’s to get you through the ravages of aging in America, computers and cell phones, antibiotics every time a tick bites you, warnings when it storms. It takes a lot of strength and purpose to wade through all of that and find your own spark and light in life.

All I could tell this man was to follow his own spark, his own light, before the world and its many greedy and fearful systems snuffs it out. It is a kind of death, I said, to turn your life over to the fears of others.

A few months after I talked with him, he e-mailed me to tell me he quit his job and took his savings and started his own business as a landscape designer. It is rough going, he said, but inch by inch, he is getting there. He will make it, he said. He has two trucks and three employees. He loves every day of his hard work.  He thanked me, he said, no one had encouraged him to do what he wanted. I am glad, I said, that it was me. Small miracles, I thought, for him and for me. I am teaching a writing workshop. I tutor people to start blogs and find their voices. I am good at it. I teach encouragement.

I think this man is getting to live a well-lived life. His wife and children will benefit from living with a happy and independent man. I am learning what getting older can really mean.

Got not one daily egg from the barn today, but two. Symbols of nourishment, and another testament to the sometimes simple artistry of Mother Earth.