Thursday, July 26, 2007
Tough noise laws in effect since July 1, 2007
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Most city dwellers have been inured to the ambient noises that penetrate our lives , punctuated by sirens, construction, garbage trucks and such, and some of us have escaped the brunt of the attack by hiding behind soundproof double window glass, installed in many coops of East Midtown. We manage to block out the street, our young have learned to cool down their stereos, and dog owners have educated their pets to be silent. Quiet enjoyment of life us the key phrase. Nevertheless, sounds still intrude.
Noise laws have been in existence for 30+ years, not too efficiently enforced. In December 2005 Mayor Bloomberg had a new, stringent law passed, with fairly robust definitions of sound limits in decibels (dB) and distances, for various hours of the day. An 18 month enforcement delay was provided, to give the noise generators some time for remedying conditions. An upgraded complaint review system was set up, with the 311 phone number service for the complainant, to bring investigators with noise meters (NYPD has 80 for its 76 precincts, and Environment Protection has 26 - more on order - with 45 agents dedicated to noise law investigation). Fines range from under $100 into the hundreds of dollars.
So, what are the limits that might bring an investigator to validate your complaint? Well, first let’s look at the noisy air conditioners and rooftop circulation units, the bane in my years of coop board service. Super-noisy ones were hard to identify, and people actually hired their own noise experts. The new rule says that the units may not produce noise levels in excess of 42 dB , as measured from a point three feet within the open door or window of the complainant’s residence. The investigators may take several readings, so please (the instructions actually said that), please be patient.
Music from bars , clubs and restaurants also may not exceed 42 decibels, as measured from nearby residences, The commercial establishments must limit the level of unreasonable or disturbing noise that escapes into the streets , but the code explainers want us to recognize that New York’s world renowned entertainment industry brings in billions of dollars . First offenders will be forgiven, if the business certifies that they have corrected (by soundproofing, changing business configuration or modifying sound equipment}, on the theory that the fine funds have been invested in the repair. The code does get tough between 10 PM and 7 AM, when seven decibels is the limit, when measured from the street 15 feet away, a really low number.
To explain, here are some known sounds and their decibel level. Whisper is 30 dB, normal conversation is 50 dB, vacuum cleaner 10 ft. away runs at 70 dB, and so does midtown Manhattan traffic as heard from the curb, motorcycle normally produces 88 dB, jackhammer hits the 110 dB mark . These are logarithmic rather than arithmetic progressions.
For garbage trucks. max sound level may not exceed 80 dB, from 35 ft., not including the compaction cycle. Recognizing that the best garbage collection hours are when there is no traffic, the law allows 85 dB between 10 PM and 7 AM within 50 feet of residential property (measured as above). Car and truck sound is less defined, and is deemed excessive on routes with speed limit less than 35 mph when it is plainly audible at 150 ft. from cars, or 200 ft. from trucks or motorcycles. Horn honking is forbidden except in extreme situations.
Disruptive cell phone use in public places is “to be avoided,” but not legislated against. Car stereos in public right-of-ways do get a summons.
Construction may occur between 7 AM and 6 PM on weekdays. Repairs of family homes are acceptable Saturdays and Sundays, 10 AM to 4 PM, if the dwelling is 300 ft away from a house of worship. After hours work requires authorization from Dept of Buildings and Transportation, and a noise mitigation plan must be posted – you can get them on that. I remember screaming at the authorities when “emergency” street repairs took place at night, without results. Now they may be easier to cope with. Your noisy neighbor with the power tools at odd times is also culpable, subject to some specific rules.
As for man’s best friends, if their barking is unreasonable and plainly audible between 7 AM and 10 PM for 10 min . or more, or for 5 min. in the night hours, enforcement may be called.
Our neighborhood is not among the worst, according to an analysis by Maggie Haberman, 2nd generation NY reporter at the Post, daughter of cityscoper Clyde Haberman of the Paper of Record. In the first weekend Canarsie had 115 complaints, followed by Upper Manhattan’s Hamilton Heights, East Flatbush, East New York and Olinville in the Bronx (79). Maybe that is because we do not see Mr. Softee jingle trucks, which are allowed to play their merry tunes only while in motion. At least one parked jingler is on the record as having been hit by a hefty $350, obviously not a first offender.
Wally Dobelis also thanks Thomas E. Lueck & the NYCDEP
Most city dwellers have been inured to the ambient noises that penetrate our lives , punctuated by sirens, construction, garbage trucks and such, and some of us have escaped the brunt of the attack by hiding behind soundproof double window glass, installed in many coops of East Midtown. We manage to block out the street, our young have learned to cool down their stereos, and dog owners have educated their pets to be silent. Quiet enjoyment of life us the key phrase. Nevertheless, sounds still intrude.
Noise laws have been in existence for 30+ years, not too efficiently enforced. In December 2005 Mayor Bloomberg had a new, stringent law passed, with fairly robust definitions of sound limits in decibels (dB) and distances, for various hours of the day. An 18 month enforcement delay was provided, to give the noise generators some time for remedying conditions. An upgraded complaint review system was set up, with the 311 phone number service for the complainant, to bring investigators with noise meters (NYPD has 80 for its 76 precincts, and Environment Protection has 26 - more on order - with 45 agents dedicated to noise law investigation). Fines range from under $100 into the hundreds of dollars.
So, what are the limits that might bring an investigator to validate your complaint? Well, first let’s look at the noisy air conditioners and rooftop circulation units, the bane in my years of coop board service. Super-noisy ones were hard to identify, and people actually hired their own noise experts. The new rule says that the units may not produce noise levels in excess of 42 dB , as measured from a point three feet within the open door or window of the complainant’s residence. The investigators may take several readings, so please (the instructions actually said that), please be patient.
Music from bars , clubs and restaurants also may not exceed 42 decibels, as measured from nearby residences, The commercial establishments must limit the level of unreasonable or disturbing noise that escapes into the streets , but the code explainers want us to recognize that New York’s world renowned entertainment industry brings in billions of dollars . First offenders will be forgiven, if the business certifies that they have corrected (by soundproofing, changing business configuration or modifying sound equipment}, on the theory that the fine funds have been invested in the repair. The code does get tough between 10 PM and 7 AM, when seven decibels is the limit, when measured from the street 15 feet away, a really low number.
To explain, here are some known sounds and their decibel level. Whisper is 30 dB, normal conversation is 50 dB, vacuum cleaner 10 ft. away runs at 70 dB, and so does midtown Manhattan traffic as heard from the curb, motorcycle normally produces 88 dB, jackhammer hits the 110 dB mark . These are logarithmic rather than arithmetic progressions.
For garbage trucks. max sound level may not exceed 80 dB, from 35 ft., not including the compaction cycle. Recognizing that the best garbage collection hours are when there is no traffic, the law allows 85 dB between 10 PM and 7 AM within 50 feet of residential property (measured as above). Car and truck sound is less defined, and is deemed excessive on routes with speed limit less than 35 mph when it is plainly audible at 150 ft. from cars, or 200 ft. from trucks or motorcycles. Horn honking is forbidden except in extreme situations.
Disruptive cell phone use in public places is “to be avoided,” but not legislated against. Car stereos in public right-of-ways do get a summons.
Construction may occur between 7 AM and 6 PM on weekdays. Repairs of family homes are acceptable Saturdays and Sundays, 10 AM to 4 PM, if the dwelling is 300 ft away from a house of worship. After hours work requires authorization from Dept of Buildings and Transportation, and a noise mitigation plan must be posted – you can get them on that. I remember screaming at the authorities when “emergency” street repairs took place at night, without results. Now they may be easier to cope with. Your noisy neighbor with the power tools at odd times is also culpable, subject to some specific rules.
As for man’s best friends, if their barking is unreasonable and plainly audible between 7 AM and 10 PM for 10 min . or more, or for 5 min. in the night hours, enforcement may be called.
Our neighborhood is not among the worst, according to an analysis by Maggie Haberman, 2nd generation NY reporter at the Post, daughter of cityscoper Clyde Haberman of the Paper of Record. In the first weekend Canarsie had 115 complaints, followed by Upper Manhattan’s Hamilton Heights, East Flatbush, East New York and Olinville in the Bronx (79). Maybe that is because we do not see Mr. Softee jingle trucks, which are allowed to play their merry tunes only while in motion. At least one parked jingler is on the record as having been hit by a hefty $350, obviously not a first offender.
Wally Dobelis also thanks Thomas E. Lueck & the NYCDEP
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Summer in the city – parks, heat, storms, terrorist threats
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
If you are not visiting our local East Midtown parks, you are missing a good chunk of the charm of New York City. Take the two Stuyvesant Square parks, for example. Entering the West park on 17th Street, side, walking into the shade of great green trees in the coolth of the morning, you will pass a huge pink rose bush, balancing what seems to be a summer-blooming magnolia tree across the street from it. Raise your eyes and you will see a catalpa tree, with great heart shaped leaves and hanging fruit pods, an import from the American West, of which there are several in both parks. There are a few locals relaxing on the benches, mostly bag people waking after a night spent outdoors. We exchange hellos and a few learned words about the relative humidity today and yesterday – this is the second week of July 2007, and the heat has been immense, over 90 degrees. Approaching the fountain in the center of the West park, one notes that the greenery around it looks a bit parched by the hot sun – the blooming cleomes and the brown bayberry bushes could use some rain. This is in sharp contrast with the fountain’s twin in the East park, much more closely surrounded by the trees. There the cleomes show their full colors. We note this to Christie Dailey, our Parks and Recreation Department gardener, who happens to be working nearby, clearing out the dry brushes, with a few blue –shirted helpers assisting. This will free up the view of the blue hydrangeas and the white loosestrife stalks, their graceful gooseneck spikes gleaming. It is an invasive plant, distantly related to the taller pink loosestrife that aggressively attacks the wetlands upstate and everywhere else, overwhelming the native vegetation,
Our parks get good care, the meager city funds subsidized by the monies that Carol Schachter and the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association raise in an early Spring Street Fair, a worthy cause (if you think otherwise, dear friends, write me another letter).
New Yorkers have been dealing with this week’s heat wave well, men coming to work in short-sleeve shirts and putting on their office neckties and jackets, if and as required .I wear a necktie year round, as an item of clothing serving as protection from sore throats while moving in and out, between the warm outdoors and air-conditioned indoors. Most people keep sweaters in their desk drawers year-round. With the heat continuing and last year’s brownout well remembered, some cautious office people have brought in their battery-driven radios – even a five-inch screen TV has been noted. There is also an L. L. Bean crank-driven radio and its flashlight companion on someone’s desk - the flashlight holds the single or triple light quite well. I was lax, and only replaced the weakened emergency batteries in our home portable radio – they should be checked ever so often.. As luck and, for once, the foresight of Con Edison would have it, we escaped the brownout. Not only that, we were treated to a day of intermittent thunder, lightning and severe rain, much needed, about two inches in some locations. Once more, my Wall Street office dweller home going crowd handled the weather with aplomb and panache. The expensively dressed businesspeople left behind them their jackets and $70 neckties (some even more costly, there is a new Hermes shop across from the New York Stock Exchange, in the Downtown By Phillippe Starck condo highriser), rolled up their shirt sleeves and braved the Lexington Ave train with the rest of us. The women folk were the pluckiest, leaving the spiky heels behind and wearing light sandals, not much worried about their summer frocks getting wet under the flimsy $3 street- peddler-supplied umbrellas. Luckily, the air conditioning was tuned down on the Lex, and by the time my train reached 14th Street the storm was mostly over.
The spikes in the weather also coincided with spikes in terrorist attacks, in London and Glasgow. The police have gone to an extra effort. The morning arrivals at the Wall Street subway station were greeted by two patrol cars, with New York’s Finest at each exit, watching for suspects and presumably randomly searching backpacks . NYPD states that these observation posts are set up at least 35 times a year at each of the city’s 468 subway stations, more than 300 a week, each for several hours a at a time, 24 hours a day, with 20,000 observations since the beginning of the program two years ago. Two black-clad Emergency Service men, watchful and carrying submachine guns on the ready, have recently been seen in the Wall Street area with some frequency. All this should give us some comfort, in the mind-boggling days when MDs who have taken the Hippocratic oath engage in attempts to blow up innocent civilians, in the name of religion. When will the one billion plus peace-loving Muslims outlaw the few thosand terrorists?
If you are not visiting our local East Midtown parks, you are missing a good chunk of the charm of New York City. Take the two Stuyvesant Square parks, for example. Entering the West park on 17th Street, side, walking into the shade of great green trees in the coolth of the morning, you will pass a huge pink rose bush, balancing what seems to be a summer-blooming magnolia tree across the street from it. Raise your eyes and you will see a catalpa tree, with great heart shaped leaves and hanging fruit pods, an import from the American West, of which there are several in both parks. There are a few locals relaxing on the benches, mostly bag people waking after a night spent outdoors. We exchange hellos and a few learned words about the relative humidity today and yesterday – this is the second week of July 2007, and the heat has been immense, over 90 degrees. Approaching the fountain in the center of the West park, one notes that the greenery around it looks a bit parched by the hot sun – the blooming cleomes and the brown bayberry bushes could use some rain. This is in sharp contrast with the fountain’s twin in the East park, much more closely surrounded by the trees. There the cleomes show their full colors. We note this to Christie Dailey, our Parks and Recreation Department gardener, who happens to be working nearby, clearing out the dry brushes, with a few blue –shirted helpers assisting. This will free up the view of the blue hydrangeas and the white loosestrife stalks, their graceful gooseneck spikes gleaming. It is an invasive plant, distantly related to the taller pink loosestrife that aggressively attacks the wetlands upstate and everywhere else, overwhelming the native vegetation,
Our parks get good care, the meager city funds subsidized by the monies that Carol Schachter and the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association raise in an early Spring Street Fair, a worthy cause (if you think otherwise, dear friends, write me another letter).
New Yorkers have been dealing with this week’s heat wave well, men coming to work in short-sleeve shirts and putting on their office neckties and jackets, if and as required .I wear a necktie year round, as an item of clothing serving as protection from sore throats while moving in and out, between the warm outdoors and air-conditioned indoors. Most people keep sweaters in their desk drawers year-round. With the heat continuing and last year’s brownout well remembered, some cautious office people have brought in their battery-driven radios – even a five-inch screen TV has been noted. There is also an L. L. Bean crank-driven radio and its flashlight companion on someone’s desk - the flashlight holds the single or triple light quite well. I was lax, and only replaced the weakened emergency batteries in our home portable radio – they should be checked ever so often.. As luck and, for once, the foresight of Con Edison would have it, we escaped the brownout. Not only that, we were treated to a day of intermittent thunder, lightning and severe rain, much needed, about two inches in some locations. Once more, my Wall Street office dweller home going crowd handled the weather with aplomb and panache. The expensively dressed businesspeople left behind them their jackets and $70 neckties (some even more costly, there is a new Hermes shop across from the New York Stock Exchange, in the Downtown By Phillippe Starck condo highriser), rolled up their shirt sleeves and braved the Lexington Ave train with the rest of us. The women folk were the pluckiest, leaving the spiky heels behind and wearing light sandals, not much worried about their summer frocks getting wet under the flimsy $3 street- peddler-supplied umbrellas. Luckily, the air conditioning was tuned down on the Lex, and by the time my train reached 14th Street the storm was mostly over.
The spikes in the weather also coincided with spikes in terrorist attacks, in London and Glasgow. The police have gone to an extra effort. The morning arrivals at the Wall Street subway station were greeted by two patrol cars, with New York’s Finest at each exit, watching for suspects and presumably randomly searching backpacks . NYPD states that these observation posts are set up at least 35 times a year at each of the city’s 468 subway stations, more than 300 a week, each for several hours a at a time, 24 hours a day, with 20,000 observations since the beginning of the program two years ago. Two black-clad Emergency Service men, watchful and carrying submachine guns on the ready, have recently been seen in the Wall Street area with some frequency. All this should give us some comfort, in the mind-boggling days when MDs who have taken the Hippocratic oath engage in attempts to blow up innocent civilians, in the name of religion. When will the one billion plus peace-loving Muslims outlaw the few thosand terrorists?
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Reflections upon the passing of Beverly Sills - author thrying to save humanity, once more
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The morning after the announcement of Beverly Sill’s death I was bemoaning the loss to a fellow stationary bicycle user at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases on 17th Street (yep, this advocate of walking as the universal exercise has not done enough stair climbing, and now needs rehabilitation of his quadriceps), when he interrupted me to ask who the lady was. The chief therapist was nearby, so I asked him the question. He claimed ignorance and asked his assistant, a young woman. Same answer. It went on like that all day.
It reminded me of the time when we at some office get-together were inspired to declaim poetry, preferably daring stuff, and I chose an obscure limerick: “While Titian was mixing rose madder, his model stood on a ladder. Her position to Titian suggested coition, so he climbed the ladder and had her.” My audience mostly knew of limericks, but demanded translation of three words, you know which (rose madder is paint).
When I was at Baruch College five decades ago (before there was a CUNY), earning a BBA degree, we trade schoolers had to take four obligatory years of English (literature and writing), four terms of Rhetoric (speech), one each of Art, Music and Biology. No classmate of mine would have that problem of understanding the limerick, except maybe some confusion with rose madder (there seems to have been an ecdysiast by that name - that’s a striptease artist - and I don’t mean Gypsy Rose Lee).
Then came all those separatist movements – feminism, multiculturalism, emphasis on ethnicity instead of assimilation, identity politics, and disrespect for Western civilization. The acronym of derision, DWEM (Dead White European Men) became a popular academic term for Western culture. Technology became a more and more demanding area of study, and liberal arts sank. Harvard’s acclaimed 1978 invention, the Core Curriculum, contributed to the shift, providing a choice of eight or nine topics within a menu of 11 – foreign cultures, literature, arts, historical studies. moral reasoning, quantitative reasoning (eco), social sciences and social analysis, lite on the valuable 101 level comprehensive courses and big on boutique topics. Thereafter, one could spend four years at Harvard and never hear of Shakespeare.
Such Core Curricula became prevalent throughout the academe, consequently driving out the Required Subjects mode, not unlike bad coinage driving out good (Gresham’s Law, remember?). Schools started offering contrived subjects for one’s major. A New York Times crossword puzzle editor got there by majoring in games, a first and only one then. Subsequently several schools have let students major in computer games (must look ridiculous on your sheepskin), obviously a significant career topic, since Microsoft alone has sold 11 million of its xBox 360 games. At least one Ivy League school became the subject or derision because of the permissiveness of its majors.
The result is evident everywhere. Lack of culture, knowledge and civility prevails. My Rhetoric classes taught us some manners, now a lost topic with Generation post-X, the xBox users. The last remaining refuge for decorum is the US Congress, with its generous modes of address, while the British, Australian and Israeli legislatures have lost it.
We no longer can blame TV alone as the reason for the dulling of interests, trending to pop. Internet has to accept its share of blame in loss of culture, manners and general knowledge. Why remember names and dates when you can look them up on Google! As to manners, why not accept the opportunity to gush out your hatreds and prejudices and jealousies on a web page, on an interactive site, when it can be done anonymously. Besmirching a classmate’s reputation on a school website occurs locally, or internationally, on one of those social networking sites that Murdock and Google seem to be buying up, spending billions. MySpace has 190 million subscribers, exhibiting their accomplishments, knocking competitors and seeking to hook up with friends, and its look-alikes Facebook and Friendster sites are trying to get there. Saying nasty things anonymously is not limited to kids’ websites, adults do it too, as noted as close to home as on a midtown Tenants Association website.
The invasion of privacy and property continues. YouTube gained recognition by offering space for showing embarrassing home movies, or clips pilfered from copyrighted motion pictures, fitting well in context with the petty larceny in the music download culture, once actively supported by the notorious Napster. The pilfering of music continues, with the aid of Apple and its wildly popular iBook, mixing the sales of music while facilitating easy copying. One major music retailer, Tower Records, has already bitten the dust. The music business as a whole is endangered, and the good are going down with the bad.
Why am I rehashing this Untergang des Abendlandes theme? It is simply that once in a while we need to step back, look at the direction we are going, and re-evaluate our personal contributions to that end.
The morning after the announcement of Beverly Sill’s death I was bemoaning the loss to a fellow stationary bicycle user at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases on 17th Street (yep, this advocate of walking as the universal exercise has not done enough stair climbing, and now needs rehabilitation of his quadriceps), when he interrupted me to ask who the lady was. The chief therapist was nearby, so I asked him the question. He claimed ignorance and asked his assistant, a young woman. Same answer. It went on like that all day.
It reminded me of the time when we at some office get-together were inspired to declaim poetry, preferably daring stuff, and I chose an obscure limerick: “While Titian was mixing rose madder, his model stood on a ladder. Her position to Titian suggested coition, so he climbed the ladder and had her.” My audience mostly knew of limericks, but demanded translation of three words, you know which (rose madder is paint).
When I was at Baruch College five decades ago (before there was a CUNY), earning a BBA degree, we trade schoolers had to take four obligatory years of English (literature and writing), four terms of Rhetoric (speech), one each of Art, Music and Biology. No classmate of mine would have that problem of understanding the limerick, except maybe some confusion with rose madder (there seems to have been an ecdysiast by that name - that’s a striptease artist - and I don’t mean Gypsy Rose Lee).
Then came all those separatist movements – feminism, multiculturalism, emphasis on ethnicity instead of assimilation, identity politics, and disrespect for Western civilization. The acronym of derision, DWEM (Dead White European Men) became a popular academic term for Western culture. Technology became a more and more demanding area of study, and liberal arts sank. Harvard’s acclaimed 1978 invention, the Core Curriculum, contributed to the shift, providing a choice of eight or nine topics within a menu of 11 – foreign cultures, literature, arts, historical studies. moral reasoning, quantitative reasoning (eco), social sciences and social analysis, lite on the valuable 101 level comprehensive courses and big on boutique topics. Thereafter, one could spend four years at Harvard and never hear of Shakespeare.
Such Core Curricula became prevalent throughout the academe, consequently driving out the Required Subjects mode, not unlike bad coinage driving out good (Gresham’s Law, remember?). Schools started offering contrived subjects for one’s major. A New York Times crossword puzzle editor got there by majoring in games, a first and only one then. Subsequently several schools have let students major in computer games (must look ridiculous on your sheepskin), obviously a significant career topic, since Microsoft alone has sold 11 million of its xBox 360 games. At least one Ivy League school became the subject or derision because of the permissiveness of its majors.
The result is evident everywhere. Lack of culture, knowledge and civility prevails. My Rhetoric classes taught us some manners, now a lost topic with Generation post-X, the xBox users. The last remaining refuge for decorum is the US Congress, with its generous modes of address, while the British, Australian and Israeli legislatures have lost it.
We no longer can blame TV alone as the reason for the dulling of interests, trending to pop. Internet has to accept its share of blame in loss of culture, manners and general knowledge. Why remember names and dates when you can look them up on Google! As to manners, why not accept the opportunity to gush out your hatreds and prejudices and jealousies on a web page, on an interactive site, when it can be done anonymously. Besmirching a classmate’s reputation on a school website occurs locally, or internationally, on one of those social networking sites that Murdock and Google seem to be buying up, spending billions. MySpace has 190 million subscribers, exhibiting their accomplishments, knocking competitors and seeking to hook up with friends, and its look-alikes Facebook and Friendster sites are trying to get there. Saying nasty things anonymously is not limited to kids’ websites, adults do it too, as noted as close to home as on a midtown Tenants Association website.
The invasion of privacy and property continues. YouTube gained recognition by offering space for showing embarrassing home movies, or clips pilfered from copyrighted motion pictures, fitting well in context with the petty larceny in the music download culture, once actively supported by the notorious Napster. The pilfering of music continues, with the aid of Apple and its wildly popular iBook, mixing the sales of music while facilitating easy copying. One major music retailer, Tower Records, has already bitten the dust. The music business as a whole is endangered, and the good are going down with the bad.
Why am I rehashing this Untergang des Abendlandes theme? It is simply that once in a while we need to step back, look at the direction we are going, and re-evaluate our personal contributions to that end.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
In search of non-depressing escape literature
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The task of reading newspapers and watching CNN comes with the column; else I would not be able to produce incisive and topical 800 word essays for your pleasure. Needless to say, such reading and watching can be depressing beyond belief. This puts a premium on some heavy-duty escape reading, because TV comedy is toilet quality, TV drama is flab, or violent, good old movies are scarce, and Law and Order is too intense to relax.
Escape reading and watching can be really a matter of mental and physical health, as necessary as a vacations and more accessible, and we know that active humor therapy is effective – it cured Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, as documented in cancer and oncology literature.
But even with the riches of the world’s literature at our disposal, good escape reading is not easily found. Current "good" literature is excessively filled with psycho-pathological problems, contributing to the worldwide mongery of despair. The fiction in The New Yorker has been unreadable since the passing of James Thurber and J. D. Salinger. That leaves me with re-reading old and trusted books, and my favorite mid century authors are too dismal. The dystopian society fantasies of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut are too evocative to revisit, John Cheever’s suburbanites too corrupt, and the wartime characters of Norman Mailer and James Jones bring on more bad vibes. Going back further, James Joyce, Hemingway and Mark Twain are good in parts, but Dickens has too much aspera before the astra.
The salvation lies in the spy and detective literature, although much of current stuff is either excessively bloody or unbelievable, or ambivalently dark – the good guys do not always win. The sadistic James Patterson novels and Patricia Cornwell’s tales, with her forensic expert Dr. Kay Scarpetta walking through accumulations of dead bodies are too much like the Middle East. Ugh!
Of today’s mystery writers, Alexander McCall Smith and his Botswana detective lady heroine are joyful. Likewise, the heirs of Thomas Pinchon’s highflying stream of consciousness imagery (see the satire The Crying of Lot 49), such as Carl Hiassen and his successors Tom Corcoran (detective Alex Rutledge in Air Dance Iguana) and Tom Dorsey (insane killer Serge A. Storms and his drugged-up buddy Lenny in Stingray Shuffle), although the latter can turn icky.
Reliably cheerful is formula writer Sue Crafton, with detective Kinsey Milhone in the formula series (from A Is for Alibi she’s up to T Is For Trespass), with interludes of domesticity and lovers. Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Lt. Joe Leaphorn is reliable.
The old Florida novels of John D. MacDonald, featuring Travis McGee, his economist buddy Meyer and innumerable tall blondes with long brown legs coming to Slip 17 in the Fort Lauderdale Marina looking for help and retaliation, are still upbeat. More rescuers of damsels-in-distress, a bit hoary – The Saint of Leslie Charteris’s domain; Archie Goodwin, aide to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, Archie McNally in the Lawrence Sander’s series, very P. G. Wodehouse-like, has his own Jeeves. The other MacDonald, Ross, creator of the hard-boiled Lew Archer (not of Archer and Spade) is not cheerful, and neither is Dashiel Hammett of the Continental Op and Maltese Falcon (yep, that’s A & S). Raymond Chandler’s Marlove is quirky, and the Big Sleep is too dark. Lawrence Bloch’s burglarizing bookseller Bernie is amusing and literate but too black in concept. Whew.
This brings me to the most reliable of positive escape writers, Robert B. Parker and his Boston, er, Cambridge hero Spencer, with a black sidekick Hawk, who speaks either educated or ghetto English, as required, and girlfriend, Susan Silberman, PhD, who speaks pop-psych and sex, as required. Spencer is the most reliable of today’s thug-detective characters whom you can trust to do justice, and he is known to cry after an unavoidable killing (Looking for Rachel Wallace).
On the Boston theme, Linda Barnes’s private eye Carlotta Carlyle is an ex-cop, part-time cab driver, who has a good-guy Mafia lover and a homicide lieutenant beau; Jean Evanovich’s New Jerseyite Stephanie Plum, ex-model now bounty hunter has similar appendages; both are funny but a bit too formula-prone. Feminist writers such as the modern doyenne of the genre Sara Paretsky and her lawyer lady detective I. V. Warshawski (Indemnity Only, 1982) do produce trustworthy drama that, if not necessarily uplifting, will not blow off the reader. Ditto Dana Stabenov’s Alaskan native ex-DI investigator Kate Shugak.
Some U. K. resources: re-reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 novels can be cheering, also early Kingsley Amis. As for older detective writers: Agatha Christie today seems a trifle flat, the humor of Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey still works, P. G. Wodehouse is essential.
This is my first-cut 101 survey of health-saving escape literature, to be continued. For addenda or critiques write to wally@ix.netcom.com or editor. No personal answers, state whether you mind being quoted. Next week we may talk about the fulfillment of this column’s Bloomberg forecast of May 2007.
The task of reading newspapers and watching CNN comes with the column; else I would not be able to produce incisive and topical 800 word essays for your pleasure. Needless to say, such reading and watching can be depressing beyond belief. This puts a premium on some heavy-duty escape reading, because TV comedy is toilet quality, TV drama is flab, or violent, good old movies are scarce, and Law and Order is too intense to relax.
Escape reading and watching can be really a matter of mental and physical health, as necessary as a vacations and more accessible, and we know that active humor therapy is effective – it cured Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, as documented in cancer and oncology literature.
But even with the riches of the world’s literature at our disposal, good escape reading is not easily found. Current "good" literature is excessively filled with psycho-pathological problems, contributing to the worldwide mongery of despair. The fiction in The New Yorker has been unreadable since the passing of James Thurber and J. D. Salinger. That leaves me with re-reading old and trusted books, and my favorite mid century authors are too dismal. The dystopian society fantasies of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut are too evocative to revisit, John Cheever’s suburbanites too corrupt, and the wartime characters of Norman Mailer and James Jones bring on more bad vibes. Going back further, James Joyce, Hemingway and Mark Twain are good in parts, but Dickens has too much aspera before the astra.
The salvation lies in the spy and detective literature, although much of current stuff is either excessively bloody or unbelievable, or ambivalently dark – the good guys do not always win. The sadistic James Patterson novels and Patricia Cornwell’s tales, with her forensic expert Dr. Kay Scarpetta walking through accumulations of dead bodies are too much like the Middle East. Ugh!
Of today’s mystery writers, Alexander McCall Smith and his Botswana detective lady heroine are joyful. Likewise, the heirs of Thomas Pinchon’s highflying stream of consciousness imagery (see the satire The Crying of Lot 49), such as Carl Hiassen and his successors Tom Corcoran (detective Alex Rutledge in Air Dance Iguana) and Tom Dorsey (insane killer Serge A. Storms and his drugged-up buddy Lenny in Stingray Shuffle), although the latter can turn icky.
Reliably cheerful is formula writer Sue Crafton, with detective Kinsey Milhone in the formula series (from A Is for Alibi she’s up to T Is For Trespass), with interludes of domesticity and lovers. Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Lt. Joe Leaphorn is reliable.
The old Florida novels of John D. MacDonald, featuring Travis McGee, his economist buddy Meyer and innumerable tall blondes with long brown legs coming to Slip 17 in the Fort Lauderdale Marina looking for help and retaliation, are still upbeat. More rescuers of damsels-in-distress, a bit hoary – The Saint of Leslie Charteris’s domain; Archie Goodwin, aide to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, Archie McNally in the Lawrence Sander’s series, very P. G. Wodehouse-like, has his own Jeeves. The other MacDonald, Ross, creator of the hard-boiled Lew Archer (not of Archer and Spade) is not cheerful, and neither is Dashiel Hammett of the Continental Op and Maltese Falcon (yep, that’s A & S). Raymond Chandler’s Marlove is quirky, and the Big Sleep is too dark. Lawrence Bloch’s burglarizing bookseller Bernie is amusing and literate but too black in concept. Whew.
This brings me to the most reliable of positive escape writers, Robert B. Parker and his Boston, er, Cambridge hero Spencer, with a black sidekick Hawk, who speaks either educated or ghetto English, as required, and girlfriend, Susan Silberman, PhD, who speaks pop-psych and sex, as required. Spencer is the most reliable of today’s thug-detective characters whom you can trust to do justice, and he is known to cry after an unavoidable killing (Looking for Rachel Wallace).
On the Boston theme, Linda Barnes’s private eye Carlotta Carlyle is an ex-cop, part-time cab driver, who has a good-guy Mafia lover and a homicide lieutenant beau; Jean Evanovich’s New Jerseyite Stephanie Plum, ex-model now bounty hunter has similar appendages; both are funny but a bit too formula-prone. Feminist writers such as the modern doyenne of the genre Sara Paretsky and her lawyer lady detective I. V. Warshawski (Indemnity Only, 1982) do produce trustworthy drama that, if not necessarily uplifting, will not blow off the reader. Ditto Dana Stabenov’s Alaskan native ex-DI investigator Kate Shugak.
Some U. K. resources: re-reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 novels can be cheering, also early Kingsley Amis. As for older detective writers: Agatha Christie today seems a trifle flat, the humor of Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey still works, P. G. Wodehouse is essential.
This is my first-cut 101 survey of health-saving escape literature, to be continued. For addenda or critiques write to wally@ix.netcom.com or editor. No personal answers, state whether you mind being quoted. Next week we may talk about the fulfillment of this column’s Bloomberg forecast of May 2007.
