Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill
We’ve been looking at jumble sales in books, drifting also
into church fetes and village bazaars (many entries - this is the most recent, with links back). Unconnected, I’d been re-reading the
works of Reginald Hill – the Dalziel and Pascoe series – and
happen to have come to this one, which is wholly concerned with something
called the Day of Reckoning. There’s a small village, Enscombe, where
everything revolves round the Big House, and where there is a massive annual
celebration. The book opens (more or less) late on that day, with quite a major
event, then goes back a few days to show what led up to it. It sounds a bit
like Margery
Allingham’s Beckoning Lady, but Hill himself seems to be
channeling Jane Austen – a quote for every chapter, and various parallels. (It
might even resemble the Gaudy in Gaudy Night or The Counting of the Starkadders in Cold Comfort Farm)
Going back 20 years: I had read some of the early Hill
books, but had drifted away. Re-reading now I can see why – I found them trite,
not inventive, and full of weird misogyny and hearty nonsense. I didn’t (as you
might expect from such a feminist bolshy leftie as myself) particularly object to the lordly Dalziel – he is beyond
criticism, I enjoyed him – but I couldn’t get on with other aspects.
So then, in around 2000, I was living in the USA and went
to a talk by Laurie
King, a crime writer I very much admire. She was asked what
were her favourite crime books, and she named this one: she said it had the
right name, because it was the perfect mystery story. I was impressed and went
and bought the book, and loved it – but it didn’t feel as though it was by the
same person as some of the early ones. I picked up on the series and went
forward with it, and also slowly went back on those I had missed, so I read all of them, and will shortly have re-read all (more posts to follow…)
This one is on the lighter side, is funny and clever, and
has multiple plotlines which are going to intersect at the end on the Big Day
itself. There is crime and wickedness in it, but it is gentle and
life-affirming at the same time, in a way that is hard to describe. (Not all
Hill’s books have that feature by any means). This one has the maybe-valuable
pictures of the title – fakes, copies and swaps, always good in a crime novel. And
there are a lot of people in the book going to find out whom they really love
or changing their mind.
It feels as though it is going to teeter on the edge of
twee, as in this idealized Caldecott version of traditional village life:
and the description might sound that way, but it really isn’t.
For example, it doesn’t hold back on politics:
But they were not long, the
days of swine and Porsches. And by the early ’nineties the smartest pigs, those
who could still remember how to walk on two legs, were putting as much distance
as they could between themselves and the wrack of that frightful
image of perfection they had worshipped in vain…
[should that be 'wreck'? It's definitely wrack in the text]
There is one oddness in the book: a character says
‘What’s to explain? You’re a
free agent. Obligations, responsibilities, desert, what the hell do things
like that mean at Old Hall?’
It’s 'desert' that’s bothering me. And then it comes up
again:
‘And her
great desert some few years ago made me debate whether the time had
not come to cut through the old law of male primacy, bar the entail, and make
her my heir.’
Should it read desertion? Even that doesn’t wholly make
sense. Anyone with a better version please let me know.
The Reckoning doesn’t quite fit into our village fete theme. It is the day the tenants pay their rents, one by one, and ends in a giant feast. The lord of the manor traditionally then sings a ballad to the assembled villagers, which he eventually admits is a kind of retaliation. ‘The years I’ve spent listening to them droning on at fetes and shows and concerts and meetings…’
There will be more posts on Reginald Hill when I have
finished rereading his books…
The top picture from Wikimedia Commons seemed ideally suited to the post, although there is no information about it apart from the name, Lord of the Manor
File:Lord of the Manor (5378897578).jpg - Wikimedia Commons.jpg){kind=link}
Photo, Preparing for the Fete
File:Preparing
for the village fete (4) - geograph.org.uk - 1475010.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1475010.jpg){kind=link}
File:Preparing
for the village fete (2) - geograph.org.uk - 1475007.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1475007.jpg){kind=link}
Andy F / CC BY-SA 2.0
Interesting - I read a couple of Hill's early books and mildly liked them, but I thought he was one of those writers who got worse when they got hold of word processors and then computers and could put more and more into them instead of cutting.
ReplyDelete"Rack and ruin" was originally "wrack and ruin" - could Hill have gone down with chronic pedantry?
Could "desert" be "dessert" - ""just desserts" - "what they deserve" - in the first quotation? It would be another example of pedantry - it should actually be "just deserts". The second quotation may be explained by its context, and I'm sorry, but I'm not interested enough to get hold of and read the book to see if it is!
Rack and ruin seems convicing.
DeleteDessert is possible but doesn't wholly work...
Deservingness - is there another way of putting it?
DeleteIn the first quote - a list of things that don't apparently matter. Obligations and repsonsibilities are on the other side of a balance sheet from 'deservingness'. Two are what people owe to the Hall, the other is what the Hall owes to them.
DeleteIn the second one, it is not at all clear what her 'great desert' could have been, but if it means deservingness it is a tautological sentence 'after she deserved it she deserved it', rather than 'After doing something wonderful/saving the whole estate, I thought of changing the inheritance...'
Merriam-Webster gives these old meanings, maybe the OED would have something older. From the context it sounds like a positive quality, anyway.
ReplyDelete"archaic : the quality or fact of meriting reward or punishment
"… the gaiety of this rich lodging exceeds my imagination as much as it does my desert."
—Sir Walter Scott
3
archaic : excellence, worth
Only as desert can be proved by the acquisition of knowledge and the exhibition of high moral character …
—William Still"
"Deservingness" does seem the most logical meaning, particularly in the second quote. Is it the the same speaker both times?
DeleteSovay
They are the same speaker I think. The first one fits all right, but I don't think the second one does.
Delete'Her great deservingness' doesn't sound like a sensible phrase to me
Delete"Her great worth" - "what she deserved [for what she did]"? Did she - whoever she is - do some thing notably praiseworthy?
I wasn’t really putting forward “deservingness” as a word the speaker was likely to use (in fact I wasn’t sure it actually existed as a word, though apparently it does and is in the OED) so much as clarifying in my head what he was thinking; which seemed to be that “she” (whoever she may be) did him some significant service a few years back and deserved to be made his heir in return, though presumably she wasn’t.
DeleteSovay
The reason she isn't the heir is because she is a close relation, but a woman...
DeleteAnd the reason she should be the heir is because she is a much better bet than the male heir. She is an all-round good thing, but it isn't that she did something specific that made her the right choice
Did the woman go through some great difficulties in those years? I found this alternate meaning, something like a "desert of the soul"?
DeleteMeaning: Calling a period of time "her great desert" is a metaphor for a woman going through a lonely, difficult, or creatively dry chapter of life.
Example: Commentators sometimes refer to poet Elizabeth Bishop's periods of isolation or melancholy as her "great desert."
There's another comment by the narrator about how "God is merciful even to undesert" which seems to link with the sense of being deserving (or otherwise). I just finished reading the book, which I soon realized I had read once before. Certain incidents and images had stuck in my memory although I didn't connect them with book described in the post!
DeleteGood catch on the 'undesert' Marty.
DeleteI am always astonished by which bits of books I remember and which I don't, and whether I would recognize someone else's description! I once read a murder story, and was congratulating myself on having guessed what had happened, before realizing that I had read it before - though it took me two-thirds of the book to realize that
"And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind." The Tempest
DeleteLovely quote...
DeleteAgain from M-W, wrack seems to be synonymous with wreck, although there's a note that it's often used in connection with ships. Could the "picture of perfection" have foundered on the rocks?!
ReplyDeleteHill does like obscure words, but I do think wreck woud fit better there.
DeleteCome wind, come wrack; at least we'll die with harness on our back! Macbeth
DeleteThat is one fabulous line!
DeleteI've been rereading too, on your recommendation, and I thought On Beulah Height, which had a haunting quality, was particularly good,. I also like his wit and his 'take no prisoners' approach to literary references. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteI will be coming to Beulah Height! short version: a great book but too sad...
DeleteHe was an excellent writer
OED, wrack (this is just the contents; let me know if you want details or quotations):
ReplyDeleteI.1. Retributive punishment; vengeance, revenge; in later use…
I.2. Damage, disaster, or injury to a person, state, etc., by…
I.3. A disastrous change in a state or condition of affairs…
II. Something that causes or experiences suffering or damage…
II.4. † An instance of suffering or causing wreck, ruin…
II.5. A thing or person in an impaired, wrecked, or shattered…
I tend to think of 'wrack' only in phrases like 'sea-wrack', where it can mean seaweed, or else (OED again): 'Property cast ashore by the sea. Obsolete.' That seems to me to work well here. And that seems to be from 'wrack n 2', shipwreck and by extension the things washed up from the wrcked ship (is that metonymy, part for the whole?).
DeleteHill does like to use obscure words. In this case I think wreck would fit better
Delete"Nerve-(w)racking" is another example, I get an impression of something being worn-out or torn-apart by various stressors.
DeleteYes, it is quite an expressive word: I just don't think you would often find it as a standalone noun.
DeleteI can't help remembering the Weird Sisters in Macbeth. These women really had it in for sailors, especially.
DeleteFirst Witch
Here I have a pilot’s thumb,
Wrack’d as homeward he did come.
I remember it distinctly from grade 12 as "wrack'd" though my search online also found many offerings of "wracked" or "wrecked". From my recollection (and I'm like this...) in Shakespeare, "wracked" would would mean pronouncing it with two syllables, whereas "wrack'd" would be one. And thus it scans...
Okay, I'll stop now.
Fascinating, great contribution to the discussion!
DeleteWhen did poets stop using 'd or ed to show scansion? No doubt dreamt vs dreamed and leapt vs leaped began the same way
DeleteI've lost my self again - Roger Allen
Deletetoo much to hope it was resolved...
DeleteGood question. I bet Lucy has an opinion.
I never really investigated this, but when I was writing for a US magazine, I used the word spelt - as in 'he spelt it wrongly' and there was a furore online, people claiming this word didn't exist except as a grain. I'm sure I asked some grammatcal Americans, but can't remember any outcome.
I feel there is a distinction: 'He spelled it wrongly' means he always spelled that word incorrectly. 'He spelt it wrongly' means 'on this occasion.'
It's good to remember that online furores over word use have been going a long time. Some (the more polite) of my commenters would fit right in on CiB comments. I can't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure when I first saw the list of comments I assumed it was about something controversial in the article, but absolutey correctly they had all focused on a verb.
Spelt must be one of those words that didn't make it across the Atlantic. M-W lists it as a "chiefly British" usage, and I had never heard of the distinction you mention (which of course doesn't mean it wasn't there).
DeleteSo, do you have dreamt, learnt - which are both analagous?
DeleteI've also seen smelt (in P.D. James), which could be a fish or an industrial process.
DeleteNerys
I've heard dreamt fairly often. Learnt, not so much. Oddly enough, my good buddy M-W lists learnt as British, but not dreamt--and my 'puter is telling me that dreamt is not a word, but it's fine with learnt! Go figure. We do have larnt, but that's a kind of backwoods version. Still, the experts say that a lot of the Appalachian backwoods speech has remnants of old British speech.
DeleteI'd be less likel to use smelt, Nerys, but I'd defend its existence.
DeleteLarnt sounds very dialect American to us!
I guess it's a construction that didn't really make it across.
I'm thinking: 'I wouldn't have dreamt of it' - it wouldn't sound right with dreamed instead
I expect 'larnt' is a respelling of dialect/accent based on a pronunciation analogous to 'clark' for what both US and UK spell as 'clerk' but generally pronounce differently--and yes, it is a standard feature of HEL studies that Appalachia was settled by Ulster Scots and Northumbrians. Also it is well-known that isolated communities preserve old pronunciations and constructions better than more porous communities do (see also Outer Banks accent, and Quebecois French, which preserves many seventeenth-century features).
DeleteThis post is bringing out the professor in me, which is making me start to think about fall classes. Fortunately your Laurie King link has loads of lovely clothes, so I will go look at those and try to relax . . .
Deletethanks for all the extra info, Dame E, and glad you are nejoying Laurie King. A very interesting writer and she gave a great talk!
DeleteOED desert, n 1:
ReplyDelete1.a.
1297–
Deserving; the becoming worthy of recompense, i.e. of reward or punishment, according to the good or ill of character or conduct; worthiness of recompense, merit or demerit.
1.b.
c1374–
In a good sense: Meritoriousness, excellence, worth.
2.a An action or quality that deserves its appropriate recompense; that in conduct or character which claims reward or deserves punishment. Usually in plural (often = 1).
2. b. A good deed or quality; a worthy or meritorious action; a merit. ? Obsolete.
3.
1393–
That which is deserved; a due reward or recompense, whether good or evil. Often in to get, have, meet with one's deserts.
I hope the formatting isn't too wonky with the cutting and pasting!
Thank you for both contributions. To me it is still not the right word.
DeleteI enjoyed Hill's books because he didn't just keep repeating the same formula and enjoyed experimenting. Even just gradually adding more POV characters with a different perspective allowed him to develop, and for me, he has dated better than most of the others whose series detectives started in the 60s and 70s- for me certainly better than the Wexford or Adam Dalgliesh books.
ReplyDeleteI do remember when first reading it that I understood desert as meaning deserving and that just deserts was spelt with one "S". Still, I am of the age where decimation means losing one in ten rather than 9 in 10 and accept that language moves on - though I'm still ready to argue against disinterested having turned into a synonym for uninterested.
This was a particularly lighthearted read. Indeed, I could imagine the lord of the manor and his female relatives in an Angela Thirkell book/
Risk of being spoilery, even though I am trying to be indirect, so don't go to the next paragraph unless you have read the book.
I actually enjoyed that some of the loaded Chekhov guns early on ended up as red herrings or bait-and-switch.
Yes to all you say. Though the politics would be completely different in an Angela Thirkell book 😀😀😀
DeleteAnd absolutely - the man had wide learning and a wild imagination - what a great combo
And I am much more ready to read him again than Wexford and Dalgliesh, absolutley.
Annoying that he cannot be asked to explain! I wonder if his editor, Julia Wisdom (!), is still alive. "Editing him was a genuine pleasure. He delighted in using words that had the reader (and his editor) reaching for a dictionary, and enjoyed ambushing me with quotations during our chats. His knowledge of literature was encyclopaedic and he always used this to great effect in his writing." https://crimewritingmonth2012.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/a-personal-memory-of-reginald-hill-from-julia-wisdom/
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely article, I am so glad to have read it. And it is clear he was deliberately using obscure words
DeleteI read this many years ago and no longer have a copy, but it has remained in my memory more than most of the other Dalziel and Pascoe books. Hill seemed to me to be very heavy-handed in his treatment of issues and characters in earlier books, and I never remember any of the plots or the denouements. His later plots were more interesting and inventive by far. This book has a very different, lighter tone, some interesting characters, and a memorable ending. I particularly liked Sergeant Wield's story. I also list Pascoe and Ellie among my least desirable fictional dinner guests, and their involvement is minimal in Pictures of Perfection.
ReplyDeleteNerys
Yes, though I do also very much like the one before, Recalled to Life. But there reall was a marked change, and the later books quite different.
DeleteI don't mind Pascoe and Ellie myself, but I do always enjoy a good strong sideswipe like yours!
While I can understand anyone feeling that in any individual book, the marital relations of the Pascoes could be irritating, having two people over the series work through their issues pays off for me. Considering that the norm was for either the wife to be a doormat or for the detective's relationships to end badly, having the two of them work through their problems and watching Ellie's interactions with Dalziel and Wield develop works for me on a re-read. Certainly I prefer that to the disappearing wives of Dr Watson.
DeleteYes, very good point - how rare to have a realistic but not disastrous relationship for the investigating police officer. And yes, hard agree that her relationship with Wield and Dalziel is excellent.
Delete(Van Der Valk had a good marriage, but look what happened to her...)
Thank you for your perceptive response, AdrianDominic, I see that I should do some rereading. The early books I read didn't click for me, and I don't think I subsequently read enough to be immersed in the world and follow its development.
DeleteNerys
Very gracious Nerys, and it would be nice if you found more in them. But we don't all like all the books, and that's OK!
DeletePictures of Perfection is the most recent book I have read in this series. I liked this one a lot and I agree with you on Recalled to Life, it was also very good. I have all the books so I intend to read them all, but some are just mass market paperbacks which are sometimes hard to read, so we shall see.
ReplyDeleteYes, those two, and then Beulah Heights (with slightly mixed feelings because dark) are the high points of the series, but I am carrying on my re-reading and the later books are enjoyable.
DeleteLike you, I am increasingly bothered by small print and low-quality paperbacks
I thought of another one that I liked, and it was in spite of Ellie. The title is Under World, or Underworld. I have seen book covers with both titles. Anyway, I liked it because it was published in 1989 and was about a community that had been affected by the 1984 miner's strike. That was the first thing I had read about the strike and an eye-opener.
DeleteAt one time I said that my favorites were An Advancement of Learning, set in academia, and the novel in which Pascoe meets Ellie, and Deadheads. I still remember why I loved Deadheads, but don't remember much about An Advancement of Learning.
That's interesting Tracy - when I reread those earlier books recently I wasn't very taken with them. I don't know if it's me or crime fiction that has changed...
Deletespelled, learned, dreamed, smelled, spelled and so on - I pronounce "dreamed" as "drempt" which wouldn't do. As for a difference in meaning between spelt and spelled - no, no, please no! People try to tell me there's a difference between judgment and judgement ...
ReplyDeleteThere's a Margery Allingham book where the spelling of judgement gives a clue. I would say it is definitely a personal choice rather than a meaning.
Deletebut I try to be very relaxed about other's usage, while liking to preserve distinctions and use what I consider the right word and arrangement myself. I see it as a hobby that I know about disinterested, minuscule, semi-colons, possessive pronouns with gerunds, and what a gerund is, the difference between practise and practice (UK only), hopefully.
But - I'm sure my writing is full of times where I break my own rules, and I am as gentle with myself as I am with others. (Writing for a US magazine for a long time helps with this)
Dangling participles are my favorite. And whaddya mean about US magazines--🥴 I totally agree, and would include newspapers too. I remember many grammar rules but not all of them by any means! I break some of them on purpose, too--I have a special aversion to semi-colons, as you may have noticed. I'm fussy about the difference between possessives and contractions--its/it's, your/you're, whose/who's, etc. If the Grammar Police were making arrests, I wouldn't be safe by a long shot.
DeleteYes, danglers make me wince, though I still try to keep patient.
DeleteUS mags - I meant that there were differences, no criticism! I had to change my ways - for things that I thought were a universal law, eg how quotation marks and other punctuation marks combine.
The editor of the magazine I worked at had a legendary hatred of semi-colons, but I disagreed with him.
For some reason, semi-colons seem a bit formal, or at least more formal than I usually want to be. I understand their function and I do use them in more "serious" writing. Not against them in principle at all!
DeleteFor me, sometimes only a semi-colon will do...
DeleteAccept no substitutes!
DeleteAgreed
DeleteSurely if you're (quite rightly) "fussy about the difference between possessives and contractions--its/it's, your/you're, whose/who's, etc" the Grammar Police would try to recruit you!
ReplyDeleteTo be fair to "offenders", I think they are often victims of autocorrect, which goes round making good spellings wrong so people give it a job.
My grammar fussiness is selective, though, and probably not consistent enough for the GP! As Moira mentions below, Grammar Policing can backfire on you so I've become a little shy of it.. "Judge not, lest ye be judged...."
DeleteExactly my feeling Marty
DeleteI see I've been allowed back¬
ReplyDeleteI think it's a rule that if you start criticizing others' grammar, spelling, you will accidentally make mistakes in the indictment.
DeleteAutocorrect is completely maddening, in particular with wed, well, we'd and we'll - where it instinctively always picks the wrong one.