Dispatches from Israel 13

by Helen Kaye

[Helen has curtailed her usual active schedule somewhat of late.  That’s part of why this is her first contribution to “Dispatched from Israel” since last October.  I’m glad to report, however, that she’s back now with three reviews of productions, all from Tel Aviv, from last fall and this month.  As many ROT readers know, I’ve known Helen for many years—from when she was an actress here in New York City—and we’ve remained in contact since she made her aliyah to Israel some 30 years ago.  She became a cultural journalist for the Jerusalem Post (as well as a stage director in her off-duty life) and has shared her writing with me and, therefore, with readers of Rick On Theater, since I started the blog almost nine yeas ago now.  I really like posting her JP reviews and occasional other reports on ROT because it gives me a chance to cover theater from outside my own small cruising range.  It’s also another voice on the blog, which I try to promote as much as I’m able.]

The Book of David

By Ro’i Chen based on the book by Stefan Heym

   directed by Yevgeny Arye

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 18 September 2017

Whether he uses his knife to peel an apple or slit a throat, it’s all one to Benaya (Doron Tavori) Solomon’s (Micki Leon) thuggish, and ever practical Chief of Staff whose job it is to get things done – in this case The Book of David to be written by historian Eitan (Alon Friedman), plucked for the job from his cosy life with wife Esther (Karin Seruya) and mistress Lilit (Ruth Rasyuk).

If he undertakes the task it’ll have to be the truth Eitan says in half a question, awed in the presence of Might.

“Of course, of course,” Solomon reassures him, leaving Benaya to growl that it’s gotta be the ‘right’ book, making sure that the exploits of shepherd boy David turned powerful monarch David are seen in the ‘right’ light and if it all didn’t quite happen that way, well, “man is the legend he creates.” Facts, fiction, who cares?

Sic transit gloria mundi goes the Latin tag meaning that all glories and honors are transitory and Michael Karamenko seems to have designed his set of plastics, scaffolding – a replica of Michaelangelo’s celebrated David is surrounded by it – and creaking, massive wooden doors to reflect that, as does eternal outsider Amenhotep, Solomon’s massively cynical Egyptian eunuch beautifully handled by Israel Demidov. Stefania Georgeokayta’s costumes cleverly link past and present because, as we quickly understand, The Book of David is a satire that Yevgeny Arye has realized with his usual flair and perception, his love of all things circus this time portrayed in marvelously grotesque mime sequences that tell the story of David and Goliath and David and Bathsheba played by such as Gilad Kelter and Alexander Senderovitch.

To get to the truth Eitan interviews people who actually knew David such as Michal, his first wife played with sorrowful dignity by Lilian Roth and Yoav, David’s army chief, now a shadow offered by Yevgeny Terlitzki. It’s Yoav’s throat that Benaya slits, saying “We’re building an enlightened and cultured society here and don’t need the likes of him.”

Tavori and Leon alternate Solomon and Benaya – the all-wise and his alter ego. Tavori – gravelly voiced and little bent, makes Benaya impatient. He wants deeds, not words. As the natively arrogant Solomon, Leon is all for words. They hide so much.

Seruya and Rasiuk play their roles with grace. Friedman’s Eitan grows from village innocent to horrified chronicler who realizes too late what he’s let himself in for.

“The more I learn about you, the less I understand about myself,” Eitan tells the statue. “Danger lurks behind every written word.”

The satire is about legitimacy, truth and what we do with either or both. It’s not a coincidence that Eitan is a historian. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” is a paraphrase from George Santayana.

Even if you do ignore history, go see the production. It’s well worth.

*  *  *  *

Herzl Said

By Ro’i Hen

Artistic direction by Yevgeny Arye

Music by Roni Reshef

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 15 October 2017

Herzl Said starts with a coffin on a stage and it’s full steam ahead from there. This is a gleeful, irreverent, exhilarating, zippy and mischievous sleigh-ride of a show/satire that will delight the eye, tickle the funnybone and warm the heart of all who watch it, and by all means take the kids above the age of 10.

It’s only afterwards you realize that it also makes us think.

In 1902, two years before his death, Herzl published Altneuland, his famous and utopian romance on a future Jewish state in the then Ottoman Palestine whose contents fuel this show, as does the title. “Herzl Said” is the Israeli equivalent of “Simon Says” and its antics also propel the musical in unexpected, often risible, directions.

Just to give you a taste, during one of the many scenes, Herzl, very nicely played with the ever undiminished gravitas and dignity of the straight-man by Gilad Kelter, comes across the rest of the cast discussing another person whose name (tfoo!) begins with H, but Herzl thinks they’re discussing him . . . .

The rest of this accomplished cast plays two sets of characters, the Israelis of 1949, the year Herzl’s bones – remember that coffin? – were moved to their present site on Mt. Herzl, and the protagonists of the novel living in a Jewish state where Arabs and Jews live harmoniously side by side, where there’s no social or economic inequality, where . . . but you get the drift, right?

And they do it superbly, tossing off Ro’i Hen’s rhyming couplets, barbed dialogues and song parodies with utmost suavity, especially Ruth Rasyuk and Henry David, who sing most of them – taken from beloved songs by such as Naomi Shemer and John Lennon.

The others are Uri Yaniv, Assaf Pariente, Eli Menashe, and Ziv Zohar Meir in his alter ego as a 1949 haredi rabbi, who at one time snarls “If you will it. Zero. It’s a dream!”

Herzl Said happens on a stage within a stage – Nadav Barnea and Judith Aharon are responsible for the show’s deft lighting and costumes – into and from which actors and props enter/emerge as they switch between time and novel.

As every Israeli Jewish child knows, the thoroughly assimilated Viennese journalist Herzl was jerked into awareness of his Jewishness by the infamous Dreyfuss trial of 1895, convening the 1st Zionist congress at Basel in 1897.

And every Israeli Jewish child knows in his bones and blood the proper version of Herzl’s famous dictum from Altneuland: ‘If you will it, it is no dream’ but Hen and the play insist that we also pay attention to the end of that sentence – printed on page two of the handsome program – that says, no less definitely, “And if you don’t will it, everything I have related here is a dream, and a dream it will remain.”

Is that our aim? To be a failed dream? I hope not.

*  *  *  *

Doing His Will

By Moti Lerner

Directed by Aya Kaplan

Habima National Theatre, Tel Aviv; 5 February 2018

First of all, go and see this play because it’s good theater and Aya Kaplan has done a great job on it. Second it impels you to think because politically-hearted playwright Moti Lerner has written a thoughtful and gripping drama that asks some uncomfortable questions about faith, belief and the question of religion in our lives.

Doing His Will is based on the true story of Esti Weinstein, born into Hassidut Gur, who left the sect for the secular world, wrote a book that opened a window to the Gur world and her experiences, yet later committed suicide, leaving a note that said in part “. . . time isn’t healing and the pain doesn’t stop.”

The drama moves back and forth in time and space, but essentially we meet Dassi (Osnat Fishman) at her wedding to Yaakov (Yoav Donat). The trouble starts with the wedding night. Though he continually turns to Rabbi Zilber (Igal Sade) for advice and instruction, he cannot perform, and the blame, naturally, is ascribed to Dassi. From there things go from bad to worse. Try as she will, Dassi cannot accommodate herself to what she perceives as the soul-destroying rules of Gur. She leaves for the secular life with one of her daughters, Gilli (Sivan Mast) divorces Yaakov and pays a dire price. She may not see or communicate with the other six.

All efforts to reverse that rabbinical ruling are in vain. So is life she decides. It is a week before she is found dead in her car.

The title is deliberately ambiguous. Is it ‘his’ or ‘His’ or both? And which is paramount? Jehudit Aharon’s understated set contributes to the ambiguity. Two tall brick walls bisected by a path are the backdrop. Are they protection or boundary? In the foreground on a platform facing one another are two single beds – and it is no coincidence that they resemble biers. Dori Parnes’ minor themes add poignancy – we could do without the ‘heavenly choirs’ though. Keren Granek’s lighting and Aviah Bash’s costumes meld seamlessly.

The secular Jewish world, whether or not it believes in a Deity, is at a disadvantage vis á vis the religious one, especially that of the ultra-orthodox whose passion we cannot fathom and whose way of life is often as alien to our understanding as a man from Mars. The guiding principle of Gur is Sanctity from which human sexuality detracts. Hence the very severe prohibitions regarding marriage and sexuality save those for biblically enjoined reproduction.

This is the world to which Yaakov adheres and which breaks Dassi. Lerner has not written an anti-religious polemic. Doing His Will is not about faith, or belief but about control. In his absolute obedience Yaakov becomes a robot. In her questioning the order of things Dassi becomes a rebel and therefore intolerable. Lerner is asking which way do we want and need to go, a question particularly apposite in a society whose government is moving swiftly towards fascism.

The acting is uniformly splendid. Fishson’s Dassi is powerful, passionate and touching. Donat’s Yaakov is not a bad man but one who is irretrievably torn between instinct and obedience. Sade’s omnipotent Zilber is as unyielding as granite but could use some human nuance. The ever excellent Orna Rothberg shines as Ahuva, Dassi’s torn mother, and Moti Gershon is gently tough as Dassi’s brother Haim who has also joined the secular world, become a lawyer and her advocate. Mast as Gilli must needs wear her courage visibly and as pregnant Hanni, Dassi’s eldest, Aurelle Maor is as visibly torn. Also, and as definitely, “don’t judge” says this play.

[As I observed in my afterword to “Dispatches 12,” the list of Helen’s past contributions to ROT has grown too long to append to new offerings.  I suggest that anyone curious about my friend’s opinions of past productions in Israel, as well as her other cultural commentary and travel journals, look back at “Dispatches 10” (11 November 2016) for the dates of Helen’s posts—look down in the afterword—and add numbers 11 (17 June 2017) and 12 (27 October 2017).]

Perry Mason (Part 2)

by Kirk Woodward

[This is Part 2 of Kirk’s essay on the Perry Mason mystery novels of Erle Stanley Gardner.  (If you haven’t read Part 1, I strongly recommend going back to 19 February—the post just below this one on the Rick On Theater site—to be sure you have all the background to this discussion.)  Here, Kirk picks up where he left off, examining the various approaches to constructing Gardner’s mystery stories that make his novels different from most of the rest of the genre.

[In this part of the post, Kirk touches on the TV series of 1957-1966.  Gardner was still writing the novels while the series was on the air and many of the books were adapted as episodes.  Gardner also allowed the successful TV show to influence some of the ways in which the novels changed over the later years.  I’m sure ROTters will enjoy the conclusion of Kirk Woodward’s “Perry Mason.”]

The practice of law

A collection of Perry Mason’s comments about the practice of law gives a fascinating picture of determination in the service of justice. Here are some remarks found in The Case of the Grinning Gorilla (1952. The titles of Mason mysteries all begin with The Case of the . . . ; as I did in Part 1, in referring to Mason books I will use only the parts of the titles that are unique.)

:

“I make my living by knowing something about law and something about human nature. I stand up in front of juries. I cross-examine witnesses. I have to know a lot more about human nature than the average man.” 

“You don’t get to understand human nature by listening to what people tell you when they’re talking to you. That’s when you see them with their make-up on, with their best foot forward. You learn about human nature by watching people when they don’t know they’re being watched, by listening to conversations that they don’t know are being overheard, by prying into their thoughts whenever you can find what their true thoughts are. You learn about people when you see their souls stripped naked by suffering.”

“I saw no reason to comply with an empty legal formality.” (Della Street replies to this, “I think probably that last remark is a very complete index to your character.”)

“We’re never going to get anywhere by denials and evasions, and being on the defensive. This is a case where we’re going to have to carry the fight to the other man.”

“When a lawyer has to argue with himself to try to talk himself into believing a client’s story, it’s a damn sight better to keep anyone else from ever hearing that story.”

“There’s a difference between retreating until you can fight at the right time and at the right place and just running away.”

“You have to take them as they come, Jim. You can’t skim the cream all the time. Every once in a while Fate hands you something.”

“We advise our clients for their best interests, not ours.”

Mason often describes himself as a fighter. His comments on his own motivations don’t go much farther than these (from Runaway Corpse, 1954) in a conversation with a District Attorney:

Vandling said, “The district attorney in Los Angeles gave me quite a briefing about you. He told me you were tricky, shrewd, diabolically clever, and while he didn’t say in so many words that you were crooked he intimated that you’d cut your grandmother’s throat in order to obtain an advantage for a client.”

“Why not?” Mason asked, grinning. “After all, I’m supposed to represent my clients. Then again you’re not my grandmother.”

Gardner certainly would have approved of the comment by Leslie Charteris (1907-1993, the creator of the series of novels featuring The Saint) that he created his great series character as a protest against “the miserable half-heartedness of the age.” Mason sees the law as a great ideal, and its ambiguities as a testing ground for personality.

I’m a hunter, Della. Some men get their thrills in life out of standing up to a charging lion or tiger. Some like to shoot small birds; some just like to hunt, not for what they kill, but for the thrill of hunting. Well, I hunt murderers. And, Della, I want to bag that murderer. I don’t want Tragg to do it. I’m willing he should have the credit, but I want to be the one to do the hunting, and finding. (Haunted Husband, 1941)

To that end he will sacrifice even the typical human ideal of the happy family life. And it seems to have sacrificed him as well. He never mentions parents, and says he has no brothers or sisters. And of course he is unmarried.

Mason is the classic example of Benjamin Franklin’s precept in his Autobiography (1790): “I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.”

Mason lives in an apartment; we don’t learn much more about it than that it has curtains and he reads in his chair. He has a good car; he dines out and eats well; he goes camping with cronies and makes what they call Thousand Island Gravy. Otherwise he is a saint to the law. Where does this devotion come from? We aren’t told, but it may remind us of Bible verses like Psalm 119:34: “Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.”

The family structure

Mention of marriage brings us to the central emotional feature of the books – the nature of Perry Mason’s “family.” Gardner periodically tries to establish a romance between Perry and Della Street, his secretary. (After Gardner’s wife died, very late in his life, Gardner married his secretary.) Perry and Della discuss marriage (for example, in Lame Canary, 1937; Golddigger’s Purse, 1945; and Caretaker’s Cat, 1935), but they never marry; they move toward marriage, and then away from it. Their moments of hugging and kissing don’t feel quite right to the reader.

The reason for this dance of closeness and distance, I believe, is that in a psychological, or even psychic, sense, Mason’s team actually is a family. Mason is the paterfamilias; Della and Paul Drake are his children, and Burger and Tragg are alternately cranky and bearable relatives. (Sergeant Holcomb is an unpleasant neighbor.)

Perry Mason doesn’t marry Della, then, because the relationship would be too weird; it would feel as if he had married his daughter. So the efforts to kindle sparks between Perry and Della are doomed; because of the way the stories are structured, such a pairing would strike us as icky, even if it were not literally so. (When a new Perry Mason series starring Monte Markham appeared on network TV in the 1970s, the producers indicated that Perry and Della would be a sexually active couple. The series was a failure.)

I am not claiming that this interpretation is “true” in terms of the stories – that “Della really is Perry’s daughter” – or that Gardner intended to present the situation this way, but that this is how the situation feels to the reader, and apparently how it felt to Gardner too, since he was not able to overcome the structural resistance between Perry and Della, like trying to bring two magnets together at the same pole.

Readers and audiences love families. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as created by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) are a family, and readers can hardly get enough information about their relationship. Lord Peter Wimsey, Bunter, and Harriet Vane, as created by Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), are a family. We still want the Beatles to reunite as a family, even though alas that is impossible. The family relationship in the Mason books gives the stories an emotional strength, even if a slightly odd one, that carries them through. (A contemporary example of the same pattern can be found in the Harry Potter book series:  Harry, Ron, and Hermione can be thought of as brothers and sister, Dumbledore as the father, Voldemort as the evil uncle, Draco Malfoy as the mean cousin, and so on.)

Mason says the same things that every other ordinary male of his time might have said about women; but he is a gentleman, and, when actually offered a sexual encounter, he is practically a monk, again illustrating his remarkable single-mindedness – a constant theme of the books, and a quality at the core of his character.

The plot hook

The “engine” of the plots of the Mason books, the “hook” that gives them their distinctive nature, is that Mason invariably does something that puts him in as much trouble as his client is in – he runs the risk of being disgraced, or jailed, or, worst of all, disbarred and forbidden to practice his sacred craft any more. He must then fight as hard to extricate himself from the mess as he fights for his client; and, to make things more difficult, if their interests clash, he must put those of the client ahead of his own.

A typical Mason client looks guilty as sin because someone has deliberately arranged appearances that way. It is not always clear whether Mason sees through the deception from the start, or whether he is merely acting according to the principle that everyone is entitled to an effective defense. He often proclaims that he only defends the innocent; he is not interested in getting scoundrels off. However, appearances damn his clients; how does he know they are innocent?

In any case, each defendant is by definition an underdog in some way. Gardner does not always view the law from the defense’s perspective; he wrote books with a District Attorney, Doug Selby, as the hero. Even in those cases, though, Selby is fighting heavy odds. Gardner was a scrapper in real life – an acquaintance is said to have called him “a contentious son of a bitch” – and the series characters of his stories are scrappers too.

Keeping current

The practice of law in the United States has evolved over the decades, to the point where Perry Mason would find much of it unfamiliar. Pre-trial discovery, in particular, would remove a number of strings from his bow, or make them more difficult to use. However, in the books Mason stays current with the law, just as Gardner stays current with what happens in society.

The writer Penelope Gilliatt(1932-1993) once remarked how interesting it was to watch the hemlines go up and down over the years in Agatha Christie’s long-running mystery play The Mousetrap (which opened in 1952, and is still running). In the same way, one sees both social and legal fashions change in the Mason books. Perry Mason begins as practically a tough-guy detective out of a book by Dashiel Hammett (1894-1961); Gardner, always on the watch for a market for his writing, freely imitated the core concepts of other writers. (His Bertha Cool and Donald Lam bear a remarkable and I would guess not coincidental resemblance to Rex Stout’s characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.)

But as the years pass, Mason becomes much less obnoxiously tough, and more the sophisticated lawyer, a fact Gardner comments on in his introduction to a reissue of Lucky Legs (1967), originally published in 1934, where he notes that the early Perry Mason was seldom without a set of master keys to use when breaking and entering, but gradually settled down to become a law-abiding member of the bar, shunning his initial cavalier lawbreaking.

The reader of the books in sequence sees the Miranda warning of 1966 (“You have the right to remain silent,” etc.) coming into effect, irritating the police but interestingly not seeming to influence Mason at all – he frequently instructs his clients to stay silent anyway, and he knows all about their need for an attorney.

As legal fashions change, so do social. Gardner keeps Mason’s world as unrestricted by time period as possible (a remarkable bit of foresight); but we see glimpses of speakeasies, of the Depression, of World War II, of beatniks and the turmoil of the 1960’s (Gardner and Mason don’t have much use for it, but Mason treats everyone even-handedly until he reaches the point of exasperation). People lose their fortunes in the Depression, soldiers come home from war shell-shocked, rationing makes it difficult to buy tires. Gardner doesn’t connect his stories to particular dates, but the real world does make shadowy background appearances.

Gardner was an active, participatory sort of man, and his books demonstrate his powerful curiosity. Gorilla includes a great deal of speculation about the possibility of hypnotizing animals – and what would you do with them then? – plus substantial interest in the actual habits of gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys. Typically a Gardner book reflects a lively interest in what’s going on in the world.

Through it all, as noted, Mason continues to get himself in trouble as he tries to get his clients out of it. The major difference between the books and, in particular, the TV movies starring Raymond Burr (1917-1993) that began in 1985, is that on TV Mason is of course a tough cross-examiner, but not particularly a risk-taker, while the Perry Mason of the books can hardly resist an opportunity to throw himself into the fire.

Perry Mason on TV

The original TV series falls somewhere between these two stools, but of course any faults of the years of the series (1957-1966) are redeemed by the extraordinary cast. It is well known that Burr was barely allowed to audition for the role at all; Gardner saw him audition for the antagonist, the role Burr frequently played in movies, and announced, “That’s Mason!” It can be said that Burr did not fit Gardner’s physical description of Mason (not that he ever describes him extensively): his features are not steely or craggy, but soft. But Burr had the extraordinary gift of making the simplest line, like “Then what did you do?” crackle with significance.

He also seemed to contain a deep well of kindliness. When I was a child, my parents took me to hear him speak to the Bar Association, and he gave me his autograph afterwards. I recall him as pleasant and considerate.

The family unit in the series – Barbara Hale (1922-2017) as Della Street, William Hopper (1915-1970) as the private detective Paul Drake, William Talman (1915-1968) as District Attorney Hamilton Burger, and Ray Collins (1889-1965) as Lt. Tragg – is also perfectly cast, again not necessarily in keeping with the descriptions in the books. Hopper was tall but not glassy-eyed or bug-eyed. Talman was not “bear-like”. Collins was not Mason’s age, and tall, but older, and short. But surely none could have been equaled.

In the books written after the TV show had begun to take hold, the characters subtly begin at least not to contradict those on TV. (Gardner, as is well known, played a judge in the last episode of the TV series, incidentally one of the best examples of a “final episode” of a TV series.)

Keeping the formula fresh

Since the TV series usually ended up in the same courtroom every week, we may forget that Gardner worked hard to vary the characteristics of his books. By my count about a quarter of the books in the series either do not end in a trial at all, or end in some sort of a hearing other than a trial, or in a county other than Los Angeles, and the District Attorney, Hamilton Burger, does not appear in every Los Angeles trial, although he tends at least to make an appearance toward the end, when he anticipates that Perry is at long last about to lay an egg.

It should go without saying that Gardner is a master plotter, from the initial incident (in Gorilla, Perry purchases a series of diaries at an auction) through the denouement, which may contain a surprise inside the surprise. One of the surest signs of the high quality of Gardner’s plotting, to my mind, is that not all Perry’s schemes pay off. Some backfire, getting him in trouble; some simply don’t amount to anything, a realistic observation – nobody’s perfect, and Mason makes mistakes, and loses his temper, like anyone else.

What’s in a name?

The mention of Burger brings up the topic of Gardner and names. He loves triple-names and middle initials, although none of the core team has them. Names of peripheral characters can be exotic, as though they had been assembled by a quick visit to the phone book (although there are plenty of ordinary names as well). Those in Gorilla are not as bizarre as, say, Eduardo Marcus Deering, the District Attorney in Duplicate Daughter (1960), or Dr. Herkimer Corrison Renault in Runaway Corpse (1954), but neither are they ordinary:

Helen Cadmus
Benjamin Addicks
Josephine Kempton
Nathan Fallon
James Etna
Mortimer Hershey
Sidney Hardwick
Fern Blevins
Herman Barnwell

And was Gardner aware from the start that his DA’s name was Ham Burger? 

Religion

There is little about religion in the Mason books. In Caretaker’s Cat (1935) a clergyman is suspicious and afraid to open the door of his house, an attitude that bemuses Mason and Drake. The title character of the Stuttering Bishop (1936) is evaluated primarily in terms of his professional responsibilities, but it is also reported that in Australia he was “one of the most human ministers I’ve ever seen. He didn’t have the smug, self-righteous attitude so many preachers have. He was a man who wanted to help people – and he helped me.”

Then there’s the following interesting conversation from Stepdaughter’s Secret (1963). A client is speaking:

“There was a chaplain in that prison who took an interest in me. I won’t say that he gave me religion, because, in a way, he didn’t. He simply gave me confidence in myself and my fellow man, and in a divine scheme of the universe.

“He pointed out that life was too complicated to be accidental, that it took a master plan to account for life, as we knew it; that fledglings emerged from the egg, grew feathers and poised on the edge of the nest with the desire to fly because of what we call instinct; that instinct was merely a divine plan and a means by which the architect of that divine plan communicated with the living units.

“He asked me to consult my own instincts, not my selfish inclinations but the feelings that came to me when I could deliberately disregard my environment and put myself in harmony with the universe. He dared me to surrender myself in the solitude of night to the great heart of the universe.”

“And you did?” Mason asked.

“I did it because he told me I was afraid to do it, and I wanted to show him I wasn’t. I wanted to prove he was wrong.”

“And he wasn’t wrong?”

“Something came to me – I don’t know what it was. A feeling of awareness, a desire to make something of myself. I started to read, study and think.” 

And in Haunted Husband (1941), Mason tells a woman a parable of life and death that I have not seen elsewhere, and that would stand out in any discussion of death and immortality. If the reader is not familiar with it, I highly recommend it. It begins, “If only we had the vision to see the whole pattern of life . . . .” Needless to say, the passage is integrated with the plot.

Looking for a savior

I described above the “hook” to the plots of the Perry Mason books, in which Mason immerses himself in his client’s case to the extent that he is in almost as much trouble as the client is. I have saved to the end a comment on the “myth” underlying this device. (By “myth,” of course, I do not mean something fictional, but rather a significant underlying story.)

Not to put too fine a point on it, Perry Mason is a Savior. He enters a world not his own, participates in it, and saves his devotee from death. In other words, Mason is a Christ figure. Jesus as he appears in the gospels is not merely someone, even a loving someone, who looks at us, possibly sees the best in us, and pleads our case with God. That would be fine, of course (and would correspond to the TV Mason movies), but that’s not the Jesus story. Instead, as the author of Hebrews 5:2 writes, “He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.”

I am not claiming that Gardner was a Christian – I have no idea. (He requested that the only religious event at his graveside be a reading of the Twenty-Third Psalm.) I definitely am claiming that the Mason books resonate because of their mythic structure, because they dramatize the situation of all of us who get ourselves deep in life’s messes, and pray – whatever that may mean for us – for help. In the Mason books, that help is provided – which is also the upshot of the Christian story.

The poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973), in The Dyer’s Hand (1962), writes in a famous essay called “The Guilty Vicarage” that murder mysteries end in “a real innocence from which the guilty other has been expelled, a cure effected, not by me or my neighbors, but by the miraculous intervention of a genius from outside who removes guilt by giving knowledge of guilt.” That, perhaps, is the root of the appeal of the Perry Mason books, and why many people like me still read them.

[Well, that’s Part 2 of the Perry Mason two-fer.  I called it the conclusion . . . but is it?  Kirk’s working on reediting a possible addendum, a sort of coda to “Perry Mason.”  I won’t provide any details—in case he decides not to include it—but if he does, it’ll be a little lagniappe for ROT readers.  Keep an eye out for “Perry Mason (Part 3)”—it could appear at any time.]

Perry Mason (Part 1)

by Kirk Woodward

[Kirk posted a recent article, “Four Actors” (30 January), concerning the acting of the guest stars in four episodes of the Perry Mason television series.  I pointed out then that Kirk’s a devoted fan of the Mason mystery novels (as he is of the entire genre).  Back in 2006, he wrote an essay about the novels for a site called Perry Mason TV Series (http://www.perrymasontvseries.com/wiki/); Kirk’s article, “Perry Mason,” is at http://www.perrymasontvseries.com/woodward/.  The post below and Part 2 on 22 February is a lightly reedited version of that essay. 

[“Perry Mason” isn’t about acting, of course, but mystery writing (and writing in general).  I’ve never been a reader of Gardner’s novels, but I found the essay (which I first read when it was originally posted on line) fascinating.  I guarantee you all will, too, possibly because the novels are not familiar.  (Those of you who have been fans of Gardner’s writing will find interest in seeing if you agree with Kirk’s points or not.)  Between Part 1 and Part 2, you’ll find that Kirk covers most of the salient points of the Mason mystery books, and he’s done it with his customary insight and style.]

Introduction

For years I have read, re-read, and enjoyed the Perry Mason books by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970). Generally speaking, a mystery reader becomes immersed in a series for two reasons: affection for the main character or characters, and an imaginative response to the world of the stories. Those are certainly my reasons for enjoying the Perry Mason series, and my pleasure is increased by my inability to remember the solution to any mystery, which means that I can return to it time after time without being bored.

I’m not sure that books that have sold so well (it is still the third best selling book series of all time) need much of a defense, but I have the impression that the positive qualities of the Mason books are not always sufficiently appreciated. In this essay I want to help correct that situation by addressing both complaints and strengths. I have discovered after years of reading that some of the emotional wellsprings of the books are not exactly what one might expect. Those discoveries are included in the material that follows, which I present according to themes.

There are some eighty Perry Mason novels, plus a novella and a short story. Gardner published his first Mason novel in 1933 and continued to write them until his death in 1970, at the age of eighty. In my opinion the books written in the forties and fifties are probably the strongest as a group, but there is little falling off in quality through the entire series; they are all fun to read.

A “prototypical” Perry Mason mystery should include the main cast of characters, including Sergeant Holcomb, the boorish police sergeant, as well as Lieutenant Tragg; it probably should involve a switch in guns, a Gardner specialty; and it should end in a courtroom. I would propose The Case of the Long Legged Models (1958) as a classic example: a gambler is killed over his IOU’s and Mason defends the gambler’s daughter when she’s charged with the murder of the man who killed her father.  For his defense, Mason must sort out three identical guns which he manipulates until no one can follow where each gun was and who had it when.

For illustrations in this essay, however, I will use The Case of the Grinning Gorilla, published in 1952. Gardner was sixty-two years old at that time – he was approximately ten years older than the twentieth century. Guns are not a major feature in Gorilla, in which Mason, at a public administrator’s auction, buys a packet of memorabilia of a woman who drowned herself; after the murder of a man who’d been interested in obtaining the woman’s diary, Mason finds himself facing a hypnotized gorilla. But in other respects it is an excellent representative of the corpus, and a colorful and imaginative story.

(The titles of Mason mystery novels, unlike the television episodes, all begin with The Case of the . . . In referring to Mason books I will use only the parts of the titles that are unique.)

Women

Someone told me once that the Perry Mason books appeal only to men, not to women. I can’t imagine that this is true – I have known women who love the books – but we may begin by recognizing that Gardner displays characteristics in his writing that cry out to be labeled male chauvinism. Numerous times a woman getting out of a car “shows a glimpse of shapely leg,” or nylon. Women are sometimes described in terms of their physical appearance, in a sort of barroom or smoking club tone.

But in contradiction to this somewhat sniggering masculine attitude is the redoubtable Della Street, Perry’s secretary, treated by him almost always as an equal – consulted and relied on, not just for her looks (there we go again), but for her brain. In Stuttering Bishop, published in 1938, Gardner makes a deliberate point about women’s capabilities when Della makes several deductions that would not have occurred to Paul Drake. After Paul says that women simply aren’t cut out for detective work, for example, she notices blood stains in a car, upon which Paul says: “You’ve got a good eye, Della.”  And lined up with her are a number of smart, self-sufficient, self-motivating women (as well as Bertha Cool, the detective, who with her sidekick Donald Lam has her own series of books, written under the name A. A. Fair). Consider the following, from Sleepwalker’s Niece, published in 1936. Mason is talking with a golddigger:

“I understand the woman is a nurse. Think of it, Peter Kent marrying a nurse!” 

“What’s wrong with a nurse?” Mason asked.

“Everything,” she replied, “so far as Peter Kent is concerned. She has to work for a living.”

“And a mighty fine thing,” Mason said. “I like women who work for a living.”

In Velvet Claws, the first Mason novel, published in 1933, Mason mentions that Della’s family was rich and lost its money (the Great Depression, which began in 1929, was a recent event), so Della had to work.

Gorilla is mostly a book about men – perhaps appropriately, considering the gorilla theme! But Helen Cadmus, the beautiful stenographer who hoped for a movie career before disappearing from a ship, is shown in her diaries as sensitive and intelligent, and Fern Blevins, although no rocket scientist, has a lot of what used to be described as moxie. We can say that even the women in the stories who define themselves in relation to men, also have their own lives to lead.

Race

The same can be said about Gardner’s attitudes toward race. As a practicing attorney Gardner specialized in representing Chinese immigrants, so he had experience with treating members of minorities as individuals rather than as stereotypes. The early books do contain portraits of grinning Negroes, devious Asians, and shiftless Hispanics (for example, in 1940 in Baited Hook); but quite soon these are replaced by a different attitude: “minorities” are people, with feelings, ideas, and experiences of their own. In the late novel Fabulous Fake (1969) Mason defends a young black man pro bono; the man has been accused of theft because he is walking through a white neighborhood carrying a paper bag (his lunch) when a robbery takes place, and is only exonerated when someone else is arrested for the crime.

Gorilla handles race in a particularly interesting way, by using Chinese culture as a recurrent theme. The restaurant staff behaves in what could be considered a stereotypical way, with the waiter portrayed as stolid and imperturbable. Perry and Della discuss their “fortunes” seriously, speculating on the roles of fate and chance. Later, when a client is upset, Perry quotes the fortune he received, “Courage is the only antidote for danger” – particularly appropriate for his life – and recommends familiarity with Asian proverbs. At the end of the book, another “fortune” provides the book’s emotional conclusion.

Gardner’s treatment of an ethnic group, then, shows nuance and creativity. Whatever his prejudices and inherited limitations may have been, he ordinarily treats people as people.

Writing style

Could Gardner “write well” – was he a “good writer” – and are not the Perry Mason books in fact badly written? Gardner built his career by producing on demand: he wrote what he needed to in order to make a living. But when style was required, he was excellent, as many of his short stories attest. Consider the following, the opening of the short story “The Valley of Little Fears” (published 1948, possibly written earlier). I love the rhythms of this passage, and how much it accomplishes in a short space:

This thing is true of the desert, the first time you feel its spell you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it. If you hate it, your hatred will be founded on fear.

Those who know the desert claim you never change that original reaction, no matter how long you live in the sandy wastes. In that they’re wrong. I know of one case where the rules didn’t work. The desert is hard to figure, and you can’t make rules about it.

The Perry Mason books put a premium on dialogue and on speedy narrative. The jacket cover notes (author unattributed) to Seven Complete Novels (Avenel Books, 1979), in an excellent critical evaluation of Gardner’s writing style in the Mason books, points out that

Each of these stories is a murder mystery written with stunning economy of characterization and dialogue, moving from an intriguing beginning, through intricate plots and subplots, to the crescendo of a battle of wits and expertise in the courtroom to a climax that is always unexpected.

Arguments about “good writing” tend to point toward a generalized notion of “beautiful style”, and often to forget that to be “good,” writing must succeed at the purpose for which it is intended. Gardner’s purpose is fast-moving narrative and dialogue. This purpose lends itself to dictation – a method of writing suited to a dialogue-centric style – and Gardner did frequently dictate his books. This practice may not be a flaw, though; perhaps partly as a result, the speeches in the books are varied, well characterized, lively with slang and idiom, and, needless to say, fast-paced.

While Gardner’s dictating his books may have contributed to their lack of “literary” style, it also surely contributed to the quality of the dialogue, which is colloquial, character-based, and flexible.

It is true that Gardner has his favorite expressions – many times someone is said to “take a button and sew a vest on it” – but for this reader at least, such affection for particular phrases is part of the charm of the series.

Subjects of particular interest

But there are two subjects in the Mason books (in addition to crime and the law, of course) on which Gardner writes with particular eloquence, two subjects dear to his heart: the undeveloped American West and wilderness, and dogs. In particular, as a writer he seems almost to relax (as do Perry and Della) when his stories leave the cities and head for the mountains and the deserts, as in Drowsy Mosquito (1943), Rolling Bones (1939), and many short stories. He seldom bothers to describe the physical properties of a scene unless it involves the desert or the mountains:

Down below the desert stretched interminably. The tall, weird shapes of the Joshua palms cast long, angular shadows. Over on the right snow-capped mountains turned to a rosy glow in the rays of the setting sun. Then the desert gave way to mountains, piling up in jagged, tumbled peaks until the crests became covered with dark green pines. A lake flashed into view. (Runaway Corpse, 1954)

As for dogs, Gardner loved them; they play a role in the plots of several books, and Mason displays deep familiarity with their behavior, as for example in this passage from Drowning Duck (1942):

“They’re nice dogs,” Mason said. “Peculiar thing about canine psychology. They hurl a challenge at you, and you stand still and look at them, and, as we lawyers say, ‘the issue is joined.’ You keep right on going about your business, and show absolutely no fear, and almost any dog is inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Gardner was not anti-cat, however; the behavior of Careless Kitten (1942) is crucial to the solution of the plot, and it is one of two books named for cats, as well as for birds and other animal life.

Aside from his interest in the west and in animals, Gardner is consistently interested in what goes on in life. Subjects as varied as racetracks, modern art, corporate management, beauty contests, real estate, ducks, photography, detergents, casinos, waiting on tables, farm-bred trout, Hollywood, motel management, prospecting all are grist for his mill.

Aristotelian structure

The Perry Mason books have both internal and external climaxes. The external is the moment when the case swings Perry’s way. As with classical Greek tragedy, this is followed by a denouement, in which the situation is resolved, sometimes (though by no means always, as it sometimes seemed on TV) with the public confession of the guilty party. The internal climax is the moment when Mason suddenly sees the true configuration of the events of the mystery. (This is equivalent to Nero Wolfe’s pushing his lips in and out, in the Rex Stout mystery novels, but for Mason it happens in various ways.) This moment is always at least implied in a Mason book; sometimes it is not described, but we know it must have occurred. The false connections melt away, and Perry understands what must have really happened.

The structure of the Mason novels is in fact highly Aristotelian, typically including an exposition, a rising action, an inciting incident (almost always the murder), a climax, and an unraveling. However, Mason is not a tragic hero; instead, he is both the protagonist and the one who restores order to a society torn apart by the worst of all crimes, murder. His client is innocent too (with a qualified exception or two), at least of murder – not always of wrong behavior. Frequently clients get themselves in trouble by making dubious decisions (for example, in Screaming Woman of 1957, Perry’s client, a salesman, tries to talk his way out of being arrested by the police, with the opposite result). Many of the books provide examples, and very often the clients lie to their attorney as well as to the police.

Lawyers

Perry Mason is a lawyer. To Gardner, who was himself a resourceful and capable attorney, this is explanation enough for Mason’s actions. A lawyer’s duty is to fight for the client. On the other hand, it is worth noting that although Gardner holds in the highest esteem the ideals of the legal profession, he does not idolize lawyers as such. The Mason books are full of inept or crooked ones, like Nathaniel Shuster in The Caretaker’s Cat (1935), Banner Boles (not a practicing attorney, but trained in the law and all the more dangerous on that account) in Lucky Loser (1957), or the excellently named “Old Attica, the shyster” in Half-Wakened Wife (1945).

In Gorilla Mason finds himself teamed with the young attorney James Etna. The two attorneys exercise considerable professional caution before they join on the case, and collegiality once they do. Mason always observes legal etiquette, and makes sure his young associate gets to take part in cross-examination at the trial, although he also keeps him in line – explaining why, so his junior associate will be able to grow. Sidney Hardwick, a lawyer for another group of characters in the story, is resourceful and willing to use the status of his client to manipulate the district attorney’s office for his own purposes. He gives the impression that he works the margins of the law as Mason does; one also gets the impression that his faith in justice is as not as high.

As an attorney, surely Mason appeals to readers everywhere because he returns his phone calls. Anyone who has tried to get a lawyer – or anyone else – to call back knows how glorious this is. Mason may not answer his mail (he hates to), but when a client needs him, he is there. No wonder he doesn’t like unimportant cases.

Gardner periodically mentions that Mason has multiple clients, and occasionally introduces one; on the TV show it generally seems as though he has only one client at a time, and devotes all his attention to that one person. In the books we see Mason accepting pro bono work (Hesitant Hostess, 1953), and shifting appointments so he can concentrate on the most important case of the moment. The man can prioritize. His clients are of all sorts – young and old, rich and poor, attractive and unattractive, cooperative and uncooperative, sympathetic and unlikable, naive and manipulative, sometimes pure as the driven snow, sometimes so shifty that they ought to be guilty, even if in fact they’re not.

Gardner, like Abraham Lincoln in his days as a trial lawyer, enjoyed tricky defense strategies – not dishonest ones, but strategies that take advantage of every nook and cranny of the law. We see Mason home late at night, reading the advance decisions (Hesitant Hostess). He keeps a file of unusual decisions (Singing Skirt, 1959), as did my father, also a lawyer. [Kirk’s grandfather, also a lawyer, founded the firm in which his father practiced and wrote a chronicle of his life as an attorney over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Kirk composed “A Lawyer and a Life” (11 November 2010) for ROT based on that memoir. –ed.] The fact is that Mason stretches the limits of the law in order to carry out what he considers (to borrow Star Trek terminology) its Prime Directive: to represent and defend his client to the best of his ability. This principle often leads him to the edge of both trouble and the law. One sympathizes with the police.

Judges

Gardner doesn’t spend a lot of time personalizing judges; they almost certainly appear as they would to a lawyer – fairly remote figures with individual traits worth noting primarily for strategic reasons. Mason is on personal terms with some (1954’s Restless Redhead, the posthumously published Fenced In Woman of 1972, 1965’s Beautiful Beggar), and he does his best to gain an advantage from what he knows of a judge’s personality (Careless Cupid, 1968).

Some judges in the series are tougher than others. None are visibly corrupt or unable at least to listen to Perry’s arguments, although many express strong reservations about Perry’s tricks, especially his habit of turning preliminary hearings into conclusive trials. But the ethos of the books requires that Mason have at least a fair chance before the Court, something he seldom gets from the police or the District Attorney.

In another installment of this article we will look at how the practice of law is presented in the Perry Mason books, and at the interesting “family” structure that Gardner develops as the series of novels progresses.

[Kirk notes above that the Mason books are still popular and selling well even after over half a century in print.  Apparently that wasn’t always the case.  Kirk told me that the Mason novels were out of print for some years at one point, but are now being reissued by Ankerwycke, which is the publishing arm of . . . the American Bar Association!  (I never knew that the ABA had a “publishing arm”!  I imagine Gardner was an ABA member, but they must feel Perry Mason is a good ambassador for the profession.)

[I hope readers enjoyed the first part of Kirk’s “Perry Mason.”  Log back on to Rick On Theater in three days to pick up Part 2 of Kirk’s discussion of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries.  There’s plenty more yet to be said (including a brief look at the popular TV series as it relates to the books), as I’m sure you’ll discover.]

"History of Valentine’s Day"

[In the past, I’ve published posts marking various holidays when the schedule for Rick On Theater coincides with the date of celebration.  I thought, since today’s Valentine’s Day, that a history of the unofficial holiday celebrating romantic love would be fun.  The article below was posted originally on the website History.com in 2009 and has been reposted annually (at http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day).  I’ve amended the History version a little to include some dates of figures and events mention in the article]

Every February 14, across the United States and in other places around the world, candy, flowers and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint, and where did these traditions come from? Find out about the history of this centuries-old holiday, from ancient Roman rituals to the customs of Victorian England.

THE LEGEND OF ST. VALENTINE

The history of Valentine’s Day—and the story of its patron saint—is shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?

DID YOU KNOW? Approximately 150 million Valentine's Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine's Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas.

The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine [226-269 CE] was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II [Claudius Gothicus, 210-270 CE] decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death [on 14 February].

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl—possibly his jailor’s daughter—who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and—most importantly—romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.

ORIGINS OF VALENTINE’S DAY: A PAGAN FESTIVAL IN FEBRUARY

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial—which probably occurred around A.D. 270—others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

VALENTINE’S DAY: A DAY OF ROMANCE

Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”—at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius [reigned 492-496 CE] declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans [1394-1465], to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt [25 October 1415]. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V [b. 1386; reigned 1413-22] hired a writer named John Lydgate [1370-1451] to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois [1401-37; Queen Consort of England, 1420-22].

TYPICAL VALENTINE’S DAY GREETINGS

In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings.

Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland [1828-1904] began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.” Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.) Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.

[Valentine’s Day 2018 coincides with Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent in the Christian religion.  The cultural clash has been covered extensively in news reports so I won’t replicate them.  I will note, however, that the calendrical coincidence is the first since 14 February 1945—73 years ago—and won’t occur again until 14 February 2024 and 2029—six and 11 years from now.  (In a further temporal concurrence, Easter Sunday, the end of Lent, will fall this year on 1 April . . . also known as April Fool’s Day.)]