Legal Laughs

Judge Henry Cecil Leon (1902 - 1976), who wrote under the pen name Henry Cecil, served as a County Court Judge in England from 1949 until 1967.  Judge Leon was a very prolific author turning out one comic novel after the other about lawyers, judges and the legal system

The book which I just finished, Brief Tales From the Bench (1968), is a collection of comic short stories told from the first person perspective of a County Court Judge.  Of the eight stories in the collection, four are said to be “Embellished but based on an actual case.”  The remaining four are fiction.

“Contempt of Court” is about how the Judge can hold a man in contempt of Court for saying the exact same things about the Judge that the Judge’s wife says about him.  Another involves a student whose father refuses to pay the schoolmaster tuition because his son has learned how to be a criminal at the school.  In “Perjury” “Judge Cecil” has to determine which witness is lying.  “Chef’s Special” involves a guest suing a hotel for breach of contract when he receives the “Fawlty Towers” treatment.  “Retrial” involves a convicted shoplifter suing the store which prosecuted him for damages for liable.  “The Hidden Money” involves a man who tried to hide assets from his wife during a divorce.  “The Truth” is another case in which the Judge must determine which witness is truthful.  “Made To Measure” involves a man with very eccentric tastes who refuses to pay for a custom made suit.

Judge Henry Cecil Leon

Here is my favorite quote from the book: “People are so very polite, not to say obsequious to judges that there is a danger that a judge may think he is just as important out of court as he is in court, when in fact he is not.  It is the office which is important, not the man.  This is easy to state, but not always so easy, for an average person like myself, to remember.”

The humor (or should I say “humour”) is very British.   The stories are very amusing and this provides light entertainment with a lesson.  The Bad Catholic gives Tales From the Bench three gavels out of five.  

Eclectic Reading

At long last here's the list of the books I read in 2011. The list only contains books that I finished and completely read. It does not include the tons of books that I skimmed through or read bits and pieces of.

1. Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her             Fiction Edited by Joanne Halleran McMullen   
2. The Twelfth Imam by Joel C. Rosenberg
3. Flannery O’Connor: A Life by Jean W. Cash    
4. Orient Express: An Entertainment by Graham Greene 
5. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch 
6. Travelers Along the Way: The Men and Women Who Shaped My Life by Benedict J. Groeschel 
7. It’s a Battlefield by Graham Greene 
8. One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty by The Heritage Foundation 
9. Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska 
10. The Lion, the Mouse, and the Dawn Treader: Spiritual Lessons from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia by Carl McColman 
11. England Made Me by Graham Greene  
12. Looking for the King by David Downing  
13.  Is God Still An Englishman: How We Lost Our Faith (But Found New Soul) By Cole Moreton
14. Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth by Oliver Hilmes  
15. Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin by Mel Gordon 
16.  Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich 
17.  The Shining By Stephen King 
18. Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir by Geoffrey O’Brien 
19. Acts of Love by Roberta Latow 
20.  Seminary: A Search by Paul Hendrickson
21.  A Bullet for Cinderella by John D. MacDonald 
22.  The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain 
23.  Double Indemnity by James M. Cain Completed: August 27, 2011 
24. The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family by Andrew Himes  
25. Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden 
26.  Venus in Furs by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch 
27.  Ex-Virgin by Orrie Hitt 
28.  Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief by Joseph Pearce 
29.  The Inferno by Dante Aligheri Translated by Mark Musa 
30.  Havah: The Story of Eve by Tosca Lee
31. 11/22/63 by Stephen King 
32.  Ordinary People by Judith Guest 
33.  Testing the Faith: The New Catholic Fiction in America by Anita Gandolfo 

Stephen King's 11/22/63

I admit it. I got hooked. I let Stephen King work his magic on me. I sat up until one o’clock in the morning to finish King’s massive new tale 11/22/63. It was worth every minute. Stephen King is a master story teller. He may be the greatest living American writer. Since the publication of Carrie in the 1970s, King has told many grisly and spooky tales which have kept many readers awake at night.

11/22/63 is the story of a Maine schoolteacher named Jake Epping. (Other than Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, no fictional world is as fully realized as Stephen King’s Maine. Like Faulkner, King weaves references to his earlier novels into this story). Jake’s alcoholic wife has recently divorced him, and Jake is all alone in the world. Jake teaches the adult G.E.D. classes. A janitor named Hank writes an essay telling about how his alcoholic father murdered Hank’s mother and siblings one Halloween night and how it changed his life for the worse. Jake has a friend named Al who runs a diner. Al has discovered that his pantry is really a portal to the past. Like the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe if you keep walking toward the wall in Al’s pantry you eventually end in up in another world. Except in this case, it's always the same day in 1958. Al has been using the pantry doorway to go buy meat at 1958 prices and bring it back and sell it in 2011. Finally, Al gets the idea that he should use his doorway to the past for a greater purpose. What if he could go back in time and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963?

Al has gone back and tried to stop the assassination, but has contracted lung cancer. Even though he has spent years in the past, when he returns to the future it is only two minutes after he left. Al recruits his friend Jake to take up his mission to save John F. Kennedy. Part of Jake's mission is to make sure that Oswald acted alone and that there was no conspiracy. King is convinced that Oswald acted alone. (King realizes that a conspiracy is actually comforting. A conspiracy means that a group of smart people planned the death of the President. The thought that one nut with a cheap rifle can change history is what's scary).

King spends the first several hundred pages of this 842 page novel setting his hook on the reader. You come to care about Jake and care about the subplots which King has masterfully woven into the story. 11/22/63 may also contain one of the best love stories of the last few years. While waiting to confront Oswald, Jake falls in love with a woman from the past. In fact, he may be willing to sacrifice the future for her . . .

As we all know from watching Star Trek, monkeying about with the past is a tricky business. Jake Epping finds out exactly how tricky. With his left-leaning politics, King realizes that keeping Kennedy alive is a liberal dream. King is also aware of the old adage, “be careful what you want, you might get it.”

King spends a good bit of time feeling nostalgic for the late fifties and early sixties. Everybody smoked without guilt. The milkman delivered real milk and real cream. Gas was cheap and plentiful and big gas guzzling cars were cool. The food tasted better and people left their back doors unlocked. There is also a dark side to what King calls “The Land of Ago.” There is racism and sexism and you can’t get instant answers from the internet. All in all, King likes the Land of Ago a lot better than “The Land of Ahead.” The Bad Catholic advice, gentle reader, is go get hooked. 11/22/63 is a haunting book that will give you much to ponder long after the telling of the tale is done. Let Fisherman King dangle the bait in front of you, and swallow it hook, line and sinker. Then sit back and let him reel you in. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have been caught by a master.

Havah: The Story of Eve

The “Christian novel” has been the subject of much derision, including some gentle knocking from yours truly in a previous post.  However, the usual flaws of the “Christian novel” (which include plastic cardboard cutout characters who walk around holding Bible study at every opportunity) are not present in the book presently under consideration.  In fact, I cannot find enough good things to say about Havah: The Story of Eve (B&H Publishing Group, 2010) by Tosca Lee.

Author Tosca Lee

The basis of Ms. Lee’s novel is the first five chapters of the Book of Genesis.  Taking the Biblical narrative seriously, Lee weaves a compelling portrait of what the Garden of Eden must have been like for Adam and Eve (“Havah”) before the first sin was committed.  Her descriptions of life in paradise are imaginative and well conceived.  Ms. Lee’s well written conception of how the world must have changed after the Fall from Grace is some of the best imaginative fiction which I have read in a long time.

 An imaginative photo of author Tosca Lee

In scene after scene, Ms. Lee scores a home run in her narrative which Bible readers will find familiar but also very new.  The reader comes away with the feeling that if the Bible is taken literally this must be very close to what it was really like.

Tosca Lee with the "cowgirl" look

After the initial sin, Adam and Eve begin being repulsed by the killing of animals for clothing and the eating of meat.  As time goes on, however, these things become commonplace.  As their long lives go on, the memories of the Garden of Paradise grow dim.  As their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren become farther removed from God, sin and troubles increase.  And these troubles include disease and natural disasters.  Ms. Lee has brilliantly concocted a story in which the reader is made acutely aware that the world that we live in is not like God intended it to be.

Author Tosca Lee with the "Elvira Mistress of the Dark" look.

I was fascinated that the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Havah is described as a dragon.  This explains how God then changes the Serpent from a creature who walked and flew to a creature that wriggles on the ground.  Although dragons no longer exist, the memory of the dragon stays in the human consciousness to be incorporated into legend and depicted in art.  The dragon is depicted as a creature which was merely the manifestation of the fallen angel Satan.

Ms. Lee also weaves a lot of good theology into her narrative.  The idea is put forward that there is no morality without choice and, therefore, the tempter had to be in the garden of paradise.  Adam and Eve had to be given a choice whether to obey God or rebel, otherwise they had no true free will.  Their bad decision forever binds their descendants and warps the world they live in.

Being written from the first person point of view of the first woman, some will probably describe Havah as "chick lit."  Indeed, with its descriptions of what it is like to be pregnant, this book could probably only have been written by a woman.  In the relationship between Adam and Eve, the novel does have a kind of  "romance novel" feel to it.  However, this is definitely not a Harlequin Romance novel.

According to Wikepedia, the author, Tosca Lee, “was born on December 1969 in Roanoke, Virginia to Sang Moon Lee and Laura Moncrief.  Her father, a first-generation Korean who initially entertained dreams of becoming an opera tenor before he went on to establish himself as a leading academic in the area of business management, named her after his favorite Puccini opera, “Tosca.”  Ms. Lee was the winner of the Mrs. Nebraska beauty pageant for 1996 and a runner up in the Mrs. U.S.A. pageant.  As well as being a writer and a model, she also works for Gallup.  Read an interview with Tosca Lee here.

Ms. Lee is obviously a woman of many faces.

In traditional rabbinic Judaism, Midrash is a storytelling technique that seeks to understand the
Biblical text by telling stories to fill in the gaps left in the Biblical narrative.  It seems to me that this is what Ms. Lee’s novel really is: modern day Midrash.  Havah is a very enlightening and entertaining novel.  Highly recommended.

The mysterious "Girl Next Door" Look (Love the Black Fingernail Polish!)

Tosca Lee as Mrs. Nebraska 1996

The Bad Catholic loves the swim suit competition!

Book Blogger Hop

Here's the Book Blogger Hop question for this week: What is your favorite spooky book? The Bad Catholic Answer: The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons. Something just ain't right with that brand new designer home in suburban Atlanta. Do the neighbors just have bad luck or is it something much more sinister?

Book Blogger Hop

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Rumer Godden's FIVE FOR SORROW, TEN FOR JOY

Rumer Godden (1907 - 1998) was a prolific author who wrote over sixty books during the course of her long life.  Godden was the author of the three best novels of all time about nuns: Black Narcissus (1939), In This House of Brede (1969), and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy (1979).


In 1979, when Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy was published, Rumer Godden was seventy two years old and had led a long and distinguished career as a best selling author. As her biographerAnne Chisolm notes,

“It was a time when novels like Rumer’s were in a critical and commercial shadow; long disregarded by the fashionable and avant garde, her books were too gentle and well-mannered for a mass readership fed by blockbusters of the Jackie Collins or Harold Robbins variety.” 

Chisolm notes that in her seventies Godden wrote eight books. Godden was still writing novels well into her eighties.  Her last book, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva, was published in 1997.

Rumer Godden

“Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy (1979) was a novel about an order of French Catholic nuns, the Dominican Sisters of Bethany, who worked with prisoners and prostitutes.  To write the story of Vivi, a child who grows up in a brothel, and the madam turned nun who tries to help her, Rumer spent six months improving her French; she then enlisted Dorothy Watson to go with her to France to visit courts, prisons and the back-streets of Paris.  Rumer was not above a little string-pulling to get what she wanted: the British Ambassador in Paris was asked to pass on a letter to the French justice minister from Harold Macmillan, who vouched for Rumer as ‘a person of the highest probity and discretion,’ who would be willing to submit her book for approval before publication.  Dorothy Watson, observing Rumer at work, was impressed with her stamina and determination.  They attended a murder trial, visited the women’s prison at Rennes and were driven round the roughest quarters of Paris in the small hours; Rumer then went to stay at the convent at Fontenailles where many of the postulants were ex-prisoners.  Two of the Sisters of Bethany were her special advisors. . . . Rumer made sure that in return for their help the Sisters of Bethany benefited financially from the book.  She also took an interest in the small, impoverished community that the order had set up in north London.  When she found out they could not afford to furnish their chapel, she undertook to do it by persuading ‘everyone who had benefited from my writing’ to help. . . . The book attracted some excellent reviews; the Financial Times called it ‘a very readable and dramatic story of manipulation, violence, double-dealing and redemption,’ while Auberon Waugh in the Evening Standard said it was ‘a first-class story, with a nice and unusual plot.’ *

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is the story of Elizabeth Fanshaw.  Elizabeth, known as Lise, is an orphan who has been reared by her spinster aunt.  Joining the British Army as a teenager during World War II, Lise is sent to France as a driver.  In Paris, Lise is seduced by Patrice, the owner of a high class brothel.  After becoming Patrice's lover, Lise is forced into a life of prostitution.  Lise becomes known as La Balafree, "the branded one'" after she is accidentally cut across the face in a fight between Patrice and a client who has fallen in love with her.  Ultimately,  Lise becomes the brothel's madame and manages the house for Patrice and his brother Emile.

Lise rescues a young girl named Vivi.  Vivi had been the victim of incest at the hands of her father and had been given refuge in an insane asylum during the German occupation of France.  Lise finds Vivi living on the streets of Paris and about to be arrested as a vagrant.  As Vivi gets older she becomes more beautiful.  Tension ensues when Patrice removes Lise as his mistress and replaces her with young Vivi.  Vivi, however, becomes bored with Patrice and seduces Luigi, a young Italian delivery boy.  Lise helps Vivi to escape the brothel and run away with Luigi.  When Patrice discovers that Vivi is gone, Lise is savagely beaten.   About a year later, Lise gets information that Patrice is about to kidnap Vivi and force her back into a life of prostitution.  Lise follows Patrice to Vivi’s doorstep where she shoots and kills him.  Lise has been mistaken, however.  It turns out that Vivi, now bored with her husband and neglectful of her baby, had herself contacted Patrice and asked him to take her back. 

Lise is sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.  During her years in prison, Lise becomes acquainted with the Sisters of Bethany who come to minister to the prisoners.  While still in prison, Lise begins preparing for religious life, and makes plans to enter the Sisters of Bethany following her release.  

Another prisoner, a young girl named Lucette, is released from prison at the same time as Lise. Although Lise tries to get rid of her, Lucette looks up to Lise as a role model  and is determined to follow Lise wherever she goes.  Lise then enters the convent and begins the long road to become a fully professed nun.  

Two real life Sisters of Bethany hold up a picture of the founders of the order, 

Mother Henri Dominque and Father Lataste, which was made by a prisoner.

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is about the intersection of Evil and Divine Grace in the lives of these three women: Lise, Vivi and Lucette.  The title, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, is a reference to the prayers of the rosary (sorrowful mysteries, joyful mysteries, and glorious mysteries).  When Lise finds Vivi on the streets of Paris, Vivi is carrying a rosary.  Later, after Vivi has betrayed Lise at her trial for murdering Patrice, Vivi sends the rosary to Lise in prison. Heartbroken and angry,  Lise breaks the strand of beads in two and sends it back to Vivi.  When Lise becomes a nun, although she intends to take the name "Sister Mary Lise of the Cross," she finds herself saying "Soeur Marie Lise du Rosaire" or "Sister Mary Lise of the Rosary."  Guilty over her treatment of Vivi, Lise is unable to say the rosary.  Lise's relationship to the prayers of the rosary and what happens to Vivi's broken rosary is an important theme of the novel.

  Our Lady of the Rosary

As in a number of her other novels, Godden has a unique story telling technique with relation to time.  Rather than just telling the story in a linear fashion, the novel, which is set in  the present  of the 1970's, is put together as a series of flashbacks to different periods in Lise's life.  The narrative is advanced through the past and present, with more and more of Lise's life being revealed throughout the novel.

Although Godden has been accused of merely writing a rehash of In This House of Brede, I think that Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is a very different kind of book.  Whereas In This House of Brede was concerned mostly with the inner action of the spiritual life, the subject matter of this novel can be described as a lurid melodrama.

Although some will find the melodramatic elements of the story to be over the top, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, has to rank as one of the best Catholic novels of the twentieth century.  It is also a very entertaining read with sufficient twists and suspense to keep the reader enthralled.  Rumor Godden was a very talented writer, and even when dealing with this potboiler material does not disappoint.  On a scale of one to five, the Bad Catholic gives Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy five Rosaries.

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*Chisolm, Anne, Rumer Godden: A Storyteller’s Life, Greenwillow Books (1998) p. 281 - 282