How Eccentric Are You? The Quiz

No, this was not an early prototype cover for the Sergeant Pepper album. Although I do understand how you could think this. 


What you are actually looking at is a picture of Lord Berners - the famous British composer, artist, author, homosexual, and raving eccentric - amid a colorful menagerie of weirdness. Berners was not known to pal around with prize horses and oversized flowers, but he was a recognized eccentric even in his own day. Undoubtedly, the graphic designer responsible for this collage felt that the man's essence could only be captured by pasting him into a twelve year old girl's surrealist fantasy; while this would not have been the route Miss Merricat chose, she cannot say that this picture is entirely unrepresentative of the man it features.

Berners was not the only famous eccentric Britain produced in the twentieth century.  The Mitford family, whom Berners knew, was as famous for its odd ways as it was for its bevy of beautiful, batty daughters. Not only did the sisters divide their loyalties between communism and fascism - just imagine Christmas conversation at this home! - but Nancy went on to author a series of well received novels. Her character, Lord Merlin, who enjoyed dipping pigeons into colored vats of paint and releasing them into the air to become "a cloud of confetti," is a thinly veiled version of Berners in his natural element. Like I said, the man was an A-1 weirdo.


Lest ye think that eccentric behavior and opinions are solely a pastime for our British brothers and sisters, remember Little and Big Edie Beale. Captured forever in the brilliant documentary Grey Gardens, one sees the two Beale women - cousins of Jackie Kennedy - navigating their way through a ramshackle house, traipsing outside in more clothes than Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen wear in a week, and making observations that could only be described as "unique." Although the Beales came to lack the financial independence of Lord Berners and the Mitfords, their approach to life and living was equally eccentric. None of these individuals were weird for the sake of being weird; they were simply deeply odd people who lacked the desire, or the energy, to hide their batshit notions and pastimes from the world around them.

Miss Merricat respects them for their genuine lack of conformity and, occasionally, wishes her own childhood had been a bit less suburban and a bit more medieval. Would it have killed my parents to raise my sister and I in a decaying villa in some god forsaken rural parish? Couldn't they have even tried to induce a family ghost to haunt our premises and our dreams? Did all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins have to be so unrelentingly normal? I think at least one of them could have fallen on their sword for the rest of the family and lived a life of complete aestheticism and reckless abandon. Rather than end up with the sort of childhood Dodie Smith relates in I Capture the Castle, I ended up with something much more normal. 

You, however, may be luckier than I. If you have ever thought you were eccentric, but lacked the diagnostic tool necessary for a formal diagnosis of "weird," this is your lucky day. To find out just how weird - or normal - you are, read on. 

How Eccentric Are You? 

Quiz Edition

(1) The place where you live is accessible via:

      (A) Asking for directions at the Tastee Freeze off route 10.

      (B) Calling Albert Maysles and asking for your home's GPS coordinates.

      (C) Bus lines 14, 24, 27, and 67.

(2) Your house can be identified by:

      (A) The sign that reads "Little Paddocks," which hangs above the front door.

      (B) Its ramshackle, ivy-covered turrets, and the all encompassing smell of decay.

      (C) Its numerical address, which can clearly be seen on Google Earth.

(3) In your free time you:

      (A) Take long walks in your moor-free neighborhood, the moors having been pushed out when the 35th Starbucks opened on this block.

      (B) Traipse along the moors, in nothing but a pair of Wellies, communing with nature.

      (C) Thank god that you are geographically separated from anything moor-like. 

(4) Would you say that you are artistically gifted and/or a polymath?

      (A) I can complete a simple sudoku puzzle while simultanesouly watching television and snacking on Kettle Chips.

      (B) I speak twelve languages, have composed five symphonies, and am up for the Nobel prize in chemistry this year. Plus, I'm only 10 and a half.

      (C) Math and I do not get along.

(5) On a walk near your home, you are likely to encounter:

      (A) Three stray cats and the neighbor that called the cops on your ten person Halloween party several years back.

      (B) Rodents, raccoons, opossums, the Hound of the Baskervilles, and, on alternate Fridays, the ghost of Peter Maysles.

      (C) So many a**holes you cannot even BEGIN to list them all.

(6) Your family reunion consists of:

      (A) Your immediate family and your grannie, whose dementia forces her to swear like a sailor. 

      (B) Your parents (Favre and Muv), your siblings (Unity, Topaz, Tyrwhitt, Polly, and Pelham), your cousins (Little Hettie and Big Hettie), and your pets (Abelard and Heloise).

      (C) Dinner at a chain restaurant with your mom and stepfather. The awesome blossom  is totally on them.

So, how much of an eccentric are you? Add up the number of A's, B's, and C's you received and then check out the table below. 


Mostly A's = Almost Eccentric
Mostly B's = Batty as a Beale
Mostly C's = Clearly a Cleaver


If you somehow managed to acquire an even number of two of the letters - or, even more shocking - an even number of all THREE letters, then you are even weirder than this test could have imagined. Well, that or you cheated. Congratulations, on being a (cheating?) super-weirdo!

Almost Eccentric

Try as you might, you are just not that odd. Although you do have some unusual hobbies, habits, and predilections, you are fairly normal by comparison. Your home is in a semi-populated region, is not overrun by wild animals and endangered muskrats, and your family is so boringly normal that they are almost gauche. Were any of them arrested at all last year? Even for taking part in an ill advised political or social protest? No? See - boring. You do try to compensate for your stultifying normality by acquiring and expressing "quirky" mannerisms, like wearing pajamas outside or trying to repopularize the deerstalker cap. Sadly, no one is fooled. We all just think you have bad fashion sense (on top of being such a normie.) My advice would be to either accept your normality, quickly, or work on acquiring a few of the following: a family ghost; a run down castle in the Scottish Highlands; siblings who join fringe social movements and/or cults (note that you need a minimum of two siblings in different groups for this to be an option); or simultaneous world-wide acclaim for your newest contribution to string theory and for your smash hit opera. I am not saying that tackling any of these will be easy, but they really are your only shot at moving from wishfully weird to truly eccentric. Best of luck, dearie.

Batty as a Beale

My, you are an odd duck. You are not, by any chance, the reincarnation of Little (or Big) Edie Beale, are you? I have to ask. Not only do you live in relative seclusion, in an area that makes no man's land look like Times Square, but your house is literally a breeze away from collapsing on you and the family of meerkats who live in the cellar. Which would be a shame, because your house is overflowing with your artistic and intellectual output: your oil paintings; your letters to the President and his cabinet; your memoir revealing what nasty thing you saw in the woodshed all those years ago; and your formula for a natural deodorant that actually works. In fact, you are so weird - and live so far off the grid - that it amazes me you were able to find and complete an internet based personality quiz. (AT&T's coverage must be a lot better than it used to be.) Clearly, you are odd enough to need no advice from someone like Miss Merricat. However, it is the season of giving, so I will pass some along to you anyway. If a documentary crew ever shows up at your abode, and asks to film you, please condition your participation on them never allowing a feature film version - with professional actors - to be made of your life. The last thing you need is to be portrayed by Drew (normal-as-all-hell) Barrymore. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Clearly a Cleaver

My, you are normal. Too normal, even. Are you using your overwhelming normality as a cover to get away with nefarious deeds? Secret trysts? Serial killing spree? Addiction to snorting Pixy Stix? I certainly fear so. No one could possibly be as boringly normal as you are on a day to day basis without committing a few serious felonies here and there. Might I make a suggestion? Rather than live as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, why not split the difference and live as a semi-weird person on a day to day basis? Think of all the money you could save on attorneys, chemistry equipment, trash bags, and candy. (The Willy Wonka company does not need ten percent of your annual household income.) You may not end up looking like a true eccentric but, then again, you would not want to. The police always suspect those people first and you have more than a few skeletons to hide. (Not literally, I hope. Otherwise, Miss Merricat will be forced to report you to the proper authorities. Sorry.)

Crushed to see that this quiz has come to an end? Me too. Now we both have to get back to being productive: feeding the raccoons in the cellar, distressing the 17th century wing of the house, scheduling a date for Albert Maysles to come by. Nothing but work work work all the time. And you know what raccoons are like . . . all rabies and attitude. Never a word of thanks. If it were not for the hundreds of adoring fans I have worldwide, it just would not be worthwhile.

Luckily for you, I'll be back with another totally meaningless quiz sometime in the near future. Do try to contain your excitement; you would not want to keel over before the new quiz arrives. That would be tragic.

Curiouser and Curiouser: The Mystery Fiction of G.K. Chesterton & Edmund Crispin

In his youth, Robert Bruce Montgomery was a self described “intellectual snob.” Although his snobbery may have reared its head on several different fronts simultaneously, one thing his intellectual pretensions kept him far away from was mystery fiction.  (Christie, David A. "(Robert) Bruce Montgomery." British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1940: First Series. Ed. Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley. )

Were it not for John Dickson Carr’s The Crooked Hinge, the mystery novel Montgomery read at the prompting of a friend, he may never have overcome his aversion.  Prior to reading Carr, Montgomery felt that detective stories were beneath him; after finishing The Crooked Hinge, he went on to author a series of outstanding mystery novels under the pen name of Edmund Crispin.

Like Montgomery, I have a complicated relationship with mysteries. While I have always appreciated good writing, regardless of the genre it is packaged under, the intellectual snob within has some distinct reservations about much of what is labeled and sold as mystery fiction. To quote Kingsley Amis’s introduction to a series of Father Brown stories, I have always believed – and still believe – that the mystery fiction genre is divided into two types of works:  detective stories; and, “detective stor[ies] with a difference, or several differences.”  (G.K. Chesterton, Selected Stories. Ed. Kingsley Amis.) Mysteries in the former category may be highly entertaining to read, but they are formulaic, plot heavy devices. One reads frantically through them in search of the answers – Who? What? How? Oh my! – and turns the last page without a second thought. Rereading such a book would be a farce; by relying so heavily on plot, and on convention, these works forget about the traditional elements of the novel that set a good book apart from a mediocre one: the delineation of character; the description of people and places; and the use of language that is both beautiful and evocative. The second category of mystery novels, those Amis refers to as mysteries with a difference, manage to combine the traditional elements of the mystery genre and the novel with something which is original and clever. Those authors who write mysteries with a difference – Georges Simenon instantly comes to mind – challenge our conceptions of what a mystery is and what it can be in the future.  Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time is the perfect example of a novel that broadened and reinvigorated the mystery form; despite the temporal lapse between its “crime” – the murder of Richard III’s nephews in the tower – and its detective – an ailing twentieth century police inspector – Tey managed to create a wholly original novel that was eminently literary, suspenseful, and moving.

Edmund Crispin and G.K. Chesterton also wrote detective stories with a difference. Like Crispin, Chesterton had not intended to become a mystery novelist. Trained in fine art at the Slade, he turned his back on an artistic career in favor of the life of a reviewer, journalist, and poet. His mystery fiction was born of a need to “subsidize a series of weekly newspapers: the Eye Witness , later the New Witness, which he founded with his brother Cecil and Hilaire Belloc in 1911; and its successor G.K.'s Weekly , which Chesterton edited from 1925 until his death on 14 June 1936.” (Leitch, Thomas M. "G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton." British Mystery Writers, 1860-1919. Ed. Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley.)

Despite its humble origins, the mystery fiction G.K. Chesterton authored is anything but run of the mill commercial work. Chesterton’s stories – which include both stand alone mysteries as well as mysteries starring his amateur detective, Father Brown – are small masterpieces of both description and logic.  In all of Chesterton’s work there is an:

inexhaustible fascination with the outward appearance of things, not only with the effects of light upon them but with the things in themselves: landscape and seascape, streets, shops, gardens, the outsides and insides of houses, ornaments, knick-knacks of every possible kind, details of dress and costume – and, more than any of these, the lineaments of the human beings inside the costume. Nobody, I think, would call Chesterton a great characterizer of the inner selves of men and women, but one would have to turn to a writer on the scale of his beloved Dickens to find a better representer of how they look.

(From Kingsley Amis’s introduction to: G.K. Chesterton, Selected Stories. Ed. Kingsley Amis.)

Chesterton’s frequent descriptions are rendered with the kind of detail and precision one would expect of a classically trained artist as well as with an uncommon degree of humor. Take, for example, Chesterton’s description of Glengyle Castle, the location for his Father Brown story, “The Honour of Israel Gow.” The story begins thus:

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in step roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scottish chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens.

           (G.K. Chesterton, Selected Stories. Ed. Kingsley Amis.)

These detailed descriptions of places, people, and things, allowed Chesterton to create tension and atmosphere without having to sacrifice the simplicity of his plot lines. The mood builds through the word choices he makes, and the comparisons he draws, rather than through an accumulation of nefarious happenings.

Chesterton was an advocate of simple mysteries: "the secret may appear complex, but it must be simple; and in this also it is a symbol of higher mysteries." The author has given the reader the handful of clues necessary for the mystery’s successful resolution; whether the reader is able to “solve” the case depends not on her being able to keep up with the plot twists but with her ability to see “the world of the story in a completely new way, a way [she has] never suspected before.” The detective story is, ultimately, a kind of logic puzzle in which the reader “is not really wrestling with the criminal but with the author.” (Leitch, Thomas M. "G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton." British Mystery Writers, 1860-1919. Ed. Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley.)

“The Honour of Israel Gow” is an excellent example of the mystery story as logic puzzle. In this story, Father Brown is looking into the death of the master of Glengyle Castle. The circumstances of his death are shadowy, at best, and there is a puzzling array of clues:  a stash of loose “precious stones;” “heaps and heaps” of loose snuff; “curious little heaps of minute pieces of metal;” and wax candles, without candle holders.  Scotland Yard’s Inspector Craven, who is also at the scene, challenges Father Brown (and the reader) to successfully resolve the case as “by no stretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose clockwork.” Whether one is able to work out how these pieces fit together – and Miss Merricat was not when she first read this story – Father Brown’s solution to the case comes like a revelation of clear thinking. Rather than feel anger at the author for failing to provide you with the needed clues, the reader is left frustrated with herself for her inability to see the obvious truth before her eyes.

While some of Chesterton’s stories are easier to reason out than others, he rarely fails to provide the reader with the clues she needs to work out the story for herself. Partially, this is due to Chesterton’s belief that the story should act as a kind of logical game, as a way for the reader to test her wits against those of the fictionalized detective. But his meticulous fairness to his readers stems from another source as well: he believed that “a reader who [was] given the opportunity to discover the secret of a detective story [was] thereby offered a model for perceiving the world of God's reason.” (Leitch, Thomas M. "G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton." British Mystery Writers, 1860-1919. Ed. Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley.) The spiritual world, which Chesterton strongly believed in, was a mirror for the fictional world of the detective story; the deceptively simple secrets of each would be revealed to those who approached them with patience and with logic.

As a Catholic, much of Chesterton’s work is infused with traditional notions of right and wrong:  he, “unabashedly, used the structure and figures of detective fiction as a vehicle for dramatizing [his] moral and eschatological view of the world.”  (Leitch, Thomas M. "G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton." British Mystery Writers, 1860-1919. Ed. Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley.) For some of his contemporaries, including George Orwell, this was his main fault. By failing to keep his personal ideology separate from the poetry and prose he composed, he was apt to imbue his work with – sometimes objectionable – religious and political imagery.

In addition to the Father Brown stories, Chesterton also authored poetry and nonfiction. In some of these works, Chesterton expressed his most unappealing character trait: his anti-Semitism.  Some critics have tried to salvage Chesterton from this accusation by insisting that numerous members of British society were anti-Semitic during the 1920’s; they somehow feel that by making his bigotry appear commonplace, a societal ill rather than a personal failing, they can redeem the man. While these critics may be well intentioned, their premise is completely unsound: we cannot ignore his prejudice merely because it was shared by others. Chesterton is a racist bigot by contemporary standards, and he “was a racist bigot even by the standards of his time.” (Beckett, Francis. "G K and A K: a tale of two anti-Semites." New Statesman (1996). 126.4323 (28 Feb. 1997): p46.) As one who believed in moral absolutes, Chesterton himself would not have exempted another’s conduct from reprobation simply because the individual was not on the extreme fringes of society. Wrong was wrong, no matter how often one encountered it.

Although it does not excuse his beliefs, nor mitigate their harmfulness, it would be unfair of me to fail to mention Chesterton’s strong opposition to Hitler. As Amis notes, “he was quick to speak out against the rise of Hitlerism, rather quicker, in fact, than some social democrats of the period.” (From Kingsley Amis’s introduction to: G.K. Chesterton, Selected Stories. Ed. Kingsley Amis.)

Chesterton was a bigot, but he was also a fine mystery writer.  Whether the former cancels out the latter is something you will have to decide for yourself; while I cannot look at some of Chesterton’s poems, or nonfiction, without feeling nauseated by his beliefs, most of the Father Brown stories remain untainted for me. Lacking complicated plot structures, grisly crimes, or an overly eccentric amateur sleuth, these stories function as both artfully constructed logic puzzles as well as entertaining feasts of description.  They are also, dare I say it, often quite funny.

Humor is at the heart of Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen series. Fen, an Oxford professor, solves crimes in a manner that can only be described as madcap; if P.G. Wodehouse were to have taken up the mystery mantle, I think his efforts must have come very close to those of Crispin. There are zany car/boat/foot chases; impossible, and impossibly silly, crime scenes; and characters so bumbling that Fen is simply forced to insult them. Repeatedly.

Like Chesterton, Crispin was keen to provide his reader with all of the clues necessary for the solution of the case. As Fen asks in The Case of the Gilded Fly:

You've had all the facts that I've had; more, you've had a lot of them at firsthand; they give you everything you want. Do you honestly mean to tell me you still don't know what this is all about?

Despite being provided with all of the clues necessary, most readers will find Crispin’s puzzles less than simple to decipher. As a fan of John Dickson Carr – the recognized master of the so-called locked room mystery – Crispin’s work typically involves a seemingly impossible crime. In order to help the reader work out how the murder could have been committed, his books come complete with a detailed map to the crime scene and its environs.

What Crispin brought to the pantheon of impossible crime stories is a wholly unique protagonist; in Gervase Fen he created a completely amoral detective who was both a moody and pompous academic as well as a childlike eccentric. To watch Fen reason out how a crime occurred, and why, is to receive a thoroughly entertaining advanced course in logic.

Like Chesterton, Crispin was a political conservative. He believed in middle class Britain's values and work ethic, although he labeled himself as "a lazy person essentially, and of a sedentary habit." (As an aside, Miss Merricat finds this quote to be a wholly appropriate description of herself as well.) Although his politics occasionally crept into some of his later works, most of Crispin’s novels are remarkably free of moral or ideological judgments. The books are mysteries, but their resolutions are meant to tax the reader’s logical capacities – and her sense of humor – rather than her sense of the world and one’s place in it. Crispin is decidedly uninterested in ethics or epistemologies; any character who even ventures into such waters is apt to receive a rather hilarious drumming down from an irate Fen. (Christie, David A. "(Robert) Bruce Montgomery." British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1940: First Series. Ed. Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley.)

Although strikingly different as men, and authors, both Chesterton and Crispin used the precepts of the mystery genre to create original works that were wholly reflective of themselves and their interests. For Crispin, the mystery became an avenue to explore characterization, humor, and impish perversity. For Chesterton, it became another route by which to study paradox and revelation.


What both men shared is an idea of the mystery as something which should be solvable, a test that the careful and logical reader could master along with the amateur sleuth. There are no missing clues or shocking last minute revelations brought into the fray. There are only facts, clearly given, waiting for the reader to pick them up, examine them, and fit them into place. The picture that emerges from these disparate parts may or may not be one of jarring simplicity, but it comes into focus with a sense of awe that can only be called revelatory. 


As T.S. Eliot wrote, of another kind of mystery entirely:

the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started /and know the place for the first time. 

You Down with the OED revisions?

It’s that time of year again: the folks who edit the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) have released a list of the new words that have been incorporated as well as a list of existing words that have gained additional definitions or parts of speech. This list, which was released back in September, gives the stamp of approval to several words that you, me, and everyone we know have been using for decades – words like batshit, apeshit, and face plant. However, the new version of the OED also legitimizes a few words that Miss Merricat has either: (a) never heard of; or, (b) hoped to never hear uttered again.

What bizarre new words has the OED added to its lexicon? Well, several, but my two favorites happen to be “globaloney” and “hand relief.” (The meaning of globaloney you can probably figure out by yourself and, for those of you with dirty minds, the meaning of hand relief may be apparent as well.) As it is always fun to see how the brainy Brits behind the OED define things, here is their definition of globaloney:

          Globaloney, n.: Nonsensical or absurd talk or ideas concerning 
          global issues.

Although the OED traces this word back to 1943, when it was uttered by an American Congressman, Merricat feels positive that most contemporary readers will have no problem using it in a sentence. Here is my example: Everything that George W. Bush has ever said about world politics is globaloney.

Unlike globaloney, which is clearly a word you can throw around at work and in front of small children, “hand relief” has a more limited audience. Have you figured this one out all on your own? If not, here is how the Brits have defined it:

Hand relief, n. slang (chiefly Brit.): Manual stimulation of the (male) genitals to orgasm, esp. performed on one person by another as a paid sexual service.

Which decade produced such a winning piece of slang? If you guessed the 1980’s then you are, clearly, one smart cookie. Merricat was guessing that this originated in the 1960’s, but – in retrospect – that was the decade of FREE love. It was not until the Thatcherite 1980’s that we started to affix price tags to “hand relief.” (That was my sentence using the word. Now you try!)

The staff of the OED clearly did not want to make itself too racy for the average dictionary consumer so, in addition to adding the phrase “hand relief” to its volumes, it also added several twee expressions. While I appreciate twee textile prints, twee wording generally forces me to dry heave. I have heard soccer moms use the word “anyhoo,” but knowing that the OED has now legitimized this as a ‘real’ word literally causes me to go apeshit.

What other misguided words did the OED add this year? Apparently feeling that the word “blessing” was somehow ambiguous, the OED chose to include the odd phrase “unmixed blessing.” No, you have not accidentally face planted; the OED did add the phrase “unmixed blessing” into its lexicon for those times when you are trying to convey:

         

A situation or thing that is wholly advantageous or beneficial.

How is a regular, unmodified, blessing different from its unmixed cousin? I’ll let you work this one out on your own:

Blessing: A beneficent gift of God, nature, etc.; anything that makes one happy or prosperous; a boon.

While I may not agree with all of the OED’s choices this year, at least there is one thing the Brits and I are in wholehearted agreement about: a dictionary just isn’t a dictionary without the word apeshit in it. 

The Three Faces of John Thaw Quiz

I am a huge fan of the BBC. Not only do they produce the best mystery programming in existence, but they also have a great news service. I somehow find my news more authoritative, and less depressing, when offered to me in a lovely British accent and the BBC news website has a great end of the week news quiz that focuses on the more amusing and esoteric stories to have emerged in the past seven days.


So, in honor of my beloved BBC, I, too, am offering an end of the week quiz. What sets my quiz apart? It focuses on absolutely nothing that is at all current, newsworthy, and/or educational. Instead of exploring the hard hitting issues of the day, my quiz is going to focus on another sort of dilemma entirely: the three faces of John Thaw.


For those of you who have lives - or who only watch television shows made in this century - John Thaw was a British actor who starred in several successful television shows in the U.K. as well as in numerous films. Three of the television shows he is best known for include: The Sweeney, Inspector Morse, and Kavanagh, Q.C. As a local area librarian has informed me, on more than one occasion,  "the ladies, and some of the men, just LOVE John." Which, belatedly, set my trivial brain to wondering . . . which John Thaw does the populace lust after? Do we kiss our posters of him as Regan in The Sweeney or are we penning our love poems to another one of his incarnations? Only this quiz can tell. To find out which version of the now deceased John you are, secretly or consciously, in love with, read on.

The Three Faces of John Thaw Quiz 

(1) You prefer men who wear: 
      (A) wigs.
      (B) leisure suits.
      (C) neutral colored suits and ties.


(2) When John arrives at your home to pick you up for a night on the town, he will be driving:
      (A) Who cares!  All I need is the wig.
      (B) Ford Consul GT, complete with chauffeur.
      (C) Nothing but a 1960 Mark 2 Jaguar will do.


(3) When encountering a low life member of the community, your John Thaw would:
      (A) Inquire as to whether he has represented him at trial previously; if not, he would  give the hooligan a business card.
      (B) Fabricate evidence proving his guilt, rough him up a bit and/or kidnap him until a confession could be secured.
      (C) Pontificate about the failings of modern society while quoting an obscure 19th century poet. 


(4) In his spare time, your John would be:
      (A) Spending time with his children.
      (B) Drinking at the pub with his mates.
      (C) Alone, at home, drinking while listening to Maria Callas and/or completing a crossword puzzle.


(5) Which television show would your John most approve of:
      (A) Rumpole of the Bailey.
      (B) Life on Mars (the British version, thank you very much!)
      (C) Inspector Lewis.


So which John are you smitten with? Total up the number of A's, B's, and C's you selected and then check out the table below. If you have an equal number of two of the letters you are simply stark raving mad about John in general. Congratulations.

All About A
Congratulations: you are secretly, or openly, smitten by John's portrayal of a barrister in Kavanagh, Q.C. How does Kavanagh do what he does to you? Perhaps it is his love of law and order, his commitment to social justice, and his ability to have a relatively normal personal life. Or perhaps you just go for a man in uniform. In either case, you are definitely guilty of having the hots for a robed and coiffed John Thaw.

Batty for B
Congratulations: you are secretly, or openly, in love with John's portrayal of DI Regan, the tough talking red-tape cutting member of the Met's Flying Squad. How does Regan do what he does to you? Perhaps it is his awesome 1970's wardrobe and his oversized walkie talkie and other gadgetry. Or it could be his Dirty Harry like refusal to allow scum to walk the streets unmolested. No matter where the source of your devotion lies, you might be willing to commit a felony or two if it meant being apprehended by this John.

Crazy for C
Congratulations: you are secretly, or openly, in love with John's portrayal of DCI Morse, Oxford's premier scholar policeman. How does Morse do what he does to you? This one is easy: he owns a Mark 2 Jaguar and he's the Byronic hero par excellence. He broods; he drinks (a lot); he has a first name that he absolutely will not reveal to you; he can complete an impossible crossword puzzle in mere minutes; he has an encyclopedic knowledge of, and appreciation for, classical music and opera; and he studied English literature at Oxford.  Did I mention he also has had less luck in the romance department than even Merricat herself? Too true. While Merricat has dated people who are completely apathetic about her existence, and who laugh when she trips over things, Morse has pined after women who: (a) use him as their alibi in attempts to get away with murder; and (b) lie to him while protecting the real criminal mastermind. Oh, Morse: how the ladies of Oxford failed you. In case you cannot tell, Miss Merricat is partial to Inspector Morse which means, for all intents and purposes, that he is off limits. So scroll back up and become either an A or a B this minute. I am not joking. 


If you are devastated that this quiz has come to an end, do not fret. There are other totally inane quizzes out there upon which you can waste a few more minutes of your existence. I am particularly fond of the "Who Wants to Marry a Founding Father (or Mother)"  Quiz available here.  Just be careful not to fall for Merricat's Founding Father or we'll have to arm wrestle for him. 

Author to (re)read: Shirley Jackson

“Poor strangers,” I said. “They have so much to be afraid of.”

In the works of Shirley Jackson, everyone has something to be afraid of: losing that year’s lottery and being stoned to death by local townsfolk; succumbing to the supernatural presence felt in an old house; or, perhaps most terrifying of all, becoming trapped in one’s own mind and its cancerous imaginings. While Jackson’s last work, and my favorite, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, concludes with our protagonists pitying the outside, fearful world of the “strangers,” Jackson was at her best when she was writing about the internal states of her own characters. Like Patricia Highsmith and Henry James, Jackson understood that external forces were not always the most terrifying. While serial killers, grotesque creatures, and gore for gore’s sake, may frighten some, one’s own mind and its workings can be an equally fertile source of discomfort.

A coworker of mine recently complained that “there are no truly scary books anymore.” An avid reader, of all genres, he was dismayed by the number of horror and science fiction books being published that were both boring and complacent. While these books feature weird and disgusting things, none of them have the true capacity to unsettle you or – as he put it – make “your stomach jump into your throat and stay there.” Unlike the ‘complacent’ books my coworker was railing against, Jackson’s work is far creepier than it has a right to be. None of her work is plot heavy, nor is it dominated by descriptions of ghostly happenings or horrifying sights. In fact, the plot of most of her work can be summed up in a few brief sentences. What makes these stories and novels terrifying is not the facts of the case, what does and does not happen and to whom, but where the minds of her characters go and how easily sanity can disintegrate into madness. To read Shirley Jackson  is to enter the fragile mind of an individual or, as in the case of The Lottery, a community, and to watch how civilized behavior falls away. The horror stems not from what a few isolated ‘bad’ people enact, but from what normal people and normal societies are capable of on any given day.

“The typical Jackson protagonist is a social misfit, a young woman not beautiful enough, charming enough, or articulate enough to get along with other people.” (Rubenstein, Roberta. "House Mothers and Haunted Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 15.2 (Fall 1996): 309-331).  She is alone, and vividly experiences the outside world as hostile to her and her survival. Some critics have felt that Jackson’s focus on female outsiders was an explicit critique of patriarchy, of woman as other on the broader social scale. Whether or not one agrees with this viewpoint – I find it quite persuasive – Jackson’s characters are constrained both internally and externally: the outside world pities or despises them; and their internal self has been shaped and molded by the shame, guilt, and fear of being an outcast. They are, to incorporate a bad reference to an Almodovar film, women on the verge of nervous breakdowns (and/or psychosis). The aura of unease that permeates Jackson’s fiction stems from watching these protagonists try to navigate their world and remain psychologically intact; whether they can do so is never certain.

Jackson clearly identified with her protagonists, experiencing much of the internal shame and inferiority that they felt. As she stated: “why am i less, why am i inferior, why am i put down?” Jackson saw her stories and novels as reflective of her own internal woes: “insecure, uncontrolled, i wrote of neuroses and fear and i think all my books laid end to end would be one long documentation of anxiety. if i am cured and well and oh glorious alive then my books should be different. who wants to write about anxiety from a place of safety?” (Carpenter, Lynette. "The Establishment and Preservation of Female Power in Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 8.1 ( 1984): 32-38). The fear that Jackson felt in her own life, and replicated in her artistic work, was not, ultimately, a fear of the external world and its forces but a fear of the self and its potential:

We are afraid of being someone else and doing the things someone else wants us to do and of being taken and used by someone else, some other guilt-ridden conscience that lives on and on in our minds, something we build ourselves and never recognize, but this is fear, not a named sin. Then it is fear itself, fear of self that I am writing about ... fear and guilt and their destruction of identity.

(Judy Oppenheimer, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988) p. 223.)

Much has been written about Jackson’s background and about the mental breakdown she experienced after completing her last novel. Although Jackson was reticent to discuss her personal life, and her childhood, some authors have delved into the details that do exist in an attempt to understand the ‘origins’ of her instability and her art.

One author stresses that Jackson’s relationship with her mother was difficult; Jackson struggled with her weight throughout her life and her mother was prone to frequent, disparaging remarks on the subject. After the publication of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, her mother wrote: “Why oh why do you allow the magazines to print such awful pictures of you? ... I have been so sad all morning about what you have allowed yourself to look like." (Judy Oppenheimer, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988) p. 245-46.) After a lifetime of such comments, and of receiving corsets in the mail as gifts, it is not entirely surprising that Jackson saw humanity as a disparaging and destabilizing force. The world outside was hostile and, try as she might, she was terrified by the idea that this world had come inside to become a part of who she was and how she thought. These fears dominate Jackson’s work, turning stories that are – ostensibly – about haunted houses or children who kill into stories that are truly about how we construct and maintain our sense of self.

Perhaps the real mystery about Jackson’s fiction is how she was able to combine this all encompassing aura of fear with passages of such exquisite beauty and humor. Merricat, the narrator of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, wakes up after a night spent avoiding her cousin Charles to note that:

"[m]ists were wandering lightly along the creek, curling around my face and touching me. I lay there laughing, feeling the almost imaginary brush of the mist across my eyes, and looking up into the trees."

The world may be hostile, and one’s own sanity may be questionable, but there is, simultaneously, the possibility for beauty, magic, and imagination. In reality, you may be huddled in a half burned ‘castle’ with your cat and your sister, but in your mind you are on the moon experiencing its ways and its customs. It is only the strangers, left on earth, who have so much to be afraid of.