The Beast Must Die, Distractions

So I dove into The Beast Must Die yesterday after I watched Autumn Sonata. For those not up on their murder mysteries, it's a "Nigel Strangeways" novel by Nicholas Blake written in the late 30's. Actually, Nicholas Blake is a pen name that Cecil Day-Lewis, the late British Poet Laureate, used when writing his detective novels. Anyway, I'm only about halfway in. I'm really enjoying these Nicholas Blake novels. I read Thou Shell of Death. That was very literary, high-brow....

The Beast Must Die, at least the first part, is extraordinary. Can't speak for the rest since I haven't read it yet. Those first 80 pages or so are entries in a diary of a would-be murderer Frank Cairnes. Mr. Cairnes (the character in the novel) is himself a writer of detective novels who writes under the name Felix Lane. With me? It's actually rather ingenious. Like a play within a play or a the movie in Lulu. So Frank, or Felix, is a rather sympathetic kind of guy. He is out for vengeance. His young son was run over in the road before the action in the novel, and Felix, or Frank, is determined to track down the driver who ran down his little boy. There is a bit of meta-commentary going here about the world of novel writing and the act of writing. For Frank, writing Felix's diary as he attempts to find the killer takes the energy he should be devoting to his fiction. Unless you think Frank really should find and kill the driver from the hit-and-run. Somehow, the story involves movie studios, takes us out of the country into London and back out again. Frank is making love, actually Felix is making love to an actress, and he's not quite sure whether the feelings are themselves fiction. See what I mean about the meta-commentary? There's a better to phrase it, I'm sure, but whatever it is, it is fun to jump into. I love this kind of stuff where the lines get blurred, and you seem to see the act of creating fiction happening before your eyes.

All of this is a kind of distraction from my stomach. I think I mentioned it before, but I've been ill since December with some distressing abdominal pain and nausea. I finally see a gastroenterologist tomorrow morning after weeks of waiting. He's supposed to be the best one in San Francisco. Anyway, I hope it was worth the wait. The pain has made work all but impossible. Meetings I'm supposed to attend I have to do over the telephone, other things at the office I have to manage remotely. It's just a mess. And to top it all off, I have had to cancel a business trip to Dublin I was actually looking forward to and may have to cancel a chamber music workshop I'm supposed to take part in. I will be quite unhappy about the chamber music. It's a fun workshop, and I've been assigned the Grosse Fugue of Beethoven, a piece I have revered since I was a teenager. I have never played it before. Sigh. Such is life, I suppose.

Well, back to my Nicholas Blake I think. Next up will be a racy Anne Rice novel before I dive into some more Henry James.