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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 12 |
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RITA MAE BROWN and " SOURPUSS"
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Brown is a literary icon
for her generation
of TheColumnists.com
Sometimes you open up a book and you get the feeling you've slipped on something slick and all of a sudden you're falling down a rabbit hole. I believe this once happened to a girl named Alice. Well, now it's happened to me.
I'm going to start with a major confession: Rita Mae Brown's new "Mrs. Murphy" mystery, "Sourpuss" (Bantam, $25), is the 14th in her long and successful series--and it's the first of them I've actually read.
My avoidance of the "Mrs. Murphy" series doesn't mean I had no interest in nor respect for Rita Mae Brown. Quite the contrary. It so happens my wife brought home a copy of Brown's classic autobiographical novel "Rubyfruit Jungle" some 30 years ago and I picked it up one day and that was that. I thought it was a marvelous novel, even though it was largely about something I didn't especially relate to at the time--a young woman's discovery that she was attracted to other women. I'd never read anything quite like it, but I certainly knew that the writer was a profoundly talented writer and an intelligent and deeply interesting person.
Yet somehow I couldn't imagine myself following Rita when she suddenly decided to enter the world of genre fiction and started writing novels about a mystery-solving cat named Mrs. Murphy. In fact I distinctly remember standing there in the bookshop, holding a copy of the first in the series and saying out loud, "A cat detective? Oh, Rita, what have you done?"
But now that I've finally taken the plunge, all I can say is: "You big dumb lout! Why didn't you at least read a few pages of that first one?"
The truth is Rita Mae Brown, who's now 61, is still just as talented, intelligent and fascinating as she ever was. If all the other "Mrs. Murphy" novels are as funny, fact-filled, wise and clever as "Sourpuss," I can guarantee you one of my favorite bookstores is suddenly going to have to part with the 13 other books in the series as soon as I can get down there with my wallet.
I'm not embarrassed to say such a thing even knowing that "Sourpuss" ends with a great fight scene that involves a man, a woman, two cats, a Welsh Corgi, a possum, a blacksnake and an owl. I hope I haven't left anybody out. If you're not a "Mrs. Murphy" fan, then I know what you're thinking: Well, the old boy is finally round the bend. Go on and think it. See if I care. You're the one who's going to be missing out on something truly wonderful.
The secret of the "Mrs. Murphy" mysteries is that the animal characters all talk to each other and they TRY to talk to the series' human protagonist--Mary Minor Haristeen or "Harry" for short--because they all live on her Virginia farm and they consider her their "Mom." But Harry never actually hears what they're saying, although she generally gets the drift if they really put a lot of physical effort into their communications. The book is also beautifully illustrated by Michael Gellatly.
Maybe this is too big a pill for some of too swallow. But I doubt if it will trouble anybody who loved "Watership Down" or "Black Beauty" or any other story that suggests animals have their own way of communicating with each other and their owners. Rita Mae likes to settle that particular issue by just asking you, "Do you own a cat?" That's because she knows anybody who has spent any time around cats already knows they're like furry little people who have a lot to say.
Now possibly my special connection to the book is the fact a regular character is a female Corgi named Tucker. My wife and I had two male Corgi brothers for many years--and I can guarantee you Tucker is very much like our Fancy Man and Bojangles, aside from the plumbing.
When I spoke with Rita Mae Brown the other night at her booksigning for "Sourpuss" in Bellingham, WA, I felt compelled to tell her I had Corgi experience. Perhaps that's why she first asked me if we currently had a dog--we're "between dogs" at present--then wrote in my copy of her book, "Ron, there's a corgi out there waiting for you!" I love this woman!
In the central plotline of "Sourpuss," there are some murders that relate to the competitiveness between certain farmers in Harry's region of Virginia, most of them vying to have the biggest and best vineyards. (If you didn't know Virginia was wine country, then you're in for an additional treat.) Other motivations play a role, too, including the past relationships between some of the suspects.
But that's not what kept me enthralled with "Sourpuss." What drew me in was the way Brown manages to tell a reasonably straightforward mystery story on the human level while spinning out the most engaging sort of separate storyline involving the farm animals, their individual quirks and relationships, and their quite distinctive need to get to the bottom of the same mystery that's puzzling all the humans. How she dovetails these two storylines is her special magic--and I don't know anybody else who can do this sort of thing so creatively.
Brown claims she's really not using her cat mysteries to push any special issues or agendas. In fact, she says she keeps the stories apolitical because, as she put it, "The difference between Democrats and Republicans is like the difference between syphillis and gonhorrea." I suppose she means she doesn't think her stories should be afflicted with either one.
And though Brown tells us a great deal about the heavy expense and great risks involved in trying to grow wine grapes in "Sourpuss," she freely admits, "I don't drink myself and never have. To me, it all tastes like cat pee."
Still, I was greatly entertained by listening to the attitudes of the various animals about certain issues. For example, the overweight and rather lazy cat called Pewter wonders why two nice neighbor women who like each other can't get married. Tucker, the corgi, explains, "They can, sort of, but the state doesn't recognize it." But just about when you think Rita Mae has slipped a political opinion by us, Pewter states her own opinion much more clearly: "Why do people get married? We don't. It's such an expense....Why not just pair off and be done with it?"
Pardon me, but I find this animal repartee quite entertaining.
Then there's the moment when the cats and the dog get caught in the rain and take refuge in a den--only to find a bear already occupying the space. It takes a certain amount of diplomacy to convince the mama bear they're just seeking temporary shelter and aren't going to bother her cubs. It not only works out for the trio, but the bear winds up giving them a really important clue about a human that's been buried in Harry's peach orchard.
I'd always thought that the only way Hollywood could ever bring the Mrs. Murphy mysteries to the screen would be via animation, with the focus being primarily on the animals. But Walt Disney Pictures and Brandon Stoddard, former president of ABC Entertainment, did bring Mrs. Murphy to television as a two-hour live action movie based on the novel "Murder, She Purred." That was in 1998 with former talk show host Ricki Lake starring as Harry. (Blythe Danner was the voice of "Mrs. Murphy.") It was a ratings clunker and any plans they had to make a TV series out of the books vanished at that point.
When I asked her about it, Brown said, "I can't tell you anything about it because I had nothing to do with it. I don't think Ricki Lake was the right person to play Harry, but otherwise I guess it was all right."
Brown has had some direct dealings with television, though. She adapted Laura Kalpakian's novel "Graced Land" as a 1993 TV movie that wound up being called "The Woman Who Loved Elvis," starring then husband-wife team Roseanne and Tom Arnold. (Kalpakian was on hand to greet Brown in Bellingham last week.) She also wrote the acclaimed 1997 documenary "Mary Pickford: A Life on Film" and did another adapted screenplay for the 1990 TV movie "Rich Men, Single Women" and the 1986 TV movie "My Two Loves."
One lady in the Bellingham audience asked Brown a question that surely has been on the minds of many readers who started with her way back in the days of "Rubyfruit Jungle" or even earlier works when she was viewed as a coming literary light: "Are you going to write any more serious novels like those?"
Brown said she's currently working on a historical novel that will take years to complete because of the research involved. She gave few details about it, except to say publishers really aren't anxious to have their writers tied up on such long-developing projects. I'm pretty sure she's at a point where she can do whatever she wants to do as a writer.
Her life today is largely occupied by running her own large farm in Virginia, like Harry does in the Mrs. Murphy books, and writing six days a week. "If the Lord thought he should rest one day a week, I figure I can, too," she said. She claims she doesn't go out nights very often and doesn't live a very social life. She's a bluejeans kind of person and when she tells you, "I'm a farmer," there's no obvious reason to dispute her.
For decades, Rita Mae Brown has been an icon of American literature with her refreshingly original and forthright books, but she's now also a very well-seasoned author of commercially successful mystery novels.
If, like me, you've shied away from the "Mrs. Murphy" mysteries, I think "Sourpuss" is a great place to start playing catchup. I think I'm really going to enjoy the process. It definitely won't seem like homework to this student of mystery.
©2006 by Ron Miller. The book cover reproduction is courtesy of the author and Bantam Books. This column first posted March 27, 2006.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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