Only for the Nice, Not for the Naughty
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Everybody knows that the Christmas season officially begins with the arrival of the Santa Claus at the end of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The absurd and offensive commercialism of stores that put up Christmas decorations in October, thereby ignoring that great American holiday, Thanksgiving, irritates me enough to cross them off my shopping list.They are not decorating in the spirit of the holidays; they are attempting to gain an edge on their competitors with gross cynicism. Mail-order catalogs, with their overpriced chocolates and pears, are worse, arriving earlier each year, with mailboxes stuffed in the middle of summer warning us to “order early and save.”
I love the whole holiday season and its customs, from Thanksgiving to Chanukah to Christmas to Boxing Day to New Year’s,from warm family gatherings to noisy football games to music and giddy celebrations. Giving presents to those we love is a joy matched only by receiving presents from those who love us (and I don’t believe you when you say it’s better to give than receive; I’ve seen how quickly you tear off the wrapping paper on that box with your name on it).
If you’re like me, however, finding the right present for friends, family, and colleagues is a trial, an annual test of creativity, patience and, let’s face it, good luck in finding just the right thing. I can help.
Later, I’ll do a wrap-up of the year’s best mystery fiction, which will guarantee a terrific book (or little stack of books) for the readers on your list – and if they’re not readers, why would you have them as friends? But for now, here are a few wonderful items for those who are less dedicated to reading than some others on your shopping list, yet still have that literary aura about them that shows you respect the recipient of your largesse.
Free calendars from your bank or butcher shop may show up in the mail, but most of us don’t want a large, permanent advertisement on our wall for 365 days. Instead, give someone with a sense of humor a Charles Addams or Edward Gorey desk calendar (and if they don’t have a sense of humor, why would you have them for a friend?).
“Neglected Murderesses & Deranged Cousins” (Pomegranate, $14.99) is an engagement calendar with full-page illustrations from Gorey’s weird mind. Spiral-bound so that it always lies flat, it gives a full page to each month and follows that overview page with weekly pages, so there is enough space to write down everything of which you need to be reminded – an absolutely perfect format.
Each neglected murderess gets her page, with such captions as “Miss Q.P. Urkheimer brained her fiance after failing to pick up an easy spare at Glover’s Lanes in Poxville, Kansas, 1936” and “Nurse J. Rosebeetle tilted her employer out of a wheelchair and over a cliff at Sludgemouth in 1898.”
“Chas. Addams’s 2006 Engagement Calendar” (Pomegranate, $14.99), the twin of the Gorey calendar in format, may be even more hilarious. Many of its macabre cartoons feature the characters who inspired the television series, “The Addams Family.” In one, Morticia and her husband tell the baby sitter: “We won’t be late, Miss Weems. Get the children to bed around eight, and keep your back to the wall at all times.” In another, the same children are feeding logs into a roaring fireplace while their parents surreptitiously peek through the door, saying, “The little dears! They still believe in Santa Claus.”
The perfect stocking stuffer is a handsome little volume titled “Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life” (Alfred A. Knopf, 78 pages, $14.95). Editor Marty Asher has pulled together some of the great Raymond Chandler’s pithiest remarks, and you could do worse than store some of the accumulated wisdom on a back shelf of the brain.
“I don’t drink,” Chandler writes in “The Long Goodbye” (maybe his best book). “The more I see of people who do, the more glad I am that I don’t.” In “The Lady in the Lake” (maybe his best book), he writes, “Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.” In “The Big Sleep” (maybe his best book), he writes,”The sunshine was as empty as a headwaiter’s smile.”
In “Farewell, My Lovely” (maybe his best book): “His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish.” In “The Long Goodbye” (again): “She had an iron smile and eyes that could count the money in your hip wallet.”
Perhaps not quite so wise, and seldom as funny, is “The Da Vinci Cod” (Harper, 180 pages, $11.95) by Don Brine,subtitled “A Fishy Parody,”which no one can deny. I mention it because, while millions wait for Dan Brown’s next novel, every third thriller is now being described as “in the tradition of ‘The Da Vinci Code'” – as if a tradition takes less than three years to develop.
At least “The Da Vinci Cod” is honest enough to call itself a parody, while hack writers everywhere either attempt to claim that Mr. Brown stole their ideas or try to duplicate his book, changing only the names and places. If someone on your list loves Mr. Brown’s best seller, he or she might enjoy this. You decide. Here’s a sample of the “humor”:
He was satisfied with his day’s work. He did not consider what he had done to be murder. To him it was merely extermination. He did not even consider it extermination with extreme prejudice, because, as a generally liberal-thinking individual, he disliked the very notion of prejudice … In a sense, his nation was not England but Extermi – Do you see? Not that there is any such country as Extermi, of course. It’s just a figure of speech. Indeed, there are no countries in the whole world that begin with those letters, which is an interesting observation.
Uh, not that interesting. On second thought, better stick with Addams, Gorey, and Chandler.
Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.