tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81075971262363967232024-03-09T21:46:18.626-05:00Little Known Gems: Reviews and InterpretationsRichard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.comBlogger305125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-33594257159101857092014-02-14T00:19:00.001-05:002014-02-14T00:24:40.981-05:00Valentines Day, 2014<span style="font-size: large;">I've mentioned the Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist and author, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter" target="_blank">Douglas R. Hofstadter</a>, several times in <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011/09/through-wormhole-and-douglas-hofstadter.html" target="_blank">this blog.</a></span><br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/34/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot.bookcover.amazon.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="File:Le Ton beau de Marot.bookcover.amazon.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/34/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot.bookcover.amazon.jpg" height="400" width="327" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We especially liked (and concurred with) Hofstadter's theory that when two people love each other and closely share their hopes and aspirations over many years, a sort of mind meld takes place, where one sees through the eyes of the other, a condition that even transcends death. In <em><strong>Ton Beau De Marot</strong></em>, Hofstadter illustrates that theory with his own experiences and reflections after the death of his beloved wife, Carol.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In a later book, Hofstadter expresses his amazement that other scientists did not take on this premise, as if they considered it simply sentimental rather than what actually happens.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It doesn't happen to everyone, of course. Not everyone is capable. My posts on other Valentine Days (for instance, <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012/02/valentines-day-whats-love-got-to-do-got.html" target="_blank">at this link</a>) have usually been about the lack of genuine love in this materialistic American society.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There are individuals who carry an infectious sense of love and caring around with them. They seem always in a good mood, never a bad word to say. My own wife, spreading good cheer wherever she went, was that rare sort of person. This is my first Valentines Day since her death, a mere thirty days ago.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But she is still with me and with everyone who knew her, for to know her was to partake of that special sunshine which touched on the eternal.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As Hofstadter argued, love can be like a magic mind meld so that a part of her assumes a transformative place in my own mind. I look, I listen, and she sees and hears too. Seleta is still with me on this consciously spiritual level. She remains the very best part of me. Still here right now.</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-41394638171858442592013-11-28T12:02:00.000-05:002013-11-28T16:01:39.617-05:00Michael York And The Message of Cabaret<span style="font-size: large;">Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Last night we watched <em>Cabaret</em> with Lisa Minelli and Michael York. We’d never seen it before, at least not all the way through, as we’ve never been Minelli fans and the obvious theme of threesomes and bisexuality has never interested us.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I bought the <em>Cabaret</em> DVD as a result of recently reading:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">(1) Jeremy Bernstein’s <strong>MOSTLY HE WON: Kubrick, Bobby Fischer, and the Attractions of Chess</strong>. In here, Bernstein points out to Kubrick that Joel Grey was not German, as his Jewish-American father was Mickey Katz, who played the clarinet in Spike Jones’s orchestra and “had made some very funny records of operetta warhorse ballads translated into Yiddish.” Stanley Kubrick then says that <em>Cabaret</em> is the greatest musical of all time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">(2) Coincidentally, shortly after I read this, on November 21st, fellow Cormackian Tom Conoboy blogged about <em>Cabaret</em> glowingly </span><a href="http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2013/11/cabaret.html" rel="nofollow"><span style="font-size: large;">at this LINK.</span></a><span style="font-size: large;"> Conoboy says, </span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">“This is the glory of <em>Cabaret</em> for me, both the film and the play. Yes, we see the darkness of humanity, the depths to which it can descend. But that darkness is transient. Hitler’s thousand year Reich lasted barely twelve years. Humanity was restored. Love, humour, lust, companionship will survive, will revive, will reassert themselves. For all the apparent lowness of the lives of the dancers and regulars of the Kit Kat Klub, they represent humanity, glorious, unpredictable, bawdy humanity. And they will win. Always.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">(3) I discovered that Michael York, who stars opposite Minelli in the movie, has been fighting amyloidosis, the same disease that my wife is fighting. Here’s a good article on York’s fight to stay alive: </span><a href="http://www.lady.co.uk/people/features/2220-i-ll-never-take-anything-for-granted-again" rel="nofollow"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ll Never Take Anything For Granted Again.”</span></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Michael and Pat York" border="2" class="fltlft" height="198" src="http://michaelyork.net/images/Pat-n-Michael-York-by-Douglas-Kirkland-300.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="300" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael and Pat York, from their website</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">York credits his wife with helping him attain the correct diagnosis–after three years of going from doctor to doctor. That was our own experience too. And I don’t think that we ever would have had a correct diagnosis if I hadn’t gotten involved and harangued doctors for treating my wife’s symptoms instead of looking for the underlying disease. Our GP gave up on her at one point, suggesting that her pain was in her head and recommending a psychiatrist. At which point we changed doctors.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was finally tentatively diagnosed, not by a doctor, but by an angelic APRN named Debra Lusk, in Elizabethtown. Kentucky. Her diagnosis was confirmed by the world renown Dr. Merrill Benson at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. Apparently people die from this disease all the time without ever having a proper diagnosis.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">My wife and I are not ones to take our gift of life for granted. We know that it is temporary, and we treasured each other every day long before the onslaught of this disease. And we know that this disease is yet incurable, that the median survival rate of this disease is a year and a half. Yet some people live with it for ten years or more, and so we are hopeful. And again thankful for each day.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The song from<em> Cabaret </em>goes,</span><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;">Start by admitting: from cradle to tomb,<br /> it isn’t that long a stay.</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Yes, indeed. It sees the problem, but it doesn’t have the right answer. I can see value in its anti-authority theme, and in its compassion for the Other–ruder forms survive, as McCarthy puts it. <em>Cabaret</em>‘s carnivalesque show is deeply noir, and in that, a great work of art. BUT…</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I can also see that the movie is shortsighted in its ultimate message. <em>Cabaret</em> prescribes continued denial, the addiction of distraction, instead of the facing of life’s temporal reality with love, gratitude, and responsibility. That is what Michael York and his wife are facing in their real-life roles.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As are we.</span><br />
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Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-47680989554185542692013-10-31T23:45:00.001-04:002013-10-31T23:57:36.544-04:00HALLOWEEN BOOKS AND MOVIES 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">First, thanks to all for your cards, phone calls, and prayers concerning Seleta's health.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For anyone who hasn't yet heard, my wife, Seleta, was diagnosed with amyloidosis in July. She is doing relatively well now, in the middle of chemotherapy treatments, pert and positive as usual, always cheerful. We are grateful for each and every day.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Happy Halloween to everyone.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnSaCPRE_ux0pnpeUqeDaTcMbuIW4S5sj1Na8EIFR9-H8BB2wTD2xO4NLnGW474a5aTGxaZfmdAJPiFjAbH9kxXwbedtqspA2b5LeI3ZmGJlqz_The5P6NK_ePqfXHusuaB55vLZ7uy2ZH9Y/s1600/005.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnSaCPRE_ux0pnpeUqeDaTcMbuIW4S5sj1Na8EIFR9-H8BB2wTD2xO4NLnGW474a5aTGxaZfmdAJPiFjAbH9kxXwbedtqspA2b5LeI3ZmGJlqz_The5P6NK_ePqfXHusuaB55vLZ7uy2ZH9Y/s400/005.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seleta and I ran together in this race, years ago. Sometimes it seems like just a few months ago.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWyoXTe1gc_4ue_9t_DAJUhCiXRAOMqBT33GaYvyC6EVn1a_ed0OwPC9g9NNtfAC1ufbpcs9Xr-h8ZUVQ2osZqlfD6eKjsnlgZ0AFLRR7bCIthJKDvxR0dHkZDKIyw_aaueVVHGrv3Xdxk2SI/s1600/Screen-shot-2011-01-13-at-10_45_00-AM-200x300.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWyoXTe1gc_4ue_9t_DAJUhCiXRAOMqBT33GaYvyC6EVn1a_ed0OwPC9g9NNtfAC1ufbpcs9Xr-h8ZUVQ2osZqlfD6eKjsnlgZ0AFLRR7bCIthJKDvxR0dHkZDKIyw_aaueVVHGrv3Xdxk2SI/s1600/Screen-shot-2011-01-13-at-10_45_00-AM-200x300.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The best links for last year's literary Halloween are at this link:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html"><span style="font-size: large;">http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html</span></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And, the best Halloween links from the year before are at this link:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html"><span style="font-size: large;">http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The literary Halloween costume of the day is Holden Caulfield, from J. D. Salinger's iconic novel, <strong>The Catcher in the Rye</strong>.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8tl0YtLCP03wQYUEUI5kdEfJ40SrHVqIl5rD5x61YFvp1XX0WojWbZEfFJT4sf06NYd_jPn80FAHH_gccuimm-qHEhtHny0eQiR4DnOV7aKqLc0lBwM70qhNW3wS4Ew4uACqNc3QsR15-n58/s1600/55ded1eac920c8a0d20e8d39299b8c7f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8tl0YtLCP03wQYUEUI5kdEfJ40SrHVqIl5rD5x61YFvp1XX0WojWbZEfFJT4sf06NYd_jPn80FAHH_gccuimm-qHEhtHny0eQiR4DnOV7aKqLc0lBwM70qhNW3wS4Ew4uACqNc3QsR15-n58/s320/55ded1eac920c8a0d20e8d39299b8c7f.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the web (link to follow)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stephen Colbert as Holden Caulfield</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CdNUZQEf9YKO11uGFkr84WjvAjxXchsa_Eh5enpS95uZ7hTZOxascjCXQd6XnnKcI61VopgiY0KeLYtK6eYJQSsKC5eHn8R-vK8vZiaDFuHaYLpvwnK3NHtrvX7B9bBiiQHmfxY3Q0DkpgU/s1600/cvatcherintherye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CdNUZQEf9YKO11uGFkr84WjvAjxXchsa_Eh5enpS95uZ7hTZOxascjCXQd6XnnKcI61VopgiY0KeLYtK6eYJQSsKC5eHn8R-vK8vZiaDFuHaYLpvwnK3NHtrvX7B9bBiiQHmfxY3Q0DkpgU/s640/cvatcherintherye.jpg" width="476" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media.al.com/photogallery/photo/10207932-standard.jpg&imgrefurl=http://photos.al.com/photogallery/2011/11/holden_caulfield_costume.html&usg=__OkjpMRkYrqyt9JOtA3jipeDUQR0=&h=890&w=665&sz=105&hl=en&start=1&sig2=DBOPwYPCQqVgghpZeh_vug&zoom=1&tbnid=HvDimOsUYCl2VM:&tbnh=146&tbnw=109&ei=dSRzUsHBD8rLsQSx9YCQBw&itbs=1&sa=X&ved=0CC0QrQMwAA" target="_blank">from this: link</a></td></tr>
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<br />Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-4075306790820491872013-07-07T05:22:00.002-04:002013-07-18T05:46:07.867-04:00Is noir a left-wing art form?<div class="first">
<span style="font-size: large;">This is an excerpt from Barry Graham, from "Noir: The Marxist Art Form" <a href="http://www.thebigclickmag.com/noir-the-marxist-art-form/" target="_blank">at this link:</a>:</span></div>
<div class="first">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div class="first">
There were rat footprints in the dried lard in the frying pan. Sometimes the rats woke me, but this time I had slept through their visit. They were now a fact of life, like dogs or pigeons.</div>
It was Raeberry Street, Maryhill, Glasgow in 1975. The cleansing department was on strike, and mountains of plastic bags full of garbage were piled in the back courts of the crumbling tenements. The flats didn’t have bathrooms or hot water, just closet-sized toilets.<br />
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This was how we lived, but it was not what we read. The most popular books read by children were Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels, about a group of upper-class English children who had adventures and solved mysteries. The most popular books among the adults, I think, were Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and Barbara Cartland’s romances. We kids also liked American comics. I remember standing on top of the midden, pretending to be Superman atop a tall building, yelling, <i>“Up, up and away!”</i> but I couldn’t fly out of there.<br />
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It was how we lived, but it was not what we watched on <span class="caps">TV</span>. Whether it was <i>Upstairs, Downstairs—</i>a soap about the English aristocracy—or <i>Coronation Street</i>, a soap about working class people in the North of England—there were no rats. There was hot water, and bathtubs. There was no mother of five knocking on a neighbor’s door to ask for help because it was payday and instead of coming home from his job at the butcher’s, her husband had disappeared into the pubs, and would not come home until Sunday. In the books we read and the <span class="caps">TV</span> we watched, money—or rather the lack of it—was never mentioned. The characters engaged in their dramas, mundane or life-threatening, marrying or divorcing or fucking or murdering one another without ever discussing rent arrears, lack of food, or utilities being cut off.<br />
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That year, the film <i>Jaws</i> was released, and broke all-time box-office records. Because of this, the novel it was based on became ubiquitous, in paperback with the image from the film’s poster on the cover. The film, a masterpiece of suspense, was the standard story of a heroic individual—a police chief, played by Roy Scheider—who wants to close his town’s beach because of shark attacks, but is overruled by greedy officials who want tourist dollars.<br />
<br />
But the novel is less about man-eating sharks than the fear of poverty. Brody, the police chief, is struggling to get by. His wife, who comes from a wealthy family, is embarrassed about having married beneath her station, and is so resentful and bored that she has an affair. The reason that the town’s elected officials and business people conspire to keep the beaches open is not because they are evil and greedy and don’t care that people might get eaten by the shark; they are desperate, because they depend on the summer tourist season for their livelihood, and are afraid of losing their homes if the beach is closed.<br />
<br />
Although the characters in the novel <i>Jaws</i> had a standard of living that seemed fabulous to me, it was the first time in fiction that I encountered the fear that defined the lives of everyone I knew.Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-90686575863863056132013-07-01T08:15:00.002-04:002013-11-28T16:08:23.018-05:00DOUBLE, DOUBLE: The Fates, Addiction, Double Endemity, and Martha Grimes <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMtcNEsQnk2AsaJ1yUdqqMnsTvV5Q7B4tC3Q4BblinM1X20BJM8fDaHUDf3l8yOG-D3aTNXKsBcYr-681mYia1iIOLTz1HN0ztF8vTbUFzYC0uevDqk0afaAZZ6bWr5ylmUAxN-HfKjSOL9BM/s1600/bigDouble-Indemnity-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMtcNEsQnk2AsaJ1yUdqqMnsTvV5Q7B4tC3Q4BblinM1X20BJM8fDaHUDf3l8yOG-D3aTNXKsBcYr-681mYia1iIOLTz1HN0ztF8vTbUFzYC0uevDqk0afaAZZ6bWr5ylmUAxN-HfKjSOL9BM/s640/bigDouble-Indemnity-4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A little rum will get this affair on its feet.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>DOUBLE, DOUBLE: A DUAL MEMOIR OF ALCOHOLISM </em>by Martha Grimes, the justly acclaimed author of murder mystery novels and her son, Ken Grimes. The doubles in the title can be seen as allusions to the dual narrative of the text, to a double shot, to the chant of the Wyrd Sisters in <strong><em>MacBeth</em></strong>, or to the book and film, <em><strong>Double Endemity</strong></em>. It is cleverly accomplished, as you shall see from the quotes below.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLev3LeptffuviR6K7yYhyphenhyphenSWlTTEfvBDMM9ck0NPmkJyjHt-ZJwlWvLSIQ6EsVYiNAMXEQSymEJc3ndOxQ-OXbGPB4dZc_f-nekuBtwqGoGSmNMIemAuVSqGz5OYOSU9IyqYXQe_q5NStCyaw/s388/9781476724089_p0_v3_s260x420.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLev3LeptffuviR6K7yYhyphenhyphenSWlTTEfvBDMM9ck0NPmkJyjHt-ZJwlWvLSIQ6EsVYiNAMXEQSymEJc3ndOxQ-OXbGPB4dZc_f-nekuBtwqGoGSmNMIemAuVSqGz5OYOSU9IyqYXQe_q5NStCyaw/s320/9781476724089_p0_v3_s260x420.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Double, double, toil and trouble.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Over at <a href="http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com/2011/10/ive-seen-things-you-people-wouldnt.html" target="_blank">Peter Rozovsky's blog (link)</a>, he hosted a discussion seeking to define "noir," but the definitions there differ.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">True noir, it seems to me, is exemplified especially by <strong><em>MacBeth</em></strong>, concerning power addicts and the temptations of the fates. These too, are noir, for the stories are of walking shadows caught up in the maze of their addictions, poor players who strut and fret for their entire hour upon the stage, lives of desperation, the sound and the fury.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">These are noir because they show the addict's journey into the blackness.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Some people feel that noir is <a href="http://www.thebigclickmag.com/noir-the-marxist-art-form/" target="_blank">Marxist</a> or at least <a href="http://nycal.mayfirst.org/node/10155" target="_blank">left-wing</a> and some leftists and buddhists say that it reflects actual life in this material vale. Not just addictions to money and power, but to such things as causes, soap operas, guns, alcohol, tobacco, promiscuous sex, and drugs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Martha Grimes says this in her chapter entitled "Double Double Indemnity":</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"This, mind you, is what's called "alcoholic" or"addictive thinking." The whole approach to drinking is crazily mazelike. You turn left, you turn right, you go along, you go back.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Now you--standing outside the maze, having heaps of laughter at the idiot in there who can't find his way out--please note: The idiot in there doesn't know it's a maze; he thinks this is the Capital Beltway or some other annoying, clogged-up, circular multilaner, but for all of that minor annoyance, it's the only way he can travel. This kind of thinking can also be called 'denial.' There are exits from the Beltway, clearly marked; there's an exit from the maze unmarked. Much harder to negotiate.'</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"So, you, standing outside at the exit, yell, "It's over here, stupid.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"But for the addict lost in the addiction, where's here? . . ."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Another member of our group is leaving. He's standing before us, giving reasons for his decision to stop coming to the clinic. . .He says he has his drinking under control now.'</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEMz7onjFWEtsmegG04ylcO4EQyhmZF7Pojmm4cwG7QaDiogAXqrepVLuPjBKBTurhSVar9dygVkvn_lm0qCHjvvaDcv2moWTbLpWUftY51PtMSwxXXt3-fTdLvpjk3IgOcstyBcAfSW6wigg/s448/DoubleIndemnitys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEMz7onjFWEtsmegG04ylcO4EQyhmZF7Pojmm4cwG7QaDiogAXqrepVLuPjBKBTurhSVar9dygVkvn_lm0qCHjvvaDcv2moWTbLpWUftY51PtMSwxXXt3-fTdLvpjk3IgOcstyBcAfSW6wigg/s320/DoubleIndemnitys.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Straight down the line, Walter.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">That's more or less what I want to say to him. It's what Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) says to Walter (Fred MacMurray) in that great film noir <em>Double Indemnity</em>.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In any well-constructed mystery, there is a sense of inevitability. . .The movie begins with a gorgeous romance into which is interjected something chancy and dangerous, thereby making the romance even more glamorous. Then they do the dangerous thing together, and it's all downhill from there.'</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY1FTpn84E0nJlqRIECojPG-unhsss3LY9hwnUoWrPokpLJuT5bAGlMInIcvim4d-h85tKRfEKfiC-LLWN3n2A4VlvZv_io9iNofwjzMQDvwaIcgo5che_MWj-bM9CgEGZy-AiWo1NcufaJQk/s559/sewetg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY1FTpn84E0nJlqRIECojPG-unhsss3LY9hwnUoWrPokpLJuT5bAGlMInIcvim4d-h85tKRfEKfiC-LLWN3n2A4VlvZv_io9iNofwjzMQDvwaIcgo5che_MWj-bM9CgEGZy-AiWo1NcufaJQk/s320/sewetg.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I've watched <em>Double Indemnity</em> so many times that I think it's leaking out of my pores as slowly as my last drink. It's such a beautiful piece of chiaroscuro; the lighting should be distilled and drunk neat. There's the scene at the end where she's sitting in her living room, waiting for him with a gun; his shadow is thrown on the wall as he stands in the doorway with a gun. . .'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Straight down the line, baby.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Straight down the line.</em></span><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"After that earlier dialogue, you think, Oh, God, now it's come down to this. And<em> this</em> is where I see our own Walter, announcing he's quiting.'</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfQlKHKwdEd6-Q2sD7x1Xujig70KcL3PGC0CQsCIUVOSdjVO7sa-A6qhyXzq5KB-vCi2Ew6dQGhYQPEto1C1k7zEl5EyTh4zz15dzwrwCandDGz0RGk8zwR2PkY8PZl5Z2AHnuNeElQrVq0bo/s300/double+indemnity+11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfQlKHKwdEd6-Q2sD7x1Xujig70KcL3PGC0CQsCIUVOSdjVO7sa-A6qhyXzq5KB-vCi2Ew6dQGhYQPEto1C1k7zEl5EyTh4zz15dzwrwCandDGz0RGk8zwR2PkY8PZl5Z2AHnuNeElQrVq0bo/s300/double+indemnity+11.JPG" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The way in which <em>Double Indemnity</em> moves along the track to its inescapable end is the way this fellow will end. He can handle his drinking, he says. He's got a plan. Say, drinking only on weekends. It doesn't matter. What he's thinking about now is the taste of that first drink. . ."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"He's Walter. The bottle's Phyllis. They're a perfect fit. The bottle is alive with solace and the fulfillment of desire. But the thirst is unquenchable. There is no stop on this train ride until you're over the rail and onto the track, like Phyllis's husband."</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-91471379242345836712013-05-19T01:11:00.001-04:002013-05-19T07:55:54.266-04:00The Ox-Bow Incident, The Archer, & The Question Mark<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNi1DLf3ablWIgcIZPdPyWD-riSdoENPDt-WNtZKrYTVh1ylxqWa4VIemYsVjXTbS9JH6EzYSGkK-VmYPAA5Ehi3i36VJc4eEJhGMcyYjCPXceF8RLd5iPrwXk_5zlVJlScPaxbo0qUGN5RX8/s1600/oxbow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNi1DLf3ablWIgcIZPdPyWD-riSdoENPDt-WNtZKrYTVh1ylxqWa4VIemYsVjXTbS9JH6EzYSGkK-VmYPAA5Ehi3i36VJc4eEJhGMcyYjCPXceF8RLd5iPrwXk_5zlVJlScPaxbo0qUGN5RX8/s1600/oxbow.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An Ox-Bow</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Congratulations to Ox-Bow and all of his connections, winners today of the Preakness Stakes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As luck has it, I was just reading the current issue of <em>Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine</em> (May, 2013), which features Walter Van Tilburg Clark's 1940 novel, <strong><em>The Ox-Bow Incident</em></strong>, certainly an American classic:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">
<li>"Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones."</li>
<li>"You can't go hunting men like coyotes after rabbits and not feel anything about it. Not without being like any other animal. The worst animal." - Walter Van Tilburg Clark, <i>The Ox-Bow Incident</i></li>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thomas Cox's THE OXBOW (1936) Note the question mark.</td></tr>
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<br />
The ox-bow of the title refers to a geographical phenomenon (where, in the novel, the hangings take place), which has nuances of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.<br />
<br />
It also alludes to Thomas Cox's famous 1836 painting, <strong>The Oxbow</strong>, which illustrates the division between nature and civilization--at least pastoral civilization. The oxbow circles creating a question mark between them. The birds wheel and circle too.<br />
<br />
The division can be seen as Aristotle vs. Plato, or as Apollo vs. Dionysus, or as control vs. anarchy, as men act cowardly in their vain attempt to prove their courage, their manliness. The mob misappropriates for itself a monopoly on virtuous masculinity and castigates all opposition as unpatriotic weakness and femininity.</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO-oeFQzbOCGYYL2dq7RXjtfZB8e4IfxdTdndtckBL6xFoskJ4rDy_4MwgbVxx_O4vcvn1HTb60tAE6orocw2Gx3TvJBNHGpC39GjS05UY_yC3f-sxL4mxHP4lW5Wtayc-8cE1S2pmkybR-08/s1600/imagesCAV3VXOJ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO-oeFQzbOCGYYL2dq7RXjtfZB8e4IfxdTdndtckBL6xFoskJ4rDy_4MwgbVxx_O4vcvn1HTb60tAE6orocw2Gx3TvJBNHGpC39GjS05UY_yC3f-sxL4mxHP4lW5Wtayc-8cE1S2pmkybR-08/s640/imagesCAV3VXOJ.jpg" width="414" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Ox-Bow of a noose</td></tr>
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<br />Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-7240368118225726942013-05-12T11:06:00.000-04:002013-05-12T11:06:41.462-04:00Louisville, H. L. Mencken, and The Great Gatsby<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The new movie of F. Scott Fitzgerald's <strong><em>The Great Gatsby</em></strong> is opening soon and its connections have been making the rounds on the television talk shows.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Once again, Louisville's historical connections with the novel and its author are in the the news. See <a href="http://www.wfpl.org/post/great-louisville-gatsby-mystery-where-daisys-house" target="_blank">this link,</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182882003/it-led-us-on-a-journey-the-musical-world-of-the-great-gatsby" target="_blank">this one,</a> and <a href="http://www.wfpl.org/post/when-young-louisville-reporter-searched-f-scott-fitzgerald-and-zelda-sayre" target="_blank">this one.</a> This last week, KET showed a documentary about Newport, Kentucky and its Mafia connections, including the story of lawyer/gangster George Remus--who inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby. Or so they say.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I was young, I loved the novel the first time I read it without really understanding why--except I that I could identify with that male narrative voice. Over the years I've read much of the critical literature on the novel. Like Lois Tyson's essays, "You Are What You Own" and "What's Love Got To Do With It?" Indeed, later critical readings had me questioning whether the idea of love in here was a superficial possessive love or genuine unconditional love.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The movie adaptations are hard for me to watch, despite the eye candy of the different actresses who have played Daisy. The plot is jarring without the meditative palliative of the prose. I know the book by heart, and perhaps it is the great clanking inevitability of what happens that puts me off. The Robert Redford/Mia Farrow movie strikes me as spectacularly beautiful but profoundly sad, a Kentucky Derby party when the favorite pulls up lame and is found to have broken its legs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Still, in my opinion, the novel itself is great because it contains the right amount of mature reflection, the right mixture of recalcitrance, universal ambiguity, and human compassion. It is a much more mature work than <strong><em>This Side of Paradise</em></strong>, which was a young man's novel, witty and clever but less wise, more materialistic than humanistic.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Predictably, critic H. L. Mencken, who had championed <strong><em>This Side of Paradise</em></strong>, turned against <strong><em>The Great Gatsby</em></strong>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">From Charles Angoff's memoir:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Mencken once asked me to accompany him to a New York hotel where F. Scott Fitzgerald was staying. I looked forward to meeting Fitzgerald, for while I had not taken him very seriously as a writer, I had a persistent curiosity about him. I told Mencken as much as we walked to the hotel.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"As usual, you're crazy, Angoff,' he said. 'If you had said <strong><em>The Great Gatsby</em></strong> was poor stuff I'd agree with you. There Scott is writing about people he doesn't know anything about. At best it's only an overlong short story, but <strong><em>This Side of Paradise</em></strong> is really something, my boy, and when your children start shaving you'll realize how right I am. But by then I'll be in heaven or in a Trappist monastery, and you won't have a chance to apologize.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">". . .Fitzgerald greeted us warmly. He had been drinking and was hardly able to stand up straight. He tried to embrace Mencken, who was obviously annoyed by this attempt at intimacy. Mencken then introduced me: "Meet Angoff, my private chaplain."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Fitzgerald and I shook hands. Mencken then said: "Don't say anything dirty about the Virgin Mary or call the Pope a dope or discuss Cardinal O'Connell's children. You see, Angoff is an unfrocked priest and is living with an escaped Polish nun--she smells like a smoked ham--but deep down both of them are still very devout Catholics."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Fitzgerald did not seem amused. He offered us drinks. Mencken noticed a copy of Spengler's <strong><em>The Decline of the West</em></strong> on a table. "So you're reading that swill," he said.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"That's not swill, Henry," Fitzgerald said. "That man is a thinker."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Bosh," said Mencken. "You talk like Knopf, who published the stuff, and who probably hasn't read it."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Have you?" asked Fitzgerald.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Merely glanced at it. A fellow like me knows when to stop reading. Isn't he another one of those Socialist swine?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"He's no Socialist," Fitzgerald said quietly as he fondled half a glass of straight whiskey in his hand. . .He walked up and down the room, in silence. Then he said:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Henry, I got another idea for a novel going through my head. Have a lot of it written up. It's about a woman who wants to destroy a man, because she loves him too much and is afraid she'll lose him, but not to another woman--but because she'll stop loving him so much. She decides to destroy him by marrying him, but gets to love him even more than before. Then she gets jealous of him, because of his achievements in some line that she thinks she's also good in. Then, I guess, she commits suicide but she does it the way all people, all women, commit suicide, by drinking, by sleeping around, by being impolite to friends, and that way. I haven't got the rest of it clear in my head, but that's the heart of it. What do you think, Henry?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, it's your wife, Zelda, all over again," Mencken said.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4SpA_grweomp5spTM-TnqecowVwfghqEnjAL04xfW0W8sriEqRdBXB894S6Bs9LOkrM9Nw1LEig25crluhxqe4V30A_Xh0aCQAqUxESyX-vqqgaVOUyHwKnNf1nL3yFADiaZFy-U_J8pnpYo/s1600/ZELDA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4SpA_grweomp5spTM-TnqecowVwfghqEnjAL04xfW0W8sriEqRdBXB894S6Bs9LOkrM9Nw1LEig25crluhxqe4V30A_Xh0aCQAqUxESyX-vqqgaVOUyHwKnNf1nL3yFADiaZFy-U_J8pnpYo/s320/ZELDA.jpg" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zelda Fitzgerald</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Fitzgerald sat down, swallowed some of his drink, and then got up and paced back and forth. Without looking at Mencken, he said: "That's the dumbest piece of literary criticism I have ever heard or read."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Mencken said nothing. Fitzgerald continued. "You know, Henry, sometimes I think you're no literary critic at all. I don't know what the hell you are, but you're no critic, that's sure. . .You don't know what a writer goes through, what he fumbles for, you don't know the grace he searches for. And, goddamn it, you have no compassion. Of all the times to mention Zelda to me. Of all the goddamn times to mention her." He sank into his chair and burst into tears.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Mencken stood up, muttered, "I'll be seeing you," and he and I walked out. As we returned to the office he told me, "Scott will never amount to a hoot in hell till he gets rid of his wife." </span><br />
<br />Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-27133426987855897192013-05-10T13:19:00.001-04:002013-05-10T20:38:25.279-04:00Friday's Forgotten Book: Don Winslow's THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes the first book I read by an author will have been their best, making me somewhat disappointed in every other book by this author that I subsequently encounter. Sometimes it works the other way.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtxdqdo8e2lTJus4V_PiamGWiwL4zEeBIZIkdUt4bKXla3AWntSz9qGXJbtz4-mYpBGgCG0BJWdbDNcCFclxh0dHf42BrTBOzxl0oS-oTPp2wQQ-cKttzQT3pj7BFBukQQVZKlAQq3j0KW54/s1600/winterver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtxdqdo8e2lTJus4V_PiamGWiwL4zEeBIZIkdUt4bKXla3AWntSz9qGXJbtz4-mYpBGgCG0BJWdbDNcCFclxh0dHf42BrTBOzxl0oS-oTPp2wQQ-cKttzQT3pj7BFBukQQVZKlAQq3j0KW54/s320/winterver.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You would think it logical that authors start out as amateurs and imitative and develop their craft as they age, that a natural arc would build toward a peak of their abilities. This did not happen with F. Scott Fitzgerald and it didn't happen with the topic author of the day, Don Winslow.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Earlier this year, I did a reading survey of surfing novels and movies, which included rereads of Winslow's <em><strong>The Dawn Patrol</strong></em> (2008) and <em><strong>The Gentleman's Game </strong></em>(2009). I read them very closely, wanting to see more, but my opinion of them did not change. They are YA tinged, comic-book inspired, near-beer novels--Don Winslow <em>lite</em>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was taken aback once again when I got into Don Winslow's amazingly well-written thriller, <strong><em>The Winter of Frankie Machine </em></strong>(2006). I included this book in my reading survey because I thought it might be an early version of <em><strong>Dawn Patrol</strong></em>, a surfer's detective novel. Although the protagonist is an old surfer and lives near the beach, this turned out to be something else, and written on a much higher level.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg30shcmsxGPLHRGYbSRw0Gm9Klw6lUjnlU9s5lQzXoMg_LYQPKRxFkABBzD-Gkks9a93aBNyI5_bJ4_bkUhWKryNbNhyHdS1scvNuxEy4j5_DNND7cFRVttzyM0sIhkUVzF4d3u7kiEKiYy5c/s1600/tumblr_m7xaeehgrS1rrnekqo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg30shcmsxGPLHRGYbSRw0Gm9Klw6lUjnlU9s5lQzXoMg_LYQPKRxFkABBzD-Gkks9a93aBNyI5_bJ4_bkUhWKryNbNhyHdS1scvNuxEy4j5_DNND7cFRVttzyM0sIhkUVzF4d3u7kiEKiYy5c/s320/tumblr_m7xaeehgrS1rrnekqo1_1280.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Make no mistake, <em><strong>The Winter of Frankie Machine</strong></em> is still a genre crime thriller, and also a Mafia hitman novel. My admiration for this tale goes against many of my long-held biases. </span><span style="font-size: large;">I spoke out against the cliche of Mafia novels before they became popular--that is, not only before the television series, <em>The Sopranos</em>, but long before the 1969 publication of Mario Puzo's <em><strong>The Godfather</strong></em> (which, against all my predictions, turned out to be a great novel). Back in 1967, I had said that the Mafia stereotype was finally done after the comic cliches in John Godey's <strong><em>A Thrill A Minute With Jack Albany</em></strong>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was wrong.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So much of fiction depends upon the way the story is told. Craft or magic, I can't always decide. <strong><em>The Winter of Frankie Machine</em></strong> opens like a surfing novel, letting us get to know (and like) the protagonist, who gets his moniker from that older crime novel, Nelson Algren's <strong><em>The Man With The Golden Arm</em></strong>. We don't learn of Frankie Machine's Mafia past until later, and we then like him enough to forgive him for being a cliche.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It is an amiable deception.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One of the cliches of crime fiction is the plot device where the hunter becomes the hunted. Yet we know that life works exactly this way, that when we look into the abyss, it looks back at us. Here's a bit of Frankie Machine's discussion of that:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JNEP4WYQDoeV-D7J8hu8JQdleJUdfUI4I84UXeuKhNo2uWeCjJhiE6G7pl-2M6tBZO0d7V_feHgvLVwY3glYc-aUoIq63LvPGTCnDHDCYBCCOk8SdVHbUtX9koWi1azrsrCUNbjjjmpaOAk/s1600/225px-ManWithTheGoldenArm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JNEP4WYQDoeV-D7J8hu8JQdleJUdfUI4I84UXeuKhNo2uWeCjJhiE6G7pl-2M6tBZO0d7V_feHgvLVwY3glYc-aUoIq63LvPGTCnDHDCYBCCOk8SdVHbUtX9koWi1azrsrCUNbjjjmpaOAk/s320/225px-ManWithTheGoldenArm.jpg" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank Sinatra played Frankie Machine</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"A connection develops between hunter and prey. Guys deny it as airy-fairy bullshit, Frank thought, but they all know it happens. You track a guy long enough, you get to know him, you're living his life, one step removed, and he becomes real to you. You try to get inside his head, think the way he thinks, and if you succeed at that, in a strange way you become him."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Another cliched plot device of the thriller, at least according to thriller author John Lescroart writing in <a href="http://www.mysteryreaders.org/Issues/Legal1-2012.html#lescroart" target="_blank">Mystery Readers Journal</a>, is that the corruption in the crime novel always goes up to "the highest levels of government." Well, isn't that often the way it works in real life too?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Listen to Frankie Machine:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Garth and the other S&L guys would get themselves saving and loan operations, make unsecured loans to themselves and their partners through shell corporations, then default on the loans and drain their S&Ls of all their assets.'</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3mvAmWH64f3PDwE1hdJtM9uLEY3mHmXKAaDfiLAzYWXwPrrm9RV6Q1OMiQeKBL8hqf4yrKAGAVZw2mkr-nhd9ycLglH5bzZ19AQA5V5JdDF7WIMnPNDRzVMFV8J4Q06r-hhCSNBDBt4rqmX4/s1600/culture-of-corru.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3mvAmWH64f3PDwE1hdJtM9uLEY3mHmXKAaDfiLAzYWXwPrrm9RV6Q1OMiQeKBL8hqf4yrKAGAVZw2mkr-nhd9ycLglH5bzZ19AQA5V5JdDF7WIMnPNDRzVMFV8J4Q06r-hhCSNBDBt4rqmX4/s320/culture-of-corru.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Identical in shape to your classic Mafia bust-out, Frank thinks now, except we only managed to do it with restaurants and bars, maybe the occasional hotel. These guys busted out the whole country to the tune of $37 billion and Congress hit up the working guy to pay for it.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"The whole S&L house of cards eventually came tumbling down, and Garth and a few of the others did some time polishing their short games at various Club Feds, and the senators and congressmen who had been on the boat, literally and figuratively, got on CNN to proclaim what a disgrace it all was"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"...You could take the Crips, the Bloods, the Jamaican posses, the Mafia, the Russian mob, and the Mexican cartels, and all of them put together couldn't rake in as much green in a good year as Congress does in a bad afternoon. You could take every gang banger selling crack on every corner in American, and they couldn't generate as much ill-gotten cash as one senator rounding the back nine with a corporate CEO.'</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ut-3n2OORf5eCtngnOgKRzhGTDmvu4IQA84LPwB_gWp145ccfNuhlYTWZo6Xflvkf3oLzyse2tXPQC3Ptcqn7hMwRvjzV70IOIWbYbbewWxIFVd-hAOvPj25DF2dUPwq2L-uXnoJrORxt9E/s1600/safe_image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ut-3n2OORf5eCtngnOgKRzhGTDmvu4IQA84LPwB_gWp145ccfNuhlYTWZo6Xflvkf3oLzyse2tXPQC3Ptcqn7hMwRvjzV70IOIWbYbbewWxIFVd-hAOvPj25DF2dUPwq2L-uXnoJrORxt9E/s1600/safe_image.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"My father told me that you can't beat the house, and he was right. You can't beat the White House, or the House of Representatives. They own the game and the game is fixed, and it isn't fixed for us.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"...the government wants to shut down organized crime? That's hysterical. The government is organized crime."</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-13550484091608915282013-05-07T11:07:00.002-04:002013-05-08T09:39:47.357-04:00Cormac McCarthy, Folksinger: Tuesday's Forgotten or Little-known A/V<span style="font-size: large;">Cormac McCarthy is not an uncommon name, at least in Ireland, since the days of the historical Cormac McCarthy who was presented with the Blarney Stone by Robert the Bruce hundreds of years ago.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Cormac McCarthy, new CD: Collateral" height="324" src="http://www.cormac-mccarthy.com/images/collateral320.jpg" width="320" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">These days, beyond the famous American author by that name, we have a less-known folk singer named Cormac McCarthy, who has New England roots and often sings of the working poor. The songs on his newest CD (entitled <em>Collateral</em>) are outstanding and make a good soundtrack for Ron Rash's <strong><em>Nothing Gold Can Stay</em></strong>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The material is sometimes literary and poetic, “the wink of a roadkill crow,” the vocal delivery is folk-blues and solid, the musical arrangements are splendid. The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, but McCarthy’s voice is strong and clear at the right volume. You hear every word. His voice compares favorably with that of Gordon Lightfoot.<br />
<br />
The lead piece is “Gotta Keep Movin” which conjures up some words that novelist Cormac McCarthy has written: <em>Nothing ever stops moving</em>. This song also has a lyric line from Satchel Paige’s six rules of life, “Don’t look back, something might be gaining.”<br />
What’s gaining, of course, is the hound of heaven or the hound of hell--Death either way, as in <strong><em>Suttree</em></strong>.<br />
<br />
This is reprised in what I think, first time through, is the best track on the CD, “You Can’t Outrun The Hounds,” which, with its upbeat guitar, would make a good addition to anyone’s running soundtrack.<br />
<br />
Not that there is a bad track on this CD. As I say, the last time I listened to this man was back in the days of NAPSTER, and I wasn’t impressed then. But on this CD, the production seems highly professional, kind of a universal blue-collar sound. I plan to listen to the whole thing several times. Some of the tracks are noir, of lives lived in quiet desperation.<br />
<em>Songs:</em><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><blockquote>
<em>Gotta Keep Movin'<br /> The Working Poor<br /> Cadilac Man<br /> Back When I Worked on the Railroad<br /> The Crossroads<br /> On a Night Like This<br /> You Can't outrun the Hounds<br /> Walking on Solid Ground<br /> Jailhouse Bound<br /> Doppelganger</em></blockquote>
</span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Here's a good link:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.cormac-mccarthy.com/lyric5.html">http://www.cormac-mccarthy.com/lyric5.html</a></span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-61210052417764634212013-05-06T22:35:00.001-04:002013-05-10T15:39:06.987-04:00Ron Rash, Charles E. May, Southern Gothic, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgImNVtLpKTUKiC65pTAo1OBRClKsMUTTbTjw1arUoDVzbptH-T7DZw1NhwDyD3DN7UgWKcPO_MXs3PovkEma4sXhVTXMzTYVhf0WqRIDltASyDfPwjkFSrFU3Rc4iwtsUURXx6Or5sB584oeA/s1600/firsts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgImNVtLpKTUKiC65pTAo1OBRClKsMUTTbTjw1arUoDVzbptH-T7DZw1NhwDyD3DN7UgWKcPO_MXs3PovkEma4sXhVTXMzTYVhf0WqRIDltASyDfPwjkFSrFU3Rc4iwtsUURXx6Or5sB584oeA/s640/firsts.jpg" width="539" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Since <em>Firsts</em> Magazine presented their feature on Ron Rash last September, I've been reading some of his short stories and, for the most part, I've been very pleased with them.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This week we saw <em>Silver Linings Playbook</em> on DVD. Nice performances by the two leads who team up again in the movie adaptation of Ron Rash’s <em><strong>Serena</strong></em>, which has been filmed but not yet released. Due in September, I think now.<br />
</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi2KLusJSpckk-MAkXpFRumL0rWeZRC7FG2adbN5wFtzTCPH0cxwOaKKMTU76PS56qKZFirrsvBhPNjggMBO_RfrpBwLPDhgjdceRSdFVBqFxWYSQ72Fg4lxb8Irmn9J-9tatJDnLEDqL8ybk/s1600/Evolutio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi2KLusJSpckk-MAkXpFRumL0rWeZRC7FG2adbN5wFtzTCPH0cxwOaKKMTU76PS56qKZFirrsvBhPNjggMBO_RfrpBwLPDhgjdceRSdFVBqFxWYSQ72Fg4lxb8Irmn9J-9tatJDnLEDqL8ybk/s1600/Evolutio.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jennifer Lawrence as a Lady MacBeth?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Serena is a modern Lady MacBeth minus the hand-washing, so it will be worth watching to see how Jennifer Lawrence plays it. Ron Rash has a feel for the working poor, the corrupt rich, and the complicity of shared weaknesses. <em><strong> Serena</strong></em> became his most widely known novel, but he has made a name for himself with his stories, which sometimes can be described as country/southern noir.<br />
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<em></em><br />
Professor emeritus Charles E. May, whose lifelong pursuit of excellence in the short story resulted in several fine books, discusses Ron Rash’s new collection, <em><strong>Nothing Gold Can Stay</strong></em>, at this link:<br />
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<a href="http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.de/2013/04/ron-rashs-nothing-gold-can-stay.html" rel="nofollow">http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.de/2013/04/ron-rashs-nothing-gold-can-stay.html</a><br />
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And don’t miss fellow Cormackian Tom Conoboy’s praise of Ron Rash at these links:<br />
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<a href="http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2013/04/one-foot-in-eden-by-ron-rash.html" rel="nofollow">http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2013/04/one-foot-in-eden-by-ron-rash.html</a><br />
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<a href="http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2010/07/serena-by-ron-rash.html" rel="nofollow">http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/2010/07/serena-by-ron-rash.html</a><br />
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<a href="http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/search/label/Ron%20Rash" rel="nofollow">http://tomconoboy.blogspot.com/search/label/Ron%20Rash</a></span><br />Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-33268683165991230052013-05-06T17:29:00.002-04:002013-05-06T17:51:39.369-04:00NAME THE TEN BEST SHORT STORIES<span style="font-size: large;">Name the ten best short stories you've ever read. It's a difficult task, like trying to name the ten best songs you've ever heard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If you've read as many stories as I have, it can't be done. The best you can do is to name ten best stories which are personal favorites right now, while acknowledging the fact that there are many more ambitious, acclaimed, and possibly better written stories at large.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH2ckZAeYtTvD37NY7AqyL5HMxnUx1bNzzAYmesiF61L2bNsszXEQ_lEmGP6Ju0SxOknfYXPi61YCPKQ88-ZeoqZmdNiLKqSt9ggOxJubieWyYd88PyBn0RgE7L5N6UOXECWBVe2QRqGFL11s/s1600/the-stories-of-anton-chekhov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH2ckZAeYtTvD37NY7AqyL5HMxnUx1bNzzAYmesiF61L2bNsszXEQ_lEmGP6Ju0SxOknfYXPi61YCPKQ88-ZeoqZmdNiLKqSt9ggOxJubieWyYd88PyBn0RgE7L5N6UOXECWBVe2QRqGFL11s/s320/the-stories-of-anton-chekhov.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We can't help but think of those classics we have read again and again with adjacent biographical, historical, and critical works at hand. Works like James Joyce's "The Dead," Jack London's "To Build A Fire," and Anton Chekhov's "The Lady With The Pet Dog." We can't pick between Hemingway's "Big, Two-Hearted River" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," so we'd include them both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">You might disqualify such fictional works such as Joseph Conrad's "Youth" and "Heart of Darkness" as novellas rather than long short stories. You might disqualify such film transformations as Rod Serling's "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street," otherwise long among my personal favorites.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLylSaqktpXzoXELHNnBYM_jZQazRAhAX0mBXuEfMFyPgS3nYy9omIrJrKEV-i76a285NDtqBk5w9LTCLqvasQpoYysZrX0l8jJ5xXUQRtdvrHGzvYKgJ_CmqYUfNQ-6Gz2IP9kcUM8_Xm11c/s1600/815491.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLylSaqktpXzoXELHNnBYM_jZQazRAhAX0mBXuEfMFyPgS3nYy9omIrJrKEV-i76a285NDtqBk5w9LTCLqvasQpoYysZrX0l8jJ5xXUQRtdvrHGzvYKgJ_CmqYUfNQ-6Gz2IP9kcUM8_Xm11c/s320/815491.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Two of my favorites are certainly not well known--but they should be. They are Richard Russo's short story, "Horseman," which I blogged about <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011/11/best-thanksgiving-story-thanks-to.html" target="_blank">at this link</a>, and Stephen Dobyns' "A Happy Vacancy," the lead story in his collection entitled <strong><em>Eating Naked</em></strong>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I've reread "Horseman" several times now, and I can see the horseman of the title in different ways. For one thing, he is the guardian between our real selves and the selves we try to project outwardly to the world. Or he may simply represent our real, hidden selves. This seems to fit with the way author George Saunders and literary scholar and author Charles E. May discuss the art of the short story (<a href="http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.de/2013/03/george-saunders-perceptive.html" target="_blank">see this link</a>).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"A Happy Vacancy" starts out as a satire about an academic poet in the James Dickey mode who takes himself and his poetry far too seriously. One day he is killed when a large pig suddenly falls out of the sky and crushes him. The circumstances are explained, and the subsequent comic reactions of the academic community are satirized, but then the story strikes an entirely different cord and its meaning deepens.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As I say, the opening of the story is ironic, but the narrative then reveals the vacant emptiness of that very irony as the poet's widow, Harriet, emerges as the protagonist--giving the story a surprising minor key and a major lift.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Harriet's life changes. She comes to realize that the ironic humor bantered by her husband and about her husband were both forms of judgment, as was his former seriousness:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"She thought of her husband's seriousness, how he wore it like a garment. Most often his laughter had been ironic or sarcastic or superior. His laughter had been judgmental and, as a result, all his laughter had been serious. . ."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She leaves the college to work in a hospice. <span style="font-size: large;">There, she escapes her former life while working on herself.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Seriousness, said Harriet, often exists as something we want to show other people. We want others to think us serious, which suggests a fear of not being sufficiently respected, of not being taken seriously. What does seriousness get us? It neither delays our deaths nor makes them easier to bear."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A doctor at the hospice, after listening to her arguments, asks, "What is the opposite of seriousness? Frivolity?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Most literally, perhaps, but I think the opposite of such a seriousness is love, because love accepts all possibilities, whereas seriousness only accepts what it sees as correct. Perhaps I work at the hospice for purely selfish reasons. I work to improve the quality of my love."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"That seems pretty serious," the doctor says.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I'm not against seriousness. I'm against the earnestness of seriousness. I want to go beyond it. I want seriousness to be an element in my life and not its reason for being."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The story ends after a conversation Harriet has with one of the patients at the hospice, which evokes laughter:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"It was neither a guffaw nor the hysterical shriek of nervousness. It was the laugh of someone whose seriousness had been overthrown, the laugh that erases every other concern."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A place beyond irony or the material illusion of ego, a happy vacancy, you might say. A cold and a broken hallelujah maybe, but a hallelujah still.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"And doesn't this sustain us? Doesn't it provide the strength to let us bear up our burden and continue our mortal journey?"</span><br />
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Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-45017446095648734242013-04-24T07:43:00.000-04:002013-05-21T18:38:59.336-04:00I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET by Adrian McKinty: A Review<div class="date-header">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Great news, Adrian McKinty fans. The second Sean Duffy is out (on sale May 14th), and it is very good. I read it as soon as I could get a copy, and like <strong><em>The Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong>, this one held me in its spell until the very end. I hate underlining in books, but the understated humor in here had me marking sections to reread after I'd finished it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The author grew up in Northern Ireland and lived there during the Troubles, but he is widely traveled, widely educated, and widely read. Although this novel is a police procedural with lots of witty dialogue, McKinty also gives us a narrative voice which synthesizes his worldly intellectual depth.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Protagonist Sean Duffy is a rather secular Catholic policeman who determinedly seeks justice, a maverick in the old sense of that much abused term, existentially threading his way toward the truth among different bureaucracies with inherent vice in their entirely different agendas. Institutional bigotry all around.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And, as anyone who has ever worked for a bureaucracy knows, you often have to circumvent the rules of the very bureaucracy you work for in order to get anything done. And so Duffy does, sometimes against his own best material interests, in order to do his job while maintaining his integrity and his sense of decency.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The crimes in this stellar novel occur during the regime of Margaret Thatcher and put the violence of that era in perspective. Many Americans, fuzzy on the history of Northern Ireland, can now easily identify with those who recoiled against such historical terrorism. Nobody loves Big Brother, but the mongering of fear by the killing of innocents in protest was and will always be wrong.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">McKinty's humor is sometimes light comic-relief, but more often it is dark and straight-faced absurdist, reminding me of Tom Robbins in this regard. For instance:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>"We
turned off the Shore Road onto the Ballyharry Road. A bump chewed the New Order
tape so I flipped through the radio stations. All the English ones were talking
about the Falklands but Irish radio wasn't interested in Britain's colonial wars
and instead were interviewing a woman who had seen an apparition of the Virgin
Mary who had told her that the sale of contraceptive devices in Dublin would
bring a terrible vengeance from God and his host of Angels."</em></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">This author's entertaining blog is one I check often, and his books are frequently mentioned here on my own bookblog, Little Known Gems. I suppose I should mention that I have never met the man, nor do I have any kind of a financial connection with his publishers. I simply discovered his books one day and, while awaiting his next gem, have been reading my way through his significant backlist of novels.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Adrian McKinty has yet to break out in these United States, but I look for that to happen any day now.</span></span></span><br />
<br />Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-35172632962585954082013-04-16T17:47:00.000-04:002013-04-16T17:58:48.242-04:00The Dude's Detective Novel Now A Movie: INHERENT VICE by Thomas Pynchon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Thomas Pynchon’s INHERENT VICE is of course being made into a movie–a Cheech and Chong movie, the director says.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Seems like a fit to me. I can’t wait to hear the music on the soundtrack.</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgykA_akJL0J48_JBZSUb-2k_8U4DvjFC-H4TR6ei5Eisa_3xNl-iI7GH0IO9_tkxakWOaKtIWJYmxweT7zrCjVIYP43bT91iofv8Yr2Tpio5OFS5EgHYTO9roJgqqQSSCrYc81C9H9AF7MA0k/s1600/bridges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgykA_akJL0J48_JBZSUb-2k_8U4DvjFC-H4TR6ei5Eisa_3xNl-iI7GH0IO9_tkxakWOaKtIWJYmxweT7zrCjVIYP43bT91iofv8Yr2Tpio5OFS5EgHYTO9roJgqqQSSCrYc81C9H9AF7MA0k/s400/bridges.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jeff Bridges: We miss the cheerful, peaceful counter-culture.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, the main reason for reading INHERENT VICE is the wordplay:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a href="http://ambiguities.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/the-top-ten-goofs-of-inherent-vice/"><span style="font-size: large;">http://ambiguities.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/the-top-ten-goofs-of-inherent-vice/</span></a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">They’ve had a change of lead actors--we now have Joaquin Phoenix instead of Robert Downy--but the natural choice would have been the dude himself, Jeff Bridges, who plays himself so well in THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Watching a recent Charlie Rose interview with Bridges made that crystal-clear.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Pynchon picked out the dustjacket art for the first edition hardcover, and a good selection it is, I’d say.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You can see the story behind the dustjacket art at this link:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a href="http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Inherent_Vice_cover_analysis"><span style="font-size: large;">http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Inherent_Vice_cover_analysis</span></a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I like the idea that the counter-culture back in 1969-70 was an island in which there was a certain sense of freedom not seen since. Perhaps it is true that, like Pynchon’s novel itself, it was only a pipe dream, something mythical and mystical from where we now stand, like the running argument about Lemuria and Atlantis in the novel, but there was a certain sense of freedom in the anti-establishment stance that seems timeless.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">With character names like Puck and Bigfoot, it is bound to have a certain<em> Midsummer Night’s Dream</em> ambiance. A detective novel in an alternate state of consciousness, some say, but it seems like much more than that to me. It is timeless not because it is aimless but because it is absurdist, and there is a distinct difference between the concepts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We have gotten beyond the pipe dream and the beach boy music, but the world continues to be as absurdist as ever.</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-19940459111006980862013-04-16T17:14:00.000-04:002013-04-16T17:14:04.549-04:00New Books on The Searchers and Davy Crockett<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The new book on<em> The Searchers</em> is worth reading. Alan LeMay made his novel a composite of the events in several historical western narratives–not to the nth degree of Cormac McCarthy in <em>Blood Meridian</em> (as documented by John Sepich’s <em>Notes On Blood Meridian</em>) but still LeMay went to a surprising amount of research, with solid results.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Glenn Frankel’s<strong><em> The Searchers: The Making of An American Legend</em> </strong>is 400 pages or so, counting the endnotes, a nice bibliography, and an index. The author goes over the Texas history behind the novel, then discusses the history of the novel, then the making of the movie and its wide legacy. Even though I knew much of it already, it was a solid read. Recommended.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Also recommended is the new book by Bob Thompson:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em><strong> Born On A Mountain Top: On The Road With Davy Crockett And The Ghosts Of The Wild Frontier</strong></em>. Among other things, Thompson details the controversy over the evidence of whether Crockett went down fighting at the Alamo or surrendered before he was shot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It amazes me that it took so long to decide to authenticate the <em>de la Pena manuscript</em> and then so little time to do it. It reminds me of the delay in authenticating Samuel Chamberlain’s <em>My Confession</em>, which would be so easy to do, but which now probably will not be accomplished during my lifetime. Or so it seems.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Thompson throws the evidence in the <em>de la Pena manuscript</em> out anyway in his assessment, not on the basis of historical authenticity, but because he is cynical about the then contemporary hype surrounding Davy Crockett and the Alamo.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And of course, if the Chamberlain manuscript is proven authentic, it doesn’t mean that the man always told the truth, nor does it prove the existence of Judge Holden by that name. Still, enquiring minds want to know.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett was an amazing work. It featured a very unconventional opening, especially for the 1950s. Crockett is not seen until he is thrown out of the bush by an angry bear, who, he says, he had been trying to grin to death. We know right then that this is the history of the legend that we are seeing, not the actual history of the man, and we also know then that there will be comic relief along the way.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But what is most impressive is that Crockett resists Andrew Jackson’s toady bureaucrat, and that he goes home to see about his family even when Andrew Jackson tries to extend the service of Crockett’s company for the duration of the war. Here we have a striking civil disobedience lesson, and a lesson in the evils of bureaucracy that no doubt lingered in many of the minds of those who first saw it way back when.</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-6025368196693084162013-03-27T07:39:00.000-04:002013-03-27T07:39:20.627-04:00Reading In the Doctor's Waiting Room<span style="font-size: large;">The hardest reading we do, or try to do, is in the waiting rooms of doctors and hospitals, when the health of our loved ones may be on the line.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="320" id="il_fi" src="http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/c/catastrophic-care/9780307961549_custom-609075711ffd5c4386f5658503c063d0ab33053f-s6-c10.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="205" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Most harrowing is reading about the way our medical system is geared by the big corporations to expand their profits by neglecting the actual care of patients. It isn't criminal because it's legal, but it symbolic of our national materialistic corruption that it <em>is</em> legal. Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads insist that we have the best medical care system in the world, but that just isn't so.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We realize that this isn't so when we look at how our loved ones are being treated, when it then becomes personal.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I started thinking about health care because of a personal tragedy: almost five years ago, my father died from a hospital-borne infection he acquired in the intensive care unit of a well-regarded New York hospital. . .But although his death was a deeply personal and unique tragedy for me and my family, my dad was merely one of a hundred thousand Americans who died that year as a result of infections picked up in hospitals.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"One hundred thousand preventable deaths. That's more than double the annual number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number murdered, twenty 9/11s. Each and every year."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">--David Goldhill, <strong><em>Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father--And How We Can Fix It.</em></strong></span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-39172643088446196602013-03-11T22:56:00.000-04:002013-03-19T12:47:28.210-04:00An Analysis: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn<span style="font-size: large;">Walker Percy's novel, <strong><em>The Moviegoer</em></strong>, which won the National Book Award back in 1961, made the observation that people were becoming less authentic:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in <em>Stagecoach</em>, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in <em>The Third Man</em>.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Fifty-some years later, this idea is reprised in the runaway best-seller, <strong><em>Gone Girl</em></strong> by Gillian Flynn, in the following quote:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed, Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. . .'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing is that the secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Walker Percy's <strong><em>The Moviegoer</em></strong> is a very good book. I'd like to say that <em><strong>Gone Girl</strong></em> is an equally good book, but it falls far short of that. It is an overly-hyped revenge thriller which relies upon the unreliable narrator, sharply written but flawed, lacking a credible and clear distinction between the psychopathic and the normally empathetic and compassionate. The two protagonists are both insufferable psychopaths.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If they were consistent psychopaths, I might not complain as much. But the woman who turns out to be a manipulative control freak somehow has no problem giving the last of her $80,000 family trust to her then-alienated husband to open a bar with his twin sister, whom she never liked. This woman obsessively revenges those who have wronged her, yet there is no talk of revenge against the seedy couple who steal all of her money and leave her stranded. Those are the most obvious errors and they will doubtlessly fix them in the upcoming Reese Witherspoon movie. Unlike life, fiction has to make sense.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhABqgtiSPRZSu68UW0-Jx9PnZ3m_O03pSwVcLUov_Km3tLEGbSVtX6F2U5WT0h11R0Snse1tDABovp2wlOV0KTTKLAHUZJUn98Ws-rsppc_XSzENS25k_SLnXs1qb8USOh2F9osMe5vthOIpg/s1600/imagesCABTOLFF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhABqgtiSPRZSu68UW0-Jx9PnZ3m_O03pSwVcLUov_Km3tLEGbSVtX6F2U5WT0h11R0Snse1tDABovp2wlOV0KTTKLAHUZJUn98Ws-rsppc_XSzENS25k_SLnXs1qb8USOh2F9osMe5vthOIpg/s400/imagesCABTOLFF.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gillian Flynn and Reese Witherspoon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There are other glaring flaws and inconsistencies. </span><span style="font-size: large;">For openers, the title,<em><strong> Gone Girl</strong></em>, has an absolutely false ring to it considering all the talk about gender issues in here. <em>Girl</em> is an inappropriate title for a woman in her thirties unless it is meant playfully or ironically--and if that is the case, then <em><strong>The Cool Girl</strong></em> would have been a more aptly ironic title, since the protagonist defines one of her pretended personalities as such:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
“That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.”<br />
<br />
"Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.<br />
<br />
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them."<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There is a lot of talk in here about women in the tabloid media, cartoonish plays upon Oprah-like TV hosts, Court TV, and such. <strong><em>Gone Girl</em></strong> is at best a B satire which will probably make a mediocre B movie, despite the talents of Reese Witherspoon. Too bad they couldn't find a young Liza Minnelli to play the part:</span><br />
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“I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I’m obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I’m dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There’s a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.” <br />
― <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2383.Gillian_Flynn">Gillian Flynn</a>, <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/13306276">Gone Girl</a></i>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-34237344437460174572013-02-20T18:01:00.000-05:002013-02-22T17:39:29.243-05:00THE MAN WHO SHOT OSAMA BIN LADEN vs. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE<span style="font-size: large;">Re: "THE MAN WHO SHOT Osama bin Laden. . .IS SCREWED" by Phil Bronstein in <em>Esquire</em> Magazine <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313" target="_blank">at this link.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It seems to me that the lifer sniper exhibits un-sniper-like impatience to run out from under cover. With sixteen years of service, he has four years to go, with at least four months of vacation during that time. He makes $60,000 a year, but after shooting OBL, he decides on a change in his life and....he leaves the Navy?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0NPsYyckS-ZL0CJlctJsZQ9pnI7fvF171i7_ImVCBtMmy62yunTszlVZ06SxRZScVQojoBFtxsUmMX1PN9ew0_SAYIVAjjW4rbSrFCBpudJqldc0sE5rRsMngCLOLD07BIBOoto9ahL8dXhk/s1600/imagesCAMBGVWP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0NPsYyckS-ZL0CJlctJsZQ9pnI7fvF171i7_ImVCBtMmy62yunTszlVZ06SxRZScVQojoBFtxsUmMX1PN9ew0_SAYIVAjjW4rbSrFCBpudJqldc0sE5rRsMngCLOLD07BIBOoto9ahL8dXhk/s400/imagesCAMBGVWP.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Good grief, that's exactly the wrong thing to do. Tired of risking his life? Fine. Put in for a transfer. He is almost guaranteed perpetual promotion during the four years he has left. There are a lot of cushy desk jobs the Navy would be willing to train him to do, making a lot of that four years he has left stateside 9 to 5 school-deployment where he can be with his family almost every night and every weekend. All he needs to do is to write the request for a transfer.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9AANjBdpgRiAtNAaDvBYIgbrb4qifcZUio5GtUT4rYq73zAtYXDVeeAOHJHm1gdm6wAzJtVbM10-QSIx1TGuc-ydrtvbjfJSTJp4sPcGsq-6fhDr5PHZa3GZynCU_V3jZfDPCnbc6dXp5JgM/s1600/bestOsama-bin-Ladens-alleged-shooter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9AANjBdpgRiAtNAaDvBYIgbrb4qifcZUio5GtUT4rYq73zAtYXDVeeAOHJHm1gdm6wAzJtVbM10-QSIx1TGuc-ydrtvbjfJSTJp4sPcGsq-6fhDr5PHZa3GZynCU_V3jZfDPCnbc6dXp5JgM/s320/bestOsama-bin-Ladens-alleged-shooter.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Instead, his head apparently befuddled by the potentials of celebrity, he quits the Navy without properly putting in for his disability pensions? That's just stupid. Without joining the reserves? That's also stupid. Without applying for and waiting on a guaranteed civil service job which would bridge his time in the Navy and medical benefits for his family? What is he thinking? Apparently, the man's been listening to Rush Limbaugh too long and has become a dittohead.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He joined the Navy at 19, asking to become a sniper--because his high school sweetheart broke up with him. "That's the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated," he joked, "because she broke my fucking heart."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He talks like he was responsible for <em>tracking the man down</em>, which is something he had little to do with. But as the reporter says, he is an Alpha personality. Me, me, me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps what he should do now is re-enlist. They'll bridge his time. Put in for a transfer or a civil service job or at least disability pay. They'll put him near the front of the line, even though his buddy Republicans are railing against such entitlements.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Could be some rich Republican will see the story and give him a Joe the Plumb-dumb political job, which will take care of his money problems at least, while they make as much political hay with him as possible. No matter who gets "the credit," <em>The Man Who Shot Bin Laden</em>, like <em>The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</em>, incurred a karmic debt which might yet be rewarded with material riches or some political dividend but it remains an abyss too, particularly when it is glorified beyond healthy measure.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwzU3H4V0CElKtJ1T3t6CJHTNlncyUSdO9uMxiyglw4-Uil2vebFCny8KLQLKASFKnwvkKKpRvI7l8V8LVtlhcL40e2tOfe7hDeAKAJAi7jegAYB9ewQmiTPAGnTiTKQaNkkjBZZXyVz2h_mQ/s1600/imagesCALG66NQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwzU3H4V0CElKtJ1T3t6CJHTNlncyUSdO9uMxiyglw4-Uil2vebFCny8KLQLKASFKnwvkKKpRvI7l8V8LVtlhcL40e2tOfe7hDeAKAJAi7jegAYB9ewQmiTPAGnTiTKQaNkkjBZZXyVz2h_mQ/s640/imagesCALG66NQ.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The helicopter team who went on the mission to kill Bin Laden deserves credit, but how much? Compare them to the nondescript Coast Guard helicopter team who has braved a storm, with men who risked their lives diving into icy Atlantic waves to rescue nondescript victims--but whose names are lost to memory as soon as they are heard. Which team is the most courageous?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In both instances, the teams are sent on a mission not of their choosing, but for which they have been trained--to do their duty as members of the armed forces of the United States. Should we take better care of our veterans? Yes, indeed. But this looks like a case of a veteran who needs to wise up to what's available for him. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As John Wayne says to Jimmy Stewart in <em>The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</em>, don't waste time feeling bad about it, but don't glory in taking credit for it either. Just get on with your life.</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-58808146813399455612013-02-13T19:51:00.002-05:002013-02-14T15:41:29.322-05:00Valentine's Day Reading and Marriage In The Movies<span style="font-size: large;">From Groundhog's Day thru Valentines Day, we traditionally spend a lot of time reading love stories and watching romantic movies. As I've pointed out in this blog in past years, Hollywood sometimes does romance well, but rarely love itself. And marriage?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Well, that's the subject of a new book by film historian Jeanine Basinger: I DO AND I DON'T: A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE MOVIES. The author deconstructs the social history of marriages in what individual marriage films exist--and she finds more of them than I had ever imagined possible. It occurs to me now that she missed <em>Friendly Persuasion</em>, with Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire, based upon the novel by Jessamyn West, but all of our other favorites are in here.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Last week, <em>Two For The Road</em> was on one of the local television channels. I thought more of the film when I was younger. Audrey Hepburn was eleven years older than Albert Finney, although you can't see that in the film.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cooper in Friendly Persuasion</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Basinger says that in <em>Two For The Road</em>, the married couple are staying together despite their ups and downs, and that the traditional marriage film formula of "affirm, question, reaffirm, and resolve" is challenged. It is reconstituted as "question, affirm (in past tense), resolve, reaffirm." She says, "It's a difficult form to make work despite its initial honesty. It works against itself."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She discusses marriage in television shows too, including <em>Ozzie And Harriet</em> and <em>The Donna Reed Show</em>. But in Basinger's opinion, one of the finest shows ever presented on marriage was <em>Friday Night Lights (</em>with Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton), and she takes several pages to explain why she thinks so. She says, "<em>Friday Night Lights</em> is not really a show about football. It's a show about how marriage works when it actually does work."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"In all the movies about marriage I watched, I observed a constant attempt to find the best strategy...Satirize it, romanticize it, criticize it, idolize it. Pretend the couple weren't really married. Tell the story in flashbacks. Reverse the roles so the woman was smarter, richer, higher ranked than the man. Make it really about divorce...These constant strategies made it necessary to shape a marriage story into something constructed, plotted, designed."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"When I thought about all the marriages I viewed in movies--and television too--the Friday Night Lights marriage stood out for its lack of such strategies. . . Over the five years it was on the air, there was no <em>strategy</em> for their marital story, no clever plot twists, no dream episodes, no other woman or man, no cheap theatrics or misunderstandings. . .she's loving, but so is he. . .The Taylor marriage was a marriage not governed by genre rules or assaulted by plot development."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton</td></tr>
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<br />Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-33806909397163414542013-02-10T21:57:00.000-05:002013-02-11T22:17:22.052-05:00The Difference Between BOOKS TO DIE FOR And Mediocrity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yesterday, the <em>At The Scene of the Crime Blog</em> engaged in an emperor-has-no-clothes rant against the Agatha and Edgar Awards, specifically against the books that get nominated for these awards. The link is <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2013/02/apathy-sheer-bloody-apathy.html" target="_blank">here.</a></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agatha Christie</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Agatha Awards seem designed to be won by Agatha Christie-like mystery novelists. Since the sub-genre puzzle, cozy, and locked-room <em>English</em> mysteries are always less interesting to me than the more meatier <em>American</em> private-eye tales, I know in advance that they will not be my personal <em>cuppa java</em>--however, I also know that there are many readers who prefer such mysteries and some who read little else. Why would anyone want to give a bad review to a book just because they haven't learned to appreciate that particular sub-genre?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Let the Agatha fans judge the Agatha Christie-like novels.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I sometimes give mixed reviews, but the reason I don't like any particular book usually has more to do with me than with the book at hand. In my youth, there were books that I could not finish, or could finish only because it was assigned in school--many of these same books I now treasure and reread with pleasure. The books have not changed, but I have.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="311" id="il_fi" src="http://i.lisalutz.com/images/books-to-die-for.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="200" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And there are other books that I considered great back then, but which I now see as short-sighted and shallow. We need to have a greater tolerance for other minds who might see the world differently. How lucky we are that we have such a wide selection of novels to choose from, and a golden age of crime literature if there ever was one.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">After all, there are many other sub-genre awards.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And his objection to the John Connolly and Declan Burke-edited <em><strong>Books To Die For</strong></em> seems especially misguided. No one is going to agree with all of those authors, but without the prompting essays in that big volume, I might have missed several reading experiences that have made my life richer.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Some of the essays are lacking, as Michael Dirda pointed out in his <br />Washington Post review (<a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-31/entertainment/35498476_1_novel-ian-rankin-charles-willeford" target="_blank">link),</a> but as Dirda also points out:</span><br />
<br />
"...the general standard of the essays is high, most of them arguing for the depth and sophistication, the literary quality, of their chosen book or author. As the editors note in their thoughtful introduction, serious crime novelists do tend to be secret, or not so secret, moralists. In the headnote to Jo Nesbo’s rave for Jim Thompson’s “Pop. 1280” — chosen instead of the notorious “The Killer Inside Me” — Geoffrey O’Brien is even quoted as calling Thompson our “Dimestore Dostoevsky.”<br />
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Without a lot of fanfare, “Books to Die For” also points out that memorable European crime fiction existed long before Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell. Qiu Xiaolong champions the Martin Beck novels of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, both as mysteries and critiques of Sweden’s capitalist society. James Sallis quotes enough from Jean-Patrick Manchette’s “3 to Kill” that I want to find it in French. <br />
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Cara Black proves comparably good on “120, Rue de la Gare,” by Leo Malet, whose novels are nearly as popular in France as those of Georges Simenon — who, in his turn, is represented by “Act of Passion.” According to John Banville, a score of Simenon’s novels “can stand beside, or look down on, the work of Camus, Sartre, or Andre Gide.” Perhaps my favorite essay of all is Elisabetta Bucciarelli’s on Friedrich Durrenmatt’s psychologically and ethically complex “The Pledge.” There’s a paperback in this house somewhere, and I really must find it.<br />
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The best use of a volume like “Books to Die For” may finally be to remind readers — and publishers — of the many important authors or titles that merit rediscovery. For instance, introducing “A Stranger in My Grave,” Declan Hughes declares that its author, Margaret Millar, was “the greatest female crime writer of the twentieth century.” Arguable, to say the least, especially when one thinks of Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell (all represented here). But Millar is partially neglected because she happened to be married to, again in Hughes’s words, “the greatest male crime writer of the twentieth century,” Ross Macdonald. Again very, very arguable, but at least Macdonald’s work is a lot easier to find at the bookstore. Don’t miss “The Chill,” rightly called a masterpiece by John Connolly. . ."<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mediocrity? Hardly. Dirda doesn't even mention my favorites in here such as Paul Johnston's essay on Philip Kerr's <strong><em>A Philosophical Investigation</em></strong> and Denise Hamilton's essay on Kem Nunn's <em><strong>Tapping The Source</strong></em>, both of which I read and blogged about.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Were Johnston and Hamilton self-promoting? Not overtly, though their intelligent essays had me checking out their books anyway. Was the rant against the Agatha Awards and <strong><em>Books To Die For</em></strong> simply a self-promoting scheme? If so, to judge by all of the talk it has generated and the comments on his blog, it was a very successful one.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Why didn't I think of that?</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-53447472856774092482013-02-08T07:55:00.000-05:002013-03-16T07:35:10.976-04:00THE DOGS OF WINTER by Kem Nunn: Friday's Forgotten Book<span style="font-size: large;">My forgotten selection for this week is Kem Nunn's <strong><em>The Dogs of Winter</em></strong>, a beautifully written mystery/thriller, a surfer novel which has deep literary significance as well. It had been many years since I'd first read it, and this time I relished the unfolding of the plot and the beautiful prose even more. The characters are like old friends and have stayed with me all this time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nunn has a small but vocal following of readers, many of whom prefer his first novel, <strong><em>Tapping the Source</em></strong>. I happen to think that both novels are masterpieces with only minor flaws. I'll shore up this argument momentarily.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Over at J. Kingston Pierce's esteemed blog, <a href="http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2011/09/surf-noir-get-on-board.html" target="_blank">link, </a>journalist and author Denise Hamilton made her case for <strong><em>Tapping the Source</em></strong>, an argument she greatly enlarged upon in the last year's published anthology, <strong><em>Books To Die For</em></strong>. Another good review is at the Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog <a href="http://avidmysteryreader.com/2012/07/09/tapping-the-source-kem-nunn/" target="_blank">at this link.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Briefly, the plot of <strong><em>Tapping the Source</em></strong> has a young everyman searching for his lost sister, Ellen. She's an Hellenistic character rumored to have been abducted and possibly murdered by a trinity of furies, led by a hound of hell. The protagonist at first is repelled by the thought of the exploitation of young women, the drugs and other addictions, but he himself becomes seduced and addicted to the hedonistic surfer life, thus turning into what he despises. When you look into the abyss, it looks back at you. Or as Pogo once said, we have met the enemy, and he is us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Three years ago this month, the Spinetingler Blog featured <strong><em>Tapping the Source</em></strong> as its Forgotten Book </span><a href="http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2010/02/26/fridays-forgotten-books-tapping-the-source-by-kem-nunn-3/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">at this link.</span></a><span style="font-size: large;"> All of the references to the movie, <em>Point Blank</em>, are interesting, but down the page you should read the comments by Brian Lindenmuth and Terrill Lee Lankford. The latter says that <strong><em>Tapping the Source</em></strong> "...had come very close to being filmed with Ridley Scott directing and Sean Penn starring, but Penn and the producers had a last minute salary dispute and the project fell apart. It was currently in limbo. Scott jumped ship and went over to a project called <em>Johnny Utah</em> which was similar enough to <em><strong>Tapping the Source</strong></em> that lawsuits were threatened. Scott eventually dropped out of the project and Bigelow/Cameron came in and revised it again and <em>POINT BREAK</em> was born."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">journalist and author Denise Hamilton</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Strangely Connected blog has a nice review with quotes from <em><strong>Tapping the Source </strong></em><a href="http://had%20come%20very%20close%20to%20being%20filmed%20with%20ridley%20scott%20directing%20and%20sean%20penn%20starring,%20but%20penn%20and%20the%20producers%20had%20a%20last%20minute%20salary%20dispute%20and%20the%20project%20fell%20apart.%20it%20was%20currently%20in%20limbo.%20scott%20jumped%20ship%20and%20went%20over%20to%20a%20project%20called%20johnny%20utah%20which%20was%20similar%20enough%20to%20tapping%20the%20source%20that%20lawsuits%20were%20threatened.%20scott%20eventually%20dropped%20out%20of%20the%20project%20and%20bigelow/Cameron%20came%20in%20and%20revised%20it%20again%20and%20POINT%20BREAK%20was%20born.%20I%20don’t%20believe%20there%20is%20any%20official%20through%20line%20between%20the%20two%20different%20projects." target="_blank">here</a>, and an interesting, if limited, review of <em><strong>The Dogs of Winter </strong></em><a href="http://enzsign.wordpress.com/2007/09/08/the-dogs-of-winter-by-kem-nunn/" target="_blank">here.</a> The blogger, Hugh McPhail, has some problems with Kem Nunn's style, with some syntax that needed editing, but more especially with the last line of <strong><em>The Dogs of Winter:</em></strong></span><br />
<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></strong><br />
But then, he had come to the belief that all things were so ordered, from the steps a man took in time, to the tracks of a storm, the likes of which came with the season, exchanging their energies with that of a frigid and turbulent sea, and thereby raising waves as if they were themselves some variation on God’s erring Wisdom and so able to labor their passion into matter.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let me unpack that. We're creatures of spirit having a physical experience. Our spirits are not made of matter, though we act like they are. We take form like waves on the ocean or whirlpools in the river, and are under the illusion that we are solid, separate egos, only to dissolve back into the stream again.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">That, of course, is a very Cormac McCarthy type of statement, and in fact, the book rings with wonderfully Faulkner/McCarthy-like sentences, almost all of them more accessible than the one above.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">When Kem Nunn was interviewed about <strong><em>The Dogs of Winter </em></strong><a href="http://commonground.typepad.com/kemnun.pdf" target="_blank">at this link,</a> he was asked which writer had most been an influence, and he replied: "As a writer you have to be in love with language. I would have to say Cormac McCarthy. His novel, <strong><em>Blood Meridian</em></strong>, is among my favorites. You can trace the cadences of his prose all the way back to Faulkner." Later he said it again in this interview with Denis Faye of the Writers Guild blog, <a href="http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=3068" target="_blank">link.</a></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Yes, and it is not just the McCarthy-like prose we see in Kem Nunn's marvelous books. The same gnostic/buddhist/christian/pantheist naturalistic spirituality is there as well, as Nunn himself has stated. This same spirituality is also to be found in that other great literary surfing novel, Tim Winton's <strong><em>Breath</em></strong>, which I blogged about <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011/01/thursdays-critical-analysis-tim-wintons.html" target="_blank">at this link.</a> Birds of a feather.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I love this quote from <em><strong>Tapping the Source</strong></em>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Everything coming together until it was all one thing: the birds, the porpoise, the leaves of seaweed and catching sunlight through the water, all one thing and he was one with it. Locked in. Not just tapping the source but of the source."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If you're looking for surfer novels with a lighter, more superficial touch, you might enjoy Tim Winslow's <strong><em>Dawn Patrol</em></strong> and its sequel, <strong><em>The Gentleman's Hour</em></strong>, which I reviewed <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011/08/fridays-forgotten-books-two-light-reads.html" target="_blank">at this link.</a> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">(March 14th edit: Steve Nester's review of Kem Nunn's Tapping The Source has just appeared over at the Rap Sheet: </span> <a href="http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-book-you-have-to-read-tapping.html">http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-book-you-have-to-read-tapping.html</a>)Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-55835975517128236202013-02-02T13:18:00.000-05:002013-02-02T13:18:23.019-05:00GROUNDHOG DAY, and EVERY DAY by David Levithan<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Well, it's GROUNDHOG DAY. Again.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk89gFaMqkj2v4kmHPEUjlJt8492U75apdEBB-TWSToWQafDcNK-LA_Kb7pFSAUlCh56WWih9zUyrydvoNk1tbsoPVsIj2ENPWOU8VPu_F7tEkmnbF_b8ZokV0cm5X1GxrHs9ZhoKyfjack5s/s1600/Groundhogdayclock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" closure_uid_44nq20="4" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk89gFaMqkj2v4kmHPEUjlJt8492U75apdEBB-TWSToWQafDcNK-LA_Kb7pFSAUlCh56WWih9zUyrydvoNk1tbsoPVsIj2ENPWOU8VPu_F7tEkmnbF_b8ZokV0cm5X1GxrHs9ZhoKyfjack5s/s1600/Groundhogdayclock.jpg" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I've got you, babe. I've got you to walk with me, I've got you to talk with me. I've got you to hold my hand. I've got you to understand. If we've got love, we've got everything, including a song that's sunny to share.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We've celebrated Groundhog Day on this blog before, <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011/02/transcendental-tuesday-books-for.html" target="_blank">at this link,</a> and <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012/02/groundhog-day-and-somewhere-in-time.html" target="_blank">at this link.</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> We never tire of it. Two weeks ago, my wife was making her first yearly batch of ginger Groundhog Day cookies, some of which were shipped out to relatives.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Originally, according to the backstory on the <em>Groundhog Day</em> DVD, the spiritual "It's A Wonderful Life" was slated to be showing at the town theater, but they changed it to a more jerky and materialistic Clint Eastwood flick. Too bad, for <em>Groundhog Day</em> owes much to the Jimmy Stewart film, and of course, to Dickens' <em>A Christmas Carol</em>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">These stories celebrate free will, our ability to chose love and kindness over material things and self-agrandizement. Our ability to chose the glass-half-full.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh10ZX3Vzn7Bqkp8v0yObpZXvG26ILZ2vTeV5PRueQgnLosJzuyK3w2ybJeyApsJhBJGegAmLSGLGc78btdcEXhxDuSGbBdSIscho6O9YdGv_lecQgSbXhKiK1VKaxHmEwgukX3bvaHPW21MbU/s1600/glass-half-full1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh10ZX3Vzn7Bqkp8v0yObpZXvG26ILZ2vTeV5PRueQgnLosJzuyK3w2ybJeyApsJhBJGegAmLSGLGc78btdcEXhxDuSGbBdSIscho6O9YdGv_lecQgSbXhKiK1VKaxHmEwgukX3bvaHPW21MbU/s320/glass-half-full1.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There are now derivative books and movies galore spawned by these works and their wider cultural influence, and I say the more the merrier. I discuss time, Zola Budd, and the movie <em>Run Zola Run </em><a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012/01/run-lola-run-zola-budd-and-time.html" target="_blank">at this link.</a></span><br />
<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghpvP-zVaq0rOSPRabWmNccbV2ZVzpntqw7AEO7pYAbZxxmT5NdS2ZvSOLBZlVJTA-dU9BA6_Q52ZE1b68ddn78WWvc5G5hzgWPoUXTIqK05kFHMH-TzMOIvBF41RmfdTnrlezbz3CxQhW39E/s320/Bestzolabuddbarefoot.JPG" width="252" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Which brings me to David Levithan's novel, <strong><em>Every Day </em></strong>(2012), in which an everyman jumps from body to body, a different one every day. Just as in <em>Groundhog Day</em>, there is no concrete explanation as to why this is, it just happens, like life itself. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The protagonist jumps into all kinds of people, but always into those of his own approximate age and locality. He has to grapple with race and gender issues, with physical, emotional, and mental handicaps, and most importantly, with identity and ethical issues. He has to decide whether to leave his temporary personage better off than he found it. Complicating this, he begins to fall in love with a girl.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So, the story winds humorously around his dilemma, as he tries to cope with his always-temporary status, eventually discovering for himself the difference between a stalking, possessive love and actual loving. We get love when we let it go.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">David Levithan's <strong><em>Every Day</em></strong> seems to have made all of the Best YA Novel lists for last year, but it made some of the mainstream lists too. It would have made mine, had I read it last year. It deals with some YA issues, but at the end there is a maturity that escapes most adults in these United States. Sometimes the best thing we can do for those we love is to leave them alone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I thought the book's hardcover dustjacket a bit bland at first, but it has the white crosses on it like crossroads, dividing sections of a multiverse of lives. And now that I reconsider it, there are clouds everywhere, from both sides now, clouds even on the frontiespiece. Sort of like the opening of the movie, <em>Groundhog Day</em>. </span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-82313442115548651862013-01-22T13:06:00.000-05:002013-01-22T13:06:07.826-05:00An Analysis: OLD RIVERS by Walter Brennan/Tuesday's Forgotten Film or A/V<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><img height="553" id="il_fi" src="http://www.shugarecords.com/Images/Products/Large/cae4123f-e6fa-4c02-811c-a2e4b219c1fa-0.JPG" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="554" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Walter Brennan himself needs no introduction, as the Academy Award winning actor distinguished himself in many roles. I especially admire his performance as Humphrey Bogart's drunken sidekick in a role based on a character in Hemingway's <em><strong>To Have And Have Not</strong></em>.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="240" id="il_fi" src="http://annyas.com/screenshots/images/1944/to-have-and-have-not-trailer-title-still.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In April of 1962, Walter Brennan came out with the recording of <em>Old Rivers</em>, which became immediately popular and ranked in the top ten of records played, even though it was unlike anything else on the charts in the age of baby boomer rock and roll. It was a deceptively simple performance, but there is magic here:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>How old was I when I first seen old Rivers?<br />I can't remember when he weren't around<br />Well, that old fellow did a heap of work<br />Spent his whole life walking plowed ground.<br /><img height="240" id="il_fi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiguW9gxz_X5MZaWFgspxru27TKCXasSS79Cu2gxjeqqv6iFBBpZOdzUtCFZ5JUbbqxZc9HzJguh_m22NwY9KtEqxuYNDAKm7uc6Viw2bSQvnIxF2o_FysKmTDyQIqFUSUGZmYir7N86Cs/s320/walter+brennan+bogart+bacall+to+have+and+have+not.png" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="320" /><br />He had a one-room shack not far from us<br />And well, we was about as poor as him<br />He had one old mule he called Midnight<br />And I'd trailed along after them.<br /><br />He used to plow them rows straight and deep<br />And I'd come along near behind<br />A-bustin' up clods with my own bare feet<br />Old Rivers was a friend of mine.<br /><br />That sun'd get high and that mule would work<br />Till old Rivers'd say, ''Whoa!''<br />He'd wipe his brow, lean back on the reins<br />And talk about a place he was gonna go.</em><br />Chorus:<br /><em>He'd say, one of these days<br />I'm gonna climb that mountain<br />Walk up there among the clouds<br />Where the cotton's high<br />And the corn's a-growin'<br />And there ain't no fields to plow</em>.<br /><br />--- Instrumental ---<br /><br /><em>I got a letter today from the folks back home and<br />They're all fine and crops is dry.<br />Down at the end my mama said, ''Son<br />You know old Rivers died.''</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Just sittin' here now on this new-plowed earth<br />Trying to find me a little shade<br />With the sun beating down 'cross the field I see<br />That mule, old Rivers and me.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>With the sun beating down 'cross the field I see<br />That mule...old Rivers...and me.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Why is this magic?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Well, first, it is magic because it poetically and quite correctly posits the temporal material in the eternal. The consciousness of the narrator can see old Rivers even though old Rivers has vanished. When Walter Brennan speaks that last line, there are magic pauses and a breath between "that mule," "old Rivers," "and me."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> <img height="540" id="il_fi" src="http://bixography.com/images/olmanpwgood.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="542" /><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The sun is eternal, the earth is eternal, but flesh and blood vanishes like an old man's voice on the wind. We have it but we have it not, for it passes. The narrator becomes old Rivers, and so do you.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The eternal is also before you in the old man's name, Rivers. "Even if baby boomers weren't conscious of the allusion to the song, <em>Old Man River</em>, their unconscious probably heard it:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Old man river,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>That old man river,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>he must know something,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>but he don't say nothing,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>he just keeps rolling</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>he keeps old rolling along.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>He don't plant taters</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>and he don't plant cotton</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>and them that plants 'em</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>is soon forgotten</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>but old man river,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>he just keeps rolling along.</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>You and me,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>we sweat and strain,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>body all aching and racked with pain.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Tote that barge, lift that bail,</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>get a little drunk and you land in jail.</em></span><br />
<em></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Life gets weary.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>I'm sick of tryin'</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>I'm tired of livin'</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>and feared of dyin'</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>but old man river.<br />he just keeps rolling along.</em></span><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Paul Robeson sang it in <em>Showboat</em>, but Bing Crosby's version (singing with Paul Whiteman's orchestra) was popular. Then, too, also mixing the temporal with the sun and "that eternal river," there was "That Lucky Old Sun," made popular first by Frankie Laine, but later recorded by such as Ray Charles and Kenny Chesney:</span><br />
Up in the mornin'<br />Out on the job<br />Work like the devil for my pay<br />But
that lucky old sun got nothin' to do<br />But roll around heaven all
day.<br /><br />Fuss with my woman, toil for my kids<br />Sweat till I'm wrinkled and
gray<br />While that lucky old sun got nothin' to do<br />But roll around heaven all
day<br /><br />Dear Lord above, can't you know I'm pining, tears all in my
eyes<br />Send down that cloud with a silver lining, lift me to
Paradise<br /><br />Show me that river, take me across<br />Wash all my troubles
away<br />Like that lucky old sun, give me nothing to do<br />But roll around heaven
all day<br /><br /><instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""><br />Send down
that cloud with a silver lining, lift me to Paradise<br /><br />Show me that river,
take me across<br />Wash all my troubles away<br />Like that lucky old sun, give me
nothing to do<br />But roll around heaven all day</instrumental><br />
<instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""></instrumental> <img height="500" id="il_fi" src="http://www.peasprout.com/blog/wp-images/frankie-laine-thats-my-desire.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="500" /><br />
<instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""><span style="font-size: large;">Not everyone liked <em>Old Rivers</em>, to be sure. Disc-jockeys who are now either dead or old people themselves made fun of the elderly back then, and there were parodies galore. One said: "When the sun would get high, old Rivers would too."</span></instrumental><br />
<instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""><span style="font-size: large;"></span></instrumental><br />
<instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""><span style="font-size: large;">Yet the universals still ring true beyond words to those mature enough to confront their own mortality and to reflect back on their lives.</span></instrumental><br />
<instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""><span style="font-size: large;"></span></instrumental> <img height="500" id="il_fi" src="http://countryuniverse.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/kenny-chesney1.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="500" /><br />
<instrumental ear="" interlude-first="" line="" lord="" of=""><span style="font-size: large;">Walter Brennan made other recordings but none matched the magical authenticity of his performance of <strong><em>Old Rivers</em></strong>. For me, the only things that come close are his inspired renditions of Mark Twain's stories, <em>The Blue Jays</em> and <em>The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County</em>.</span></instrumental>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-52875379006968116342013-01-09T13:17:00.000-05:002013-01-12T02:14:04.256-05:00Wherever I Wind Up by R. A. Dickey with Wayne Coffey<span style="font-size: large;">This is a very intimate autobiography of professional baseball pitcher R. A. Dickey, winner of the Cy Young Award in 2012 and just recently traded from the New York Mets to the Toronto Blue Jays.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="500" id="il_fi" src="http://www.collectorsquest.com/uploads/blog/2012/04/dickey11.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="329" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As a baseball book, it is unique in several ways. Unlike the landmark baseball books of the past--Jim Brosnan's <strong><em>The Long Season</em></strong>, his sequel, <strong><em>The Pennant Race</em></strong>, and Jim Bouton's much more bawdy classic, <strong><em>Ball Four</em></strong>--Dickey's <strong><em>Wherever I Wind Up</em></strong> is personal and in greater detail provides his history and career in relationship to R. A. Dickey, the family man.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Dickey is also a religious man and there is much talk of God. The word "sin" never appears, but he spends a lot of time praying for God to keep him on the right track, to show him the way. He stops short of praying to win, but he seems to have a sense of entitlement, which some might see only as confidence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A batch of pictures are included, including the cute one of a very young Dickey trying to seal a kiss from his future wife, Anne, then in the seventh grade.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Apparently journalist and author Wayne Coffey is to be credited for the fine pacing in this autobiography, and it is a splendid piece of creative non-fiction. Dickey's prospects rise and fall but reach bottom after a crisis in his marriage--at about the time he finds himself near death at the bottom of the Missouri River.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I watched the news conference he had in Toronto yesterday. He said that he got better as a pitcher as his form improved as a man of conviction and responsibility. Dickey had some trouble buttoning his new Blue Jay top, but otherwise he came off solidly enough, an old guy, gifted with the wisdom of years, but also very self-effacing. I wished they had let his wife speak.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Baseball buffs will enjoy his frank discussion of knuckleball mechanics, and young players might learn a thing or two from it. The rear dustjacket picture shows his grip on the ball.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Many baseball people pass through the narrative as they passed through his life, but unlike many other baseball books, no one is denigrated in here. Dickey says that he has never taken performance enhancing drugs, and I believe him.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="320" id="il_fi" src="http://www.collectorsquest.com/uploads/blog/2012/04/dickey3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="285" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">R. A. Dickey versus Stephen Strasburg, the Baffler Vs. Rocket Boy--Wall Street Journal</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The funniest scene takes place on a subway where Dickey hears others talking about the pending match-up between Dickey and the ultra-hyped flame-thrower Stephen Strasburg, the Baffler vs. Rocket Boy. None of his fellow passengers recognized him. He even saw one man looking at the Wall Street Journal editorial cartoon above.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I remembered the game well, as I watched it on television. It will be interesting to see how Dickey performs this year. I suspect he'll be even better. His honesty makes us want to root for him all the way.</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-78274499536294836232013-01-09T08:53:00.001-05:002013-01-09T11:59:40.171-05:00Adrian McKinty's COLD, COLD GROUND<span style="font-size: large;">Despite the high acclaim given to his novels, Adrian McKinty has yet to break out in these United States. He has appeared on several intelligent 2012 Best of the Year lists for <strong><em>Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong>, including:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">1. Random House author Tony Black's list. A very interesting list, half of which I had not heard mentioned elsewhere. <a href="http://pulppusher.blogspot.com/2012/12/best-of-best-pusher-picks-of-2012.html" target="_blank">Link.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. <strong><em>Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong> also made the top five list at the Crime Fiction Lover's blog: <a href="http://www.crimefictionlover.com/2012/12/crimefictionlover-top-five-books-of-2012/" target="_blank">link.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">3. <em><strong>Cold, Cold Ground</strong></em> made the top five list at the excellent book blog, Crimepieces, <a href="http://crimepieces.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/my-top-five-crime-reads-of-2012/" target="_blank">link.</a></span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="383" id="il_fi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLz3LZJrFYnHMo8T-RXW0fwIKlLeWxNKc__Z1_kiBRa1mthV2u3aUrXV5yxf4wCKjF6OTKubhyphenhyphenxScZVJy53yF1g0kUpy9NQzegBiWejQzlFX7xeOC6RHhIVUoGwuLNzcQAlVQ6HK3dJbZtykg/s1600/elizabethmongomeryNew-3.JPG" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="297" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">4. Recently Peter Rozovsky wrote an article for Philly.com listing Adrian McKinty among his favorite authors and least known (in the United States). <a href="http://articles.philly.com/2012-12-22/news/35970925_1_crime-fiction-world-crime-fine-crime" target="_blank">Link.</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">5. <strong><em>Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong> makes author Cary Watson's best list <a href="http://www.jettisoncocoon.com/2012/12/best-books-of-2012.html" target="_blank">at this link.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">6. <strong><em>Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong> makes noted author Declan Burke's best of 2012 list <a href="http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/2012/12/30-shades-of-great-best-books-of-2012.html" target="_blank">at this link.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">7. <strong><em> Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong> makes the top five over at the BiteTheBook blog <a href="http://bitethebook.com/2012/11/20/my-top-5-reads-for-2012/" target="_blank">at this link.</a> A very nice review <a href="http://bitethebook.com/2012/01/09/adrian-mckinty-the-cold-cold-ground/" target="_blank">here.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">8. And, of course, <strong><em>Cold, Cold Ground</em></strong> shared top spot of my Best Thriller list, (<a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012/12/best-books-of-year-2012.html" target="_blank">link</a>), and reviewed it <a href="http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2012/02/adrian-mckintys-cold-cold-ground.html" target="_blank">here.</a></span><br />
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<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="400" id="il_fi" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355027843l/13008754.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="285" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">These are by no means the complete lists of those who have thus far read and regaled the novel, but a sampling of those I've encountered and can now recall. In Europe, where Adrian McKinty is better known, there are a great many independent reviews touting the book in newspapers and other media such as Eoin McNamee's excellect review from <em>The Guardian </em><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/06/cold-cold-gound-adrian-mckinty-review" target="_blank">here.</a>..</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don't have McKinty's new book yet. It is a sequel entitled <strong><em>The Sirens In The Street</em></strong>, available now in parts of Europe and it will be released in the United States soon. The opening of the book is linked from the the author's website, and it is compelling: <a href="http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Link.</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>_____________</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As for my other crime novel pick of 2012, Max Allan Collins' <strong><em>Target: Lancer</em></strong> was not released until the end of November, and so it got a late start--t</span><span style="font-size: large;">oo late to appear on many lists although early reviews are gushingly positive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over at the At The Scene of the Crime Blog, one of the new discoveries listed there was Max Allan Collins (<a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2012/12/year-in-review-top-10-discoveries-of.html" target="_blank">link</a>). I too discovered Collins with <strong><em>Target: Lancer</em></strong>, quite by accident. I'd tried him before and had mistakenly written him off as a Mickey Spillane clone. It turns out, the man has been writing novels in various styles, one of which has the highly intelligent and civilized tone of the private investigator in <strong><em>Target: Lancer</em></strong>.</span>Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8107597126236396723.post-34989211288295155522013-01-04T15:09:00.000-05:002013-01-05T07:47:38.070-05:00Stephen Greenleaf's BOOK CASE: Friday's Forgotten Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">A brilliant manuscript arrives at a publishing house, but unfortunately, no one knows who wrote it or whether it's fact or fiction. Private detective John Marshall Tanner has been invited to a writer's party, where the publisher wants to hire him to track down the origin of the work.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Here's the opening to <strong><em>Book Case</em></strong>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I'm not certain whether the affliction originates in genetic dis-inclination or in environmentally induced aversion, but I've always been more of a recluse than a celebrant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Most of my lies have been uttered to evade the sticky dangle of a social occasion, and most of my alcoholic intake has been consumed to ease me through those festivities I'd been too timid or unimaginative to avoid.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a result, parties and I pretty much parted ways early in the decade, when staying home with Malamud or Mahler or Montana began to seem preferable to most of the alternatives that came my way. . .</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So it was distinctly out of the ordinary for me to be parading my hard-won nonchalance on the fringes of a handsomely refurbished loft on the trendiest corner south of Market, with something called the Sunday Punch sloshing over the rim of the plastic glass that had been foisted on me the moment I arrived, as I waited for my host to find time to tell me why I'd been invited to spend an evening with half a hundred guests who were far too young to have been confronted by life's more vicious vicissitudes, at least not the sort that made my own little ledge of the world a precarious perch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As out of place as a parent at a prom..."</span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Book Case Book Cover - Stephen Greenleaf" class="stdimg" height="371" src="http://img2.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/q/r/qr74elaoyg3grq4g.jpg" width="217" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">That's the first few lines of Stephen Greenleaf's private-eye novel, <em><strong>Book Case</strong></em>, published back in 1991. I easily identify with Greenleaf's series protagonist, John Marshall Tanner, who was a recluse but not a complete recluse, an introverted guy (as the opening shows), but it is not humanity that he shies away from--just the opposite. What he despises is the plastic phoniness and hypocrisy of these party people. Tanner isn't out of step with humanity, but rather, the neurotic money-and-celebrity-worshiping popular American culture is out of step with the better angels of humanity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Some time ago, I selected Greenleaf's last novel, <strong><em>Ellipsis</em></strong>, as my forgotten book of the week. I turn to him again today, because my mood seems right.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Before I published my Best Novels list for the year, I tried again to tackle that book which seems to be on the Best Novel list of everyone else--Gillian Flynn's<strong><em> Gone Girl</em></strong>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">I found Flynn's protagonists insufferable psychopaths. I knew from the hype that there were twists and turns galore, yet the more I read, the more I felt uncomfortable doing so, this during the Christmas season of the Fiscal Cliff, where it is hard enough to escape the greed and commercialism hyped repeatedly in the media.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I gave up on it again, and I turned to Stephen Greenleaf's John Marshall Tanner, my own idea of a civilized voice. Introverted, yes, but not anti-social, just not high-society social.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="300" id="il_fi" src="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/01/26/at_0126_CAIN_QUIET_dual_480x360.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="400" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This last month I've also read Susan Cain's <strong><em>Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking</em></strong>, a best seller now in its nineteenth printing. I liked it, but I wished it was less pendant and more comprehensive. The extrovert/introvert divide is not nearly as important as the empathetic/psychopathic divide. Loners are often loving, compassionate people, and the love between them can run deep.</span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="500" id="il_fi" src="http://stuartaustin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/party-of-one.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="325" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Anneli Rufus, author of <em><strong>Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto</strong></em>, says that "one of the public's biggest misconceptions is that loners care nothing for love," and she cites her own marriage to her fellow loner and husband. If Susan Cain has read Anneli Rufus's excellent book, she fails to cite it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Greenleaf's John Marshall Tanner is an unmarried man who has his faults, but he is constantly searching for love, for goodness, for authenticity. His narration is one that you, the reader, can trust.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Stephen Greenleaf quit writing novels due to lack of sales, but meanwhile, Gillian Flynn's wildly hyped and wildly successful <strong><em>Gone Girl</em></strong> has been optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon, who will star in the movie.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="300" id="il_fi" src="http://cdn01.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/headlines/2012/11/reese-witherspoon-gone-girl-gillian-flynn-thr-feature.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="300" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author Gillian Flynn and Reese Witherspoon</td></tr>
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Richard L. Pangburnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717563750065476750noreply@blogger.com0