European Reading Challenge #6

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life - Tom Reiss

This biography examines the life and times of Lev Nussimbaum, a stateless Azerbaijani writer who lived between the two world wars.

The narrative is a bit less on the mercurial, magnetic, and elusive personality of the subject than on the major geopolitical upheavals of the 20^th century, such as the collapse of empires after WWI, the rise of Russian Bolshevism, the tragedy of Weimar democracy and the rise of Hitler’s National Socialism.

Reiss departs from the intricate story of Nussimbaum’s short life (from the Caucasus to Central Europe to America to end in Posillipo, Italy) to give primers on the horror of the Cheka; the brutality of the Freikorps; and the global rise of conflicting revolutionary and counter-revolutionary groups. This will interest readers (like me) who knew about such phenomena only superficially.

Reiss’s narrative captures and holds our attention because he continually draws from eyewitness accounts in memoirs and interviews, and Nussimbaum’s letters to intimates and fragments of his autobiography. He compares this evidence against historical sources. Did Nussimbaum soften frightful events due to his own nostalgia? Or conversely when did he see harsh reality but soften it in his fiction? This critical approach allows the biographer to substantiate the claim that Nussimbaum was probably the author Kurban Said, who wrote the iconic novel Ali and Nino ​​(1937).

An exceptional work. The book is well-worth reading if a reader can’t stop reading about the painful history of 20^th century Europe. Historical figures are presented in an interesting way (such as the young bank-robbing Stalin knowing the subject’s mother). The vision of Baku at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as the Paris of the East brings us closer to the culture, customs and peoples of the Caucasus and neighboring regions that are never mentioned in our schools or the mass media.

Chandler but More Heart & Soul

Ask for Me Tomorrow - Margaret Millar

Gilda was married to B.J. Lockwood, a nice guy that bad stuff just happened to since he never learned from experience and was too dumb to evaluate the risks of impulsive decisions. B.J.’s decision to run off with their pregnant 15-year-old house girl back to her natal village in Mexico left Gilda at loose ends. Gilda then married Marco, who had a paralyzing stroke soon after their nuptials.

Wanting to conclude unfinished business with B.J., Gilda hires young lawyer Tom Aragon to go down Mexico way and find him. Though he’s by no means an experienced detective, Tom is bilingual and quickly finds out B.J. and a con man named Jenkins were jailed on fraud charges. 

Their hapless plan to convert a poor Baja California village into a resort transformed into a criminal enterprise mainly because they were both out of their financial league. As Tom gets closer to his quarry B.J., however, three brutal murders eliminate informants.  

I found the ending a surprising hoot, while harder to please, less willing to be tricked readers of mystery may be less impressed.

Millar’s settings of Southern California and Mexico in the mid-1970s feel authentic and evocative though the attacks on the corruption in both places may put off readers who like those places. The dialogue is snappy and funny, but sometimes we wonder if it is likely that sleazy Mexican cops would really come up with such witty rejoinders. Many scenes shine as Gilda and Tom interact with each other, mainly by phone, and with a variety of curious characters. I think the exposition, dialogue and characterization make this one worth reading.

Margaret Millar was married to Kenneth Millar who wrote mysteries under the pen name of Ross Macdonald.

And the Butler-Blonde Battle was On!

Note: It’s impossible to have the Gail Patrick film festival without talking about this movie though it's hard to come up with anything new to say about one of the most popular screwball comedies ever. Mean Girl Cornelia was the role that typed Gail Patrick as The Sexy Smart Haughty One for the next dozen years. When Patrick retired from acting in 1948, inactivity drove her crazy. So she created the job of executive producer for the TV series Perry Mason and did that from 1957 to 1966.

My Man Godfrey
1936 / 1:34
Tagline: “...and the butler-blonde battle was on!”
[internet archive]

William Powell claimed that the only actress right for the part of Irene was Carole Lombard. Only an amateur critic, I hesitate to argue with a respected professional, but I wonder if at 24 years old Lombard was a little long in the tooth for the role of the giddy socialite Irene Bullock.

But I’m wrong since what trivializes a couple of years too old is that Lombard personified Thalia, the goddess of comedy. Only the powers of a goddess could make uproarious being flopped over Powell’s shoulder when he carries her up the stairs to toss her into a shower. Somehow she still manages to convey that she’s fakin’ and is as content as a puppy being carried. Even the way she lolls her head and shakes her hands is funny. Hilarious when she romps around on the furniture like a four-year-old, gleefully sing-song chanting “Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!” Lombard was a fearless actress, not afraid to look a wet and disheveled mess or act the looniest of tunes.

Lombard herself felt the character of Irene Bullock had a sense of tragedy about her. The movie-goer suspects that Irene’s bounteous love and compassion have been frustrated. Family with scads of kiddoes and doggoes or running a charity would be just the thing for her. Any foundation would benefit from her strength and kindness that badly need to find an object.

Also having a sense of the tragedy of the waste of talent was the character of Cornelia, the tough cookie sister played by Gail Patrick.

Godfrey: Very well. You belong to that unfortunate category that I would call the "Park Avenue brat." A spoiled child who's grown up in ease and luxury, who's always had her own way, and whose misdirected energies are so childish that they hardly deserve the comment, even of a butler on his off Thursday.

Cornelia: Thank you for a very lovely portrait.

Cornelia is hurt and angry at this devastating critique because she knows it’s true. She knows that she’s wasting her intelligence, adventurousness, and determination. She is all too aware that she is turning away from the challenge of life by hanging out with wastrels and worldlings. When ex-spoiled child Godfrey is taking his leave of the Bullocks, he has learned even from bad examples. He says to Cornelia:

You taught me the fallacy of false pride. You taught me humility....Miss Cornelia, there have been other spoiled children in the world. I happen to be one of them myself. You're a high-spirited girl. I can only hope that you use those high spirits in a more constructive way.

High spirits, a powerful psychological resource, run in all of us, already there, we don’t get high spirits from somewhere else. High spirits fuel the warrior in Cornelia, making it possible for her to face adversity and overcome obstacles. She needs to fight whatever is stealing her joy and dampening her high spirits, figure out her own values and work toward her own unique goals.

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click the link below to read the review.

• If I Had a Million
• The Phantom Broadcast
• The Murders in the Zoo
• Death Takes a Holiday
• The Crime of Helen Stanley
• Murder at the Vanities
• The Preview Murder Mystery

Hercule Poirot #32

Mrs. McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie

First published in 1952, the Belgian series detective is called upon by Superintendent Spence to gather enough evidence to Stay the Executioner’s Chop. Though he worked up the case, Spence doubts that James Bentley committed the murder for which he was tried and convicted. 

But if Bentley was not the culprit, who bashed Mrs. McGinty over the head, got her cash from under the floorboards, and secreted the hoard in a place her boarder James Bentley had easy access to? And why frame harmless Bentley, an out of work, lonely oddball?

Spence asks ageing detective Hercule Poirot to look into the case quietly. Poirot grants Spence’s request. He goes to the village of Broadhinny where the crime took place. To his misery, he is compelled to stay in a guest house with draughts, squalor, half-wild kids and dogs, and bad cooking. 

He meets his old friend the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver. She is having a rough time collaborating with a writer who adopting one of her series characters for a play. Her detective is a middle-aged Finnish vegetarian but the writer wants to make him into a handsome, dashing, meat-eating 35-year-old.

Through logic and method, Poirot quickly enough finds other probable motives and culprits and discovers what brought about Mrs. McGinty’s killing. There is another killing. This causes Bentley's execution to be postponed and gives more time for Poirot, by exciting his little gray cells, to untangle the mystery. Poirot's boundless self-confidence is always on display and always likable.

Agatha Christie was a plot genius. I shake my head in wonder at how she weaves her magic. Happily, Poirot is on stage from the first page. The entire mystery, in fact, is told from his point of view. The unfolding of the plot is smooth and plausible but too many characters make the reader sometimes pause and wonder, “Now who was this.” 

She doesn’t spend time describing and moves incidents along. When we readers are misdirected we know we are being conned and marvel that we still feel the suspense. High entertainment value, with all suspects gathered in a room for the climax and period references – still rationing in the early Fifties!

A Strange and Fascinating Woman

Note: This picture is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife by George Kelly. Directed by Vincent Sherman, it is the second of three films he made with Joan Crawford when they were “close to each other.”  When Sherman later revealed the affair to his wife, she observed “Well, I guess it’s too much to ask of any man that he turn down the opportunity to sleep with Joan Crawford.”

Harriet Craig
1950 / 1:34
Tagline: “A Strange and Fascinating Woman, at War with the Whole World.”
[internet archive]

Harriet Craig (Joan Crawford) is severe in her appearance, wearing clothes with straight lines, no curves. Harriet, particular to the point of being peculiar, keeps her housekeeper and her cousin Clair on the hop keeping everything just so. The upshot is that the house has all the warm coziness of the waiting area of a busy urology practice. Harriet keeps her husband Walter happy where it counts especially when she can use connubial delights to divert him from golf games with poker buddies.

But it is not like she is buckling to all the expectations of a stern patriarchy. Though she believes a wife’s duty is to look nice, she wears a hairstyle that is easy to take care of instead of attractive. Though Walter wants kids, she doesn’t want messes so they don’t have kids. In an incredible scene, she damages her husband’s reputation with his boss to head off Walter getting a promotion and a long business stay in Japan. Harriet feels she has achieved a secure stasis and doesn’t want anything as uncertain as kids or trips full of illicit temptations to rock the boat lest they all be devoured by chaos.

Harriet Craig escapes into perfectionism for safety, a fantasy world in which she is in control of the course of her mother’s dementia, Clair’s marital prospects, and her husband Walter’s promotions and business trips. She can’t face without anxiety the reality that she has control over none of these things. This movie is about how the world, other people, and her own unhelpful responses to normal changes in life all form a tornado to topple her perfect house of cards, to blow away her nutty belief that by dominating other people with her tyrant ways, she will exert control over what is in fact out of her sphere.

Wendell Corey is genial as Walter Craig. He’s probably best remembered as the dour police detective in Rear Window, being all judgy about Stewart sleeping with Kelly without benefit of clergy.  He plays Walter as a social and reasonable guy. The movie-goer can see it in his face when the realization strikes him that Harriet doesn’t like or trust other people when she claims, “We don't need other people to make us happy.” K.T. Stevens effectively portrays Clair as vulnerable in her lack of confidence and experience, defenseless against Harriet’s manipulations. Her nonverbals are expressive when it hits her that Harriet is playing fast and loose with reality.

Joan Crawford's performance is outstanding. Commanding. I had to re-evaluate my previous dismissal of her as a habitually over-acting movie star, associating her often overheated style too much with the melodramatic roles and situations of her many movies. Crawford brings to life Harriet Craig's embattled and controlling nature as she deals, not well, with a crazy world in which husbands tell each other, “Wives are mighty handy gadgets to have around the house.”

The Ides of Perry Mason 84

Gold Comes in Bricks – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

This 1940 exercise in noir-lite was the sixth of 30 novels starring the private detectives Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Like Laurel and Hardy, the partnership features the shrimpy one (him) and the stout one (her). Temperamentally speaking, Lam is a thinking machine and Bertha a bull in a china shop. As Bertha frankly sums up:

You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back some time, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.

The strain between contrasting styles is as funny as Bertha’s smarmy pseudo-concern over Lam’s love life. Women inevitably fall in love with Lam for his kind respect and willingness to listen. So Cool is always worried that Lam will end up in romantically deep waters and be too distracted to do his assignments for her. It’s a hoot.

This mystery opens with Lam taking lessons in the martial arts per the orders of Bertha, who likes her tobacco, liquor, steaks, and comfort. She thinks it would be the smart move to get Lam to toughen up in order to minimize recovery time after he gets beaten up on the job.

The client Henry Ashbury has brought them a problem of a debutante in deep trouble, the kind of case pulp writers enjoyed (even Faulkner used "deb in danger" in his notorious potboiler Sanctuary). Dad Ashbury is concerned about his independent-minded daughter Alta. She is burning through his money either by gambling or paying blackmail, and Dad fears both. He hires Cool and Lam to look into the girl’s financial dealings with her rummy friends. So that the daughter will not wonder why Lam is in the house he is to pose as Ashbury’s personal trainer.

To say this is a cockamamie plan is to say it all. Miser Bertha sees only visions of dancing dollar signs earned by Lam’s labor. Dubious but really shaking the tree, Lam uncovers a bewildering trail involving fraud, blackmail, and murder. As is usual in the Cool and Lam books, they make the situation worse until they grift the grifters and narrowly escape being arrested just for being pains in the neck.

During Gardner's lifetime, discerning hardcore readers like us thought the Cool and Lam novels were funnier, grittier, and sexier than the Perry Mason novels. For we happy few, the comedy between our two protagonists balance out the rushed or confusing endings.

Powerful Techniques for Positive Change

Change Your Life Now: Powerful Techniques for Positive Change – William J. Knaus

I read this 1994 self-help book because Dr. Knaus was one of the stars of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Self-help books, to my mind, are a waste of time if the author doesn’t have the credentials.

Knaus presents a five-point change program, which is easy to follow. His advice is founded on research up to that time. Having seen hundreds and hundreds of patients, Knaus knows change is not easy and people throw up roadblocks in their own path for various irrational and rational reasons. He tells ways to overcome obstacles of our own making. His suggestions can be adopted for all the usual problems: improving diet, quitting smoking, finding love, beating back the urge to procrastinate, and changing careers.

The writing style is from 1994, when Knaus was still able to assume that even general readers knew how to read. That is, the sentences are a little bit involved and he uses some big words. The writing is concise and practical, given the reader does not have anxiety or depression to the extent that professional help really would be a good idea. This is for readers who are serious about change, and disciplined enough to change on their own, with just a book.