European Reading Challenge #16

I read this for the 2024 European Reading Challenge.

Beatrice and Her Son - Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a doctor, playwright, novelist and short story writer in fin de siècle Vienna. He was Jewish so the Nazi regime pulped and burned his books, making them disappear from most of the German-speaking world. Though more scholars and readers have begun to pay attention in the last 20 years, he is probably best-known as the author of Traumnovelle (Dream Story) which served as the basis for Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s last movie.

Schnitzler’s short stories deal with people in bourgeois society, their marriages and adulteries, and the origins of sexual temptations. It was a society obsessed with sex but at the same time compelled to keep up appearances. In his stories, women consummate their desires, usually with worthless males, and pay heavy prices for pleasure outside of marriage.

In the short novel Beatrice and Her Son, Beatrice Heinold is the young widow of famous actor. Five years after his death, she is feeling the sap rise. The times and culture being what they were about the unacceptability of women’s sexuality, she feels like she is missing out on life. She is taking long, lazy summer vacation at a small lake village with her 17-year-old son Hugo. Every male she has contact with at the resort stokes her sexual fantasies.

She and her son are socializing with the bourgeoisie, highly educated, smooth and corrupt. So corrupt that Beatrice fears that a former actress has sexual designs on her teenage son. She asks the actress to desist, but realizes her efforts are futile, the boy is exploring his sexuality and nothing can be done about it. She learns that her dead husband was a serial cheat and in reaction she herself boldly -- takes a mad step.  A reader who’s kept their eyes open will rightly imagine that Beatrice's transgression will not go unpunished.

A fine story: convincing, comprehensible use of stream of consciousness, vivid word landscapes of Central Europe in the summertime. This novella was originally published in 1913 and immediately caused some critics to call for a ban.

The Ides of Perry Mason 66

Note: On the 15th of every month we publish something to do with Erle Stanley Gardner's contribution to mystery fiction. Below are reviews of the memorable episodes from the third season of the Perry Mason TV series that ran from 1957 to 1966, in 271 installments. Granted, the noir theme of "innocents facing impending doom courtesy of a hostile universe" was what PM was all about, but the third was to be the last season in which noir aesthetics were conspicuous.

The Best of Season 3 (1959-60)

The Case of the Spurious Sister (October 3, 1959). The first show of the season teems with noir tropes. Doubling, for instance. Peggy "The Big Sleep" Knudsen shines in brittle blonde glory as a blackjack zombie and so does her look-alike Marion Marshall, her partner in the old sister act of the title. In a lapse of judgement typical of noir protagonists, the dimbulb husband Karl Weber tampers with evidence in a big way, which naturally makes innocent him look guilty as hell. Helen and Walter Sprague are the honest moths caught in a gale of forces beyond their control, another perennial noir element. The real star is, however, the 1959 Edsel Corsair 4-Door Hard Top.

The Case of the Watery Witness (October 10, 1959). Disbelieving the chick that comes home to roost, a has-been movie actress cruelly rejects a young wife who claims that she is the star's thrown-away daughter. In her early fifties, Faye Wray still looks regal and imperious as the washed-up star with delusions of fame and entitlement. Douglas Dick plays his patented no-good, this time a blackmailing private eye. John Bryant for once plays a nice if designing guy though his niceness is undermined by his riverboat gambler looks.  Malcolm Atterbury plays the loyal agent protecting the has-been, bringing to the role a restrained pathos not often seen on the boob tube. Veteran of the stage Kathryn Card plays a housekeeper who pops the classic question, "Do you know how tell when someone is dead." We are treated to two Edsels, a 1959 Edsel Corsair 2-Door Convertible and a 1959 Edsel Corsair 2-Door Hard Top.

The Case of the Wayward Wife (January 23, 1960). As in The Case of the Purple Woman in Season 2, elegant Bethel Leslie plays the nice wife of a louse who ends up murdered and she lands in the dock. Purple Woman is about the dark side of the art business and Wayward Wife is about the literary racket, plagiarism, betrayal, and fraud. In an alluring combo of elf and hellcat, Madlyn Rhue plays a beatnik-lite artist with a troubled soul. All the characters, in the noir tradition, are battling against odds and circumstances, which gives the episode a weird anguished energy. 

The Case of the Wary Wildcatter (February 20, 1960). Gentle and delicate Lori March is lured into one of the most frightening traps of the whole series, with lights going out in a locked hotel room she can't escape and then suspicious cops treating her with savage contempt. Nobody could do the mirthless smile of the femme fatale like Barbara Bain. Harry Jackson puts in one of his two turns as the dastardly scoundrel (in other episodes he was the perp once and richly deserving victim twice). Finally, formidable Douglas Kennedy plays the part he was born to, a hard-hearted casino owner and extortionist.

The Case of the Mythical Monkeys (February 27, 1960). Louise Fletcher’s part as Gladys Doyle gives her a chance to display her acting chops as an independent-minded but naive young person. In the scene where she’s warming her wet self by a fireplace the Alabama in her voice gives her character a mixture of femininity and fight.  Sophisticated and svelte Beverly Garland plays a writer who gets in over her head with menacing and shaved Lawrence Dobkin, an archetypal scary white man in the Sterling Hayden tradition. In an episode that sticks to the original story, the veteran actors all seemed determined to put on a great show.

The Case of the Crying Cherub (April 9, 1060). Carmen Phillips goes all Nyu Yaawk as a feisty artist who produces paintings of cherubs for the market of society matrons with no taste. The cherub paintings are so awful as to be laughable and nauseating at the same time; thank heaven it was the heyday of black and white TV, all the pink would have made us lose our appetites. We meet noir stock characters, the tyrant dowager and her downtrodden son. Also familiar was the sendup of the art racket – the producers and writers often examined the pitfalls for greenhorns and idealists in the business sides of arts and entertainment

The Case of the Ominous Outcast (May 21, 1960). The corrupt small-town setting and theme of the past haunting the present are about as noir as it gets. A bearded stranger shows up in town. The stranger is the spit and image of a man that committed a terrible crime against the town 20 years before. So the peasants go crazy, mistaking him for a fiend from the past bent on dragging them to the searing hell they know they deserve. All the acting is persuasive, especially Margaret Hayes and Denver Pyle. Victim once, defendant twice, perp thrice on PM, Denver Pyle deserves much better than to be remembered as Grampa in The Dukes of Stupid.

Honorable Mention: In The Case of the Frantic Flyer Patricia Barry puts in a fine performance as the woman who’s never scarier than when she’s being coy and kittenish.  For animal lovers, Mason brings a large quadruped into the courtroom in The Case of the Bashful Burro. In The Case of the Madcap Modiste personal and professional conflicts end up in murder, plus a glimpse into what TV celeb journalism used to look like in those bygone days.  George Takei is persuasive in The Case of the Blushing Pearls and it is surprising to see Asian-Americans on TV as early as 1960.

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European Reading Challenge #15

I read this for the 2024 European Reading Challenge.

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-39 - Antony Beevor

The Spanish Civil War was a world war between the two better-known world wars. The Republicans were supported by peasants, workers, anarchists, brigades of international socialists (democratic and not), and the Soviet Union. The Nationalists were the military, the Church, landowners, big business, monarchists, and they were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. 

Beevor narrates the social and military history clearly, given obstacles. Barriers to comprehension are the large number of Spanish personal and place names; the numerous political parties, their acronyms, and their stances and supporters; and the emotions that churn as the reader works through shock, bitterness, disgust, horror, and passion that reading about this bitter conflict will provoke.

In the late 1980s, the Spanish-language version of this book won the Prize for Non-Fiction awarded by the newspaper La Vanguardia.  Readers with a serious interest in the topic will find this history fascinating.

Reading Those Classics #19

Classic Hard-boiled Mystery. This 1942 novel was his third that starred his series hero Phil Marlowe.

The High Window - Raymond Chandler

LA PI Marlowe is hired by a mean old rich lady to recover a rare coin that was allegedly stolen by her daughter-in-law. Later a killing baffles everybody, since the person of interest didn’t even know the victim. A second killing makes no sense either. Readers like me will be relieved that the plot is not as convoluted as The Big Sleep or Farewell My Lovely. Rousing action is on the skimpy side. Nor does the private eye do much detecting. Chandler, always experimenting with language and going beyond the conventions of the mystery genre, focusses on setting, character and theme.

Marlowe’s investigations take him to locations ranging from ritzy to sleazy. On the first page, we get a sense of the tasteless consumption of Pasadenans in the boom years during WWII. The client’s mansion is decorated with “a stained glass window about the size of the tennis court.” We are then introduced to the mean old rich lady, with her “pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak and large moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones.” 

No fault of Chandler’s that many writers imitated these dazzling expressions, too often not with as much taste. Of a dubious dealer in old coins: an “elderly party in a dark grey suit with high lapels and too many buttons down the front… Fuzz grew out of his ears, far enough to catch a moth … a Hoover collar which no decent laundry would have allowed on the premises nudged his adam’s apple  and a black string tie poked a small hard knot out of the bottom of the collar, like a mouse getting ready to come out of a mousehole.”

Our hero Phil Marlowe is the only likeable character, although we readers are happy when in the scene we find Merle, a young secretary who has lost faith in herself. Her broken appeal is believable and moves the plot. Tough and resourceful, Marlowe can deal with all types of crook, such as the drunken stick-up artist Hench and the smooth villain Vannier. 

But Marlowe has a profound side too. He relaxes by doing chess problems. When he delivers Merle back to her parents back in Kansas he thinks, “I had a funny feeling … as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.”

Chandler brought serious themes to mysteries. In this one he examines the effect of power and coercion of human relations. For instance, his mean old client runs roughshod over her son and secretary for no discernible end beyond she can tyrannize them. Chandler looks at the corrosive effects of infidelity on marriage. Marlowe’s sensitive relationship with the police is more subtly and intelligently handled here than in most mysteries.

European Reading Challenge #14

I read this for the 2024 European Reading Challenge. 

Ashes and Diamonds - Jerzy Andrzejewski

This novel takes place in a Polish factory town over four days, just before and after the end of WWII.

On 8 May 1945 WWII officially ended, but Polish people didn't feel much like celebrating. They were suffering stress from the violence and brutality of six years of Nazi occupation. They were facing the task of re-building not only in terms of construction but also ruined systems of education, social services, and its armed forces. Various political factions fought inter- and intra-party feuds and individuals settled grudges. People felt their beliefs and relationships in chaos.

Andrzejewski later landed in political hot water because of the lack of clear ideological line in this novel. Besides presenting a panorama of that particular place in that particular time, Andrzejewski also deals with moral conflicts and existential dilemmas post-WWII writers all over Europe were treating.

Andrzejewski was Alpha in The Captive Mind. Far be it from me to get between two Polish intellectuals about anything to do with their country, but I don’t get the feeling that the author was working for any party hacks with ideological purposes here. The reader can find unanswered questions and characters are not presented in the black and white terms of socialist realism.

In fact, the road signs they come up to never offer clearly marked forks. Inevitably, we readers are invited to join that exercise “What would you have done?” Ashes or diamonds? We can never be certain of the role we will play nor can we predict what sacrifices we accept or deeds we shirk that may cause us to be remembered.

After the war, how does one get along with neighbors who you’re sure were the ones that denounced you? After the changes induced by the ordeal of war and imprisonment and torture, is it even possible to like and love people you liked and loved before the war? How do you deal with the disgust and frustration of the worst people in the world running your country as if it were a criminal enterprise run by bosses and their henchmen?

A fine choice for those readers that like historical novels or want a view as to what Poland felt like after WWII.  

Stoic Week 2024 3

Note for Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues: This week I will apply the Stoic orientation to the irrational beliefs of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966). The first three seasons of the show often feature illustrations of the everyday vices that undermine happiness and tranquility. Just because we don’t use the old-fashioned words like “envy” and “malice” to describe motives doesn’t mean spite is never a motive in our postmodern-a-go-go age.

My Blog Posts: Day 1 Oct 28 Control | Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions | Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues

The Case of the Nine Dolls (Season 4, Episode 9, 1960)  

Linda’s Impressions: Linda was left waiting at the altar when her best friend and cousin Margaret and her fiancée Clark eloped to Vegas. They had a daughter, Peggy, and they both died young. Linda can’t stand to be in the same room with seven-year-old Peggy because the child is unlucky enough to be the spit and image of her mother. Believing she can’t get over painful memories brought back by the child’s mere appearance, Linda literally hates herself for feeling such intense dislike for the little girl.

Character & Virtues: 

STOP: Being betrayed by two trusted people must have been a bitter blow. 

TIME-OUT: Take deep breaths, call on the four virtues.

OBSERVE: It’s no wonder Linda felt “crushed.”

IDENTIFY STOIC PERSPECTIVE: Linda can change her character by focusing on what she can change and what she can’t change. Her understanding and employment of the four virtues in daily life are under her control.

CHOOSE HOW TO HANDLE SITUATION: 

Fairness: Margaret and Clark had their reasons – they thought they were doing the right thing for them – reasons that we’ll never know. 

Temperance: So there’s little point dwelling on the unknowable and the pain of past betrayal.

Justice/Fairness:  A helpless, hopeless "I-can't-change" attitude not only hurts Linda, but it isn’t being fair to seven-year-old Peggy either. She can’t help looking like her mother and just wants to love and to feel loved, belonging to a family. 

Wisdom: Linda can't change the past but she can learn from it; e.g. “People - they’ll disappoint you so if you want something good get it from yourself.” 

Courage: Linda can step up to the plate now. Linda is the only family Peggy has left now. Linda could perform cousinly duties of sociality and kinship that might assist in getting over the “I can’t stand it” refrain going through her head and blighting her life. 

Stoic Week 2024 2

Note for Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions: This is posted in observance of Stoic Week 2024. I observed Stoic Week in 2023. I keep a Stoic journal, but I thought it would be entertaining to examine ordinary problems from one Stoic’s point of view, mine. This week I will apply the Stoic orientation to the crooked thinking of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966).

My Blog Posts: Day 1 Oct 28 Control | Day 2 Oct 29 Emotions | Day 3 Oct 30 Character & Virtues

The Case of the Howling Dog (Season 2, Episode 23, 1959)

Thelma’s Impressions: Thelma thought that Clinton was a “very attractive man,” perhaps assuming that his fine appearance indicated Clinton would be a charming lover she could spend time with. Maybe even forever. So, for Clinton’s sake, Thelma did away with two people. But though he helped her bury the victims, he rejected her. He worried that one day she would be afraid of him for having something on her, that one day she would be so afraid that she would speed him to an early grave. Justifying his worry, Thelma killed Clinton too.

Emotions: Provoked by the sight of a hottie, to paraphrase Epictetus, you had better exert self-restraint. In true noir fashion, infatuation might set off a train of events that gets out of hand. Aside from the risk of momentum due to irresistible attraction to unsuitable hotties, no one needs to be dependent on one specific person for happiness and serenity. Like sensible Elinor said in Sense and Sensibility "And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant—it is not fit—it is not possible that it should be so."