Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 1/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. To mark the happiest day in the history of television, paradoxically, this week we celebrate Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir before the role that made him immortal. Burr was a demon for work, appearing in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a commanding menacing presence.

Raw Deal
1948 / 1:19
Tagline: “Bullets! Women! -- Can't Hold a Man Like This!”
[internet archive]

“Would any dame wait three years for a guy to get out of prison,” incarcerated individual Dennis O’Keefe asks Marsha Hunt, a social worker who is convinced he has some good in him. She read once that when a teen he saved kids from drowning at risk to his own young life. He shrugs off her faith in his better angels, and tells her not to wear perfume the next time she visits lest he ruin his run of good behavior. O’Keefe is realistic but hard-hearted and not real smart.

Meanwhile, Raymond Burr, who crossed O’Keefe and landed him in state prison, works an escape plot so that O’Keefe will be killed during the sneak-out. Minion John Ireland sarcastically sticks it to cowardly Burr by saying he’s good at getting the cops to pull the trigger for him. Bully and sneak Burr doesn’t like that and warns in a cold voice that he’s saving up something special, really special for Ireland. Burr is lensed from an angle that that makes him look massive and imposing but he also has a doughiness that minions and movie-goers don’t feel a need to respect.

O’Keefe beats the odds insofar as he escapes the pen with the help of his old GF Claire Trevor. She, in fact, provides important insights in voice-overs such as “Waiting…waiting… All my life it seems as if I’ve been waiting for Joe.” This narrative is spiced with theremin music, which gives an other-worldly sense that is not always suitable for a gritty crime drama directed by film noir demigod Anthony Mann. In a couple of scenes the music from the late swing era comes from a radio, giving a carefree contrast to the dramatic situation.

But staying alive while breaking out of prison exhausts his fortune. Bad luck and the inability to plan dog O’Keefe and Trevor as they drive around and find places to hide out. Bad luck takes the form of car trouble. Then, bureaucracy, which reaches into every corner of modern life, represented by a lone horseman, demands camping permits. Luck also determines if cops are going to be more or less prone to cognitive distortions like jumping to conclusions, mental filters, over-generalizing, and inability to see the forest for the trees. The cops are brought down on our fugitives by the bad luck of a runaway killer in a crime of passion running to the same remote hide-out as O’Keefe and Trevor flee to.

The cinematography, beautifully shot by John Alton, features amazing shadows, shots from various angles and striking images like pale faces surrounded by darkness; the climax is of San Francisco in fog and crackling fire. Also attention-grabbing are the sounds of the modern world such as train whistles, sirens, bells, and foghorns. As for indirect social critique, O’Keefe is not terribly bright though he's brave and resourceful. He understands in a dim way that he would be happier if he just lived an honest life supported with modest ranch or small business. But he’s still angry that he had to hock the bravery medal he won at sixteen to buy food because he lives in a society where teens go hungry from food insecurity.

Besides the empty promise of a society whose youth go hungry, betrayal is all over this drama. Claire Trevor’s moll realizes that O’Keefe has never told her clearly that he loves her. He does not listen to her when he gets lost in his own thoughts. He doesn’t listen to her advice or ultimatums either. The many slaps to the face in the movie signal a moment of revelation to the characters that they have been lied to or betrayed or they have been kidding themselves. For instance, Claire Trevor slaps Marsha Hunt, who replies, “Thanks, I probably deserved that” when she realizes she’s been working under an illusion.

It is indeed hard to feel sympathy for O’Keefe or Trevor since they are ready to kill people to get out from under the cops and they kidnap the social worker Marsha Hunt.  The social worker loses her illusions about O’Keefe when she sees how ready he is to kill the park ranger on horseback. She later remonstrates with him when he accuses her of living her life in fear, only seeking safety and security. She tells him that living life straight is what everybody does to get food on the table and maintain self-respect, that she doesn’t need safety so much as she thinks that she is living a life of decency. Ideas like “living an excellent life is the most important thing” are much more substantial than I was expecting from a noir crime drama.

All the acting here is plausible. Appearing in only three scenes as the mobster Rick, Raymond Burr dresses sharply in a pin-stripe suit but clothes don’t take away the cold remote look of a shark, especially in his eyes. Burr is shot from below to look very imposing, but his words, manner and actions are motivated by cowardice and wishful thinking. In a shocking scene famous among film noir buffs, he brings puerile acting-out to his sadism when he burns a waitress because he is angry at his minion John Ireland. Ireland is always persuasive as a heavy. He is later lambasted in the one of the three amazing fight scenes in this movie. The fog and fire of the climax with Burr’s deception is incredible. The crackles of the fire really pop.

This review grows long – I have only to finish by saying this gripping movie, directed by luminary Anthony Mann, is an example of perfect film noir, up there with The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil and Sorry Wrong Number. Keep an out for a keen 1948 Willys Jeep Station Wagon.

As for the connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series, Whit Bissel plays the killer on the run that brings legions of cops down on our runaways. Bissel was in four episodes, only once as an upstanding citizen. In one he was an embezzler and an office lecher-corporate spy in another, and in two he was the perp.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

The Nones of Perry Mason 74

Note: Buffs of classic Hollywood know that Raymond Burr played the murdering husband identified by apartment-bound James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. But only hardcore readers who have somehow found their way to this blog know that before he landed the Perry Mason role in 1956 that was to be his ticket to immortality, Raymond Burr was the Portly Prince of Noir.

I Love Trouble
1948 / 1:35
Tagline: “Five Lovelies Leave a Trail of Perfume … and Murder!”
[internet archive]

Our buddy Burr has two lines in one scene – with shadow covering half his grim visage. His bulk compels our attention as he sizes up with his spellbinding eyes hero Franchot Tone. Burr seems to be measuring Tone for a beating. Tone has been hired by a well-connected LA realtor-politician to identify the blackmailer of his wife. After Tone pursues leads in Portland, the wife’s natal city, he returns to LA to dead bodies, edgy police and thugs that roughly request the information he gathered.

Franchot Tone saves his dignity by delivering noir one-liners with style and grace. He may be feeling that old “coming down in the world” feeling due to having to appear in a B movie, but he’s a true professional. What’s curious about his ambiguous character is that the viewer can’t guess how he is going to approach an interview, especially with women.

Burr’s disheveled partner in crime is John Ireland. He made a career of looking tough and at least half-way down the road to PsychoVille. Though the formidable one, it is Burr’s role to ensure that Ireland doesn't get carried away and kill anybody in the heat of the moment.

For comic relief, we get two wonderful actors. Glenda Farrell cracks wise as the tough city girl, game, canny, reliable as the PI’s ever faithful secretary. Tone asks her, “Ever have the feeling you're being watched or followed, and she replies sourly, “Not nearly enough.” Sid Tomack plays a wise-cracking bistro owner who comes to an unhappy end because he knows too much and wants to monetize his excess of knowledge. Appearing three times on the classic Perry Mason, Tomack was especially great in a satirical scene in The Case of the Envious Editor.

The main draw, however, is the bevy who possess a similar beauty. This feeds into the noir themes of doubleness, identity, and misdirection. Janis Carter and Lynn Merrick both shanghai a movie-goer’s attention wherever they enter a scene.  Janet Blair, a breathtaking pin-up, is the nice girl we’d take home to ma and warn pa to heed his better angels. Adele Jergens is the Jezebel we’d keep secret from the homefolks.

All this but we movie-goers are treated to location shots of Late Forties L.A., with brutal concrete buildings on Hollywood Boulevard. Venice Beach used to have clam chowder shacks where proprietors would say, “You can have clam chowder and clam chowder,” to which you would reply laconically, “I’ll have clam chowder” like a real noir hero. Oil derricks in Santa Monica, so cool. I like mid-century industrial infrastructure probably I grew up in a house a five-minute walk to the Rouge Plant. 

Though complicated, this diverting movie is redeemed by its Chandleresque writing. Caretaker of the mansion, where the kidnapped PI was kidnapped, drugged, beaten, and interrogated, when asked what the place is called, “733, that’s all. Places like this don’t have a name.” PI: “That’s what you think.”

European Reading Challenge #3

I read this travel narrative for the European Reading Challenge 2024

How the ‘Mastiffs’ Went to Iceland - Anthony Trollope

By naval tradition, the collective name of a ship's crew is the plural of the name of the ship. So in the Aubrey-Maturin novels, since Jack's ships were the Surprise and the Sophie, the members of his crew are referred to as Surprises and Sophies. A wealthy patron took 15 of his friends to Iceland in June and July, 1878. The large yacht was called the Mastiff, so the passengers called themselves “Mastiffs.”

The Mastiffs embarked from their wealthy friend’s Wemyss Castle, near Fife, Scotland. Bear in mind at that high latitude in early June, they would be having 20 hours of daylight. Trollope, by the way, was a well-regarded novelist of the time and had written a shelf of travel books.

They first stopped at St. Kilda, an isolated archipelago off the northwest coast of Scotland. Far from the mainland, their small population of about 70 and small production of wool did not necessitate regular contact by boat. So the main purpose of the trip was to drop off tea and sugar, which eased the monotony of the local diet. Trollope wondered if life was sustainable in such a remote place given the population’s dependence on charity. He pointed out that marriageable women far outnumbered eligible men (because men had left for greener pastures) and that infant mortality was high for unknown reasons. In fact, the last remaining inhabited island of Hirta was evacuated in 1930.

Their next stop was a courtesy call to Thorshavn, the capital of the Faroe Island archipelago. The locals had espied the Mastiff coming in so the Mastiffs were greeted by a friendly curious crowd though it was the middle of the night. The Postmaster told Trollope that no true Faroite goes to bed in summer when the sun is up 24 hours a day. But they did have to knock up the Governor so he could pay his respects.

Trollope as travel writer earns my respect because he tells me what I want to know about a place - what it smells like – “Thorshavn lies all around various little nooks of the sea, and has the smell and flavour of the sea which is peculiar to such places. It is very pretty, but its smell and flavour, combining that of many fishes, is one to which the visitor must become accustomed before it will be palatable. There is certainly the ancient and the fish-like smell; - otherwise Thorshavn is delightful."

I’ve approached Tallinn, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, and Kaohsiung on a ferry/cruise ship like the unfortunate Estonia. I’m not good enough a writer to convey the ineffable thrill of entering the port of new city; do it if you can, there’s no rush like it. But Trollope merely recounts coming into Reykjevik with the Mastiffs arguing about the difference between glaciers and fields of snow.

Well, Trollope was 63 years old and had done a great deal of previous travelling. Maybe the thrill of a new place was gone. In Iceland, Trollope liked the locals and enjoyed their culture, being impressed that literacy was the norm. He recounts with male amusement the shopping expeditions of the female Mastiffs.

A crew of affluent people hosted by generous patron, they stayed on the Mastiff, and ate its stores, having only local cuisine in the form of curds, cream, milk, and biscuits and wine. It is not clear if they spend two or three nights on Icelandic soil, when they went on an expedition to the Geysers. In an example of Victorian excess they took sixty-five ponies, two for each of the sixteen Mastiffs and the remainder ridden by guides and servants or laden with food, tents and other belongings.

Throughout the narrative, Trollope’s tone is playful, as the kiddish tone of the title indicates. The oldest member of the party, he feels indulgent about youthful antics and the japes of other Mastiffs. There are allusions and in-jokes that only other Mastiffs will comprehend (this book was privately printed and does not appear in Trollope’s collected works). The tone at the end is melancholy, parting being such sweet sorrow.

One wonders if Tony, at 63 years old and 225 pounds, had an intimation that this was to be his last long journey. Thereafter, he visited only Ireland and the Continent. Trollope died only a couple of years later in 1882, at the age of 67, of a stroke brought on by laughing too hard while being read to by his niece. The offending book was F. Anstey’s Vice Versa, a comic fantasy novel in the body swap genre.

Internet: Libravox and Online Text

Reading Those Classics #16

Classic Set in Ye Olde Teashoppe Englande. The traditional English village mystery was popularized by Agatha Christie between the wars. After WWII the genre I think was running on fumes until the early Sixties saw published P.D. James’ Cover Her Face (1962) and Ruth Rendell’s From Doon with Death (1964). To revive village mysteries, James and Rendell introduced psychological themes that later writers such as Elizabeth George used to such good effect. Which is a long way to say, this psychological thriller set in a village is a rare bird for the 1950s.

Road to Rhuine - Simon Troy

It’s said Ru-ween, is the first thing to make clear. And the second is that I wish were a better writer to convey how excellent this 1952 mystery is, the first of nine starring Inspector Charles Smith.

The setting is a village breath-taking in its beauty, perhaps in the Lake District because Ireland is across the sea. The citizens of the village make a modest living from sustainable eco-tourism. But we shall soon see both beauty and prosperity are endangered by development.

The book opens in the humble office of a private agent, Lee Vaughn. Lee, the first-person narrator of the story, is a fix-it guy, assisting friends and friends of friends out of jams. He’s a veteran of the recent hostilities but as a smallish and timid guy, he employs violence only when he absolutely must. He is a musician at heart but brings to his fix-it jobs, if not a lot of brains, as he readily admits, then competence, conscientiousness and sympathy for his clients.

And heaven knows his clients need all the understanding they can get. Sheila Fabian, though rich and beautiful and popular with her tenants, is quiet, withdrawn, and unforthcoming with information that would help Vaughn reach their goals. Sheila is on husband Number Two. She inherited landed wealth from her first husband but because of a muddle she found out about her new-found affluence only after her second marriage to Stuart Fabian. Brother Fabian is bad and dangerous to know much less live with.

Sheila wants Lee Vaughn to provide protection for her, her two children, her landed estate, and her tenants. Fabian is hated by her two children for obscure reasons. Out of spite, to dismay her and destroy a beautiful place, Fabian wants to develop the neighborhood around her estate. He wants to turn the area in a twee piece of Ye Olde Teashoppe Englande. This plan raises the ire of the villagers who fear the threat of avaricious mega-tourism to their fiercely guarded livelihoods.

Lee Vaughn is puzzled that Sheila Fabian does not resort to the divorce courts or the police or the National Trust for protection from her husband. But Sheila Fabian is a deep one. So is her seven-year-old son Steven, who is so self-sufficient that he comes and goes as he pleases, often staying out all night. He is also friends with seventy-year-old Isiah Jonquil, who minds a garden out of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Sitr into the mix an eccentric female artist; a forthright doctor; a dodgy houseman. All the characters are as quirky as the types we usually meet in village mysteries, but Fabian and his sins are more darkly evil than we will usually see in a traditional English village mystery. In one upsetting scene a corgi is kicked (he is okay though in the end) and one rousing scene depicts mob violence against the property of the dog kicker.

Simon Troy (a pseudonym of Thurman Warriner 1904-74) also uses red herrings, plot twists, and cliffhangers to keep us readers on the edge of our seats. We hardcore mystery fans were lucky that Harper Collins Perennial Mystery Library editions re-published this novel, along with the equally respected Swift to Its Close in the early 1980s. I think Simon Troy is a writer for discerning readers who like a mystery writer who’s a master of their craft, of a mind to present characters and stories that are really different. 

Click on the title to go to the review.

Prize Winning Classic: The Moviegoer – Walker Percy

Classic Novella: Old Man – William Faulkner

Classic Epistolary Novel: Augustus – John Williams

Classic Comic Novel: Thank you, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Classic Short Stories: New York Stories – John O’Hara

Classic Air Pilot Memoir: Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic Set in the Big Apple: Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

Classic 19th Century Novel: Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite – Anthony Trollope

Classic Police Procedural: Wolf to Slaughter – Ruth Rendell

Classic War Memoir: Flight to Arras - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic American Mystery: Might as Well Be Dead - Rex Stout

Classic Courtroom Drama: A Woman Named Anne – Henry Cecil

Classic Abandoned: Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

Classic Set in France: Maigret’s Patience – Georges Simenon 

Classic English Mystery: Hallowe’en Party – Agatha Christie

Reading Those Classics #15

Classic English Mystery. The last novel by Agatha Christie, Postern of Fate, was such a mess that one morning in the early 1990s waiting for a ride to the since re-named Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, I put it, unfinished, on an end table in the lobby of an annex of the Grand Hotel in Taipei. And just left it. I hope a Chinese learner of English did not blame herself when she found it as incomprehensible as I did. That experience was so off-putting that I did not read another novel of hers for about 30 years. Hey, my grudges make me who I am.

Hallowe’en Party – Agatha Christie

I swore off Dame Agatha’s novels for some 30 years until circumstances dropped this full-length mystery into my lap. Who am I to argue with a fate when it randomly sends my way the 32^nd Hercule Poirot mystery?

And even though this novel suffers repetition problems, it remains readable, pleasant, understandable and intriguing. Indeed, Poirot still persists in wearing patent leather shoes that are too tight and inappropriate for sauntering about in a village. Familiarity in a series character is comforting.

Another attraction is the Christie gets positively trippy when she has Poirot become entranced in an aesthetic experience in a quarry garden. Indeed, her descriptions of semi-wild gardens, one in Ireland and one in the fictional village, make the reader more determined to make something of their little acre come the spring.

Anyway, the story, you no doubt wonder. Mrs Drake throws a children's party for Halloween which is also attended by the well-known mystery author Ariadne Oliver. During the evening of festivities and games, thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds declares that she saw a murder committed. No one, not a contemporary, not an adult, believes her. When little Joyce is found drowned in a basin full of water and apples, Mrs. Oliver appeals to Poirot for this assistance.

As usual in the cozy mystery – and one of the reasons I’m uneasy with them - I felt a certain discomfort at the reaction of the characters who are respond it as if it were normal to find a corpus in the library, or in this case, a child brutally drowned in a basin of water. Granted, there was some compassion expressed by one character but other characters took malicious pleasure in belittling Joyce, the victim.

And then – another kid  - is murdered. Wow. Christie really testing her readers, though I’m not sure if that is typical since I’ve not read Christie widely.

Another theme that Christie deals with is that of prejudice against foreigners, in particular Olga, an au pair from Eastern Europe, openly considered a gold-digger by the inhabitants of the country who, convinced of her bad faith, do not worry in the least about her fate when the girl mysteriously disappears.

Christie was a popular writer not only due to her characters and surprises but also her simple, homey style. The reader easily takes in the action and she weaves that narrative enchantment that makes the reader want to turn pages until the reveal. Christie has a power that beguiles the reader. Though late in her writing career in 1969, she was still capable of surprising us readers with those prestidigitator tricks of which she is a master, crafting a logical plot that leads to a reasonable solution.

Click on the title to go to the review.

Prize Winning Classic: The Moviegoer – Walker Percy

Classic Novella: Old Man – William Faulkner

Classic Epistolary Novel: Augustus – John Williams

Classic Comic Novel: Thank you, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Classic Short Stories: New York Stories – John O’Hara

Classic Air Pilot Memoir: Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic Set in the Big Apple: Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

Classic 19th Century Novel: Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite – Anthony Trollope

Classic Police Procedural: Wolf to Slaughter – Ruth Rendell

Classic War Memoir: Flight to Arras - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic American Mystery: Might as Well Be Dead - Rex Stout

Classic Courtroom Drama: A Woman Named Anne – Henry Cecil

Classic Abandoned: Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

Classic Set in France: Maigret’s Patience – Georges Simenon

Movie: Death to Smoochy

Death to Smoochy:  2002 / Color / 109 minutes

Tagline: He's Big, He's Blue, He's Smoochy... and He's got to DIE!

Actually, the color of kid’s show rhino is fuscia, not blue, and the use of vibrant colors makes this bitter comedy a visual wonder.  I suppose I’m easy to impress since I watch mainly black and white movies, but I’ve rarely seen a movie with such richly saturated colors. The colors in the production design pop like colors in The Simpsons.

The other strong point is the casting.  Catherine Keener, as usual, is outstanding as the jaded producer of kid-shows. Stopping just short of geekiness, Edward Norton plays it sincere and schmaltzy as the rhino character.  Full of caring and sharing, he says, “When my brothers and I played cowboys and Indians, I was always the Chinese railroad worker.” As the character displaced by Smoochy the Rhino, Robin Williams is as an angry, harsh, foul-mouthed lunatic. Asked by a cop if he is okay, he says, “I don't know. I'm kinda fucked up in general, so it's hard to gauge.” Leading a half-comical half-scary Irish gang, Pam Ferris sports bright red hair that I can’t believe is found in Ireland or Nature.

The movie twice uses the jaunty mambo music of Yma Sumac, so you know you’re in for a roller-coaster ride. The movie is not a satire of smarmy kid shows like Barney the Dinosaur. Nor does it satirize the corruption and back-stabbing of the corporate or entertainment world.  The plot, characters, and writing are so over the top that the movie does not have the basis in reality that a lesson or meaning needs. Screenwriter Adam Resnick takes his relentless hard-edged tone from Jonathan Swift and Ambrose Bierce, but I can’t accept it as satire, the movie has a cartoonish quality that makes it impossible to accept as having anything to do with the real world. The colors, Yma Sumac and other offbeat musicians, histrionic language, weird reflections, and odd transitions all combine to keep us off balance in a fantastical world. It’s fantasy with no fable, lesson or moral.

But the heckling starts to weary and grate at about 90-minute mark of this 110-minute movie. The salty language, the larger-than-life acting, unrestrained gestures, and the fantastical become tiring.  Lines are delivered so fast and frantic that it’s hard to catch the funnies. My Bride like the comic gang lead by evil Pam Ferris, but I ended up lying down, exhausted.

The movie generated little box office revenue. Maybe the folks got tuckered out like I did. Maybe people went to a Robin Williams movie expecting heart-warming Patch Adams, but got a relentless misanthropic loony-tune instead. One thing: the production design looks like no other movie.

Back to the Classics #22

I read this book for the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2022.

Classic Set in a Place You'd Like to Visit: This 1945 novel is set during World War II in fictitious Kinalty Castle, a big house in southern Ireland, on the Cork coast perhaps. Castle-hopping would be a must on a road trip in Eire (Republic of Ireland). It would be fun to see if any Gothic piles had rooms like the Blue Drawing Room in this novel: “She was surrounded by milking stools, pails, clogs, the cow-byre furniture all in gilded wood which was disposed around to create the most celebrated eighteenth-century folly in Eire that had still to be burned down.”

Loving – Henry Green

The novel begins traditionally enough with a death. Eldon the long-time head butler has died calling out for the love of his life while the other servants carry on. In a surprising move iffy head footman Charley Raunce is promoted to acting butler. Such are staffing shortages, what with the war and all. Out of his depth and not suspecting it, Charlie makes silly observations that perplex listeners that know better.

The author explores love in various forms. A pretty maid named Edith, aged about 20, is attracted to Charlie, aged about 40, because he’s the only eligible man around and she intuits they are the same kind of person: practical, acquisitive and conniving.  But Edith’s friend Kate is jealous of Edith’s deepening relationship with Charlie. Kate begins to fall in love with lampman Paddy O’Conor, the only non-Englishman on the staff. Somehow she understands him though he speaks only Erse, which makes him an outsider in the all-English group, whose members have the usual English prejudices against the Irish and already feel under terrorist threat since they live in the remote country

Both Kate and Edith love Mrs. Tennant’s two little grand-daughters, one of whom has fallen in calf love with Albert, a boy evacuated from London to escape the blitz. Mrs. Smith, the boozy cook but don’t call her Cook, loves and defends the unspeakable Albert so fiercely that one wonders if he’s her illegitimate son. Mrs. Tennant’s daughter-in-law Mrs. Jack is sleeping with one of her husband’s friends so in a delightful comic scene Mrs. Jack has coals of fire heaped on her head when Mrs. Tennant tells her how pleased she is that Mrs. Jack is so good for Jack. So, there’re many different kinds of loving in this novel titled Loving.

And many kinds of deviousness, too. Charlie clumsily tries to manipulate Mrs. Tennant who is concerned that she won’t be able to trust anybody in the house if they don’t get the bottom of the case of her missing sapphire cluster.  And Charley wastes little time figuring out how his predecessor cooked the books. He exploits the chance to peculate here and there to the tune of X number of pounds a week. Slippery Charlie is vague on the amount with his fiancée Edith who tries to pin him down on what their income will be. All the servants have their little scam for food or drink or time.

Given all the guile and shadiness on the part of the characters, the peacocks aren’t parading all over this novel just for the sake of color though Green uses tens and tens of color words that are saturating this novel set in the shamrock emerald kelly of an Irish spring and turning pasty English complexions red, blue and green.  Both Charlie and Edith dislike the peacocks because they feel spied on by the dandies of the avian world. This gets to clanging an Allusion Alert in us hardcore readers into Greek mythology when we were kids.  We recall Hera put in the tails of peacocks the hundred eyes of her giant watchman Argus, after he was murdered by Hermes at the request of Zeus who wanted to cheat on Hera with Io whom Argus was watching. In this novel characters are up so many indiscretions that they had better be nervous about being spied on and found guilty.

As if the fear of war and invasion and the dread of being watched and judged by others are not enough to fill one’s skull with anxiety, people will make themselves more disquieted by over-thinking stuff. The English servants are caught in a double-bind. They fear being drafted into military service if they return to England. And if they don’t return to England they fear being called disloyal slackers who stayed cushy in neutral Ireland while everybody else back home got blitzed. In another comic scene the characters get flustered when a private eye hired by the insurance company drops in to ask questions about the missing sapphire ring. Because the acronym for the insurance company is IRA, Charlie and Company get a case of the jim-jams that the detective is in fact a scout of the Irish Republican Army sent to case the big house.

Green reportedly didn’t like being called a modernist. Indeed, he doesn’t fit into the generation of Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford or Virginia Woolf as he was born in 1905, the same year as Anthony Powell, Mary Renault, Rex Warner and C.P. Snow. But Green reminds us of other modernists. His comic situations are as surreal and absurd as in Kafka. The cool unadorned tone of the faceless narrator calls to mind Hemingway. Ordinary people getting by doing what they ought to do reminds me of the slice of life side of Dubliners. Similar to Faulkner having a male Quentin and a female Quentin in The Sound and the Fury, Green has two characters named Albert which mildly confuses not only us the reader but the other characters in the novel.

Also modernist is the willingness on the part of the author to work with the reader who wants to cast off the doldrums, who worries their reading choices are getting stagnant. The writer yanks readers out of their mental ruts with minimal characterization, zero editorial commentary on the action and zero internal monologue.

In Loving, our narrator is mostly omniscient but we readers quickly get the feeling things sometimes escape our narrator so we’d better stay on our toes. For instance, we don’t know whether Charlie’s symptoms are sprinkled hither and tither deliberately or not. But seeing them together in one place - swelling of lymph glands in his neck, shooting pains down his arms, and persistent fatigue – makes us think a biopsy of Charlie’s lymph nodes in his neck may indicate Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Another modernist towline is relating plot and incident through dialogue. The banal dialogues of the servants are written to mimic some kind of working class English dialect – slangy idioms, Americanisms and countrified expressions, grammatical goofs, clichés and mangled proverbs, multiple simultaneous conversations with quick changes of topic, and much implying and inferring between the words going on. Like Faulkner, Green is a wonder-worker at making dialogue express complex interpretations and emotions in the homey vernacular of the character that’s speaking.

Modernist authors eased us readers out of ruts with intentionally disorderly sentence structure, phrases and clauses positioned any old place. Edith and Kate, dressed in purple uniforms, dance in the ballroom, in a beautiful scene that shows Green’s apparently off-again on-again relationship with commas.

They were wheeling wheeling in each other's arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above from a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of distant day, again and again red velvet panelled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.

Finally, in keeping with the modernist way, oh the irony. The book ends “… lived happily ever after.” One wonders, since Charlie’s probable cancer of the lymph system will kill him in about five years. Not much post-war promise and disappointment in store for our Charlie.

Anyway, as usual with the work of serious fiction writers of the 20^th century, this novel had better be read twice, first to get a bead on character and story, second to enjoy the wiliness of the writer and the kind of tricks they’re playing. Reading this dialogue-driven novel, the reader that finds Ivy Compton-Burnett freaking dope man will have only mild difficulty inferring the personality and motivations of characters, all the while thankfully certain that though our deductions may well be wrong the acts of thinking, connecting, visualizing, and predicting have jerked us out of a rut.

A Great Historical Novel

Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina – Robert Graves

This is Volume II of Graves’ imagined autobiography by the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – 54 AD). In the preface, Graves answers critics who carped that he merely borrowed from Tacitus and Suetonius for Volume I, entitled I, Claudius (1934). Graves then reels off a list of ancient historians that he consulted so that he could question the conventional wisdom that Claudius was a lucky fool, glutton, crapshooter, and cringing social climber. By digging into his subject’s character and motivation, Graves shows that Claudius could not have been simply a lucky fool since he was cunning enough to successfully survive the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and then maintain his own power for as long as 13 years.

Curiously, the first part of the book does not focus on Claudius’ first days in office. Instead, the beginning is a longish picaresque that tells the ups and downs of Herod Agrippa. In the early 30s, in Galilee and Antioch, Agrippa fell out of favor due to sad misunderstandings involving debts, misuses of public funds and rustling a horse. He then went to Alexandria, where he encountered troubles in the form of communal tension between the Greeks and Jewish people. Worried over debt and warrants and trials and prison time, he decided to return to Rome, where he turned to his friend Caligula, heir to the throne, to solve his financial problems. In the year 36 the ailing Emperor Tiberius, however, had him tossed in the clink for loose treasonous talk. Upon the death of Tiberius, pal Caligula sprung him from the joint. In a happy turn of fortune, Herod Agrippa then became King of Judaea, the first king since his grandfather (the Herod we remember due to his infamous mass slaying of the infants of Bethlehem). Strictly from the viewpoint that stories about scamps and rogues are an attraction, it’s enjoyable for readers who liked Jonathan Wild or Roderick Random or Barry Lyndon.

The book examines Claudius' marriage to teenaged Messalina. That somebody only sixteen-years-old could rise to heights of power in an empire seems to me a powerful argument against monarchy. But let’s give her lack of scruple the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the explanation is that her teenage brain was slow in developing the ability to predict consequences and make moral and ethical decisions that wouldn’t make an ordinarily decent person shudder. So she was always up to something, usually no good and to her own profit.

Though warned by Herod not to trust anybody, in his wily but love-blinded mind Claudius trusts Messalina only to suffer when she betrays him with politically expedient sexual affairs and administrative corruption in the form of bribery, extortion, influence-peddling, fraud, and embezzlement. For instance, Messalina encourages Claudius to exert centralized control of the grain supply of Rome through a system of state monopolies. Claudius is not convinced that’s a good idea, being a market-oriented guy. In the end, her sway over him is too strong for him to remain unpersuaded. Messalina, who has probably reincarnated as a high provincial official in Communist China, finds herself in the happy position to demand bribes in exchange for the right to manage the monopolies. Such stories make one grateful for the social and economic progress that has occurred in the last 2000 years despite the best efforts of thieves and conservatives.

Graves supposedly didn’t like his own fiction, claiming he wrote the novels for the money. However I think as a writer he dares greatly and succeeds in writing a first-person narrative of a Roman emperor and making the text credible and absorbing over the course of 400 pages. 

It’s easy to enter into the spirit of pretending this fiction is an autobiography that wittingly and unwittingly gives insight into the personality and motives of the subject and the gangland hoods that surround him. Though we are pretty sure we should have our bushwah detector set to “sensitive” when Claudius is justifying the invasion of Britain or vindicating why the Republic could not be restored, we readers are convinced by the historical accuracy. For example, we willingly believe it all when Graves/Claudius explains the origins of bull-fighting in Thessalian bull-leaping or the reasons why chariots in warfare gave way to cavalry and infantry. Graves the veteran of WWI is also convincing when it comes to military points like the key importance among officers and enlisted that they have confidence in their generals, that they feel their lives will not be squandered.

Finally, for the reader looking for instruction along with the quivers of literary pleasure, Graves, writing in the middle 1930s, a time when Europe was getting ready to explode, introduces ideas about the paradoxes of power for he who would be the strongman and his idiot devotees, the bad effect of corruption on the allocation of government resources, and the perils of compromise with bad-faith adversaries.

Glossary: Ever one for self-improvement, I present the list of words in this novel that I had to look up. I recommend the Cambridge Dictionary because it gives British and American pronunciations though it will shrug at you for theurgical and gloze over.

auspice - a prophetic sign, especially a favorable sign

corybantic (acting, dancing, music) – wild, frenzied

to stint (pleasures) – supply an ungenerous or inadequate amount of (something)

to gloze over (an awkward conversation) – to explain away; extenuate; gloss over

abstemious – moderate, temperate, self-denying especially when eating and drinking.

mole – a large solid structure on a shore serving as a pier, breakwater, or causeway.

to take one’s self in hand – hold oneself in check, to control one's feelings, not to get angry, to be reserved, to be self-contained

erysipelas – an acute, sometimes recurrent disease caused by a bacterial infection. It is characterized by large, raised red patches on the skin, especially that of the face and legs, with fever and sometimes severe general illness

theurgical – the operation or effect of a supernatural or divine agency in human affairs

recrudescence - the recurrence of an undesirable condition

buckler - a small round shield held by a handle or worn on the forearm.

to debouch - emerge from a narrow or confined space into a wide, open area.

coracle – in Wales & Ireland, a small round boat made of wickerwork covered with a watertight material, propelled with a paddle.

causeway - a raised road or track across low or wet ground.

to frap – (nautical) to bind tightly

sodality  - a confraternity or association

chaplet - a garland or wreath for a person's head.

roundel - a small disk, especially a decorative medallion.

guy-rope - a rope or line fixed to the ground to secure a tent or other structure.

thegn - aristocratic retainer of a king or senior nobleman in ancient Britain

whipstock – the handle of a whip

expiatory – making atonement; ~sacrifice, ~festival, ~rites,

emulous - seeking to imitate someone or something.

Modernist Novel

Pitch Dark – Renata Adler

First published in 1983, this novel is narrated by protagonist Kate Ennis, journalist and novelist, coming out of, scarred, an affair with an inconsiderate, probably worthless, married man. She’s trying to find meaning in love. Or, in loss. And from love and loss, all other events, from disposing of sick raccoons (remember Lawrence having to do in the hedgehog?) to midnight escapes across rural Ireland. Anguish, the flight from herself and from others, the search for identity, mistrust in the world, suspicion that people have such anxiety that manifests in thwarted entitlement and disrespect for other people, the willingness to take all the air out of rooms with their anger, obtuseness, off-handedness.

And all kinds of asides in this book, filling the spaces, because even the most depressed and anxious among us hardcore readers need digressions and tangents and forays to feed that spark of interest, curiosity, we have:

What’s new? The biography of the opera star says she used to ask in every phone call, and What else? I’m not sure the biographer understood another thing about the opera star, but I do believe that What’s new. What else. They may be the first questions of the story, of the morning, of consciousness. What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here, says the inspector, or the family man looking at the rubble of his house. What’s it to you, says the street tough or the bystander. What’s it worth to you, says the paid informer or the extortionist. What is it now, says the executive or the husband, disturbed by the fifteenth knock at the door, or phone call, or sigh in the small hours of the night. What does it mean, says the cryptographer. What does it all mean, says the student or the philosopher on his barstool. What do I care. What’s the use. What’s the matter. Where’s the action. What kind of fun is that. Let me say that everyone’s story in the end is the old whore’s, or the Ancient Mariner’s: I was not always as you see me now. And the sentient man, the sentient person says in his heart, from time to time, What have I done.

In the midst of all this jumble, questions. Also the past, which comes back again and again. And her voice. Expressive, sensitive and intelligent. That she speaks to us, sometimes, with a keen sense of humor. And she confesses. And she rambles about life and writing while she examines her own reality.

With a fragmented narrative, Adler not only works on memory, which can be understood, kind of, despite the lack of signposts for certain memories and jumps across associations, but also delves directly into feeling, the emotions memory evokes. Her novel, fleeing from her hurtful affair is a tale of loss and search. It's about what we've all felt and what we know.

There are passages of suspense and overwhelming unease. The set piece of the midnight flight by car across rural Ireland is a tour de force, bringing to mind the nightmare journey in Fortress Besieged (1947) by Ch'ien Chung-shu. 

Getting into it takes perseverance, but at a certain point it grabbed me and not just because of the haunting narrative voice. Adler, I think, wanted me to think about how I read certain books, what I think are limits on what novelists can do and still regard their artifacts as novels. 

The Ides of Perry Mason 19

The 15th of every month until I don't know when I will post a review of a Perry Mason mystery. For the hell of it.

Note. This is another appreciation of an actress that appeared in more than a couple episodes of the Perry Mason TV series. For Patricia Barry, see here.

Lisa Gaye

Auburn-haired. Green eyes. Dancer’s poise. Don’t say “ravishing” until you’ve seen Lisa Gaye. More like “entrancing” because she brought to characters a scent of wildness. The viewer got the feeling that she would be more than a handful if she felt that wasn’t getting what she felt she had coming in the way of attention, admiration, jewels, travel, and the high life. Little wonder she often played the fierce beauty in Perry Mason.

In her first episode, The Case of the Guilty Clients (1961), with passionate strains of Argentina and Ireland coursing through her, her character Lola Bronson is blessed and cursed with a fervent soul. Her husband Jeff says in Argentina, when he saw Lola come riding up looking like a goddess on horseback, he fell in love the minute he saw her. That they became a lovely couple deeply involved with each other we don’t doubt for a second. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case with ardent souls, the marriage was tempestuous. In divorce court, Lola says that Jeff put her over his knee and spanked her at a barbeque because she messed up the steaks. Though she calls him a sadist during the divorce proceedings, later at the trial where defendant Jeff is facing the gas chamber, Lola stands up and loudly claims that she killed the vic while Jeff cuts her off, claiming he lied about never being in the house, that he shot the vic. Devoted souls indeed. Though we’re thankful we don’t know couples that are liable to spank each other at a barbeque, we’re happy such sweethearts exist.

In her second outing, The Case of the Travelling Treasure (1961), Gaye plays gangster moll Rita Magovern. Her crook husband Karl is excellently portrayed by Arch Johnson, who brings to the role just the right mix of loud bad temper, unreasoning tyranny and violence restrained only by the fact he is confined to a wheelchair due to a broken leg. In a nice noir moment after Karl gets his just deserts via poison, Rita frankly admits to Perry and Paul that she’s “one of those women who always love the wrong man,” and that Karl was “planning a half million dollar robbery, and he wouldn't even give me enough to pay the gas bill.” We sympathetically suspect that she just wants a quiet modest life with all the bills paid on time, whether or not funded by ill-gotten gains isn’t her department.

In The Case of the Two-Faced Turn-a-bout (1963), she plays Alyssa Laban, the daughter of a Slavic immigrant caught up in the political troubles back in his old Balkan home. Even in black and white, those green eyes call to mind the comely charmers of Kyiv. Putting to use her talent with accents, Gaye also has down-pat the whole brooding, smoldering, quietly melancholy and turbulent manner (this writer’s Slavic genes connected with the part, anyway). No wonder the guest star Hugh O’Brian tries to claim her at the end, in the unlikely event that she’d be willing and happy to be carried off like a trophy to mark a victory in the cold war. As if. This is one of the episodes without Raymond Burr for a reason that has been lost in the mists of time. Loyal fans say contract dispute. Rude fans say recovery from liposuction.

In The Case of the Wednesday Woman (1964) Gaye’s character, Joyce Hadley, is a stock Mason baddie, the secretary who is also an ambitious conniver. Despite her smart and relentless scheming, we feel that she is more sinned against than sinning. She is harassed at work by a lab technician nerd. She is blackmailed into sex by a creep played by smoothie Douglas Dick, who often played handsome heartless cads on Perry. Also monstrous was Queen of the B Movies, Marie Windsor, who studied the Stanislavski Method under avatar Maria Ouspenskaya. In fact, the outstanding feature in this episode is that all the characters are monsters doing a lot of harm to themselves and others. But they all think they are carrying out the best decisions they can given the circumstances. Watching this episode is like kicking over a rock and watching all the disgusting little roaches scurrying about eating drinking screwing plotting thinking they got a real good bead on things. Yuck.

The Case of the Nautical Knot (1964) is interesting because it has two noteworthy actresses besides Gaye. In a part not as expansive as we’d like, our subject’s character Pamela Blair acts as tempting bait to a guy who is so inattentive he doesn’t even notice he’s the object of feminine wiles. Pamela Blair plays Assistant Bad Girl to Barbara Bain’s Mean Girl, a catty socialite that has no respect for nurses and first responders. Bain has that kind of shiny exquisiteness brightened up with lots and lots of money. In contrast to the splendor of the two society women, we have the third actress, Anne Whitfield. Her blonde freshness, open manner, and unique face with easy-to-read, kind of dopey blue eyes made her a must to cast for ‘girl next door’ parts. She was well-cast to be the goody-goody nurse who ends up accused of murder.

The appeal of this episode is the solid story, which was a relatively rare phenomenon by season eight. A second unusual point is the vic was a harmless old guy, not at all the usual despicable brute that had it coming, such that he’d be rushed to his eternal desert of, hopefully, slow roasting. Finally, what’s really odd is that Perry is called as a prosecution witness by Burger.

In her last episode, The Case of the Vanishing Victim (1966) she plays bad girl Laraine Keely. In the scene that reminds us how much the writer were flailing for ideas by season nine, Mason enters Laraine's apartment while she is showering. We get a shot of her drying her calves and ankles. Be still, beating heart, think only of deplorable pandering to low audience desires. Wearing only a towel, Laraine is angry to find him there, scolds him for being a masher while unflappable Perry in unfailing polite, as usual, this not being the first time he has disturbed a female en déshabillé in her own pad. In a huff, she exits to dress. While Perry is tossing her place for evidence, Laraine sneaks out and drives away. A tough shrewd one, for sure.

What a precarious career acting is. Especially for actresses over 30 years old. Despite her success in television, by the late 1960s, her career just stopped. She said in an undated interview, “There were shows I never did—‘Bonanza’, ‘Star Trek’, yet when I’d watch them on TV, I would say to myself ‘I could have done that!’ … I couldn’t walk through the door at Paramount—so I changed agents. Then, it was like I never worked again!”

She moved to Texas to raise her daughter and be closer to family. She worked as a receptionist for 19 years at a local religious television station and sang in the Evangelistic Temple Church’s choir. Lisa Gaye passed away in 2016, at the age of 81, in Houston.

The Reason Why

The Reason Why - Cecil Woodham-Smith

This is a popular (i.e., footnotes-free) account of the famous military disaster The Charge of the Light Brigade near the start of the Crimean War.  The short biographies of Lords Lucan and Cardigan and the social history of the early Victorian era are excellently done. So is the section on the causes and effects the famine in Ireland (Lord Lucan was a landlord there).

The book describes how aristocrats were able to buy high positions in the army, thus going over the heads of more experienced but less connected officers. It was a system that made it too easy for deeply flawed characters such as Lords Lucan and Cardigan to contribute to military disasters.

Readers who liked Leon Wolff’s In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign will like this one too. Beautifully written in a lucid style, it made me want to read W-S’s other books about  the famine in Ireland and even Florence Nightingale. I saw her biography of Queen Victoria at the AAUW UBS* in the days when such events were safe but didn't buy it (for a buck) because the spine was loose. I could kick myself.

*Young 'uns ain't the only ones that can use cryptic abbreviations. Nyah.

West with the Night

West with the Night - Beryl Markham

Markham, a pioneer aviatrix, was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from London (not Ireland) to North America. The flight ended not at its destination of New York City but tail up in a Nova Scotian peat bog. Publishers made her an offer and this book was released in 1942.

In clear graceful language that’s only sometimes portentous, she tells of growing up in Kenya, training horses, becoming a bush pilot, and making the trans-Atlantic flight. The story of a truly brave and remarkable woman received courteous reviews but after modest sales it sunk without a trace, considering 1942 also saw the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Second Battle of El Alamein, Operation Torch, and the Guadalcanal campaign.

Revived in 1983, the book has been a critical success and ordinary readers praise it with comments like “If you loved Out of Africa, you will love this beautifully written book!”  Some critics, however, point out Markham’s ethnocentrism and portrayal of locals as noble savages. She never deals with the justice and benevolence of waltzing into somebody else’s ancestral lands and turning pastoralists into plantation workers, servants, stable boys, and washerwomen.

A controversy, moreover, rages as to how much editorial guidance Markham received to write the memoir. I don’t doubt that a great book can come out of an author that writes scarcely anything else – Harper Lee. But there’re grounds for suspecting Markham didn’t write this book, her only book. She never talks about her schooling or about books she’s liked. She never mentions writing except in a stud book or flight log. The book has a style that was fashionable and so fit for sale at the time: elegant, snooty, Hemingwayesque.

It’s understandable that readers may be uncomfortable with whether a memoir is ghostwritten (John Dean’s Blind Ambition was written by historian Taylor Branch) or smothered by its author’s fishy claims (The Education of Little Tree, or A Million Little Pieces). But if a reader skipped West with the Night because of its unclear authorship, she’d be skipping some beautiful writing.

Mount TBR #33

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers

This early 20^th century spy thriller starts with Charles Carruthers plodding away in the British Foreign Office, marking time on dull reports and doing the social whirl at balls and dinners. For a change, he accepts an offer of a vacation from an old Oxford buddy, Arthur Davies. The stolid quiet Davies proposes duck shooting in the Frisian Islands on his yacht the Dulcibella. In fact, to make up for being turned down by the Royal Navy, Davies has taken to freelance espionage. He is investigating German plans to invade that royal throne of kings, that sceptered isle.

Though raised near Great Lakes, having lived on an island for six years, and living now in a place ridden by lake effect snow, I’m not really a water guy. I just read lots of nautical stories, in memoirs, serious fiction, mysteries and thrillers. In this novel, the technical information about navigation, sailing and naval dispositions is balanced by expressive narrative like this:

… A sort of buoyant fatalism possessed me as I finished my notes and pored over the stove. It upheld me, too, when I went on deck and watched the 'pretty beat', whose prettiness was mainly due to the crowd of fog-bound shipping—steamers, smacks, and sailing-vessels—now once more on the move in the confined fairway of the fiord, their baleful eyes of red, green, or yellow, opening and shutting, brightening and fading; while shore-lights and anchor-lights added to my bewilderment, and a throbbing of screws filled the air like the distant roar of London streets. In fact, every time we spun round for our dart across the fiord I felt like a rustic matron gathering her skirts for the transit of the Strand on a busy night. Davies, however, was the street arab who zigzags under the horses' feet unscathed; and all the time he discoursed placidly on the simplicity and safety of night-sailing if only you are careful, obeying rules, and burnt good lights. As we were nearing the hot glow in the sky that denoted Kiel we passed a huge scintillating bulk moored in mid-stream. 'Warships,' he murmured, ecstatically.

That second 80-word sentence is, well, something, though the ~ing verbs make movement, sights, and sounds realistic and vivid.

Historians tell us that the book was a best-seller when it was published. Public outcry stirred by the book was such that the UK shored up its coastal defense system. Critics say the book was an influence on John Buchan, whose man-child hero Richard Hannay calls to mind Davies in this one. This was Childers’ only novel. He became a stringent Irish Nationalist (his mother was Irish) and had an unfortunate end after the Great War. His son was President of Ireland in the early Seventies.

Back to the Classics #13

I read this book for the 2019 Back to the Classics Reading Challenge

Classic Tragic Novel. Trollope’s late novels are not the genial vacation novels of the Chronicles of Barsetshire. Readers then and now seem to prefer the early and middle period novels over stories with darker tones and themes such as The Way We Live Now (1875). Good thing we avid readers aren’t most readers. Plus, he sets this one in Ireland, where he lived in the brutal famine-stricken 1840s, so he's sympathetic to the hard-pressed Irish. As Mia Farrow's Irish character said in Widow's Peak (1994), "Even when the English are murdering you, they're always thorough gentlemen."

An Eye for an Eye – Anthony Trollope

Trollope despised surprises so in chapter one he tells of an inmate in a private asylum who mutters to herself over and over “An eye for an eye” and makes us wonder what drove the poor woman mad and why the Earl of Scroope pays the bill.

The rest of the two-volume novel tells the back-story. A young Englishman is about to inherit his uncle’s vast estate. Stationed by the army in Ireland, he meets a beautiful but poor Roman Catholic Irish girl. Her protection is comprised of a formidable mother and canny practical priest, both finely drawn characters. But true love is thwarted by prejudices involving class snobbery, money, station, nationality, religion, and colonial ambitions as personified in the Englishman’s aunt, another great character. 

I hesitate to describe the plot or incidents in detail out of fear of spoiling this powerful novel for another reader. I highly recommend it to fans of Trollope who think they can always see Tony’s tricks coming. This is decidedly not yet another examination of yet another weak male who makes trouble for himself and others on the order of Charlie Tudor, Harry Clavering, and Johnny Ames. Things work out but tragically – the title says expect revenge; the first chapter cautions us the story ends in madness – and that’s probably why it’s read nowadays only by hard-core readers like us that dearly like a sad story.

Mount TBR #11

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

The Nutmeg of Consolation – Patrick O’Brian

In the 14^th episode of the twenty-book series set on the high seas in the Napoleonic era, after landing on a reef and then seeing their ship destroyed by a typhoon, the crew of HMS Diane under Captain Jack Aubrey are trapped on an island about 200 nautical miles from Batavia (as in Jakarta, not Western New York of John Gardner fame). They are salvaging materials to build a schooner and make an escape.

Unfortunately, in a rousing fight scene, local Dyaks set the schooner afire. After settling Dyak hash, our heroes and their crew are able to escape the island.

Fortune decrees that in Batavia a Dutch ship has just been raised so it is now possible to for Jack and the crew to intercept the French frigate Cornélie, which was part of their original mission anyway. Ultimately, they are to make their way to Chile and Peru in order to foment independence movements there and thus get up Spain’s nose.

In this outing the usual brisk pace is not maintained at all times and there seems more nautical mumbo-jumbo than usual. Nevertheless, like a good historical novelist should, O’Brian gives insights into the times and places, especially in the miserable colonial life of Australia. I used to think that Australia was lucky to get the convicts (while we were stuck with the Puritans), but I was disabused of that notion by this book. The interplay among our favorite characters is funny as usual, with the addition of two little girls, survivors of an epidemic of what American Indians call “white man’s diseases” on their island. After hearing Ireland being trashed by dumbass English soldiers, Stephen runs a lowlife through in an immensely satisfying scene. The scene where Padeen tells Stephen he always knew the doctor would come for him will send a decent reader to the box of Kleenex.

Obviously, I’m going to give Aubrey-Maturin novels good reviews, given I’ve read 14 of them so far, with a couple of those being re-read along the way. I’ve got plans to read the rest, too. And then start over with #3 HMS Surprise.

Heaven grant me the time.

Classic by a Woman Author: Collected Ghost Stories

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell - Charlotte Eliza L. Riddell

In Victorian times, both Mrs. Riddell’s father and husband suffered business failures so she had to go to work with her pen. A prolific fiction writer, she wrote novels with intriguing titles such as The Nun’s Curse and supernatural novels like Fairy Water and The Uninhabited  House.  This Dover collection from 1977 brought together 14 supernatural stories originally published in Christmas annuals.

"Nut Bush Farm" (1882) -- A skeptical man rents a farm whose nearby peasants are spooked by something which takes a weird form. The skeptical guy finds his disbelief in haints sorely tested.

"The Open Door" (18892) – The old story of guy, fired because he didn’t know his place, who needs. money. He accepts a job in which he is to stay in a creepy old mansion all night long in order to figure out why a door won’t stay shut. The things we do for money are often examined by Mrs. Riddell, who knew the pinch of being busted.

"The Last Squire of Ennismore" (1888) –The take-away from this story is that If a foreigner appears out of nowhere from the sea, don’t invite him in your country house for a drink, if you don’t want to be the last of your line, that is.

"A Strange Christmas Game" (1868) -- A penniless brother and sister think their luck has changed when they inherit an estate from a distant relative. They couldn’t be more wrong.

"The Old House in Vauxhall Walk" (1882) –The old story of a young man who needs bread in the worst way. Homeless and wandering the streets, he meets a former servant who offers to put him up in an old empty house. Spirited hijinks ensue.

"Sandy the Tinker" – (1882) There’s something very creepy about supernatural stories that involve bad dreams.

"Forewarned, Forearmed" (1874) – Another weird dream story. I think I will stay up all night tonight.

"Hertford O'Donnell's Warning" (1867) – Smart people may be very smart but they are also subject to weird fancies. Whenever a poor doctor starts to propose to his lady love, who only happens to be a rich heiress, he and he only begins to hear the howl of the banshee. Mrs. Riddell was Irish, so there you go.

"Walnut Tree House" (1882) –Stories of ghost children are weird.

"Old Mrs. Jones" (1882) –An unforgettable mix of funny, uncanny and scary.

"Why Dr. Cray Left Southam" (1889) – An utterly plausible story about the aftermath of when a doctor who doesn’t suffer hypochondriacs accuses a uxorious husband of doing away with his wife.

"Conn Kilrea" (1899) – A family is cursed by a spirit whose appearance is a harbinger of a death in the family. Doesn’t every family have such a early warning system?

"Diarmid Chittock's Story" (1899) – Very strong Irish interest in this story. Sick of the hurly-burly of London life, a sensitive guy man lets a remote house on Ireland's Atlantic coast. He is fascinated by a young governess who turned down the proposal of one of his friends. Our hero wants to get them together. Beware meddling in other people’s business.

"A Terrible Vengeance" (1889) -- A little town flirt breaks up with her boyfriend during a boating excursion, but then goes missing. Wet footprints begin the follow Somebody. A genuinely creepy story.

Mrs. Riddell (said “riddle” by the bye) is a dab hand for evocative descriptions of landscapes and flora. She also has a sharp though sympathetic wit that we like in Irish writers. Because of her own unhappy experiences of keeping the wolf from the door, she knows people are mainly concerned with the age-old questions “What’s this going to cost me” and “What’s in it for me.”

St. Patrick’s Day

Troubles – J.G. Farrell

A character in this novel says that history is what is remembered, but ‘everything else’ – that is, daily life as what we ordinary people get up to - tends to be forgotten. This story examines people that are trying to carry on their regular lives while history is unraveling their Irish world.

It is 1919. Major Brendan Archer is a gentleman, a believer in honor, chivalry, and playing the game even after the Great War by the end of which some members of his generation like Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves  had said “goodbye to all that.” Too English, however, he is, not to be regarded by a dynamic Irishwoman as standoffish and stuffy. Archer has been released from his hospitalization for shell shock brought on by his service in the trenches. He visits the Victorian-era Majestic Hotel in County Wexford, Ireland, to find out if still on is his accidental engagement to Angela Spencer made while he was on a brief leave from the war.

Angela’s father Edward owns the hotel, which like British rule in Ireland, is going to pieces. Edward is hard to respect, given his snooty airs and anti-Catholic prejudices, but his dogged optimism has a certain pride.  A master of self-deception, Edward frets about renovations and conducts amateur experiments in psycho-physiology. The hotel and science are distractions so he can disregard the political troubles between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists. The escalating violence and resulting stress gradually seize his attention and steadily unhinge him.

Archer feels high-strung and restless due to his war experience. He feels tired of conflicts of any kind. Ireland, with its “vast and narcotic inertia,” casts its spell over him. He insensibly becomes involved in the Anglo-Irish family's issues and tensions with servants and tenants. Lacking boldness to get on with his life, he makes friends with the old ladies who permanently reside in the hotel. He’s also unlucky enough to fall in the love for the first time. He’s pretty defenseless, not that that makes us readers pull for him since the love object is so worthless.

Human beings are not at their best in this novel.  An old order goes poof.  But it is by no means grim or dejecting. Farrell manages cutting satire and blackly comedic situations without being mean or depressing. Long at 400+ pages, this novel has spots where nothing much happens except atmosphere and curious detailed descriptions, yet overall it’s a satisfying and enjoyable read. Farrell had soul. For readers into highly literary fiction, Ireland, or the effects of sectarian violence on ordinary people, this is a moving story. This novel won the Lost Man Booker Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

Farrell's other two major novels also turn on a British community dealing with threats. In The Siege of Krishnapour, hostile local Indians attack a lonely British outpost in the 1857. In his masterpiece, The Singapore Grip, the Japanese invasion of the Malayan Federated States and Singapore in 1942 hands the British their most ignominious military defeat in their history of Empire.

2018 European Reading Challenge

I will read these books for the 2018 European Reading Challenge.

1/ The Irish Sketchbook of 1842 - Wm. Makepeace Thackeray (Ireland)

2/ Call It Treason: A Novel - George Howe (Germany)

3/ When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light under German Occupation, 1940-1944 - Ronald C. Rosbottom (France)

4/ The Spies of Warsaw – Alan Furst (Poland)

5/ Eminent Georgians - John Halperin (UK)

Mount TBR #60

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. – William Makepeace Thackeray

It’s strange that I finish the reading year as I began: with a picaresque novel. Barry Lyndon was first published in 1844. It was a dusty forgotten novelette until Stanley Kubrick made a gorgeous movie out of it in the middle 1970s.

Set in the late 18^th century, our young anti-hero, Redmond, must flee his native Ireland after a scandal in which his affection for a cousin nearly derails her brothers’ efforts to marry her off to a detestable but rich Englishman. After misadventures, he enlists as a British squaddie fighting on the Continent. He deserts but is impressed in a mercenary army of the Prussians. Worse, he is forced to become a household sneak and spy, where at least he meets his long-lost uncle who has been unable to return to Ireland because of political troubles. The uncle helps him escape the clammy Prussian grip. The two sharpers make a precarious living at play (gambling) in the shabby minor courts of Europe. Redmond goes to England in order to relentlessly pursue a wealthy widow, Countess Lyndon. He marries her, but his utter irresponsibility with money denies him happiness and respectability.

Compared to exuberant Dickens and genial Trollope, Thackeray’s humor is bitterly satirical but at least unprejudiced. Thackeray aims smacks at everybody. He punctures apologists of English doings in Ireland and the hypocrisy of English society at every level, especially concerning ambitions for gentility. He ridicules Irish poverty and pretentions to royal lineages that reach back into the misty reaches of time. Thackeray even mocks the stock character of the loyal-unto-death Irish Mama. The dragon Bell Brady spoils Redmond rotten and forgives him for his worst misbehaviors and eggs on his low conceits and brutal mistreatment of his wife. Thackeray also derides military valor, prowesss, and honor as words words words.

Besides the untrustworthy unlikable narrator, jumps in time and anti-authoritarian stance, this novel feels modernist for its use of real historical characters and scandals of bygone days:

… it was through Mr. Reynolds that I was introduced to a score of [men of letters], and their great chief, Mr. Johnson. I always thought their great chief a great bear. He drank tea twice or thrice at my house, misbehaving himself most grossly; treating my opinions with no more respect than those of a schoolboy, and telling me to mind my horses and tailors, and not trouble myself about letters. His Scotch bear-leader, Mr. Boswell, was a butt of the first quality. I never saw such a figure as the fellow cut in what he called a Corsican habit, at one of Mrs. Cornely’s balls, at Carlisle House, Soho. But that the stories connected with that same establishment are not the most profitable tales in the world, I could tell tales of scores of queer doings there. All the high and low demireps of the town gathered there, from his Grace of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Goldsmith the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters, who came to queer ends too: poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged for killing Miss Ray, and (on the sly) his Reverence Doctor Simony, whom my friend Sam Foote, of the ‘Little Theatre,’ bade to live even after forgery and the rope cut short the unlucky parson’s career.

Basically, our narrator is selfish, egotistical, careless, lying, xenophobic, racist and misogynist. He sees the world as a vicious brutal arena where only the nasty and cruel win. Barry believes that everyone owes him respect though he is too lazy to do anything to earn respect.  All the bad things that happen to him occur because people defame him or want revenge for his nonexistent misdeeds. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of others.

Funny that Barry Lyndon reminds me so much of – oh, never mind. It’s Christmas, after all.