Raine on Hitler’s Parade
The misspelling of the word bastard in the title of “Inglorious Basterds” was strictly a mistake or whim of director Quentin Taratino, for which he has not offered a rational explanation.
The story had several chapters; each with a heading, very much like in a novel. It also had three main characters. They were: Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the name a tribute to actor Aldo Ray who was in several war movies in the 1950s; Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a canny SS officer nicknamed “the Jew Hunter”; and Shosanna Dryfus (Melanie Laurent), the lone survivor of a family exterminated by Col. Landa—she is bent on revenge at all costs. The ‘Basterds’ were a Jewish death squad that, like the members of “The Dirty Dozen,” were a collection of quasi-crazed killers led by Lt. Raine that had been dropped behind enemy lines to terrorize the soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Two of the disconcerting things they do were to scalp dead Germans and kill the uncooperative officers with a baseball bat. Taratino, in a daring move, mixes fable with revisionist history, which I found engaging and a fantasy that didn’t come true but oh, if only it had…
The opening scene in the film involves Colonel Landa’s unannounced visit to a French farmer to question him about a Jewish family from the region who are unaccounted for, a mystery the SS spokesman wished to clear up. Landa was a slick fellow, full of guile and compliments, but he was a good detective with a nose for the truth. He’s not called “the Jew Hunter” for nothing. He figures out the missing family was under the farmer’s floor boards. He brings in three soldiers with machine guns who fire into the floor, killing four of the five members. Only Shosanna survived and ran like the blazes to some woods a couple of hundred yards away. Landa saw her running but decides to let her escape. Nor does Taratino inform us of the consequences for the French farmer and his three daughters. One wonders about that. It’s one crack in the solidity of the film.
Then we are introduced to the Jewish Death Squad. We witness them scalping some dead soldiers—Lt. Raine was part Indian—and a Jewish soldier called “Jew Bear” take a Louisville Slugger to the head of uncooperative German officer. The one soldier left alive was spared to be sent back to camp branded by Raine’s Bowie knife (another reminder that the story resembled an American Western), as he carved a swastika in the man’s forehead, which the soldier later showed to Hitler. The Basterds not only resembled “The Dirty Dozen,” but they act like the “The Wild Bunch.”
When Shosanna showed up again four years later she is the owner of a cinema in Paris, a business she inherited from a deceased Aunt and Uncle. She was on a ladder removing a name from the marquee, which coincidently was featuring one of Leni Riefenstahl’s earlier popular mountain climbing epics from the 1920s. She was of course the German filmmaker who became famous as “Hitler Filmmaker,” the Director of “Olympiad” and “Triumph of the Will,” two films that were both propaganda and filmmaking of high quality. While on the ladder she was approached by a young German soldier who obviously likes her but she brushes him off. Then she discovered he is a national hero for killing scores of American soldiers from a church Bell Tower, which repulses her. His name was Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) and he persudes Joseph Goebbels to make a movie about his heroic experience, with Zoller in the movie playing himself, like Audie Murphy playing himself in “To Hell and Back.” Moreover, when the film is completed they agreed to hold its grand premier at Ms. Mimieux (Shosanna’s new name) theater with not only members of the Nazi elite in attendance. Later on, Hitler decided he should be there too..
The British horned in on the proceedings by sending Lt. Hicox (Michael Fassbender) to France to meet with a German actress named Brigit von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) who was a double agent. Hicox was selected because he was a scholar of pre-war German film but proves to be an inept spy. The rendezvous takes place in a basement bar full of drunken German soldiers Raine doesn’t like the idea at all but sends a couple of Basterds to the meeting. When Hicox blows his cover a ferocious gun battle explodes and all are killed but the actress who is shot in the leg. Raine rescued her, but Cinderella forgot her fancy high heels shoes and Col. Landa finds them when he examines the scene. He saves them as evidence.
Now the plot was clear: Both Ms. Mimieux and Lt. Raine, without knowledge of what the other was planning, will try to kill Hitler and as many Nazis as possible inside the theater while they watched the movie at its premier. Ms. Mimieux plan was to ignite some very flammable film while her partner, a black man who was her lover as well as projectionist, would have locked all the doors so no one would escape the flames. They would die too, but they didn’t care. Raine’s plan was to get inside by accompanying the German actress with the four remaining Basterds carrying dynamite strapped to their legs. They pose as Italian diplomats, which was silly but no matter. Col. Landa grabs Hammmersmark. Forces her to try on the shoes she had left behind, when they fit, he strangles her on the spot. Then he has Raine and one of his associates grabbed and hauled away, but he takes one of the bundles of dynamite and shoves it under Goebbels chair. At that point I wondered what the hell was going on.
Well, I found out soon enough. He had his two captives removed to another location for interrogation, and while they have a dialog all hell breaks loose in the theater; there are explosions, a hysterical crowd that can’t get away from the flames or the machine gun fire of the two last Basterds up in the balcony, and finally the building blows to smithereens, killing Hitler and all his henchmen, effectively ending the war with a flourish. Who could not wish but that was so? Knowing that would be the likely scenario Landa tries to make a deal with the astonished Raine and his military superiors who he contacted by phone. Not only will he save their lives, he wants to go to America, be given a house on Cape Cod, and be forgiven of past crimes against humanity and start life over a free man. Raine is told to accept the deal and he does, with one exception: he carves a swastika in the forehead of Landa so everyone will know what he was during the war.
At Cannes, where the film premiered, Christoph Waltz walked off with the award as Best Actor for his performance as Colonel Landa. As far as I am concerned he stole the show with his outstanding, even flashy, performance. Brad Pitt’s characterization of Lt. Raine was good but seemed more artificial next to Waltz’s. Melanie Laurent was radiant as Shosanna/Ms. Mimieux. Taratino makes her and Ms. Hammersmark rather like two femme fatales. Laurent fakes a sexual invitation to Zoller up in the projection booth in order to distract him while she gets her gun out of her purse to shoot him; Kruger shoots the remaining German soldier in the basement shoot-out after he had surrendered his machine gun to Lt. Raine. When Raine inquired what happened to the actress Landa said,” Let’s just say she got what she deserved.”
‘Inglorious Basterds” was ten years in the making; it went through many permutations until it found its final form. Taratino changed his mind a number of times about who would play what part, and there were the inevitable conflicts of schedules. But the core group he ended up with was solid and preformed well. The Golden Globes came out last week and the film was nominated for four awards, including Best Drama, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor, to Christoph Waltz.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Fako and some Movies
12/12/2009 Journal notes on Fako and movies.
Fako continued to harass me this morning, and then in the afternoon he said he all along was just trying to get my dander up. So my feelings were just his playthings for a week. I should shoot the bastard.
To an extent he reminded me of my problems with Dick Wist who had a similar hostility toward me and my work. Wist, who was the Art Historian at UNLV when I was there, said to me “You draw witches and lack universality,” and then he’d stab me with “You have to have legs to run.” In other words I don’t have what it takes to make a mark on the world of “serious” Art. I am poor cripple who doesn’t have the stuff that it takes to soar. Christ, its tough enough to wrestle with aesthetic solutions to an inner complex that is compelling you to search for a form to reveal what you know in your heart of hearts, let alone having to listen to the critical ravings of outsiders who have no appreciation of the dynamic you have been swept up by. Fako’s contention is without endurance & public acknowledgement an artist is just a nowhere man. He has no understanding of the compulsion to create and the intrinsic value of creativity. My relationship with Wist died on the vine 40 years ago and if Fako keeps it up ours will too.
I saw “Julia and Julie” two nights ago, a comfort movie built around food and two women goony about cooking. Meryl Streep has done it again—what a performance! She was spot on in terms of sounding just like Ms. Child, and she also moved like she did. Nora Ephron, the writer and director also had her wearing elevator shoes because the real Julia was 6’2” (and her sister was 6’5”.) Amy Adams, who is a cute as can be, is adequate in her role but her skills can’t be compared to the fluid authority of Streep as an actress who can inhabit a character so completely. Julie’s story is interesting, but like her cooking, it lives in the shadow of the master cook. One aspect of her story that I paid some interest to was how she did with her blog. At first no one seemed to be reading it; then a few people, so on and so forth until a mass of people were reading it and reacting to it. I am in that first stage and it looks doubtful I’ll ever go beyond it.
The biggest surprise in the Julia Childs section was how sexual her relationship to her husband Paul was. Once more Streep was teamed with Stanley Tucci, like in “The Devil Loves Prada.” He’s perfect as Paul, loving, encouraging, and apparently the perfect sex partner. The chemistry between them could not be better. He was some kind of low level diplomat in Paris, which enabled her to go to cooking school in Paris and to eventually begin working on her book THE MASTERING OF FRENCH COOKING, which made her reputation, along with the popular PBS program on which she spread the word. Prior to catching on at the cooking school, she was at a loss what to do with herself. It took a while for things to come together for her, but getting there was half the fun. Julie was about 30 when she found herself as both cook and writer. Incidentally, the two women never met. Paul Child died at 91 about ten years before his wife who was 90 when she passed away. I’m sure that when she got to heaven she went in the door marked “French Eatery,” and Paul was there waiting for her.
“The Other Man” I had never heard of it but it had a good cast so I thought I’d give it a look. It was a downbeat movie about the ravages of male jealousy. A businessman, played by Liam Neeson, discovers that his wife had a passionate love affair before she died of cancer. One night he decides to check her laptop and he comes across a file named LOVE, but he doesn’t know the password. He tries many things and finally remembers her trips to Lake Como on business (she was a shoe designer.) Lake Como was it. He is shocked to see his beloved wife naked in bed and cavorting with her lover, played by Antonio Banderas. Laura Linney played the wife, but was actually seen little in the movie. You can see the rage well up inside Neeson’s emotional body. By the next morning he is totally in the grip of a madness he can’t get beyond. Due to love notes from the man he knows his name is Ralph; he asks his security person at his firm to find who he is and she does. His address is in Milan, so off he goes to confront the guy with murder in his heart.
When he gets there he follows the guy around for a few days, discovering that he likes to go to a particular bar and restaurant with a room for people who want to play chess. He strkes up a conversation with Ralph (pronounced Raf) and the two men start to play chess together, and while they play Raf starts to talk about his love for the other man’s wife. At one point he has a hammer in hand and considers killing Raf. But he refrains. He also discovers the guy is a sham, heavily in debt, only posing as a man with money and style, actually living on the cheap. He was not what he seemed to be, a bon vivant and high roller. But Neeson can’t resist setting a trap for the poor bastard. Since he doesn’t know the wife has died so Neeson pretends to write him for a get-together, just like old times, something Rav has been dreaming about. But it is him waiting in the restaurant and he lays the truth on Raf, that he is the husband and that is wife is dead, which first crushes him, then infuriates him that the husband could be so cruel, as he knew how much he had loved the woman too. That last fact finally sinks in to the husband; it softens his attitude and by the time of the memorial for the wife he even feels some compassion for the man he once wanted to kill, and both toast what a wonderful woman she was. He goes home with his daughter, his heart calmed and perhaps, even healed.
I liked the dynamic of going from complete rage and jealousy to sympathy and understanding. If only it would happen like that more often.
The new interpretation of the “The Taking of Pelham 123,” is an updated version, with technological add-ons and with villains that look more like the ex-cons and tough guys of today. The hard core of the film remains the same as in the 1974 film: It’s a hostage crisis that’s designed to extort big bucks for 4 criminals and the basic tension in the story is supplied by the lead gangster and the subway dispatcher. In the original story Robert Shaw played the villain and in the new version John Travolta is the brains and chief spokesman for the four hoods. Walter Matthau was a police detective who was the other half of the duet and duel between the two main adversaries. Travolta, besides looking the part, is loudmouthed, vulgar, a serial curser, a psychotic killer, but he also likes the dispatcher, Walter Garber, an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. Ryder (Travolta) will deal only with Garber. He wants $10 million in one hour or else he will start shooting one hostage every hour thereafter We don’t find out what Ryder’s true motivation is until near the end of the film. He was a high stakes player on Wall Street who stole some money and as a consequence had gone to prison for 9 years and had only recently got out of jail, as did his technical helper Pedro Ramos (Luis Guzman) who used to work for the subway system. They want revenge on the system that sent them up the river. Garber and Ryder engage in a dialog that links them in tension and respect—and in irony, as the ending of the film will show. The four get away with the money, but they don’t get far.
The director of the film was Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother who specializes in urban crime dramas. The last film Scott made with Denzel Washington was “Man on Fire.” In the special features he discusses all the difficulties and handicaps of making a film in New York City. It was a riveting story from start to finish, and the relationship between the two main characters had the right admixture of respect, fondness, and fear.
Fako continued to harass me this morning, and then in the afternoon he said he all along was just trying to get my dander up. So my feelings were just his playthings for a week. I should shoot the bastard.
To an extent he reminded me of my problems with Dick Wist who had a similar hostility toward me and my work. Wist, who was the Art Historian at UNLV when I was there, said to me “You draw witches and lack universality,” and then he’d stab me with “You have to have legs to run.” In other words I don’t have what it takes to make a mark on the world of “serious” Art. I am poor cripple who doesn’t have the stuff that it takes to soar. Christ, its tough enough to wrestle with aesthetic solutions to an inner complex that is compelling you to search for a form to reveal what you know in your heart of hearts, let alone having to listen to the critical ravings of outsiders who have no appreciation of the dynamic you have been swept up by. Fako’s contention is without endurance & public acknowledgement an artist is just a nowhere man. He has no understanding of the compulsion to create and the intrinsic value of creativity. My relationship with Wist died on the vine 40 years ago and if Fako keeps it up ours will too.
I saw “Julia and Julie” two nights ago, a comfort movie built around food and two women goony about cooking. Meryl Streep has done it again—what a performance! She was spot on in terms of sounding just like Ms. Child, and she also moved like she did. Nora Ephron, the writer and director also had her wearing elevator shoes because the real Julia was 6’2” (and her sister was 6’5”.) Amy Adams, who is a cute as can be, is adequate in her role but her skills can’t be compared to the fluid authority of Streep as an actress who can inhabit a character so completely. Julie’s story is interesting, but like her cooking, it lives in the shadow of the master cook. One aspect of her story that I paid some interest to was how she did with her blog. At first no one seemed to be reading it; then a few people, so on and so forth until a mass of people were reading it and reacting to it. I am in that first stage and it looks doubtful I’ll ever go beyond it.
The biggest surprise in the Julia Childs section was how sexual her relationship to her husband Paul was. Once more Streep was teamed with Stanley Tucci, like in “The Devil Loves Prada.” He’s perfect as Paul, loving, encouraging, and apparently the perfect sex partner. The chemistry between them could not be better. He was some kind of low level diplomat in Paris, which enabled her to go to cooking school in Paris and to eventually begin working on her book THE MASTERING OF FRENCH COOKING, which made her reputation, along with the popular PBS program on which she spread the word. Prior to catching on at the cooking school, she was at a loss what to do with herself. It took a while for things to come together for her, but getting there was half the fun. Julie was about 30 when she found herself as both cook and writer. Incidentally, the two women never met. Paul Child died at 91 about ten years before his wife who was 90 when she passed away. I’m sure that when she got to heaven she went in the door marked “French Eatery,” and Paul was there waiting for her.
“The Other Man” I had never heard of it but it had a good cast so I thought I’d give it a look. It was a downbeat movie about the ravages of male jealousy. A businessman, played by Liam Neeson, discovers that his wife had a passionate love affair before she died of cancer. One night he decides to check her laptop and he comes across a file named LOVE, but he doesn’t know the password. He tries many things and finally remembers her trips to Lake Como on business (she was a shoe designer.) Lake Como was it. He is shocked to see his beloved wife naked in bed and cavorting with her lover, played by Antonio Banderas. Laura Linney played the wife, but was actually seen little in the movie. You can see the rage well up inside Neeson’s emotional body. By the next morning he is totally in the grip of a madness he can’t get beyond. Due to love notes from the man he knows his name is Ralph; he asks his security person at his firm to find who he is and she does. His address is in Milan, so off he goes to confront the guy with murder in his heart.
When he gets there he follows the guy around for a few days, discovering that he likes to go to a particular bar and restaurant with a room for people who want to play chess. He strkes up a conversation with Ralph (pronounced Raf) and the two men start to play chess together, and while they play Raf starts to talk about his love for the other man’s wife. At one point he has a hammer in hand and considers killing Raf. But he refrains. He also discovers the guy is a sham, heavily in debt, only posing as a man with money and style, actually living on the cheap. He was not what he seemed to be, a bon vivant and high roller. But Neeson can’t resist setting a trap for the poor bastard. Since he doesn’t know the wife has died so Neeson pretends to write him for a get-together, just like old times, something Rav has been dreaming about. But it is him waiting in the restaurant and he lays the truth on Raf, that he is the husband and that is wife is dead, which first crushes him, then infuriates him that the husband could be so cruel, as he knew how much he had loved the woman too. That last fact finally sinks in to the husband; it softens his attitude and by the time of the memorial for the wife he even feels some compassion for the man he once wanted to kill, and both toast what a wonderful woman she was. He goes home with his daughter, his heart calmed and perhaps, even healed.
I liked the dynamic of going from complete rage and jealousy to sympathy and understanding. If only it would happen like that more often.
The new interpretation of the “The Taking of Pelham 123,” is an updated version, with technological add-ons and with villains that look more like the ex-cons and tough guys of today. The hard core of the film remains the same as in the 1974 film: It’s a hostage crisis that’s designed to extort big bucks for 4 criminals and the basic tension in the story is supplied by the lead gangster and the subway dispatcher. In the original story Robert Shaw played the villain and in the new version John Travolta is the brains and chief spokesman for the four hoods. Walter Matthau was a police detective who was the other half of the duet and duel between the two main adversaries. Travolta, besides looking the part, is loudmouthed, vulgar, a serial curser, a psychotic killer, but he also likes the dispatcher, Walter Garber, an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. Ryder (Travolta) will deal only with Garber. He wants $10 million in one hour or else he will start shooting one hostage every hour thereafter We don’t find out what Ryder’s true motivation is until near the end of the film. He was a high stakes player on Wall Street who stole some money and as a consequence had gone to prison for 9 years and had only recently got out of jail, as did his technical helper Pedro Ramos (Luis Guzman) who used to work for the subway system. They want revenge on the system that sent them up the river. Garber and Ryder engage in a dialog that links them in tension and respect—and in irony, as the ending of the film will show. The four get away with the money, but they don’t get far.
The director of the film was Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother who specializes in urban crime dramas. The last film Scott made with Denzel Washington was “Man on Fire.” In the special features he discusses all the difficulties and handicaps of making a film in New York City. It was a riveting story from start to finish, and the relationship between the two main characters had the right admixture of respect, fondness, and fear.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Too Much Happiness
Before last week I had never read any of the short stories of Canadian writer Alice Munro. With the publication of TOO MUCH HAPPINESS last month that makes 14 books she has written over a long career of writing short stories. I bought TOO MUCH HAPPINESS on the recommendation of a friend. Generally speaking, I am not much of a reader of short stories. I don’t know why; it’s just not my preference as far as fiction is concerned. The last writer of short stories that I got involved with was Raymond Carver. To a certain extent TOO MUCH HAPPINESS made me think of Carver’s work. The kind of people written about by both writers tend to be uneducated, have limited vision and understanding, can be mentally disturbed, very insecure, can be thrice-married, and even homicidal. Some are in dead-end jobs.
“Dimensions” is a good example of what I mean. Doree is twenty three and a cleaning woman, a job she happy with and has no plans to leave for something better. She is an innocent, very naïve, so much so she got swept off her feet while a teenager by a maniac named Lloyd who seduced her into marriage and got her pregnant to tune of three kids before she was twenty. Then one night, when she felt very uncomfortable with Lloyd, she slept at a friend’s house. When she went home the next morning she found all three children murdered by their father, who blamed her for what he did because she had left him last night. After he had been institutionalized for a while he tries to play her like he did when she was a teenager. He does it by telling her the children are appearing to him and they are doing well on the other side and not at all unhappy or mad at their father. Wanting her to come back to him, at least as a regular visitor, he tells her he will keep her apprised of their progress in this other dimension. She was intrigued by his fantasies about the kids, so soon afterwards she is on a bus heading to the hospital for another visit. But on the way there the driver has an accident; the bus hits a young man. When they stop the lad appears to be dead but she starts giving him CPR and lo, he revives and starts breathing on his own. Help is on the way. Her reaction to the emergency revealed something about her she wasn’t aware of before. Her quick reaction made her feel good about herself. When the bus driver said to get back on the bus as he has to get people to their destinations, she tells him to go ahead, she has decided to not go to the hospital and see her ex-husband. She doesn’t have to go anymore. She now knows she is more grounded in reality than Lloyd will ever be. Helping a lad who was in real crisis was more meaningful than traipsing around after the sorry tales of a madman. The kids were gone forever and that was that.
The second story I read was called “Fiction.” In it Munro dealt with a class of people who marry often and never seemed to find the right mate and therefore never find any real depth or comfort in a love relationship. They are like wounded butterflies fluttering from one bed and partner to the next, never quite finding what they think they want or need which is never all that clear to them. Munro cleverly interweaves all these games of musical marital chairs that take place over a matter of time, as they all grow older chasing their own tails. She ends the story with the main character, a woman named Joyce, who encounters the grown daughter of the tattooed woman who stole her first husband from her. The daughter was from a previous relationship but Joyce became her teacher for a short while, teaching her how to play the violin. The daughter is now a writer and she has just published her first work of fiction, a novel, which she buys and finds out is based on her first marriage and its collapse. The daughter has turned what was a heartbreaking experience for Joyce into a piece of fiction that left out a lot of the story. She decides to go to the book store where the girl is autographing copies of her novel; she goes expecting some kind of encounter with the author. However, since so many years have passed the daughter doesn’t recognize Joyce; she signs her book, smiles, and says next please. Joyce leaves feeling let down and crushed that the girl treated her as a complete stranger. As she walks away she thinks that someday she’ll tell somebody about this quasi-encounter, this experience of non-recognition, it’ll make a good story. It’ll be her counter-vision of the fictional truth.
“Some Women” was a story about a contest among a few women acting as caregivers to a dying man. It is a clever gathering together of the crosscurrents of who will control the last phase of a man’s life. The thirteen year old girl in the story, who is never named, is very clear-headed about what is going on in the house. She calls the man “the prize,” even though he is hardly an example wondrous manhood, but instead a balding middle aged man dying of Leukemia.
His name is Bruce Crozier. His stepmother is in the house, Dorothy Crozier, and his wife, Sylvia, who that summer was teaching summer school at a college forty miles away. She hired the thirteen year old girl to help keep an eye on her husband’s needs while she wasn’t available. The stepmother is a cranky old woman who gets outflanked in regard her step-son, so instead she spends her time giving the young girl a lot of lip. The fourth woman in the house is a masseuse named Roxanne Hoy, a local woman with an extraverted personality married to a mechanic. She was hired to relieve poor Bruce of his sore muscles as he never gets out of bed any more. Since she is a take-charge kind of person it is she who gets locked in combat with the wife. Roxanne tries to insinuate her way into the good graces of Bruce who starts playing board games with her to pass the time. But, strangely, her motivation in regard controlling Bruce has little to do with him, having more to do with her sibling rivalry with her older sister who always had the first pick of the boys, while she got the rejects and nerds. Nor does it have anything to do with her husband. This time she felt she had the inside track with the wife gone so much, but where it was all heading, and why, she never stopped to think about. She was just carried on a stream of possible victory. The situation in the Crozier household seemed to develop on its own momentum.
The main event between the wife and Ms. Hoy, the interloper, finally came to a head. It was Mr. Crozier who stepped in to bring closure to the contest. He calls for the teenage girl and tells her to lock his bedroom door and to give the key only to his wife. He had grown tired of Roxanne and her obvious manipulations. That ends it for her; she is ostracized and knows it and so finally leaves for good. The teenager reveals an uncanny understanding of the situation just resolved. This is how she summed it up: “I understood pretty well the winning and losing that had taken place, between Sylvia and Roxanne, but it was strange to think of the almost obliterated prize, Mr. Crozier—and to think that he could have the will to make a decision, even to deprive himself, so late in life. The carnality at death’s door—or true love, for that matter—were things I had to shake off with shivers down my spine.”
Not long after Roxanne left the employ of the Croziers, she and her husband left town. Sylvia rented a cottage by the lake and Mr. Crozier died in peace there before autumn leaves changed color.
“Dimensions” is a good example of what I mean. Doree is twenty three and a cleaning woman, a job she happy with and has no plans to leave for something better. She is an innocent, very naïve, so much so she got swept off her feet while a teenager by a maniac named Lloyd who seduced her into marriage and got her pregnant to tune of three kids before she was twenty. Then one night, when she felt very uncomfortable with Lloyd, she slept at a friend’s house. When she went home the next morning she found all three children murdered by their father, who blamed her for what he did because she had left him last night. After he had been institutionalized for a while he tries to play her like he did when she was a teenager. He does it by telling her the children are appearing to him and they are doing well on the other side and not at all unhappy or mad at their father. Wanting her to come back to him, at least as a regular visitor, he tells her he will keep her apprised of their progress in this other dimension. She was intrigued by his fantasies about the kids, so soon afterwards she is on a bus heading to the hospital for another visit. But on the way there the driver has an accident; the bus hits a young man. When they stop the lad appears to be dead but she starts giving him CPR and lo, he revives and starts breathing on his own. Help is on the way. Her reaction to the emergency revealed something about her she wasn’t aware of before. Her quick reaction made her feel good about herself. When the bus driver said to get back on the bus as he has to get people to their destinations, she tells him to go ahead, she has decided to not go to the hospital and see her ex-husband. She doesn’t have to go anymore. She now knows she is more grounded in reality than Lloyd will ever be. Helping a lad who was in real crisis was more meaningful than traipsing around after the sorry tales of a madman. The kids were gone forever and that was that.
The second story I read was called “Fiction.” In it Munro dealt with a class of people who marry often and never seemed to find the right mate and therefore never find any real depth or comfort in a love relationship. They are like wounded butterflies fluttering from one bed and partner to the next, never quite finding what they think they want or need which is never all that clear to them. Munro cleverly interweaves all these games of musical marital chairs that take place over a matter of time, as they all grow older chasing their own tails. She ends the story with the main character, a woman named Joyce, who encounters the grown daughter of the tattooed woman who stole her first husband from her. The daughter was from a previous relationship but Joyce became her teacher for a short while, teaching her how to play the violin. The daughter is now a writer and she has just published her first work of fiction, a novel, which she buys and finds out is based on her first marriage and its collapse. The daughter has turned what was a heartbreaking experience for Joyce into a piece of fiction that left out a lot of the story. She decides to go to the book store where the girl is autographing copies of her novel; she goes expecting some kind of encounter with the author. However, since so many years have passed the daughter doesn’t recognize Joyce; she signs her book, smiles, and says next please. Joyce leaves feeling let down and crushed that the girl treated her as a complete stranger. As she walks away she thinks that someday she’ll tell somebody about this quasi-encounter, this experience of non-recognition, it’ll make a good story. It’ll be her counter-vision of the fictional truth.
“Some Women” was a story about a contest among a few women acting as caregivers to a dying man. It is a clever gathering together of the crosscurrents of who will control the last phase of a man’s life. The thirteen year old girl in the story, who is never named, is very clear-headed about what is going on in the house. She calls the man “the prize,” even though he is hardly an example wondrous manhood, but instead a balding middle aged man dying of Leukemia.
His name is Bruce Crozier. His stepmother is in the house, Dorothy Crozier, and his wife, Sylvia, who that summer was teaching summer school at a college forty miles away. She hired the thirteen year old girl to help keep an eye on her husband’s needs while she wasn’t available. The stepmother is a cranky old woman who gets outflanked in regard her step-son, so instead she spends her time giving the young girl a lot of lip. The fourth woman in the house is a masseuse named Roxanne Hoy, a local woman with an extraverted personality married to a mechanic. She was hired to relieve poor Bruce of his sore muscles as he never gets out of bed any more. Since she is a take-charge kind of person it is she who gets locked in combat with the wife. Roxanne tries to insinuate her way into the good graces of Bruce who starts playing board games with her to pass the time. But, strangely, her motivation in regard controlling Bruce has little to do with him, having more to do with her sibling rivalry with her older sister who always had the first pick of the boys, while she got the rejects and nerds. Nor does it have anything to do with her husband. This time she felt she had the inside track with the wife gone so much, but where it was all heading, and why, she never stopped to think about. She was just carried on a stream of possible victory. The situation in the Crozier household seemed to develop on its own momentum.
The main event between the wife and Ms. Hoy, the interloper, finally came to a head. It was Mr. Crozier who stepped in to bring closure to the contest. He calls for the teenage girl and tells her to lock his bedroom door and to give the key only to his wife. He had grown tired of Roxanne and her obvious manipulations. That ends it for her; she is ostracized and knows it and so finally leaves for good. The teenager reveals an uncanny understanding of the situation just resolved. This is how she summed it up: “I understood pretty well the winning and losing that had taken place, between Sylvia and Roxanne, but it was strange to think of the almost obliterated prize, Mr. Crozier—and to think that he could have the will to make a decision, even to deprive himself, so late in life. The carnality at death’s door—or true love, for that matter—were things I had to shake off with shivers down my spine.”
Not long after Roxanne left the employ of the Croziers, she and her husband left town. Sylvia rented a cottage by the lake and Mr. Crozier died in peace there before autumn leaves changed color.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Journal Notes: On Tiger's Mess
3 Dec. 2009: Journal notes
The chickens have come home to roost. All the stories about Tiger and other women have forced him to fess up, at least within certain parameters. One magazine published a story about some gal who said she had an 18 month relationship with Tiger and some voicemail has surfaced that had Tiger asking a gal to lie for him to cover his ass with his wife. The Huffington Post had a photo of the ‘mistress,’ as well as pictures of two other gals, one current, the other someone he knew before marriage to Elin. Pushed into a corner by what he termed “tabloid scrutiny,” he put out a 350 word statement yesterday, his longest and most revealing so far, that said, yes, he was guilty of some marital “transgressions,” (more than one?) and he had betrayed his values and he was sorry with all his heart. But he gave no names and no details and followed the admissions with another passionate appeal for his right of privacy. He said there should not be a need for “public confessions”; that the parties should be able to solve their problems behind closed doors.
However, once the Media gets a foot in the door it is very difficult to shut it again. They can be relentless when they smell blood, especially with such a high profile sex scandal—a story made in Heaven (or is it hell?) There is an overwhelming momentum to stories like this one, when a billionaire golfer becomes the hottest news item of the week. It is a major figure/celebrity taking a tumble. Given half a chance, the Media can eat him alive and toss the bones in the trash. For example, SPORTS CENTER open last evening with Tiger admits transgressions BUT IS IT ENOUGH? Yes, it should be and some groups have agreed to lie low and give him the time and the privacy he and his family need. But the Media is a hungry beast that is never satisfied until another equally big sucker comes along (like Obama caught with his pants down with Alicia Keys.) Sometimes I think the PGA is in cahoots with the Media to take Tiger down so Jack Nicklaus can remain the all-time king of professional golf, a white man, which is the way it ought to be in America.
A couple of days ago I saw a comment by John Daly. He said Tiger’s was “The Man” in professional golf and it was essential that he be out there playing and winning, and if he wasn’t participating like he used to the PGA Tour would be in trouble. All one has to do is look at what has happened to the LPGA without Annika Sorenstam out there doing her thing. The women pros are down to 23 tournaments next year. Two years ago it was something like 32 events. Of course the economy isn’t helping one bit.
In the latest addition of the Buddhist magazine TRICYCLE there is an article by Joan Duncan Oliver about a show of mandalas at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Oliver calls them “maps of enlightenment” and defines them differently than Jung did. She said the word mandala comes from two Sanskirt words, manda, which means “essence” and la which means “container.” I like that just as well as Jung’s translation of “magic circle.” (The name of the show in NY is “The Perfect Circle.”)
The catalog of the show is 264 pages; in hardcover it cost $80. But it sounds like a gold mine of Manadals The reproductions in the magazine show they can be quite different that we normally see.
The chickens have come home to roost. All the stories about Tiger and other women have forced him to fess up, at least within certain parameters. One magazine published a story about some gal who said she had an 18 month relationship with Tiger and some voicemail has surfaced that had Tiger asking a gal to lie for him to cover his ass with his wife. The Huffington Post had a photo of the ‘mistress,’ as well as pictures of two other gals, one current, the other someone he knew before marriage to Elin. Pushed into a corner by what he termed “tabloid scrutiny,” he put out a 350 word statement yesterday, his longest and most revealing so far, that said, yes, he was guilty of some marital “transgressions,” (more than one?) and he had betrayed his values and he was sorry with all his heart. But he gave no names and no details and followed the admissions with another passionate appeal for his right of privacy. He said there should not be a need for “public confessions”; that the parties should be able to solve their problems behind closed doors.
However, once the Media gets a foot in the door it is very difficult to shut it again. They can be relentless when they smell blood, especially with such a high profile sex scandal—a story made in Heaven (or is it hell?) There is an overwhelming momentum to stories like this one, when a billionaire golfer becomes the hottest news item of the week. It is a major figure/celebrity taking a tumble. Given half a chance, the Media can eat him alive and toss the bones in the trash. For example, SPORTS CENTER open last evening with Tiger admits transgressions BUT IS IT ENOUGH? Yes, it should be and some groups have agreed to lie low and give him the time and the privacy he and his family need. But the Media is a hungry beast that is never satisfied until another equally big sucker comes along (like Obama caught with his pants down with Alicia Keys.) Sometimes I think the PGA is in cahoots with the Media to take Tiger down so Jack Nicklaus can remain the all-time king of professional golf, a white man, which is the way it ought to be in America.
A couple of days ago I saw a comment by John Daly. He said Tiger’s was “The Man” in professional golf and it was essential that he be out there playing and winning, and if he wasn’t participating like he used to the PGA Tour would be in trouble. All one has to do is look at what has happened to the LPGA without Annika Sorenstam out there doing her thing. The women pros are down to 23 tournaments next year. Two years ago it was something like 32 events. Of course the economy isn’t helping one bit.
In the latest addition of the Buddhist magazine TRICYCLE there is an article by Joan Duncan Oliver about a show of mandalas at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Oliver calls them “maps of enlightenment” and defines them differently than Jung did. She said the word mandala comes from two Sanskirt words, manda, which means “essence” and la which means “container.” I like that just as well as Jung’s translation of “magic circle.” (The name of the show in NY is “The Perfect Circle.”)
The catalog of the show is 264 pages; in hardcover it cost $80. But it sounds like a gold mine of Manadals The reproductions in the magazine show they can be quite different that we normally see.
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