2011_12_06 Newsletter # 7
Here’s an item hot off the press: a nine year old boy was suspended from class for calling his teacher “cute” which was classed as sexual harassment. The incident gets my vote for being the most ridiculous example of such a charge.
Putin has returned to being the president of Russian, but the opposition is calling the election rigged. He’s clearly not as popular as he was the first time around when the vote was 64% for his party, UNITED RUSSIA; this time it was 49%, a squeaker, as three other parties were in contention. He has been PM for the last four years. It’s a game of musical chairs with Putin. Whatever he’s called he’s the Big Cheese.
Turkey, once so eager to get in the EURO ZONE (the United States of Europe, with the Euro being equivalent to our dollar), to be the first Islamic nation in the Euro Zone, has now backed off from joining the party, considering Europe’s debt crisis and collapsing economies. Turkey has become a regional power with its stable society and economy. The PM of Turkey was the first to condemn Assad of Syria brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors and to initiate heavy sanctions on Syria. Since then the Arab League has followed suit.
It has recently becomes public information that six of the biggest banks in the United States were getting secret loans from the Fed, cash infusions when the recession hit in 2008, loans that added up to half a trillion dollars. The Fed did not report what they were doing, as they should, by law. It is more evidence that the 1% takes care of the survival of their own class and doesn’t give a damn about the 99%. The S.E.C. (Security Exchange Commission) may have slap a wrist but let a real crime go by.
Newt Gingrich has forged ahead with Herman Cain falling out of contention because of sexual hi jinxes and gaffes about policies. The Iowa caucus is in one month and Gingrich has the lead. The race for the Republicans has boiled down to Gingrich and Romney, which means the candidate, who ever it is, will be a deeply flawed candidate. The Democrats hope it’ll be Newt rather than Mitt. Newt has more baggage (three marriages, divorced his first wife when she was sick with cancer, criticized Bill Clinton for an affair when he was having one at the same time, shut down the government in 1994, and there will be other things.) Mitt limitations are obvious: he’s a robot, wears too much hair gel, and Obamacare was modeled on Romneycare in Massachusetts. He has more of an organization behind him and his baggage is less offensive then Gingrich’s. Many think he could beat Obama. Hence, The Demos want Newt.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Newsletter #5
2011_11_30 Newsletter # 5
Ginger White is the latest woman to come forward with a sex story about Herman Cain whose poll numbers have fallen from 25% to 4% in less than a month. She carried on with him in an on-again off-again kind of way for 13 years. This revelation seems to be the coup de grace to his campaign, although he has yet to formally withdraw from the race. He took this lady, another white woman, on several trips, and gave her money, plus kept in constant contact with her up until last week when she came forward. This continuing “bimbo eruption” was just too much for the social conservatives who had joined is bandwagon. Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry should be next, although both have cash in the bank to keep going, even if they are going nowhere. By the way, that phrase “bimbo eruption” came from Jon Huntsman, who continues to hide in the weeds waiting for his turn in the spotlight.
Karl Rove was the force behind a vile, lying, recent ad that attacked Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy in Massachusetts that made her out to be the intellectual agitator behind the dirty, smelly, trash-creating, destructive mob calling themselves OWS. Then, on top of that, the bastard came out yesterday saying the GOP should be ready for a vicious campaign from the Obama camp that will say and do anything to win next November. There was also criticism for Obama because he left the word “God” out of his Thanksgiving address. Rove and his ilk will be hammering the president with no mercy for the next 11 months. If it were up to me I’d skip 2012.
I look to two academic intellectuals who are feeding good ideas and advice to OWS and Democratic candidates. They are George Lakoff and Gar Alperovitz. Lakoff is a cognitive scientist who stresses the importance of a robust government and the importance of capturing the national narrative away from the Republicans who have dominated it for a long time-- the Democrats need to be proactive not reactive. Gar, believe it or not, is from Racine and while in H.S. I competed with him for a good looking blond. His best tag line is: Private success depends on a robust Public. All successful entrepreneurs need a public arena built and paid for by everyone else, so they in turn should pay back those who provided the wherewithal for them to prosper. It only makes sense. Fair is fair. Huge inequality is not fair. Wealth is often “unjust desserts.” Gar is currently teaching at the University of Maryland.
An Iranian mob stormed the British embassy in the capital and when on a destructive binge, which prompted the Brits to vacate the embassy and quit a diplomatic connection with that Shite nation. The Iranians were mad because the Brits were enforcing economic sanctions against Iran. So now, while the “Arab spring” is full swing in northern Africa, Iran, Syria and Pakistan are suddenly turning very hostile towards the western democracies and powers. It’s a phenomenon called “destabilization.” Status quo countries hate that taking place instead of business as usual.
Here’s another good tag line from NY Times columnist. Maureen Dowd: “Mitt Romney is a phony with gobs of hair gel. Newt Gingrich is a phony with gobs of historical grandiosity.”
Gingrich pulled a whopper tonight that revealed his megalomania. He actually said to an audience in South Carolina, “Unlike the commentators on FOX NEWS, I know what I am talking about.” How to win friends and influence people???
Ginger White is the latest woman to come forward with a sex story about Herman Cain whose poll numbers have fallen from 25% to 4% in less than a month. She carried on with him in an on-again off-again kind of way for 13 years. This revelation seems to be the coup de grace to his campaign, although he has yet to formally withdraw from the race. He took this lady, another white woman, on several trips, and gave her money, plus kept in constant contact with her up until last week when she came forward. This continuing “bimbo eruption” was just too much for the social conservatives who had joined is bandwagon. Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry should be next, although both have cash in the bank to keep going, even if they are going nowhere. By the way, that phrase “bimbo eruption” came from Jon Huntsman, who continues to hide in the weeds waiting for his turn in the spotlight.
Karl Rove was the force behind a vile, lying, recent ad that attacked Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy in Massachusetts that made her out to be the intellectual agitator behind the dirty, smelly, trash-creating, destructive mob calling themselves OWS. Then, on top of that, the bastard came out yesterday saying the GOP should be ready for a vicious campaign from the Obama camp that will say and do anything to win next November. There was also criticism for Obama because he left the word “God” out of his Thanksgiving address. Rove and his ilk will be hammering the president with no mercy for the next 11 months. If it were up to me I’d skip 2012.
I look to two academic intellectuals who are feeding good ideas and advice to OWS and Democratic candidates. They are George Lakoff and Gar Alperovitz. Lakoff is a cognitive scientist who stresses the importance of a robust government and the importance of capturing the national narrative away from the Republicans who have dominated it for a long time-- the Democrats need to be proactive not reactive. Gar, believe it or not, is from Racine and while in H.S. I competed with him for a good looking blond. His best tag line is: Private success depends on a robust Public. All successful entrepreneurs need a public arena built and paid for by everyone else, so they in turn should pay back those who provided the wherewithal for them to prosper. It only makes sense. Fair is fair. Huge inequality is not fair. Wealth is often “unjust desserts.” Gar is currently teaching at the University of Maryland.
An Iranian mob stormed the British embassy in the capital and when on a destructive binge, which prompted the Brits to vacate the embassy and quit a diplomatic connection with that Shite nation. The Iranians were mad because the Brits were enforcing economic sanctions against Iran. So now, while the “Arab spring” is full swing in northern Africa, Iran, Syria and Pakistan are suddenly turning very hostile towards the western democracies and powers. It’s a phenomenon called “destabilization.” Status quo countries hate that taking place instead of business as usual.
Here’s another good tag line from NY Times columnist. Maureen Dowd: “Mitt Romney is a phony with gobs of hair gel. Newt Gingrich is a phony with gobs of historical grandiosity.”
Gingrich pulled a whopper tonight that revealed his megalomania. He actually said to an audience in South Carolina, “Unlike the commentators on FOX NEWS, I know what I am talking about.” How to win friends and influence people???
Newsletter # 6
2011_12_2 Newsletter # 6
The government released medium warm good news today about the job market. 120,000 people found employment last month; with the holidays coming that’s probably par for the course. In fact, they were in retail, service industry and holiday hires. The percentage of the unemployed went down to 8.6%, the lowest it’s been since early 2009. Meanwhile of course another 13,000,000 Americans are without jobs or have a part time job, which keeps them hanging on by their fingernails. The demand for goods and services remain very low and stagnant. The Thanksgiving weekend was a welcome spurt and promising, but the situation in Europe is still too shaky to hope for something muscular and sustained in an upward fashion. I hate to say this but Karl Marx predicted that Capitalism would be a situation in its late stages where the 1% would be at the top of the pyramid and the middle class, which had been large, had spread out at the bottom joining the ever unlucky poor.
The cover of the new TIME magazine has a photo of Romney on the cover but only half his face, with this accompanying statement, “Why don’t they like me?” Poor Romney, he’s imminently qualified and the best bet to give Obama good competition, but he can’t break through to more than 20 to 25 %, and now Newt the Brute has pulled ahead by impressing more Republicans with his strong leader act and his glibness, which people think will give Obama fits in debates. Most Democrats would be happy to see the “Grinch” get the nomination, feeling, probably correctly, that he’d be easier to beat than Romney. Newt has put his foot in his mouth too many times to not do it again and again. Still, it is amazing how Romney isn’t getting any love. He’s still the droid, a plastic man who wears too much hair gel, the guy who will say whatever you want to hear-- too desperate to be president. But truth be told, the president could use more love too, like what he got in 2008. It would be a shot in the arm when the campaign heats up next year. There are number of polls that indicate this is the GOP’s best chance to win the trifecta—both houses of congress and the White House. To think of that happening is like waiting for your worst nightmare.
At least we are pulling out of Iraq; the process is underway. Now we wait and see if the Sunni and the Shiites can refrain from a civil war.
We all have been celebrating the “Arab spring,” that they finally threw off the shackles of autocracy and would now, hopefully, turn into secular democracies. But indications are they were going in another direction. Ironically, with one third of the election in Egypt complete the liberal activists who brought about the revolution will be lucky to get 20% of the seats in their parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood, who have been organized for several decades, won 46% of the vote and the Salafis, who are more conservative than the Brotherhood won 20% of the vote, and both will probably improve their positions because when the other two sections of the country vote, Alexandria and rural Egypt, they are even more conservative. The hopes for a secular Egypt seemed dashed for now. The same thing is happening in Morocco and Tunisia. The Islamist parties will be dominant there too. They seem to be the real winners. The Salafis resemble the Saudis. Women are restricted and western entertainment is disapproved of.
Hillary Clinton is in Burma meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nelson Mandela of Southeast Asia and Nobel Prize winner. The military junta that has ruled for more than three decades have kept her under wraps—house arrest—for 20 years. She had such charisma with the Burmese people she was a constant beacon of hope and democratic values that she was always perceived as a threat to their brutal regime. But finally, reform has come to the country, and the two women, both seen as exceptional people in their respective nations, could finally meet and have discussions. It turns out Suu Kyi has read Hillary autobiography and Bill’s book as well. Hillary has stated how much she admires Aung San, who has remained adamant for years, waiting patiently year after year for the big change. At age 66 it is finally on its way.
I also heard today that the OWS folks are planning to change their focus to the foreclosure crisis. With 11 million homes under water, and more happening every day, that sounds like a good place to go. What exactly they have in mind they haven’t revealed yet. Camping out in empty homes?
I watched the Charlie Rose show tonight and heard something I hadn’t ever considered before. Rose had John Meacham who works for TIME magazine, and two D.C reporters, both from POLITICAL I believe who had combined on a book about the “right wing fighting back.” But what interested me the most was Meacham saying the word in Washington was Obama doesn’t enjoy being president. He admitted it was a story coming down to him second and third and fourth hand, but it was a consistent story. As an example he compared Bill Clinton and Obama going to Cape Cod for a short break from the beltway world. Bill Clinton would be everywhere, the ice cream store, a fast food place, running, etc. He loved to be out and about “pressing the flesh” as LBJ like to say and do. The more people he engaged the more he seemed to inflate and enjoy himself. When Obama was there you’d never see him. He wanted to escape people; he was always in retreat from crowds and the press. It hit me that it could be true, as he seemed to relish the job the first year, but it has been downhill ever since, mainly due to the intransigence of the Republicans and his own inability to break the logjam caused by the agents of the 1%. He realized after that first year that the situation had taken all the fun out of winning the election. Governing became an unpleasant chore. If it is true maybe he should hand the job over to Biden, or better yet, to Hillary. But it won’t happen will it?
The government released medium warm good news today about the job market. 120,000 people found employment last month; with the holidays coming that’s probably par for the course. In fact, they were in retail, service industry and holiday hires. The percentage of the unemployed went down to 8.6%, the lowest it’s been since early 2009. Meanwhile of course another 13,000,000 Americans are without jobs or have a part time job, which keeps them hanging on by their fingernails. The demand for goods and services remain very low and stagnant. The Thanksgiving weekend was a welcome spurt and promising, but the situation in Europe is still too shaky to hope for something muscular and sustained in an upward fashion. I hate to say this but Karl Marx predicted that Capitalism would be a situation in its late stages where the 1% would be at the top of the pyramid and the middle class, which had been large, had spread out at the bottom joining the ever unlucky poor.
The cover of the new TIME magazine has a photo of Romney on the cover but only half his face, with this accompanying statement, “Why don’t they like me?” Poor Romney, he’s imminently qualified and the best bet to give Obama good competition, but he can’t break through to more than 20 to 25 %, and now Newt the Brute has pulled ahead by impressing more Republicans with his strong leader act and his glibness, which people think will give Obama fits in debates. Most Democrats would be happy to see the “Grinch” get the nomination, feeling, probably correctly, that he’d be easier to beat than Romney. Newt has put his foot in his mouth too many times to not do it again and again. Still, it is amazing how Romney isn’t getting any love. He’s still the droid, a plastic man who wears too much hair gel, the guy who will say whatever you want to hear-- too desperate to be president. But truth be told, the president could use more love too, like what he got in 2008. It would be a shot in the arm when the campaign heats up next year. There are number of polls that indicate this is the GOP’s best chance to win the trifecta—both houses of congress and the White House. To think of that happening is like waiting for your worst nightmare.
At least we are pulling out of Iraq; the process is underway. Now we wait and see if the Sunni and the Shiites can refrain from a civil war.
We all have been celebrating the “Arab spring,” that they finally threw off the shackles of autocracy and would now, hopefully, turn into secular democracies. But indications are they were going in another direction. Ironically, with one third of the election in Egypt complete the liberal activists who brought about the revolution will be lucky to get 20% of the seats in their parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood, who have been organized for several decades, won 46% of the vote and the Salafis, who are more conservative than the Brotherhood won 20% of the vote, and both will probably improve their positions because when the other two sections of the country vote, Alexandria and rural Egypt, they are even more conservative. The hopes for a secular Egypt seemed dashed for now. The same thing is happening in Morocco and Tunisia. The Islamist parties will be dominant there too. They seem to be the real winners. The Salafis resemble the Saudis. Women are restricted and western entertainment is disapproved of.
Hillary Clinton is in Burma meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nelson Mandela of Southeast Asia and Nobel Prize winner. The military junta that has ruled for more than three decades have kept her under wraps—house arrest—for 20 years. She had such charisma with the Burmese people she was a constant beacon of hope and democratic values that she was always perceived as a threat to their brutal regime. But finally, reform has come to the country, and the two women, both seen as exceptional people in their respective nations, could finally meet and have discussions. It turns out Suu Kyi has read Hillary autobiography and Bill’s book as well. Hillary has stated how much she admires Aung San, who has remained adamant for years, waiting patiently year after year for the big change. At age 66 it is finally on its way.
I also heard today that the OWS folks are planning to change their focus to the foreclosure crisis. With 11 million homes under water, and more happening every day, that sounds like a good place to go. What exactly they have in mind they haven’t revealed yet. Camping out in empty homes?
I watched the Charlie Rose show tonight and heard something I hadn’t ever considered before. Rose had John Meacham who works for TIME magazine, and two D.C reporters, both from POLITICAL I believe who had combined on a book about the “right wing fighting back.” But what interested me the most was Meacham saying the word in Washington was Obama doesn’t enjoy being president. He admitted it was a story coming down to him second and third and fourth hand, but it was a consistent story. As an example he compared Bill Clinton and Obama going to Cape Cod for a short break from the beltway world. Bill Clinton would be everywhere, the ice cream store, a fast food place, running, etc. He loved to be out and about “pressing the flesh” as LBJ like to say and do. The more people he engaged the more he seemed to inflate and enjoy himself. When Obama was there you’d never see him. He wanted to escape people; he was always in retreat from crowds and the press. It hit me that it could be true, as he seemed to relish the job the first year, but it has been downhill ever since, mainly due to the intransigence of the Republicans and his own inability to break the logjam caused by the agents of the 1%. He realized after that first year that the situation had taken all the fun out of winning the election. Governing became an unpleasant chore. If it is true maybe he should hand the job over to Biden, or better yet, to Hillary. But it won’t happen will it?
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Soul Making, Version Number One
2011_11_16 Soul-Making, Version 1
Part one
“Each of us enacts Persephone in soul—dragged off and pulled down by Hades—then we see life through her darker eye. We do mot recognize the full reality of anima until attacked by Hades, until unconscious underworld forces overpower and make captive our normalcy. Only then, it seems, are we able to discriminate psyche from human; then we see human concerns differently, psychologically.”
The quote is from James Hillman. I could have used this understanding when I experienced the INFERNO in July 1968; it would have saved me a lot of stress and stumbling around in the dark. On the other hand, I couldn’t comprehend it till after I had gone through the INFERNO. It takes a baptism by fire to open ones psychological pores and to distinguish the psyche from the human.
But let me begin at the beginning of the process.
Organized religion fell by the wayside for me my junior year in Madison, 1957, when I was 21 yrs old and an Applied Arts major at the University of Wisconsin. When I stack up my yrs in academe, first as a student for seven years, and ten as an instructor, it was a long tenure that left its mark on me, just as 21 years as a Catholic left an indelible imprint. All through my academic yrs after 1957 I regarded organized religion as old hat, as bogus. The new self-Image I had carved for myself was largely derived from the guiding philosophy of a few of my favorite professors. Fred Spratt, Dick Tansey, Mr. Collins and Tom Elsner. In two words, secular humanism. Almost two decades later, when I started working at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Tucson, I quickly learned I was in a crowd that despised the idea of secular humanism; they treated it as something aberrant, a dirty word, and a form of godlessness. But for me in my late twenties it was what I embraced as a serviceable credo. For more than a decade I saw myself as a hard-core rationalist who believed in the dignity of man and frowned down my nose at Christianity, which of course upset my mother and brother back in my hometown, Racine, Wisconsin. But that could not be help. I had to go another way than my family.
Not only had I taken secular humanism as my moral and intellectual guide from my teachers at San Jose State College, I totally dropped the art orientation I had grown up with, one that regarded Norman Rockwell and David Stone Martin as the exemplary figures to emulate. I gave up my allegiance to commercial art and threw my hat in the ring of Abstract Expressionism. There was a stage in between where I thought Oscar Kokoschka was the Man. There was still subject matter at that juncture, but more and more the emphasis was on a generous application of paint rather than representation. Naturally, it was my teachers who pushed me increasingly in the direction of abstraction, which by 1960 was a well-established and acceptable style and idiom. Eventually I was producing images on canvas that were devoid of representation. I began to sling paint with the best of them.
My political leanings had always been center-left so I had no hesitation falling in step with the Liberalism prevailing in the art department and on campus at San Jose State. My father had been a union leader at the factory where he worked for 35 yrs. He also had been an enthusiastic supporter of FDR, something I have a very clear memory of. I can recall arguments he had with my Uncle Joe who liked Senator Bob Taft; the house would shake as the two of them would go at with hammer and tongs for hours on Sunday afternoons. I always identified with my father and his point of view. I proved my mettle in regard liberal views when I started teaching at UNLV. I was founder and president of an AFT local on campus; I demonstrated against the war in Vietnam; I got involved with civil rights issues; and I was co-founder of CINEMA X, a film society that showed controversial and experimental films. Someone expressed their disdain for my activity by slashing a 15 inch cut in an oil painting of mine hanging in the UNLV library. In addition to that some angry student defaced two of my drawings in a one-man show in the art department gallery. He or she scribbled all over the two drawings with ballpoint pen. My reward for all this activity was the administration wasn’t going to give me tenure. It made no difference; after 5 yrs at UNLV I had had enough of university teaching.
Now everything I have discussed so far was about outside activity, not what was going on in the inside. There has been no mention of my dark side, which did stir in my time in Las Vegas. The complete story of what happened to me is told in detail in Primus Rota and Bridge in the Fog, so I needn’t go through it in detail here. Let me state a few facts and we’ll leave it at that. My political activity on campus and the negative national mood sent me into a depression that motivated me to stop painting and to start drawing, which had always been my first love as an artist. Synchronous with my mood and bad temper, I began to turn out drawings that had a bite similar to what George Gross and Jose Luis Cuevas had. I became known for these hard-hearted images of ugly, vicious people doing violence to each other. After my benign paintings the drawings shocked locals and me too, as I hadn’t known I had that much anger and raw emotion inside me. The dark side hadn’t been my concerned until I reached my early thirties. (I was hired to teach at UNLV when I was 29.) Sure, I had taken a psychology class and read some Freud and Jung, but that was all book learning; I took nothing to heart nor spent much time on introspection. The only indications of possible internal problems were two things. First of all, I had a long-time fear of the dark, which I attributed to my mother’s nighttime screaming fits, which never failed to wake me up, and to my Catholic past, as the devil was always after you. Secondly, my wife, Sue, had two affairs during the first year of our marriage, which shocked and shattered me; it was something devastating to my masculine identity, as I figured she had sought satisfaction elsewhere because my lovemaking was that inadequate. A darkness rose up in me that I had no idea was present in my psyche. It rocked my world, my confidence and my comfort inside my skin. The impact of her behavior was another influence on my pen and inks. Years later, after we had moved to Tucson, I had divided my Vegas drawings into major categories. One batch of drawings I designated “The Sinister Female.” I had worked out my anger by drawing a load of negative images of the female. I did that off and on for another 20 yrs.
By the time got out of grad school I had shaped an identity I called “the heroic ego.” However, in back of this polished persona there were occasional cracks in the façade, small rivulets of sickness and whirlpools of inner chaos seeping out through chinks in my character armour. The especially vulnerable areas were sexuality and masculine identity, poor self-esteem, personal demons, a deep seeded fear and anxiety, and the instability of male-female relationships. At certain moments my so-called heroic ego was more like a rag on a stick flapping in an ill wind. Behind my cool and confident exterior was, when a crisis hit, a deep insecurity that I worked hard to disguise or hide. My interior world always seemed to be in ferment. What was really happening was what James Hillman calls “ pathologizing or falling apart.” By this he means the psyche is self-regulating; it will through necessity create or manifest illness, morbidity, disorder, and suffering in order that the person can see him-or-herself through a deformed and afflicted perspective. Hillman writes:
“There is a simultaneity in the underworld and the daily world. There is only one and the same universe, coexistent and synchronous, bur Zeus sees it from above and through the light, Hades from below and into the darkness. Hades’ realm is contiguous with life, touching it at all points, just below it, its shadow brother (doppelganger) giving to life its depth and its psyche.”
When I began my teaching career in the mid-sixties I was brimful of confidence and saw things through the light; but soon after I had fallen apart and saw things through a glass darkly. It had to happen and I am glad it did.
“Revival is forced on us by the dire pathologizing of psychic necessities.”
Part one
“Each of us enacts Persephone in soul—dragged off and pulled down by Hades—then we see life through her darker eye. We do mot recognize the full reality of anima until attacked by Hades, until unconscious underworld forces overpower and make captive our normalcy. Only then, it seems, are we able to discriminate psyche from human; then we see human concerns differently, psychologically.”
The quote is from James Hillman. I could have used this understanding when I experienced the INFERNO in July 1968; it would have saved me a lot of stress and stumbling around in the dark. On the other hand, I couldn’t comprehend it till after I had gone through the INFERNO. It takes a baptism by fire to open ones psychological pores and to distinguish the psyche from the human.
But let me begin at the beginning of the process.
Organized religion fell by the wayside for me my junior year in Madison, 1957, when I was 21 yrs old and an Applied Arts major at the University of Wisconsin. When I stack up my yrs in academe, first as a student for seven years, and ten as an instructor, it was a long tenure that left its mark on me, just as 21 years as a Catholic left an indelible imprint. All through my academic yrs after 1957 I regarded organized religion as old hat, as bogus. The new self-Image I had carved for myself was largely derived from the guiding philosophy of a few of my favorite professors. Fred Spratt, Dick Tansey, Mr. Collins and Tom Elsner. In two words, secular humanism. Almost two decades later, when I started working at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Tucson, I quickly learned I was in a crowd that despised the idea of secular humanism; they treated it as something aberrant, a dirty word, and a form of godlessness. But for me in my late twenties it was what I embraced as a serviceable credo. For more than a decade I saw myself as a hard-core rationalist who believed in the dignity of man and frowned down my nose at Christianity, which of course upset my mother and brother back in my hometown, Racine, Wisconsin. But that could not be help. I had to go another way than my family.
Not only had I taken secular humanism as my moral and intellectual guide from my teachers at San Jose State College, I totally dropped the art orientation I had grown up with, one that regarded Norman Rockwell and David Stone Martin as the exemplary figures to emulate. I gave up my allegiance to commercial art and threw my hat in the ring of Abstract Expressionism. There was a stage in between where I thought Oscar Kokoschka was the Man. There was still subject matter at that juncture, but more and more the emphasis was on a generous application of paint rather than representation. Naturally, it was my teachers who pushed me increasingly in the direction of abstraction, which by 1960 was a well-established and acceptable style and idiom. Eventually I was producing images on canvas that were devoid of representation. I began to sling paint with the best of them.
My political leanings had always been center-left so I had no hesitation falling in step with the Liberalism prevailing in the art department and on campus at San Jose State. My father had been a union leader at the factory where he worked for 35 yrs. He also had been an enthusiastic supporter of FDR, something I have a very clear memory of. I can recall arguments he had with my Uncle Joe who liked Senator Bob Taft; the house would shake as the two of them would go at with hammer and tongs for hours on Sunday afternoons. I always identified with my father and his point of view. I proved my mettle in regard liberal views when I started teaching at UNLV. I was founder and president of an AFT local on campus; I demonstrated against the war in Vietnam; I got involved with civil rights issues; and I was co-founder of CINEMA X, a film society that showed controversial and experimental films. Someone expressed their disdain for my activity by slashing a 15 inch cut in an oil painting of mine hanging in the UNLV library. In addition to that some angry student defaced two of my drawings in a one-man show in the art department gallery. He or she scribbled all over the two drawings with ballpoint pen. My reward for all this activity was the administration wasn’t going to give me tenure. It made no difference; after 5 yrs at UNLV I had had enough of university teaching.
Now everything I have discussed so far was about outside activity, not what was going on in the inside. There has been no mention of my dark side, which did stir in my time in Las Vegas. The complete story of what happened to me is told in detail in Primus Rota and Bridge in the Fog, so I needn’t go through it in detail here. Let me state a few facts and we’ll leave it at that. My political activity on campus and the negative national mood sent me into a depression that motivated me to stop painting and to start drawing, which had always been my first love as an artist. Synchronous with my mood and bad temper, I began to turn out drawings that had a bite similar to what George Gross and Jose Luis Cuevas had. I became known for these hard-hearted images of ugly, vicious people doing violence to each other. After my benign paintings the drawings shocked locals and me too, as I hadn’t known I had that much anger and raw emotion inside me. The dark side hadn’t been my concerned until I reached my early thirties. (I was hired to teach at UNLV when I was 29.) Sure, I had taken a psychology class and read some Freud and Jung, but that was all book learning; I took nothing to heart nor spent much time on introspection. The only indications of possible internal problems were two things. First of all, I had a long-time fear of the dark, which I attributed to my mother’s nighttime screaming fits, which never failed to wake me up, and to my Catholic past, as the devil was always after you. Secondly, my wife, Sue, had two affairs during the first year of our marriage, which shocked and shattered me; it was something devastating to my masculine identity, as I figured she had sought satisfaction elsewhere because my lovemaking was that inadequate. A darkness rose up in me that I had no idea was present in my psyche. It rocked my world, my confidence and my comfort inside my skin. The impact of her behavior was another influence on my pen and inks. Years later, after we had moved to Tucson, I had divided my Vegas drawings into major categories. One batch of drawings I designated “The Sinister Female.” I had worked out my anger by drawing a load of negative images of the female. I did that off and on for another 20 yrs.
By the time got out of grad school I had shaped an identity I called “the heroic ego.” However, in back of this polished persona there were occasional cracks in the façade, small rivulets of sickness and whirlpools of inner chaos seeping out through chinks in my character armour. The especially vulnerable areas were sexuality and masculine identity, poor self-esteem, personal demons, a deep seeded fear and anxiety, and the instability of male-female relationships. At certain moments my so-called heroic ego was more like a rag on a stick flapping in an ill wind. Behind my cool and confident exterior was, when a crisis hit, a deep insecurity that I worked hard to disguise or hide. My interior world always seemed to be in ferment. What was really happening was what James Hillman calls “ pathologizing or falling apart.” By this he means the psyche is self-regulating; it will through necessity create or manifest illness, morbidity, disorder, and suffering in order that the person can see him-or-herself through a deformed and afflicted perspective. Hillman writes:
“There is a simultaneity in the underworld and the daily world. There is only one and the same universe, coexistent and synchronous, bur Zeus sees it from above and through the light, Hades from below and into the darkness. Hades’ realm is contiguous with life, touching it at all points, just below it, its shadow brother (doppelganger) giving to life its depth and its psyche.”
When I began my teaching career in the mid-sixties I was brimful of confidence and saw things through the light; but soon after I had fallen apart and saw things through a glass darkly. It had to happen and I am glad it did.
“Revival is forced on us by the dire pathologizing of psychic necessities.”
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Letter to S.D.
2011_11_04 Letter to S.D.
Yes by all means send me digital pictures of “The Rock Climber” and “Magic Garden.” Having them would give some option for BRIDGE IN THE FOG. They are two of my best drawings from the late seventies. “The Rock Climber” embodies my spiritual ambitions and projects them upward.
Rather then climbing the Tree of Life I ascent up a mountain and shoot for the moon, my cosmic habitat. Vertical ascent dominates my imagination, as does the moon when it comes to soul making. I have never gotten over the spell it weaved in my inner life during the INFERNO.
Steve Jobs talked about how the prospect of death helped him define himself and honed his vision of things. Being in ill health and being on oxygen has made me acutely aware of my age and the road ahead is very short compared to the road in the opposite direction. These threats to my existence have honed my ambition to get my book project done before it’s too late. I am greatly motivated to accomplish that, as it will constitute my main legacy. What got seeded in me during the INFERNO has come to fruition. As see it, since that turn-around experience, which included a rebirth scenario, I have been engaged in, to quote William Blake and James Hillman, “soul making.” Even Gurdjieff’ had a notion about being seeded, saying we were all born with a “certain inner property” that we were charged with transforming into a living self. I have tried my best to do that and I can die knowing I gave it my best shot. And I recorded the process in three books, thousand of pages in my journal, and in numerous drawings. While others have created “necktie art” I worked on myself. As Heraclitus told his students the essence of philosophy was, “I searched myself.”
JP
Yes by all means send me digital pictures of “The Rock Climber” and “Magic Garden.” Having them would give some option for BRIDGE IN THE FOG. They are two of my best drawings from the late seventies. “The Rock Climber” embodies my spiritual ambitions and projects them upward.
Rather then climbing the Tree of Life I ascent up a mountain and shoot for the moon, my cosmic habitat. Vertical ascent dominates my imagination, as does the moon when it comes to soul making. I have never gotten over the spell it weaved in my inner life during the INFERNO.
Steve Jobs talked about how the prospect of death helped him define himself and honed his vision of things. Being in ill health and being on oxygen has made me acutely aware of my age and the road ahead is very short compared to the road in the opposite direction. These threats to my existence have honed my ambition to get my book project done before it’s too late. I am greatly motivated to accomplish that, as it will constitute my main legacy. What got seeded in me during the INFERNO has come to fruition. As see it, since that turn-around experience, which included a rebirth scenario, I have been engaged in, to quote William Blake and James Hillman, “soul making.” Even Gurdjieff’ had a notion about being seeded, saying we were all born with a “certain inner property” that we were charged with transforming into a living self. I have tried my best to do that and I can die knowing I gave it my best shot. And I recorded the process in three books, thousand of pages in my journal, and in numerous drawings. While others have created “necktie art” I worked on myself. As Heraclitus told his students the essence of philosophy was, “I searched myself.”
JP
Friday, November 4, 2011
Dennis Potter and Psoriasis
The English television playwright, Dennis Potter, the author of such works as “The Singing Detective” and “Lipstick on my Collar,” like to have sex with hookers. These encounters, although a regular thing, never really threaten his marriage, which was rock solid. He not only liked to fuck prostitutes but he compulsively told his mates about these experiences. It wasn’t in the spirit of boasting though; it was more like something he had to confess. To spill the beans to his mates served to satisfy some kind of Psychological need. One psychiatrist he saw about his depression said he had a psycho-sexual problem. Duh! That much was pretty obvious.
Humphrey Carpenter, Potter’s biographer, thinks these confessions were evidence of a “profound self-loathing.” Just as his psoriasis was more proof of his personal “pollution.”
“Your skin is your outer self—your boundary
between you and the world—and inevitably
you part of the leper syndrome. You know,
‘Ring the bell and shout UNCLEAN! ‘”
‘‘Ring the bells, etc.” is a reference to some lines in “The Singing Detective,” by far his best-known and popular work. The Detective is named, amusingly, Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s knight-errant detective of American fame. Marlowe is the Detective of the title and he is in the hospital for treatment of his severe Psoriatic Anthropathy (psoriasis combined with arthritis.) Potter was in the hospital with this condition a number of times, sometimes with a crust of scales over his eyes, it was that bad at times. The original BBC production is excellent, starring Michael Gambon as Marlowe and Joanne Whaley as his nurse in the hospital. The American version, with Robert Downey Jr., cannot hold a candle to the British production, which has the authenticity the teleplay needs. The psychologist that is working with Marlowe tells him that “the temptation to believe that the illness and poisons of the mind or personality have somehow erupted out on the skin. Unclean! Unclean! You shout, ringing the bell warning us to keep off, to keep clear.” Friends of Potter agree that he believed the disease was indeed a “poison of the mind, as punishment for sins or bad karma.”
Ah yes, the Heartbreak of Psoriasis! That’s the attitude the attitude Dermatologists like to push on the public so they will seek expensive treatments or topical creams. They make it basically a vanity issue with psychological implications. My psoriasis showed up when I was 42, with no history of it in my family. I have what they call a moderate case, where it is a bloody nuisance, but not much more than that, although it has grown worst as time has gone by. I have certainly noticed how people scowl when they notice the white scales on my hands and then back away, as if I was a leper, when in fact psoriasis is not an infectious disease. Out of desperation recently I tried taking a bath using sea salt from the Dead Sea. I wanted to see if the trace minerals in the sea salt would alter my unclean appearance. For the first time since psoriasis had showed up it was bothering my wife, especially when engaged in sex. In particular she disliked having my hands fondling her genital area or having a couple fingers in her. She knows better—that it is not contagious—but the irrational factors can take over sometimes. I couldn’t let that become my Heartbreak of Psoriasis, so I did not let her qualms prevent us from having sex. I was too horny and too needy to let that happen. The “filth” she was complaining about was in her head, not in my fingers. Eventually she came around and we rarely had a problem. Apparently, Dermatopathophobia, (fear of skin disease) is embedded in all our psyches. In our case, love conquers all.
In 1980 I sought the opinion of a Tucson Naturopath about the possible causes of my psoriasis. When he heard I had daily contact with cleaning chemicals, he thought that could be the cause, especially since the outbreak occurred two years after I was hired as custodian at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. The first time I noticed it was under my fingernails—I thought it was a fungus. In a few year s I decided to write the A.R.E. organization in Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce’s group HQ. All Cayce’s files are kept there, so I ordered his file on Psoriasis, which turned out to be pretty skinny. He said the affliction was caused by a toxic leak from the large intestine. His cure was daunting, a very complicated regime of several teas I had never heard of. If there was more to it than that I can’t recall. Another thing I tried was Castor oil in a glass of milk. I drank that every day for about 6 months.
Naturally, I eventually asked myself could there be an emotional or psychological cause to the outbreak. If so what could it be? The first thing I considered was the shock I experienced when I started working at the church, which was certainly a trauma, especially when it got linked with my mother’s attitude about me taking a class-less scum job like being a janitor, something she was on my ass about till the day she died. The transition to becoming a janitor among the class-conscious Presbyterians was tough enough, but my mother piling on made it only worse. When I took the job in May of 1977 I had myself convinced that a job was a job, at least if survival not prosperity was the man issue. Not quite. Very simply, I had a hard time making the transition from being a university professor and ‘‘big man on campus,” plus someone who had showed his work around the country, which meant absolutely nothing to Church members. Even though there 5 years in between leaving UNLV and taking the job at the church, what mattered is I was still very much identified with my campus Identity, which was hard won and had been a big boost to my lower class ID. Intellectually I had let go of the ID and image, but emotionally I still quite attached to it. I had bragged about going through a “deprofessional process, “ but part of my ego clung to the past image, which had more glamour and drama. I hadn’t eliminated it, I had just buried it out of sight, and when push came to shove, it resurfaced as a roadblock to my psychological ambition. Going back to being a working stiff turned out to be much less appealing than my “Pride of Ascendency.” Readjusting to being a NOBODY again, and believe me the church members who little or nothing about my past accomplishments, made sure I knew I was a nonentity. The elderly Asst. Pastor loved to call “boy” when I was in my forties. I called him on it but he kept it up. The pretty secretary who was fooling around with the senior pastor once said to me after he upbraided me for something or other, “You know, every once and while he wants to kick the dog.” No one gave a damn about my feelings.
Those bad days at St. Andrew’s coincided with the fact my mother was so embarrassed by my working as a janitor she told all her friends I was teaching at the University in Tucson and Sue was, of course, home with then new baby. It really galled me she had to falsify my existence to save face with her friends who had had sons they could be proud of. Is it possible that her belittling campaign toward me when combined with the corrosive negativity dumped on me the first few years at the church, could that cause me enough stress to be the “poison” that kicked off the psoriasis outbreak. Or do I blame the chemicals I had to work with for years? Who knows? I don’t.
Humphrey Carpenter, Potter’s biographer, thinks these confessions were evidence of a “profound self-loathing.” Just as his psoriasis was more proof of his personal “pollution.”
“Your skin is your outer self—your boundary
between you and the world—and inevitably
you part of the leper syndrome. You know,
‘Ring the bell and shout UNCLEAN! ‘”
‘‘Ring the bells, etc.” is a reference to some lines in “The Singing Detective,” by far his best-known and popular work. The Detective is named, amusingly, Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s knight-errant detective of American fame. Marlowe is the Detective of the title and he is in the hospital for treatment of his severe Psoriatic Anthropathy (psoriasis combined with arthritis.) Potter was in the hospital with this condition a number of times, sometimes with a crust of scales over his eyes, it was that bad at times. The original BBC production is excellent, starring Michael Gambon as Marlowe and Joanne Whaley as his nurse in the hospital. The American version, with Robert Downey Jr., cannot hold a candle to the British production, which has the authenticity the teleplay needs. The psychologist that is working with Marlowe tells him that “the temptation to believe that the illness and poisons of the mind or personality have somehow erupted out on the skin. Unclean! Unclean! You shout, ringing the bell warning us to keep off, to keep clear.” Friends of Potter agree that he believed the disease was indeed a “poison of the mind, as punishment for sins or bad karma.”
Ah yes, the Heartbreak of Psoriasis! That’s the attitude the attitude Dermatologists like to push on the public so they will seek expensive treatments or topical creams. They make it basically a vanity issue with psychological implications. My psoriasis showed up when I was 42, with no history of it in my family. I have what they call a moderate case, where it is a bloody nuisance, but not much more than that, although it has grown worst as time has gone by. I have certainly noticed how people scowl when they notice the white scales on my hands and then back away, as if I was a leper, when in fact psoriasis is not an infectious disease. Out of desperation recently I tried taking a bath using sea salt from the Dead Sea. I wanted to see if the trace minerals in the sea salt would alter my unclean appearance. For the first time since psoriasis had showed up it was bothering my wife, especially when engaged in sex. In particular she disliked having my hands fondling her genital area or having a couple fingers in her. She knows better—that it is not contagious—but the irrational factors can take over sometimes. I couldn’t let that become my Heartbreak of Psoriasis, so I did not let her qualms prevent us from having sex. I was too horny and too needy to let that happen. The “filth” she was complaining about was in her head, not in my fingers. Eventually she came around and we rarely had a problem. Apparently, Dermatopathophobia, (fear of skin disease) is embedded in all our psyches. In our case, love conquers all.
In 1980 I sought the opinion of a Tucson Naturopath about the possible causes of my psoriasis. When he heard I had daily contact with cleaning chemicals, he thought that could be the cause, especially since the outbreak occurred two years after I was hired as custodian at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. The first time I noticed it was under my fingernails—I thought it was a fungus. In a few year s I decided to write the A.R.E. organization in Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce’s group HQ. All Cayce’s files are kept there, so I ordered his file on Psoriasis, which turned out to be pretty skinny. He said the affliction was caused by a toxic leak from the large intestine. His cure was daunting, a very complicated regime of several teas I had never heard of. If there was more to it than that I can’t recall. Another thing I tried was Castor oil in a glass of milk. I drank that every day for about 6 months.
Naturally, I eventually asked myself could there be an emotional or psychological cause to the outbreak. If so what could it be? The first thing I considered was the shock I experienced when I started working at the church, which was certainly a trauma, especially when it got linked with my mother’s attitude about me taking a class-less scum job like being a janitor, something she was on my ass about till the day she died. The transition to becoming a janitor among the class-conscious Presbyterians was tough enough, but my mother piling on made it only worse. When I took the job in May of 1977 I had myself convinced that a job was a job, at least if survival not prosperity was the man issue. Not quite. Very simply, I had a hard time making the transition from being a university professor and ‘‘big man on campus,” plus someone who had showed his work around the country, which meant absolutely nothing to Church members. Even though there 5 years in between leaving UNLV and taking the job at the church, what mattered is I was still very much identified with my campus Identity, which was hard won and had been a big boost to my lower class ID. Intellectually I had let go of the ID and image, but emotionally I still quite attached to it. I had bragged about going through a “deprofessional process, “ but part of my ego clung to the past image, which had more glamour and drama. I hadn’t eliminated it, I had just buried it out of sight, and when push came to shove, it resurfaced as a roadblock to my psychological ambition. Going back to being a working stiff turned out to be much less appealing than my “Pride of Ascendency.” Readjusting to being a NOBODY again, and believe me the church members who little or nothing about my past accomplishments, made sure I knew I was a nonentity. The elderly Asst. Pastor loved to call “boy” when I was in my forties. I called him on it but he kept it up. The pretty secretary who was fooling around with the senior pastor once said to me after he upbraided me for something or other, “You know, every once and while he wants to kick the dog.” No one gave a damn about my feelings.
Those bad days at St. Andrew’s coincided with the fact my mother was so embarrassed by my working as a janitor she told all her friends I was teaching at the University in Tucson and Sue was, of course, home with then new baby. It really galled me she had to falsify my existence to save face with her friends who had had sons they could be proud of. Is it possible that her belittling campaign toward me when combined with the corrosive negativity dumped on me the first few years at the church, could that cause me enough stress to be the “poison” that kicked off the psoriasis outbreak. Or do I blame the chemicals I had to work with for years? Who knows? I don’t.
What goes around comes around
2011_10_19 what goes around comes around
I caught three films by Nicolas Ray last night on TCM. . The first one was “The True Story of Jesse James,” which I had never seen before. It was released in 1958. Ray wanted Elvis Pressley to play Jesse, but that idea fell through and he got stuck with two ‘hot properties,’ Robert Wagner, a pretty boy actor of limited range, who played Jessie James, and Jeffrey Hunter--who a few years later would be Jesus (with shaved arm pits hanging on the cross) in “King of Kings,” another Ray film-- was selected to play Frank James. The pair did not look like a couple rough and tumble cowboys; more like matinee idols.
What surprised me in the film was how Sam Peckinpah had borrowed heavily from the film, which he seemed to regard as a kind of sketch of what he wanted to do with the ideas. For example, the botched robbery in Northfield Minnesota; it was the model, the staging, for the first shoot out in “Wild Bunch,” a scene now regarded as the epitome of an action scene, along with the 12 minute closing scene which was different in character but equally brilliantly staged. William Holden as the Pike Bishop, the leader of the Bunch makes Wagner’s Jesse look like a boy scout playing at being a bad guy. Peckinpah took the western to a new level of intensity and drama. But the robbery has bits in it that seem almost lifted directly out of Ray’s Western, for example, the random chaos on the city streets, the horseman crashing through a store front window, and the gang members being sitting ducks for the town’s folk shooting at them from atop buildings, events that in “Wild Bunch” are sharply edited with a pace equal to the crazy energy of the action, with some slow motion added to the mix to alter the pace here and there. Never has violence appeared so lyrical. At the end of the scene you had to catch your breath.
Another idea lifted from Ray’s “Jesse James” was by George Roy Hill, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” It was that scene
of Jessie and Frank leaping off a cliff to escape some lawman chasing them. In 1969 that scene showed up in Hill’s movie, only he made it last a bit longer, and he made it really memorable with a great tag line, “Who are those guys?”
The second Ray movie I watch was “Bitter Victory.” Also made in the late fifties. Richard Burton and Curt Jergens are two offices sent on a secret mission by British Command in North Africa to steal some important papers from Rommel. The two men hate each other, largely because they are in love with the same woman (Ruth Roman.) The mission was a success but several men are lost in the process, including Burton. When Jergens returned to base he is treated as a hero for leading the mission and receives a high-ranking medal, which he was hoping for at the start of the mission. But in retrospect he laments Burton’s death and the killing of other men. He ends up taking his medal and sticking it on the heart of a practice dummy hanging from the ceiling. I thought that was a nice touch at the conclusion of the story.
Last March, while I was on a kick to see a number of Michael Caine movies after reading his second book about his life in pictures, I saw “Play Dirty,” a 1969 movie about two British officers who dislike each other but are teamed by British Command to go 400 miles behind enemy lines to destroy a fuel depot. Nigel Green partners with Caine and two eventually have respect for each. However, keeping German uniforms on when they approach some fellow Brits turns out to be a fatal mistake.
The third and last movie by Nick Ray was one I saw when it came out in 1958. “Wind over the Everglades” was something of a hodge-podge movie with Christopher Plummer and Burl Ives playing the lead, with a lot of local people taking roles, and some other characters throw in, like Two-Ton Tony Galento, a heavyweight boxer, Sammy Renick, a jockey, Emmett Kelly the clown, and for glamour, Gypsy Rose Lee. I would call the film a good bad movie. (One critic who hated the movie titled it, “Break wind over the Everglades.”) It was Chris Plummer’s first starring role in a Hollywood movie. He plays Walt Murdock, a Game Warren trying to protect the rookies of several species of birds; he’s essentially an early environmentalist trying to stop the silly fashion of the day, fancy feathers on women’s hats, which was depleting the everglades of many birds. The leader of the poachers is a man named cottonmouth (Burl Ives) who has a bunch of rag-tag followers. He knows his way around the swamps and he has a pet cottonmouth. The ratty gang have tagged Murdock “bird boy” and they assume Cottonmouth will eventually kill him. Actually they get drunk together, become friends (of a sort) and Cottonmouth allows Murdock to take him in. But alas, there is some poetic justice for Cottonmouth at the end of the movie. As for Ray, he got sick and was fired before the film ended.
The film had its moments and there are plenty of scenes of the wild life. At times I thought I was watching a National Geographic wild life program. But the movie put Nick Ray ahead of the times. A movie about a game warden? You got to be kidding?
I caught three films by Nicolas Ray last night on TCM. . The first one was “The True Story of Jesse James,” which I had never seen before. It was released in 1958. Ray wanted Elvis Pressley to play Jesse, but that idea fell through and he got stuck with two ‘hot properties,’ Robert Wagner, a pretty boy actor of limited range, who played Jessie James, and Jeffrey Hunter--who a few years later would be Jesus (with shaved arm pits hanging on the cross) in “King of Kings,” another Ray film-- was selected to play Frank James. The pair did not look like a couple rough and tumble cowboys; more like matinee idols.
What surprised me in the film was how Sam Peckinpah had borrowed heavily from the film, which he seemed to regard as a kind of sketch of what he wanted to do with the ideas. For example, the botched robbery in Northfield Minnesota; it was the model, the staging, for the first shoot out in “Wild Bunch,” a scene now regarded as the epitome of an action scene, along with the 12 minute closing scene which was different in character but equally brilliantly staged. William Holden as the Pike Bishop, the leader of the Bunch makes Wagner’s Jesse look like a boy scout playing at being a bad guy. Peckinpah took the western to a new level of intensity and drama. But the robbery has bits in it that seem almost lifted directly out of Ray’s Western, for example, the random chaos on the city streets, the horseman crashing through a store front window, and the gang members being sitting ducks for the town’s folk shooting at them from atop buildings, events that in “Wild Bunch” are sharply edited with a pace equal to the crazy energy of the action, with some slow motion added to the mix to alter the pace here and there. Never has violence appeared so lyrical. At the end of the scene you had to catch your breath.
Another idea lifted from Ray’s “Jesse James” was by George Roy Hill, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” It was that scene
of Jessie and Frank leaping off a cliff to escape some lawman chasing them. In 1969 that scene showed up in Hill’s movie, only he made it last a bit longer, and he made it really memorable with a great tag line, “Who are those guys?”
The second Ray movie I watch was “Bitter Victory.” Also made in the late fifties. Richard Burton and Curt Jergens are two offices sent on a secret mission by British Command in North Africa to steal some important papers from Rommel. The two men hate each other, largely because they are in love with the same woman (Ruth Roman.) The mission was a success but several men are lost in the process, including Burton. When Jergens returned to base he is treated as a hero for leading the mission and receives a high-ranking medal, which he was hoping for at the start of the mission. But in retrospect he laments Burton’s death and the killing of other men. He ends up taking his medal and sticking it on the heart of a practice dummy hanging from the ceiling. I thought that was a nice touch at the conclusion of the story.
Last March, while I was on a kick to see a number of Michael Caine movies after reading his second book about his life in pictures, I saw “Play Dirty,” a 1969 movie about two British officers who dislike each other but are teamed by British Command to go 400 miles behind enemy lines to destroy a fuel depot. Nigel Green partners with Caine and two eventually have respect for each. However, keeping German uniforms on when they approach some fellow Brits turns out to be a fatal mistake.
The third and last movie by Nick Ray was one I saw when it came out in 1958. “Wind over the Everglades” was something of a hodge-podge movie with Christopher Plummer and Burl Ives playing the lead, with a lot of local people taking roles, and some other characters throw in, like Two-Ton Tony Galento, a heavyweight boxer, Sammy Renick, a jockey, Emmett Kelly the clown, and for glamour, Gypsy Rose Lee. I would call the film a good bad movie. (One critic who hated the movie titled it, “Break wind over the Everglades.”) It was Chris Plummer’s first starring role in a Hollywood movie. He plays Walt Murdock, a Game Warren trying to protect the rookies of several species of birds; he’s essentially an early environmentalist trying to stop the silly fashion of the day, fancy feathers on women’s hats, which was depleting the everglades of many birds. The leader of the poachers is a man named cottonmouth (Burl Ives) who has a bunch of rag-tag followers. He knows his way around the swamps and he has a pet cottonmouth. The ratty gang have tagged Murdock “bird boy” and they assume Cottonmouth will eventually kill him. Actually they get drunk together, become friends (of a sort) and Cottonmouth allows Murdock to take him in. But alas, there is some poetic justice for Cottonmouth at the end of the movie. As for Ray, he got sick and was fired before the film ended.
The film had its moments and there are plenty of scenes of the wild life. At times I thought I was watching a National Geographic wild life program. But the movie put Nick Ray ahead of the times. A movie about a game warden? You got to be kidding?
Thursday, October 20, 2011
They Eygptian Connection
The Egyptian Connection
I am reading a book that has been in my library since my days at Bookman’s. It was in the section on Egyptian Mythology. For some reason I never got to it, until now, which seems fortuitous, as it comes on the heels of my finishing my three books. I have known for a long time that I have a special connection with the ancient Egyptian culture, as it is no accident that I have tagged my series of post-Inferno drawings
THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER. The idea for that name was a spin-off from reading Frances Yates fine book BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION. The book was my first real clue that my mind was working in a similar way to their ancient mythology as I had the same inclination to express myself in a symbolic language. After my intense and active 5 years of teaching and politicking at UNLV, a time in my life when most of my life energies were flowing in an outward direction, I had one of those turn-around experiences, like St. Paul experienced, where I ceased all that activity and cut myself off, withdrew from society and embraced two months of solitude. Actually, I plunged like a stone in to my internal world. I became an “Introspective Voyager,” leaving behind the persona of a radical figure on the barricades fighting against tyranny and injustice. Instead I became a “plunger,” which is what Charles Olson said of Herman Melville. It means I knew how to take a chance.
The first thing that happened was the vision of the black sphere and the wheel design; it was a spontaneous vision that provided me with a clue about a new direction I might take. Given the kind of drawing I was doing at the time, it was another turn-around experience. At one point fear and anxiety became strong and I experienced some personal demons. One night while I was reading a book about the demonic at three o’clock in the morning there was a loud inexplicable crack in the brick wall behind my chair. I had reached the point of no return. A few days later, after sinking about as far as I could go at the time, I experienced death, transfiguration, and rebirth; and it was generated by a spontaneous eruption of energy that had shot up my spine and danced on the crown of my head; and after I saw myself die, lose all flesh, and then resurrect, slowly becoming whole again. I’ll never forget than image of myself as a bony ghost on “the other side.” The spontaneous rush up the spine was the key to the vision. I felt like an Egyptian who had visited the Land of the Dead.
I have come to call that experience in, of all places, Las Vegas, THE INFERNO, as it was a Baptism by Fire, in a place hellish hot in the summer. And it was more than reversal of course: a seal was broken and I now existed on the psychic plane, the middle zone between Spirit and the material plane. I became open to a new understanding of all things. From the internal perspective I am a twice-born man. But not a Christian, which is important to remember.
In November 1969, while living in Eugene, Oregon, I experienced a second kundalini rush, this time more sought after. It was different too, for when it happened I was meditating while in considerable pain. I had an abscessed tooth that I was seeing a dentist the next day. My legs were killing me after 20 minutes in the half lotus position. My right shoulder hurt like hell. Then, like the first time, there was this explosive release in the lower torso, in the region of the first two chakras, and the same energy came charging up my spine. The feeling had been I was vessel filling up with liquid; as the waters rose all my pains were wiped out and all I felt was bliss, bliss and more bliss. I am not sure how long it lasted but when the energy returned to the lower chakras, the pains returned. The rush was curative but short-lived. I can’t imagine what life would be like if such bliss was constant.
In 1970 I had 25 dreams that I recorded. Many of them contributed ideas and images that I fed off of for years in my drawings. The second rush had opened a second seal and the waterfall of dreams was the result. It was also in the winter of 1970 that I turned out my first three-decker ‘hieroglyph,’ the forerunner of THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER.
These breakthroughs and turn-a-rounds led to the inevitable: quitting teaching and relying on the “sure thing.” I became more of a risk-taker, following my intuition no matter how crazy most people thought I was. My eye was on one thing: personal authenticity.
The book on Egypt that I was reading was THE TEMPLE OF THE COSMOS: THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN EXPEIENCE OF THE SACRED. The author’s name was Jeremy Naydler a Brit who does independent research. He has a profound grasp of Old Egypt and is amazingly articulate in laying out the Ontology, Metaphysics, and Mythology, the foundational elements of Egyptian spirituality. He has reinforced my intuitive sense of identification with their culture. It is definitely more important to me than the Greek and Roman World.
I am reading a book that has been in my library since my days at Bookman’s. It was in the section on Egyptian Mythology. For some reason I never got to it, until now, which seems fortuitous, as it comes on the heels of my finishing my three books. I have known for a long time that I have a special connection with the ancient Egyptian culture, as it is no accident that I have tagged my series of post-Inferno drawings
THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER. The idea for that name was a spin-off from reading Frances Yates fine book BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION. The book was my first real clue that my mind was working in a similar way to their ancient mythology as I had the same inclination to express myself in a symbolic language. After my intense and active 5 years of teaching and politicking at UNLV, a time in my life when most of my life energies were flowing in an outward direction, I had one of those turn-around experiences, like St. Paul experienced, where I ceased all that activity and cut myself off, withdrew from society and embraced two months of solitude. Actually, I plunged like a stone in to my internal world. I became an “Introspective Voyager,” leaving behind the persona of a radical figure on the barricades fighting against tyranny and injustice. Instead I became a “plunger,” which is what Charles Olson said of Herman Melville. It means I knew how to take a chance.
The first thing that happened was the vision of the black sphere and the wheel design; it was a spontaneous vision that provided me with a clue about a new direction I might take. Given the kind of drawing I was doing at the time, it was another turn-around experience. At one point fear and anxiety became strong and I experienced some personal demons. One night while I was reading a book about the demonic at three o’clock in the morning there was a loud inexplicable crack in the brick wall behind my chair. I had reached the point of no return. A few days later, after sinking about as far as I could go at the time, I experienced death, transfiguration, and rebirth; and it was generated by a spontaneous eruption of energy that had shot up my spine and danced on the crown of my head; and after I saw myself die, lose all flesh, and then resurrect, slowly becoming whole again. I’ll never forget than image of myself as a bony ghost on “the other side.” The spontaneous rush up the spine was the key to the vision. I felt like an Egyptian who had visited the Land of the Dead.
I have come to call that experience in, of all places, Las Vegas, THE INFERNO, as it was a Baptism by Fire, in a place hellish hot in the summer. And it was more than reversal of course: a seal was broken and I now existed on the psychic plane, the middle zone between Spirit and the material plane. I became open to a new understanding of all things. From the internal perspective I am a twice-born man. But not a Christian, which is important to remember.
In November 1969, while living in Eugene, Oregon, I experienced a second kundalini rush, this time more sought after. It was different too, for when it happened I was meditating while in considerable pain. I had an abscessed tooth that I was seeing a dentist the next day. My legs were killing me after 20 minutes in the half lotus position. My right shoulder hurt like hell. Then, like the first time, there was this explosive release in the lower torso, in the region of the first two chakras, and the same energy came charging up my spine. The feeling had been I was vessel filling up with liquid; as the waters rose all my pains were wiped out and all I felt was bliss, bliss and more bliss. I am not sure how long it lasted but when the energy returned to the lower chakras, the pains returned. The rush was curative but short-lived. I can’t imagine what life would be like if such bliss was constant.
In 1970 I had 25 dreams that I recorded. Many of them contributed ideas and images that I fed off of for years in my drawings. The second rush had opened a second seal and the waterfall of dreams was the result. It was also in the winter of 1970 that I turned out my first three-decker ‘hieroglyph,’ the forerunner of THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER.
These breakthroughs and turn-a-rounds led to the inevitable: quitting teaching and relying on the “sure thing.” I became more of a risk-taker, following my intuition no matter how crazy most people thought I was. My eye was on one thing: personal authenticity.
The book on Egypt that I was reading was THE TEMPLE OF THE COSMOS: THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN EXPEIENCE OF THE SACRED. The author’s name was Jeremy Naydler a Brit who does independent research. He has a profound grasp of Old Egypt and is amazingly articulate in laying out the Ontology, Metaphysics, and Mythology, the foundational elements of Egyptian spirituality. He has reinforced my intuitive sense of identification with their culture. It is definitely more important to me than the Greek and Roman World.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Shamanism
2011_10_16 Books and more books
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Monday, October 17, 2011
Letter to a Friend
2011_10_16 Books and more books
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Thursday, October 6, 2011
To a High School Friend
2011-10_05
Tucson, AZ
Dear Frances,
Thanks for the book. Looks like I owe you one.
After reading the chapter on you, the only woman out of nine personalities, I was struck by the similarities in our experiences during our early days as artists. The “competition” mentioned you encountered in high school was, at least according to my memory, was Shirley Soens and I. As for Sister Monica, she was a role model for me too, by example not word. If my memory is accurate she was the ‘Angel’ who told me that UW in Madison was a hotbed of godlessness and radical politics. This warning was, like for you, more a magnate then a deterrent. All things considered, Madison was art-wise not as fruitful for me as it obviously was for you. Grilley, Wilde, Zingale, others, did little for me. Dean Meeker was helpful. A few years later I got much more out of classes at San Jose State, when I, for some reason, was more receptive. At the California school things clicked for me. It was less formal a department and there was a lot of interaction between teachers and students outside the classroom. Dick Tansey, for example, the well-known Art Historian held forth every afternoon at a bar just off campus. (Given a chance he could have drunken Dylan Thomas under the table.) He was a kind of Samuel Johnson figure and the better students flocked to that bar in the afternoon. The interaction between students and staff was a real plus for me. In Madison I never attended a party where the two mixed. Maybe they did on a Graduate level; to that I can’t speak. I eventually shared a studio with my mentor, Fred Spratt, who was the major-domo at SJSC for decades. We later had a falling out over the war in Vietnam and he didn’t approve of my wife, but he was the guy who got me into teaching, as a sabbatical replacement at SJSC.
Where Madison did worked for me was in the non-art classes. I experienced an intellectual awakening, like Henry Pochman’s Am Lit. class and a philosophy class that dealt with Censorship of the Arts. In Pochman’s class I was introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism, and to Herman Melville, who is still a cultural hero for me. The other class introduced me to Henry Miller and James Joyce. Meeting all kinds of people was also an invaluable experience in Madison.
Living in the Bay Area in the late Fifties and early Sixties was the place to be at the time. I saw “The Green Table” and Rudolph Nureyev dance. I heard Allan Watts in person a couple of times. I was a classmate of Robert Graham whose public sculptures are well known. My first date with Suzie was at a poetry reading in SF, Philip Whalen I think it was. I went to the Blackhawk to listen to Brubeck and Cal Jader, and to North Beach to hear Garry Mulligan and Sonny Stitts. I’ve been to City Lights many times and to SF MOMA lots of times with Fred Spratt. The shows I remember the best were two one-man shows, Max Beckmann and Kandinsky, the late works, which are my favorites. I saw my first Beckmann triptychs at the time. In sum, it was a stimulating place but I had to move on…
And let me tell you going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a shocking departure from the Bay Area, like going to the dark side of the moon. Madison had been staid, traditional, orthodox, not very experimental, and rather counter-intuitive. I departed in 1957. The Bay Area was the reverse, drugs, anything goes, radical politics, the beat revival, the sexual revolution—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs—HOWL, ON THE ROAD, & NAKED LUNCH. Going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a dramatic departure from both Madison and the Bay Area. It was like entering a cartoon scenario of fantasy and Kitsch—like one of your husband’s comic prints. UNLV was only 5 years old when I got hired at age 29. The teachers were a mixture of older profs at their last posts and a bunch of raw recruits like myself, just starting out. The president of the University was from the world of advertising not Academe. The head of the Art Department was a life-long Mormon with 6 kids. Six weeks after I arrived on campus I was demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. He wasn’t happy about that. But the real death knell for me was starting the AFT Union on Campus, which I had joined the year I taught at SJSC. Both Tansey and Spratt were members. That was the unforgivable sin as far as the Administration was concerned, the backbreaker on tenure. By the end of 1969 I knew I had three options. One, a majority of the students wanted me to become Head of the Dept. Two, they wanted to hire me at Oregon State, where I had taught part time on leave from UNLV. The last option was I could quit and look for work outside academe. First of all, I could not see myself as an administrator. Secondly, I decided against OSU because the faculty was as dreary as the winter weather in Corvallis. The third option was it.
Several years later my daughter, who was sociology major at a university in Florida showed me a study of teachers who had come from a lower-income class. I had for years used the expression a “Stranger in Paradise” to describe my discomfort in academe—no matter how accomplished I might be I could never feel like I belong. The name of the study that Nasima gave me was called STRANGERS IN PARADISE. I discovered that 100s of other people felt like I had and used the same expression to express their feeling of estrangement. So leaving teaching and the university life, which no doubt can be seductive and cozy, was not in the cards for me.
The phrase in the beginning of the section on you used the description “class-structured” to describe Racine. I had a reaction to that and I’ll tell you why. I doubt I ever told you this before but Margot Andis, who I had been going with for a year or so, was instructed by her father to break up with me because I didn’t fit with the family image. I was “ too lower class and too crude.” That’s been a burr under my saddle for a long time. Because of it I carry a deep animus toward the rich.
I am sure all this is more than you expected or wanted to hear. But I am the type to let it all hang out.
Thanks again for the book.
Tucson, AZ
Dear Frances,
Thanks for the book. Looks like I owe you one.
After reading the chapter on you, the only woman out of nine personalities, I was struck by the similarities in our experiences during our early days as artists. The “competition” mentioned you encountered in high school was, at least according to my memory, was Shirley Soens and I. As for Sister Monica, she was a role model for me too, by example not word. If my memory is accurate she was the ‘Angel’ who told me that UW in Madison was a hotbed of godlessness and radical politics. This warning was, like for you, more a magnate then a deterrent. All things considered, Madison was art-wise not as fruitful for me as it obviously was for you. Grilley, Wilde, Zingale, others, did little for me. Dean Meeker was helpful. A few years later I got much more out of classes at San Jose State, when I, for some reason, was more receptive. At the California school things clicked for me. It was less formal a department and there was a lot of interaction between teachers and students outside the classroom. Dick Tansey, for example, the well-known Art Historian held forth every afternoon at a bar just off campus. (Given a chance he could have drunken Dylan Thomas under the table.) He was a kind of Samuel Johnson figure and the better students flocked to that bar in the afternoon. The interaction between students and staff was a real plus for me. In Madison I never attended a party where the two mixed. Maybe they did on a Graduate level; to that I can’t speak. I eventually shared a studio with my mentor, Fred Spratt, who was the major-domo at SJSC for decades. We later had a falling out over the war in Vietnam and he didn’t approve of my wife, but he was the guy who got me into teaching, as a sabbatical replacement at SJSC.
Where Madison did worked for me was in the non-art classes. I experienced an intellectual awakening, like Henry Pochman’s Am Lit. class and a philosophy class that dealt with Censorship of the Arts. In Pochman’s class I was introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism, and to Herman Melville, who is still a cultural hero for me. The other class introduced me to Henry Miller and James Joyce. Meeting all kinds of people was also an invaluable experience in Madison.
Living in the Bay Area in the late Fifties and early Sixties was the place to be at the time. I saw “The Green Table” and Rudolph Nureyev dance. I heard Allan Watts in person a couple of times. I was a classmate of Robert Graham whose public sculptures are well known. My first date with Suzie was at a poetry reading in SF, Philip Whalen I think it was. I went to the Blackhawk to listen to Brubeck and Cal Jader, and to North Beach to hear Garry Mulligan and Sonny Stitts. I’ve been to City Lights many times and to SF MOMA lots of times with Fred Spratt. The shows I remember the best were two one-man shows, Max Beckmann and Kandinsky, the late works, which are my favorites. I saw my first Beckmann triptychs at the time. In sum, it was a stimulating place but I had to move on…
And let me tell you going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a shocking departure from the Bay Area, like going to the dark side of the moon. Madison had been staid, traditional, orthodox, not very experimental, and rather counter-intuitive. I departed in 1957. The Bay Area was the reverse, drugs, anything goes, radical politics, the beat revival, the sexual revolution—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs—HOWL, ON THE ROAD, & NAKED LUNCH. Going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a dramatic departure from both Madison and the Bay Area. It was like entering a cartoon scenario of fantasy and Kitsch—like one of your husband’s comic prints. UNLV was only 5 years old when I got hired at age 29. The teachers were a mixture of older profs at their last posts and a bunch of raw recruits like myself, just starting out. The president of the University was from the world of advertising not Academe. The head of the Art Department was a life-long Mormon with 6 kids. Six weeks after I arrived on campus I was demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. He wasn’t happy about that. But the real death knell for me was starting the AFT Union on Campus, which I had joined the year I taught at SJSC. Both Tansey and Spratt were members. That was the unforgivable sin as far as the Administration was concerned, the backbreaker on tenure. By the end of 1969 I knew I had three options. One, a majority of the students wanted me to become Head of the Dept. Two, they wanted to hire me at Oregon State, where I had taught part time on leave from UNLV. The last option was I could quit and look for work outside academe. First of all, I could not see myself as an administrator. Secondly, I decided against OSU because the faculty was as dreary as the winter weather in Corvallis. The third option was it.
Several years later my daughter, who was sociology major at a university in Florida showed me a study of teachers who had come from a lower-income class. I had for years used the expression a “Stranger in Paradise” to describe my discomfort in academe—no matter how accomplished I might be I could never feel like I belong. The name of the study that Nasima gave me was called STRANGERS IN PARADISE. I discovered that 100s of other people felt like I had and used the same expression to express their feeling of estrangement. So leaving teaching and the university life, which no doubt can be seductive and cozy, was not in the cards for me.
The phrase in the beginning of the section on you used the description “class-structured” to describe Racine. I had a reaction to that and I’ll tell you why. I doubt I ever told you this before but Margot Andis, who I had been going with for a year or so, was instructed by her father to break up with me because I didn’t fit with the family image. I was “ too lower class and too crude.” That’s been a burr under my saddle for a long time. Because of it I carry a deep animus toward the rich.
I am sure all this is more than you expected or wanted to hear. But I am the type to let it all hang out.
Thanks again for the book.
Friday, September 23, 2011
The Rio Project
2011_9_22 Waste Land
“Variety is the spice of life,” remarked my wife a couple days ago, thinking of the interesting mix of films we have seen recently, all of them coming in the mail from NETFLIX. Last night we watched a most unusual documentary about a rather extraordinary artist from South America, Vik Muniz. He was born in a lower middle class neighborhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He financed a trip to New York City in the early eighties with money given him by a rich man who had accidentally shot him in the leg. He shows the scar in the movie. The money turned out to be his ticket to fame and fortune. At age 50 he had an idea to return to Brazil, which could be in part a way to give something back to his homeland. He seemed to be the kind of guy who would do that. There is no question he is an individual of extraordinary warmth in order to coax a great deal out of anyone he comes in contact with, as he demonstrates time and time again in “Waste Land.” Although he was originally a sculptor, he made his name as an innovative photographer, as he makes clear in the film. He made plans to be in Rio de Janeiro the better part of two years working with ‘catadores’ who worked in the Jarden Gamacho.
So what is the Jarden Gamacho? It is a vast landfill full of the garbage of Rio. And catadores or “pickers” are the group of scavengers who ‘farm the filth for fun and profit,’ if you can believe that. Actually, that’s not quite true because the seven catadores Vik selects for his special project are men and women who are interested only in material that can be recycled. Who knows how much time Muniz spent meeting catadores until he found the right seven. Months probably. The Association that was formed for the catadores has 2000 members. One of the people he chose for the project was Tiao, the man responsible for the Association. He presides over any issue that comes up. Another was Zambi, the resident intellectual who gathered enough books in the dump to start a decent library in the building where the Association held their meetings. Four women, each with a different story, were selected. Suelem started when she was 7 years old and now she is 18 with two kids, with a third on the way by the time the project ends. (A city of shacks borders the landfill; its population is 13,000 souls. It’s where most of the “pickers” live.) Irma is an older woman who is the resident cook at Jarden Gamacho. Magna and Isis, two women in their thirties, are pickers that are there because they have been unlucky in love. Finally there is Valter, the happy-go-lucky court jester who keeps everyone laughing, and a vital role among the pickers.
Now what might all this have to do with art and photography? The 7 catadores are to become collaborators with Vik in the creation of images in which garbage will play a creative role. The first step was each strikes a pose in imitation of a famous painting. For example Tiao chose “The Death Of Marat” by Jacques Louie David. Vik photographed him and then that picture is magnified many times over on a cloth format that is huge. A scaffold was put together with a large expensive camera. The pose of Marat is sketch in. Then Taio and Vik begin to fill the space around the figure and his bathtub—fill it with pre-selected recycled garbage, much of it colorful. When the design is finished a photograph is taken from above. For exhibition purposes the picture is reduced to approximately
4 x 5.’ Each of the catadores was thrilled to participate in the artwork, and at the end of the day, Vik presented each with a 16 x 20” replica of the picture each had worked on.
Vik Muniz was a sly fellow, as no one felt coerced into participation and all are quite content afterward. He wanted to have impact with his collaborators and he did. There are not too many artists around (or maybe I am living in a cave) with such human intentions. I am all for the idea of art as the engine of transformative experience. I agree with Franz Kafka: Art should serve as pick ax to break the frozen sea inside us. I also think of Artaud and his Theater of the Absurd and Cruelty. Garbage in a work of art?? Gawd, what will think of next?
What people forget is broken is opened.
The finale of the project took place in New York. Six of the catadores were flown to New York to see the stuff in a museum
Vik took Tiao’s work to an auction in New York and it sold for $50,000, which got divvied up among the catadores.
So what happened to the Seven? Valter, the laughing catadores, died of lung cancer right after Vik left. Taio still runs the Association and is big man in the recycle industry. Zambi was a catadores since he was nine years old so he spends some time with his friends, but he is also still stocking the library with more books—they have 7,000 now-- and he also brought computers and other educational tools for the people and their children. Suelem married the man who impregnated her and so far so good. Isis met a man; quit the Jarden Gamacho, got married and now works as a clerk in a grocery store. Magna also met a man and remarried; she works in a Pharmacy, bought a house with the money from the sale of her painting. She also got involved with making Jewelry.
I’ll say this: I was quite moved by this movie and I shall check Vik’s web site to see what he is up to now.
“Variety is the spice of life,” remarked my wife a couple days ago, thinking of the interesting mix of films we have seen recently, all of them coming in the mail from NETFLIX. Last night we watched a most unusual documentary about a rather extraordinary artist from South America, Vik Muniz. He was born in a lower middle class neighborhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He financed a trip to New York City in the early eighties with money given him by a rich man who had accidentally shot him in the leg. He shows the scar in the movie. The money turned out to be his ticket to fame and fortune. At age 50 he had an idea to return to Brazil, which could be in part a way to give something back to his homeland. He seemed to be the kind of guy who would do that. There is no question he is an individual of extraordinary warmth in order to coax a great deal out of anyone he comes in contact with, as he demonstrates time and time again in “Waste Land.” Although he was originally a sculptor, he made his name as an innovative photographer, as he makes clear in the film. He made plans to be in Rio de Janeiro the better part of two years working with ‘catadores’ who worked in the Jarden Gamacho.
So what is the Jarden Gamacho? It is a vast landfill full of the garbage of Rio. And catadores or “pickers” are the group of scavengers who ‘farm the filth for fun and profit,’ if you can believe that. Actually, that’s not quite true because the seven catadores Vik selects for his special project are men and women who are interested only in material that can be recycled. Who knows how much time Muniz spent meeting catadores until he found the right seven. Months probably. The Association that was formed for the catadores has 2000 members. One of the people he chose for the project was Tiao, the man responsible for the Association. He presides over any issue that comes up. Another was Zambi, the resident intellectual who gathered enough books in the dump to start a decent library in the building where the Association held their meetings. Four women, each with a different story, were selected. Suelem started when she was 7 years old and now she is 18 with two kids, with a third on the way by the time the project ends. (A city of shacks borders the landfill; its population is 13,000 souls. It’s where most of the “pickers” live.) Irma is an older woman who is the resident cook at Jarden Gamacho. Magna and Isis, two women in their thirties, are pickers that are there because they have been unlucky in love. Finally there is Valter, the happy-go-lucky court jester who keeps everyone laughing, and a vital role among the pickers.
Now what might all this have to do with art and photography? The 7 catadores are to become collaborators with Vik in the creation of images in which garbage will play a creative role. The first step was each strikes a pose in imitation of a famous painting. For example Tiao chose “The Death Of Marat” by Jacques Louie David. Vik photographed him and then that picture is magnified many times over on a cloth format that is huge. A scaffold was put together with a large expensive camera. The pose of Marat is sketch in. Then Taio and Vik begin to fill the space around the figure and his bathtub—fill it with pre-selected recycled garbage, much of it colorful. When the design is finished a photograph is taken from above. For exhibition purposes the picture is reduced to approximately
4 x 5.’ Each of the catadores was thrilled to participate in the artwork, and at the end of the day, Vik presented each with a 16 x 20” replica of the picture each had worked on.
Vik Muniz was a sly fellow, as no one felt coerced into participation and all are quite content afterward. He wanted to have impact with his collaborators and he did. There are not too many artists around (or maybe I am living in a cave) with such human intentions. I am all for the idea of art as the engine of transformative experience. I agree with Franz Kafka: Art should serve as pick ax to break the frozen sea inside us. I also think of Artaud and his Theater of the Absurd and Cruelty. Garbage in a work of art?? Gawd, what will think of next?
What people forget is broken is opened.
The finale of the project took place in New York. Six of the catadores were flown to New York to see the stuff in a museum
Vik took Tiao’s work to an auction in New York and it sold for $50,000, which got divvied up among the catadores.
So what happened to the Seven? Valter, the laughing catadores, died of lung cancer right after Vik left. Taio still runs the Association and is big man in the recycle industry. Zambi was a catadores since he was nine years old so he spends some time with his friends, but he is also still stocking the library with more books—they have 7,000 now-- and he also brought computers and other educational tools for the people and their children. Suelem married the man who impregnated her and so far so good. Isis met a man; quit the Jarden Gamacho, got married and now works as a clerk in a grocery store. Magna also met a man and remarried; she works in a Pharmacy, bought a house with the money from the sale of her painting. She also got involved with making Jewelry.
I’ll say this: I was quite moved by this movie and I shall check Vik’s web site to see what he is up to now.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Movies I have recently Seen
Movies I’ve seen recently
I am still involved with my book project but I wanted to get something on the blog about some movies I have seen recently. I changed my deal with NETFLIX. Instead of 3 movies at a time and streaming we cut back to 2 movies and no streaming for $12, which is half the other plan. With our appetite for film it may not be enough, but we shall try it and see how we feel. So far this year we have seen 165 films, about 90% through NETFLIX. Because of their need for revenue they hiked their prices and in one month they have lost 600,000 customers.
In 1996 the painter/filmmaker Julian Schnabel made a docudrama about one of the major stars in New York of the 1980s, Jean-Michael Basquiant, who was a friend of his. Along with Keith Haring they were the gold dust twins of the New York art scene in that decade, both dying young, Basquiant from a drug overdose and Haring from AIDS. Both had discipline as artists but not much with other appetites. Basquiant OD of heroin at 27, joining that array of “rock stars” that died at 27. Haring was 32. As has proven many times over, fame can be injurious to your health. Schnabel’s film is a kind of loving tribute to the young man. Jeffrey Wright played Basquiant and did a remarkable job, bringing to life in a fictional treatment his successes and death. David Bowie played Andy Warhol who was friend and mentor to the lad from Haiti; he even shared a show with him. Dennis Hopper also shows up in the film. The introduction to Basquiant work was of the drive-by variety.
I also saw a later film (2009) about Basquiant by another friend, a gal named Tamara Davis who has made several films, including “Billy Madison,” and “Gun Crazy.” It was called “Jean-Michael Basquiant: The Radiant Child.” The film was built around a Davis interview with the artist while he was still alive. In front of the camera he seemed uncomfortable and rather shy, not very forthcoming either. The film is generally less adoring of the “Radiant Child” and reassess him as a human being. We see more of his work, with a stress on the paintings with a graffiti emphasis rather than pictorial or painterly quality. Davis comments that he was not ready for fame. It came too early for him to handle it well.
My daughter hoodwinked me into seeing “Bridesmaids”; but I thanked her afterward because it was truly a hilarious film, one of very few I have seen in recent years. It has an ensemble cast but one talent really stood out, and it belong to Kristen Wiig. Foul-mouthed, scatological, and raunchy not only as a comedienne but she also wrote the screenplay. One scene is hilarious, when Wiig gets intoxicated on a plane. It’s a classic as far as I am concerned. I saw her as an updated Steve Martin, very skilled at physical comedy and a good writer too boot.
“Of Gods and Men” is a historical drama about some conflicted Trappist monks in Algeria during the anticolonial insurrection against France in the 1980s. Eight monks who live in complete harmony with the local village Muslims come into conflict with some Muslim extremists who have begun to terrorize the region. They talk among themselves what to do: should they flee or stay and take their chances. There is much debating about what to do and much singing and praying, which constitutes what they normally do day in and day out. Eventually they all decide to stay, no matter what. One night six of the monks are taken prisoner. The Arab terrorists try to make a trade using them as hostages to free some comrades. But the French officials won’t make the deal and the inevitable happens. We get a snapshot of how these monks lived, how they devoted themselves to God and helping others, and how they got caught in the crosshairs of history.
“RIFIFI” is a French crime drama that owes much to American noir films. I have seen at least 5 times, as I find it that intriguing and so well mounted and played. The last time I saw the film it was a terrible print. This time it was a Criterion DVD that was in excellent condition. Jules Dassin was the director. The last film he made was another noir film, “Night and the City,” which was released in America 1949. But then he ran afoul HUAC, a communist-hunting investigation committee from the House and because he failed to cooperate he was blacklisted till 1955 when he caught on in France. The film would certainly make my top ten in regard crime dramas. The highlight of the film is a robbery of some diamonds from a jewelry store in which no word is spoken for a half hour. The heist doesn’t pay off like it should have because one of the safecrackers—it was Jules Dassin himself playing the part—stole an expensive ring to give to a woman he was romancing, who belong to a rival gang. Such a thoughtless slip-up is a typical downfall in the noir movie where women are to be feared as well as loved. The two gangs war over the loot and 7 guys end up dead. The only survivors are three women, secondary characters—but without the loot. There is an interesting interview with Jules Dassin in special features.
“Fish Tank” is a small British film with Michael Fassbender who seems to be on the rise in movies as the newest hunk. He has a rugged handsome look, reminding me a bit of Rutgar Hauer who always got the role of Gladiator or Replicant. In “Fish Tank,” which is a small movie, Fassbender is carrying on an affair with a woman with a 15-year-old daughter who becomes smitten over lover boy, because he is nicer to her than her mother is. The girl is also an aspiring dancer, even though there is nothing extraordinary about her dancing; it just a dream she needs to nurture to keep her head above water, as her life is stuck in a narrow orbit with no real prospects. Well, lover boy makes love to her one night when her mother is drunk and asleep in the bedroom, and soon afterward she finds out he is married with a wife in the suburbs and 5-year old daughter, which pisses her off. So what does she do? She runs off with some 16-year-old boy, who like her quit school long ago, to repeat the folly and pattern of her luckless mother. It is a bleak film in the style of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.
I am still involved with my book project but I wanted to get something on the blog about some movies I have seen recently. I changed my deal with NETFLIX. Instead of 3 movies at a time and streaming we cut back to 2 movies and no streaming for $12, which is half the other plan. With our appetite for film it may not be enough, but we shall try it and see how we feel. So far this year we have seen 165 films, about 90% through NETFLIX. Because of their need for revenue they hiked their prices and in one month they have lost 600,000 customers.
In 1996 the painter/filmmaker Julian Schnabel made a docudrama about one of the major stars in New York of the 1980s, Jean-Michael Basquiant, who was a friend of his. Along with Keith Haring they were the gold dust twins of the New York art scene in that decade, both dying young, Basquiant from a drug overdose and Haring from AIDS. Both had discipline as artists but not much with other appetites. Basquiant OD of heroin at 27, joining that array of “rock stars” that died at 27. Haring was 32. As has proven many times over, fame can be injurious to your health. Schnabel’s film is a kind of loving tribute to the young man. Jeffrey Wright played Basquiant and did a remarkable job, bringing to life in a fictional treatment his successes and death. David Bowie played Andy Warhol who was friend and mentor to the lad from Haiti; he even shared a show with him. Dennis Hopper also shows up in the film. The introduction to Basquiant work was of the drive-by variety.
I also saw a later film (2009) about Basquiant by another friend, a gal named Tamara Davis who has made several films, including “Billy Madison,” and “Gun Crazy.” It was called “Jean-Michael Basquiant: The Radiant Child.” The film was built around a Davis interview with the artist while he was still alive. In front of the camera he seemed uncomfortable and rather shy, not very forthcoming either. The film is generally less adoring of the “Radiant Child” and reassess him as a human being. We see more of his work, with a stress on the paintings with a graffiti emphasis rather than pictorial or painterly quality. Davis comments that he was not ready for fame. It came too early for him to handle it well.
My daughter hoodwinked me into seeing “Bridesmaids”; but I thanked her afterward because it was truly a hilarious film, one of very few I have seen in recent years. It has an ensemble cast but one talent really stood out, and it belong to Kristen Wiig. Foul-mouthed, scatological, and raunchy not only as a comedienne but she also wrote the screenplay. One scene is hilarious, when Wiig gets intoxicated on a plane. It’s a classic as far as I am concerned. I saw her as an updated Steve Martin, very skilled at physical comedy and a good writer too boot.
“Of Gods and Men” is a historical drama about some conflicted Trappist monks in Algeria during the anticolonial insurrection against France in the 1980s. Eight monks who live in complete harmony with the local village Muslims come into conflict with some Muslim extremists who have begun to terrorize the region. They talk among themselves what to do: should they flee or stay and take their chances. There is much debating about what to do and much singing and praying, which constitutes what they normally do day in and day out. Eventually they all decide to stay, no matter what. One night six of the monks are taken prisoner. The Arab terrorists try to make a trade using them as hostages to free some comrades. But the French officials won’t make the deal and the inevitable happens. We get a snapshot of how these monks lived, how they devoted themselves to God and helping others, and how they got caught in the crosshairs of history.
“RIFIFI” is a French crime drama that owes much to American noir films. I have seen at least 5 times, as I find it that intriguing and so well mounted and played. The last time I saw the film it was a terrible print. This time it was a Criterion DVD that was in excellent condition. Jules Dassin was the director. The last film he made was another noir film, “Night and the City,” which was released in America 1949. But then he ran afoul HUAC, a communist-hunting investigation committee from the House and because he failed to cooperate he was blacklisted till 1955 when he caught on in France. The film would certainly make my top ten in regard crime dramas. The highlight of the film is a robbery of some diamonds from a jewelry store in which no word is spoken for a half hour. The heist doesn’t pay off like it should have because one of the safecrackers—it was Jules Dassin himself playing the part—stole an expensive ring to give to a woman he was romancing, who belong to a rival gang. Such a thoughtless slip-up is a typical downfall in the noir movie where women are to be feared as well as loved. The two gangs war over the loot and 7 guys end up dead. The only survivors are three women, secondary characters—but without the loot. There is an interesting interview with Jules Dassin in special features.
“Fish Tank” is a small British film with Michael Fassbender who seems to be on the rise in movies as the newest hunk. He has a rugged handsome look, reminding me a bit of Rutgar Hauer who always got the role of Gladiator or Replicant. In “Fish Tank,” which is a small movie, Fassbender is carrying on an affair with a woman with a 15-year-old daughter who becomes smitten over lover boy, because he is nicer to her than her mother is. The girl is also an aspiring dancer, even though there is nothing extraordinary about her dancing; it just a dream she needs to nurture to keep her head above water, as her life is stuck in a narrow orbit with no real prospects. Well, lover boy makes love to her one night when her mother is drunk and asleep in the bedroom, and soon afterward she finds out he is married with a wife in the suburbs and 5-year old daughter, which pisses her off. So what does she do? She runs off with some 16-year-old boy, who like her quit school long ago, to repeat the folly and pattern of her luckless mother. It is a bleak film in the style of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
On a Mission
On a Mission
“You sound like a man on a mission.” A good friend of mine said that in a recent email. The comment came on the heels of my email full of the trials and tribulations of preparing two books for publication, that is, for self-publication. Actually, all the problems and numerous details involved with both books have pretty much dominated my mind and energy for the past three months, and it’s the main reason I haven’t written anything for the blog for several weeks. One simply can’t do all one would like to, and some off time is important too. And some of the people I regularly exchange emails with are losing patience with my carrying on time and time again about Eros AND PSYCHE and BRIDGE IN THE FOG, like some fanatic who is more obsessed than he realizes. My cousin back in Racine is letting me know she misses my usual email, where I write about various things. People have to understand that getting these books ready for publication is the culmination of essentially twenty years work. I have written each book three times and certain sections up to ten times. Plus there was a lot of drawing over those years—and I had a full time job up until 2003. Retirement and the time I now had helped me turn the corner and turbo-charged me for the remaining laps to the finish line. In any case, it was a long slog and a long time coming to fruition.
The gal I am working with at ALPHAGRAPHICS is sweet and very supportive but she has gotten confused about the order of images in the book. She sent me home Monday with the third sample of the EROS AND PSYCHE, wanting my opinion of the reproduction of the drawings, which had been too dark. The other chore I had was to correct about a dozen minor grammatical errors and I did all that. I was happy with all the drawings too, all but the two that were reduced in size in the introduction. Monday afternoon I brought in the two original drawings for them to scan anew and we have our fingers crossed that will make the difference. When I went through the third sample to my horror I found a drawing missing; it was the self-portrait with the woman coming out of my skull with me balancing a mandala on my right forefinger. It’s important because the commentary has a direct relationship to the image. The problem was in putting it back in where it was suppose to be not only altered the pagination, it left a blank page. My solution to that was to add another drawing, which is what we did. It will be the only case of two images side by side, but it comes in the middle of the book so I think it’ll work okay. I chose the one with clown on a runway with a dark and a light lady attending his act, which should fit right in with no problem.
So if the two reduced drawings are better than before we will be ready to print.
“You sound like a man on a mission.” A good friend of mine said that in a recent email. The comment came on the heels of my email full of the trials and tribulations of preparing two books for publication, that is, for self-publication. Actually, all the problems and numerous details involved with both books have pretty much dominated my mind and energy for the past three months, and it’s the main reason I haven’t written anything for the blog for several weeks. One simply can’t do all one would like to, and some off time is important too. And some of the people I regularly exchange emails with are losing patience with my carrying on time and time again about Eros AND PSYCHE and BRIDGE IN THE FOG, like some fanatic who is more obsessed than he realizes. My cousin back in Racine is letting me know she misses my usual email, where I write about various things. People have to understand that getting these books ready for publication is the culmination of essentially twenty years work. I have written each book three times and certain sections up to ten times. Plus there was a lot of drawing over those years—and I had a full time job up until 2003. Retirement and the time I now had helped me turn the corner and turbo-charged me for the remaining laps to the finish line. In any case, it was a long slog and a long time coming to fruition.
The gal I am working with at ALPHAGRAPHICS is sweet and very supportive but she has gotten confused about the order of images in the book. She sent me home Monday with the third sample of the EROS AND PSYCHE, wanting my opinion of the reproduction of the drawings, which had been too dark. The other chore I had was to correct about a dozen minor grammatical errors and I did all that. I was happy with all the drawings too, all but the two that were reduced in size in the introduction. Monday afternoon I brought in the two original drawings for them to scan anew and we have our fingers crossed that will make the difference. When I went through the third sample to my horror I found a drawing missing; it was the self-portrait with the woman coming out of my skull with me balancing a mandala on my right forefinger. It’s important because the commentary has a direct relationship to the image. The problem was in putting it back in where it was suppose to be not only altered the pagination, it left a blank page. My solution to that was to add another drawing, which is what we did. It will be the only case of two images side by side, but it comes in the middle of the book so I think it’ll work okay. I chose the one with clown on a runway with a dark and a light lady attending his act, which should fit right in with no problem.
So if the two reduced drawings are better than before we will be ready to print.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Belle and the Bull had a Blast
2011_7_18 The Belle and the Bull of the Ball
Yesterday’s celebration of our 50 years of marriage was a splendid, laugh-filled and touching four hours; it was truly an event we will cherish for all the years we have left. It, among all the parties we have held over many years, was special. First of all, Nasima’s ‘slide show’ of 35 images over the years, starting with our baby pictures, went over well and kept repeating itself on TV screen for 3 hour. We chose Joanie Mitchell’s song “The Circle Song” to accompany the flow of pictures, which was an excellent choice, and Nasima timed the song with the last image, the two things absolutely in sync. The first photo after the baby pictures was the Polaroid of the two of us in 1960, the year of our first intimacies and feelings of deep love, at a party with Sue, a very lovely 20-year-old girl, sitting on my lap while I laid a kiss on her cheek. Many people could not believe that the handsome dark-haired skinny fellow kissing her was me. Alas, that small peak of a man grew into a mountain of a man. The very last slide in this parade of images was the reverse situation: Sue is kissing me on the cheek and it looked like she had to climb the mountain to do it. As a matter of fact Nasima picked 15 pictures where we are either kissing or hugging. That was close to a revelation to our audiences who really don’t know or see as us as a romantic couple. Our daughters planned the whole thing with little consultation with us. They chose Greek food because I love Gyros and Suzie loves dolmas. There was a bucket of meat and Tdzekie sauce, along with peta bread, humus, a big salad, and for dessert we had Baklava with vanilla ice cream or watermelon. The watermelon tasted good and was cooling because most of us ate outside under the covered patio despite the 103 temp and the high humidity. It did rain for about ten minutes. After everyone had their fill two musicians in the group got up, a violinist and a flutist did their thing for a short while, which was a pleasant interlude. Then Nasima and Kaia came out of the house with two trays of small paper cups full of champagne. I like the funky touch of paper cups as opposed to elegant glasses. Many toasts were offered, as were many nice things about Sue and I. The memory book is in process, as Nasima has all the cards and commentaries and she will be the one to tie it altogether in a book. I read just a few of the cards and I must say the love and respect for us doth flow like a river.
The spirit of the party was gleeful and buoyant; the chatter was none-stop and various and amusing. Laughter rocked the patio and the shrieks of the kids in the pool added to the upsurge of good vibes percolating through this assembly of 30 hearty guests. I was in extremely good humor as I had taken some canelo prior to going to the party. One of our old hippy-dippy friends had a laugh that could be heard for blocks—a most hearty guffaw. This guy had gone to Europe and India in the sixties and recently, after writing 15 versions of the story, self-published the book, which he titled WANNA SMOKE? He had come to the party without his dentures; he somehow had forgotten them. No problem he said, I’ll drink my dinner. Ryder ran around naked all during the party, just like his mother used to do when she was 4 years old. Liam is now 10 years old and has long hair for the first time and he looked good.
Four couples did not make the party, two because they were out of town. One individual didn’t make it, although his wife and son did. That would be my ex-pool partner. It was a big disappointment with no explanation.
I managed to get through the party on one canister of oxygen.
The “belle and the bull of the ball “ had a blast.
Yesterday’s celebration of our 50 years of marriage was a splendid, laugh-filled and touching four hours; it was truly an event we will cherish for all the years we have left. It, among all the parties we have held over many years, was special. First of all, Nasima’s ‘slide show’ of 35 images over the years, starting with our baby pictures, went over well and kept repeating itself on TV screen for 3 hour. We chose Joanie Mitchell’s song “The Circle Song” to accompany the flow of pictures, which was an excellent choice, and Nasima timed the song with the last image, the two things absolutely in sync. The first photo after the baby pictures was the Polaroid of the two of us in 1960, the year of our first intimacies and feelings of deep love, at a party with Sue, a very lovely 20-year-old girl, sitting on my lap while I laid a kiss on her cheek. Many people could not believe that the handsome dark-haired skinny fellow kissing her was me. Alas, that small peak of a man grew into a mountain of a man. The very last slide in this parade of images was the reverse situation: Sue is kissing me on the cheek and it looked like she had to climb the mountain to do it. As a matter of fact Nasima picked 15 pictures where we are either kissing or hugging. That was close to a revelation to our audiences who really don’t know or see as us as a romantic couple. Our daughters planned the whole thing with little consultation with us. They chose Greek food because I love Gyros and Suzie loves dolmas. There was a bucket of meat and Tdzekie sauce, along with peta bread, humus, a big salad, and for dessert we had Baklava with vanilla ice cream or watermelon. The watermelon tasted good and was cooling because most of us ate outside under the covered patio despite the 103 temp and the high humidity. It did rain for about ten minutes. After everyone had their fill two musicians in the group got up, a violinist and a flutist did their thing for a short while, which was a pleasant interlude. Then Nasima and Kaia came out of the house with two trays of small paper cups full of champagne. I like the funky touch of paper cups as opposed to elegant glasses. Many toasts were offered, as were many nice things about Sue and I. The memory book is in process, as Nasima has all the cards and commentaries and she will be the one to tie it altogether in a book. I read just a few of the cards and I must say the love and respect for us doth flow like a river.
The spirit of the party was gleeful and buoyant; the chatter was none-stop and various and amusing. Laughter rocked the patio and the shrieks of the kids in the pool added to the upsurge of good vibes percolating through this assembly of 30 hearty guests. I was in extremely good humor as I had taken some canelo prior to going to the party. One of our old hippy-dippy friends had a laugh that could be heard for blocks—a most hearty guffaw. This guy had gone to Europe and India in the sixties and recently, after writing 15 versions of the story, self-published the book, which he titled WANNA SMOKE? He had come to the party without his dentures; he somehow had forgotten them. No problem he said, I’ll drink my dinner. Ryder ran around naked all during the party, just like his mother used to do when she was 4 years old. Liam is now 10 years old and has long hair for the first time and he looked good.
Four couples did not make the party, two because they were out of town. One individual didn’t make it, although his wife and son did. That would be my ex-pool partner. It was a big disappointment with no explanation.
I managed to get through the party on one canister of oxygen.
The “belle and the bull of the ball “ had a blast.
Obama's Capitulation
2011_8_02 Obama’s Capitulation
Here I go again jumping on Obama for another poor performance in the latest dust up in Washington; this time the wrangle is over the debt ceiling controversy. The first thing I’d say about that is why didn’t the Democrats separate that issue from the deficit problem? And then once the two thing were inerasably linked why didn’t he revert to the 14th Amendment? Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa explained on the floor of the senate that it was used successfully three times by esteemed presidents—by Thomas Jefferson to expedite the Louisiana Purchase, by Lincoln to help pass the Emancipation Proclamation, and by FDR to hurry along the Lend Lease Loan to England under attack by Hitler. For some reason Obama never took it seriously. He could have used it for leverage if nothing else.
He may live to regret it as virtually nobody likes the bill signed into law today by Obama all by himself in the Oval Office, very odd considering the import of the bill and how long it took to get passed. Usually there is a crowd flanking the President as he signs major legislation. Not this time. The left and the right hated it, and the center held their nose when they voted. Two people were smiling and felt victorious when it was over: John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leaders. Boehner told Scott Pelly tonight he was very happy because he got 98% of what he wanted. McConnell doffed his hat to the Tea Party folks for their assistance and was already gleefully preparing for the next encounter with the President, for he knows he’s got his number.
From where I sit the tipping point in this latest disaster, the debt ceiling imbroglio and the final deal was Mitch McConnell who refusal to negotiate with Harry Reid, but only with the “man who could sign the bill into law.” That is code for the man he has consistently outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and over-matched. He has done it time and time again. He is as agile with rhetoric as Obama is, and he combines that with a subtle aggressive style that Obama doesn’t know how to handle. He’s good at constructing pithy narratives and his sound bites are terse, simple, and cogent. He’s a son of a bitch but I have to admit he is a tough gladiator. The Demos have no one to match his skills. He may look like Elmer Fudd and mumble through his teeth but those things disguise a WASP that stings. It’s uncanny how effective he can be, Like Bill Maher said the other night, McConnell knows how to get Obama to bend over and pull his pants down. Amen, brother!
The Super Committee to be formed in a few months is ready made for a stalemate, with six Republicans members who’ll be uniformly against tax increases and six Democrats who will be there to protect entitlements, which means the fierce in-fighting will be fierce and unforgiving, on both sides, but especially with the Republicans with their rigid backbone. If they can’t come to a resolution the deal is they will revert to automatic cuts which will threated the discretionary spending in domestic programs the Demos hold dear and the Republicans will sweat cuts in the defense Budget. And then there is the election, not to mention Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New years while all this bickering will be going on. Should be fun.
Welcome to bedlam!
Here I go again jumping on Obama for another poor performance in the latest dust up in Washington; this time the wrangle is over the debt ceiling controversy. The first thing I’d say about that is why didn’t the Democrats separate that issue from the deficit problem? And then once the two thing were inerasably linked why didn’t he revert to the 14th Amendment? Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa explained on the floor of the senate that it was used successfully three times by esteemed presidents—by Thomas Jefferson to expedite the Louisiana Purchase, by Lincoln to help pass the Emancipation Proclamation, and by FDR to hurry along the Lend Lease Loan to England under attack by Hitler. For some reason Obama never took it seriously. He could have used it for leverage if nothing else.
He may live to regret it as virtually nobody likes the bill signed into law today by Obama all by himself in the Oval Office, very odd considering the import of the bill and how long it took to get passed. Usually there is a crowd flanking the President as he signs major legislation. Not this time. The left and the right hated it, and the center held their nose when they voted. Two people were smiling and felt victorious when it was over: John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leaders. Boehner told Scott Pelly tonight he was very happy because he got 98% of what he wanted. McConnell doffed his hat to the Tea Party folks for their assistance and was already gleefully preparing for the next encounter with the President, for he knows he’s got his number.
From where I sit the tipping point in this latest disaster, the debt ceiling imbroglio and the final deal was Mitch McConnell who refusal to negotiate with Harry Reid, but only with the “man who could sign the bill into law.” That is code for the man he has consistently outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and over-matched. He has done it time and time again. He is as agile with rhetoric as Obama is, and he combines that with a subtle aggressive style that Obama doesn’t know how to handle. He’s good at constructing pithy narratives and his sound bites are terse, simple, and cogent. He’s a son of a bitch but I have to admit he is a tough gladiator. The Demos have no one to match his skills. He may look like Elmer Fudd and mumble through his teeth but those things disguise a WASP that stings. It’s uncanny how effective he can be, Like Bill Maher said the other night, McConnell knows how to get Obama to bend over and pull his pants down. Amen, brother!
The Super Committee to be formed in a few months is ready made for a stalemate, with six Republicans members who’ll be uniformly against tax increases and six Democrats who will be there to protect entitlements, which means the fierce in-fighting will be fierce and unforgiving, on both sides, but especially with the Republicans with their rigid backbone. If they can’t come to a resolution the deal is they will revert to automatic cuts which will threated the discretionary spending in domestic programs the Demos hold dear and the Republicans will sweat cuts in the defense Budget. And then there is the election, not to mention Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New years while all this bickering will be going on. Should be fun.
Welcome to bedlam!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Soft-Boiled Eggs vs. Hard-Boiled Eggs
2011_7_11 Soft Boiled vs. Hard Boiled
Agatha Christie is probably the best known and most popular Mystery writer of the Anglo Saxon world in the 20th Century. I don’t think there is much dispute about that. She is Queen of the Genre in that taste sphere.
But her stories, so utterly dependent on a fixed formula, have never appealed to me. I see them as Victorian parlor games, not serious or believable crime fiction. For someone who reads and admires Raymond Chandler, James Cain, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, and of late, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, one has to smile indulgently at Christie’s work. To think that Jane Marple, a sweet little old lady, could outfox both the killers and the police, well, if you believe that you probably still believe if Fairies, too. Her stories are such bald contrivances and filled with such British stereotypes from the War years I find it impossible to take them seriously. If you like soft-boiled eggs, this is your author.
Now it is true that all mystery novels are puzzles to one degree or another, but Christie’s stories are nothing but a puzzle to be solved and otherwise short on reality. They may be cute and clever within their time period, but hard-boiled fiction is vastly more popular today. Today’s fictional sleuths are more procedurally orientated, more tough-minded, cynical, and gritty, and often they can be damaged goods, like Kurt Wallander and Dave Robicheaux. We seemed to have more respect and liking for the PI or Detective who stalks our ‘Mean Streets’ and occasionally is capable of being a ‘Dirty Harry’ in order to get the bad guys. It’s more a rough trade than a genteel pastime. Harry Bosch can be scary at times, but once he gets a scent he’s relentless. In Mankell’s THE MAN FROM BEJING it opens with the slaughter of 17 elderly Swedes. The murder scene is am orgy of blood and detached limbs. Both Hercules Poirot and Miss Jane Marple would barf at such a scene. It would take more then what they had to offer. The world as we know it is a very violent place and murder as a parlor game no longer does the job. Our sense of reality demands more. The unbelievable success of THE MILLINIUM TRILOGY points to crime novels as more sociological and political commentaries. There seems to be developing a greater appetite for broader subject matter in a crime novel, which was certainly the case with Dostoevsky’s best work. There is also a craving for a studier individualism that can stand up to oppressive Security Services. LizBeth Salander is Wonder Woman for the 21st century. Her creation was one of Larsson’s boldest inventions. Her antics and immoveable resistance to older men who wanted to do her harm thrilled me.
All this is but a prelude to some remarks I would make about a 2004 biopic I saw about Agatha Christie last Saturday night. Olivia Williams plays Christie in her youth and Anna Massey plays her as an old woman. Massy shows up at the beginning and end of the film. When older she is shy, reserved and doesn’t like interviews. The middle section of the film deals with the great mystery of her middle years: her strange disappearance for 11 days. Local authorities had search parties out day after day. People volunteered to help with the search. Newspapers covered the story every day and reporters hounded Christie’s husband, Archie. One thing he did not mention to the police or the reporters was the day she disappeared was the day he had asks her for a divorce. This is what happened: she had thrown some clothes in a suitcase and driven off in the family car, when she had a minor accident with the car, banging her head against the steering wheel. That blow plus the emotional trauma of the pending divorce was too much for her; she slipped into a dissociative state, with amnesia and completely forgetting whom she was. She ended up in a hotel in a nearby town where she stayed for the duration, until a chambermaid recognized her and called a reporter. When her husband showed up to take her home she did not recognize him, which prompted him to find a psychologist to work with her. There are many scenes in the movie with her working with the doctor, who gradually, step by tiny step, brings her back to herself. Slowly the trauma recedes and she considers writing again and at 38 marries again, an archeologist she had met named Max Mallowan, someone she had worked with on a dig in the Middle East. She had a more professional attitude about her writing afterward, and by professional she meant she was quite conscious of how much money she could make. A good portion of it went into her husband’s work. They were married for 46 years and she wrote a total of 80 books. One a year she says in the movie but it had to be more than that unless she started as a toddler. She died in 1976 at age 85. Altogether she sold 4 billion books, in England second only to Shakespeare.
Hercule Poirot, the Belgian dandy who thinks well of himself, was featured in the first 33 books. When she tired of him she switched to the spinster Miss Jane Marple, who appears in 47 books. Late in her life she was asked why she hadn’t combined her two sleuths in one book. Keeping in mind what I said earlier about the nonsense of an elderly spinster helping the professionals on the job she said: ” Hercule Poirot, a complete egotist, would not like being taught his business or having suggestions made to him by an elderly spinster.”
Amen!
Agatha Christie is probably the best known and most popular Mystery writer of the Anglo Saxon world in the 20th Century. I don’t think there is much dispute about that. She is Queen of the Genre in that taste sphere.
But her stories, so utterly dependent on a fixed formula, have never appealed to me. I see them as Victorian parlor games, not serious or believable crime fiction. For someone who reads and admires Raymond Chandler, James Cain, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, and of late, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, one has to smile indulgently at Christie’s work. To think that Jane Marple, a sweet little old lady, could outfox both the killers and the police, well, if you believe that you probably still believe if Fairies, too. Her stories are such bald contrivances and filled with such British stereotypes from the War years I find it impossible to take them seriously. If you like soft-boiled eggs, this is your author.
Now it is true that all mystery novels are puzzles to one degree or another, but Christie’s stories are nothing but a puzzle to be solved and otherwise short on reality. They may be cute and clever within their time period, but hard-boiled fiction is vastly more popular today. Today’s fictional sleuths are more procedurally orientated, more tough-minded, cynical, and gritty, and often they can be damaged goods, like Kurt Wallander and Dave Robicheaux. We seemed to have more respect and liking for the PI or Detective who stalks our ‘Mean Streets’ and occasionally is capable of being a ‘Dirty Harry’ in order to get the bad guys. It’s more a rough trade than a genteel pastime. Harry Bosch can be scary at times, but once he gets a scent he’s relentless. In Mankell’s THE MAN FROM BEJING it opens with the slaughter of 17 elderly Swedes. The murder scene is am orgy of blood and detached limbs. Both Hercules Poirot and Miss Jane Marple would barf at such a scene. It would take more then what they had to offer. The world as we know it is a very violent place and murder as a parlor game no longer does the job. Our sense of reality demands more. The unbelievable success of THE MILLINIUM TRILOGY points to crime novels as more sociological and political commentaries. There seems to be developing a greater appetite for broader subject matter in a crime novel, which was certainly the case with Dostoevsky’s best work. There is also a craving for a studier individualism that can stand up to oppressive Security Services. LizBeth Salander is Wonder Woman for the 21st century. Her creation was one of Larsson’s boldest inventions. Her antics and immoveable resistance to older men who wanted to do her harm thrilled me.
All this is but a prelude to some remarks I would make about a 2004 biopic I saw about Agatha Christie last Saturday night. Olivia Williams plays Christie in her youth and Anna Massey plays her as an old woman. Massy shows up at the beginning and end of the film. When older she is shy, reserved and doesn’t like interviews. The middle section of the film deals with the great mystery of her middle years: her strange disappearance for 11 days. Local authorities had search parties out day after day. People volunteered to help with the search. Newspapers covered the story every day and reporters hounded Christie’s husband, Archie. One thing he did not mention to the police or the reporters was the day she disappeared was the day he had asks her for a divorce. This is what happened: she had thrown some clothes in a suitcase and driven off in the family car, when she had a minor accident with the car, banging her head against the steering wheel. That blow plus the emotional trauma of the pending divorce was too much for her; she slipped into a dissociative state, with amnesia and completely forgetting whom she was. She ended up in a hotel in a nearby town where she stayed for the duration, until a chambermaid recognized her and called a reporter. When her husband showed up to take her home she did not recognize him, which prompted him to find a psychologist to work with her. There are many scenes in the movie with her working with the doctor, who gradually, step by tiny step, brings her back to herself. Slowly the trauma recedes and she considers writing again and at 38 marries again, an archeologist she had met named Max Mallowan, someone she had worked with on a dig in the Middle East. She had a more professional attitude about her writing afterward, and by professional she meant she was quite conscious of how much money she could make. A good portion of it went into her husband’s work. They were married for 46 years and she wrote a total of 80 books. One a year she says in the movie but it had to be more than that unless she started as a toddler. She died in 1976 at age 85. Altogether she sold 4 billion books, in England second only to Shakespeare.
Hercule Poirot, the Belgian dandy who thinks well of himself, was featured in the first 33 books. When she tired of him she switched to the spinster Miss Jane Marple, who appears in 47 books. Late in her life she was asked why she hadn’t combined her two sleuths in one book. Keeping in mind what I said earlier about the nonsense of an elderly spinster helping the professionals on the job she said: ” Hercule Poirot, a complete egotist, would not like being taught his business or having suggestions made to him by an elderly spinster.”
Amen!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Hereafter
“Hereafter” is Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, with a rather unexpected subject matter, a love story intertwined with the question of life after death. I knew going in that it was about tricky subject matter; but it wasn’t quite what you might expect or what that title might imply. Eastwood was very sly how he approached his theme; he doesn’t force any religious hokum down your throat and is more concerned with three individuals in an emotional and metaphysical crisis. His primary interest is showing the development of character. First there is George, the psychic (Matt Damon), who views his gift as more a curse than a blessing. And there is one episode in the story that demonstrates what he means. He gets involved with a woman he really likes, but when she insists he do a reading for her it ends in a disaster, for some sexual truths she didn’t want to hear were revealed. George never saw her again. Secondly, there is Marcus, a 10-year-old boy who has lost his twin brother, Jason. He runs through several pretenders and fakes who prey on the naïve and the desperate folks trying to connect with dead loved ones who left without resolution about something or other, which is driving the survivor nuts. Marcus is disconsolate over his loss, until finally he tracks down George. At first George runs from the boy but finally gives in and gives the boy a reading. Once he identifies Jason by holding Marcus’ hands, he tells the lad Jason said he couldn’t come home and Marcus is on his own now and he has to accept that. The contact provides Marcus with a closure. The third party in this triangulation is Marie, a successful anchor on a political television program in Paris. Her near-death experience happened in Thailand when the tsunami hit the coastal towns. She is swept away and when a board knocks her out she drowns or appears to drown, but two men pull her out of the water and perform CPR on her, and lo and behold she wakes up, spits out the water and survives. However, while “dead in the water” she had visions of a brightly lit but foggy otherworldly dimension that was filled with people who drift by. She is unable to return to her old political self, as she is haunted by the vision she had. Finally, she meets a psychiatrist who has collected records of others that have had similar experiences. She writes a book about them titled HEREAFTER. A confluence between George and her happens at a book fair in Paris. Marcus plays a role too in the confluence by telling George what hotel she is staying at. She is not in but he writes her a two-page note that explains his gift and background, saying they must meet. She reads the note and leaves eager to meet him. Both feel like an invisible hand has made sure they cross paths. They embrace like lovers who have finally found the proper soul mate. Their connection solves both their estrangement and isolation, and delights each for they know they are grounded in the same reality. Thus the movie ends on a very high note.
There’s one more thing I should comment on and that’s the opening sequence of the tsunami sweeping through the town off the coast. It’s entirely CGI and it is brilliantly handled, very convincing in every way, including her body underwater after she’s knocked out. Awesome is a word overused but, by god, it’s the only word that fits the scene.
There’s one more thing I should comment on and that’s the opening sequence of the tsunami sweeping through the town off the coast. It’s entirely CGI and it is brilliantly handled, very convincing in every way, including her body underwater after she’s knocked out. Awesome is a word overused but, by god, it’s the only word that fits the scene.
Deatn, the Sublime
2011_5_2 Death, the Sublime
“Departures” is a story about an ex-cello player from Tokyo, Daigo, who returns to his hometown in rural Japan, Yamagata, to start over in the house his mother left to him when she died. His wife Mika was quite willing to leave Tokyo, or at least she tells him she is. Later we learned differently. He needs employment of course, so not long after they settle in he goes to an establishment he thinks is some kind of Travel Agency called DEPARTURES. But it turns out the owner was looking for a trainee for encoffinment, a person to perform the ceremony of preparing a dead body for its “send off,” which is performed in front of the family. It is a practice that has largely disappeared from the big cities of Japan but is still alive in the rural areas. He of course is horrified at the very idea of working with dead bodies, but he needs a job quickly so he decides to take it but keep it secret from his wife, which works for a little while; but when she finds out she is repulsed by him, because he’s touched dead bodies. His employer and mentor on the job had told Daigo “You were born to do this.” He has begun to believe it. Since he refuses to look for other employment she up and leaves him, going to live with her mother.
His journey from an ex-cello player who performed in concerts to a master of enconffinment is fraught with doubts, upsets and gradual improvement in his craft, as it eventually connects with his artistic bent. The first body he cleans, a very pretty young woman, shocks him by having a penis; the second is an old women who has been dead for two weeks, which makes him retch; and in another case he gets caught in a family squabble about the victim’s death.
The owner of the business, Sasaki, a man in his fifties, befriends Diago and considered him his apprentice and brings him along slowly and patiently, being a very understanding mentor to the young man who never expected to be in this circumstance. He keeps telling Daigo he was born to preform this service. The owner isn’t a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, but he is soberly caring and affectionate in his fashion. He shares a meal with Daigo and tells him to remember “the living eat the dead.” He is obviously pleased with how his young apprentice treats the deceased, reverently, with grace, and utmost skill and sense of beauty and ritual. He will make the grade. Eventually Daigo sees himself as “the gatekeeper to the next stage.” As William Blake said as an old man, “Death is like moving to the next room.”
I loved the movie for dealing with a taboo subject, for its sensitivity, and for portraying the Japanese aesthetic sense, which permeates everything to one degree or another.
“Departures” is a story about an ex-cello player from Tokyo, Daigo, who returns to his hometown in rural Japan, Yamagata, to start over in the house his mother left to him when she died. His wife Mika was quite willing to leave Tokyo, or at least she tells him she is. Later we learned differently. He needs employment of course, so not long after they settle in he goes to an establishment he thinks is some kind of Travel Agency called DEPARTURES. But it turns out the owner was looking for a trainee for encoffinment, a person to perform the ceremony of preparing a dead body for its “send off,” which is performed in front of the family. It is a practice that has largely disappeared from the big cities of Japan but is still alive in the rural areas. He of course is horrified at the very idea of working with dead bodies, but he needs a job quickly so he decides to take it but keep it secret from his wife, which works for a little while; but when she finds out she is repulsed by him, because he’s touched dead bodies. His employer and mentor on the job had told Daigo “You were born to do this.” He has begun to believe it. Since he refuses to look for other employment she up and leaves him, going to live with her mother.
His journey from an ex-cello player who performed in concerts to a master of enconffinment is fraught with doubts, upsets and gradual improvement in his craft, as it eventually connects with his artistic bent. The first body he cleans, a very pretty young woman, shocks him by having a penis; the second is an old women who has been dead for two weeks, which makes him retch; and in another case he gets caught in a family squabble about the victim’s death.
The owner of the business, Sasaki, a man in his fifties, befriends Diago and considered him his apprentice and brings him along slowly and patiently, being a very understanding mentor to the young man who never expected to be in this circumstance. He keeps telling Daigo he was born to preform this service. The owner isn’t a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, but he is soberly caring and affectionate in his fashion. He shares a meal with Daigo and tells him to remember “the living eat the dead.” He is obviously pleased with how his young apprentice treats the deceased, reverently, with grace, and utmost skill and sense of beauty and ritual. He will make the grade. Eventually Daigo sees himself as “the gatekeeper to the next stage.” As William Blake said as an old man, “Death is like moving to the next room.”
I loved the movie for dealing with a taboo subject, for its sensitivity, and for portraying the Japanese aesthetic sense, which permeates everything to one degree or another.
To Kill or Be Killed
2011_6_06 Kill or Be Killed
One of the great features of NETFLIX is it helps you catch up on films you missed when they were first released. “Descending Angel” was a HBO film that was released in 1990. I have no recollection of it at all, even though it stars George C. Scott and Diane Lane, a very lovely actress. I decided to order it to check it out and I am sure glad I did but for reasons I hadn’t anticipated. It was a story that looked back at the Second World War, and it reminded me of the novel by Jonathan Littell, THE KINDLY ONES, especially the opening chapter called “Tocata,” where a justification of the Holocaust was offered by an ex-Nazi, a German Officer, who managed to blend end with population at the end of the war. The main character of “Descending Angel,” Florian Strola (George C. Scott) who made it to the U.S. after the war, becoming a very successful antique dealer, was a Romanian Nazi collaborator and a now a prominent member of the local Romanian community. He has successfully covered up his past, just like the German officer of the novel, to the degree even his adult daughter, Irina (Diane Lane), knows nothing about it, seeing him as a survivor of Buchenwald, and that’s all, which was the story he has spun to cover his tracks. But trouble comes in the form of Michael Rossi (Eric Roberts), a young man Irina has fallen in love with and who she brings home to meet her father, hoping to get his blessing. The two men do not hit it off. He then meets a bitter survivor of the camps who witnessed the truth about Florian and his Iron Guard: he actually participated in the slaughter of local Jews. The Bishop at Florian’s church opens a file in the basement of the church and let’s Rossi read it; it further implicates Florian. When Rossi finds out the truth of Florian’s background he confronts the older man who explains what he did this way: “ Things were different then. I was in a world where there were only two kinds of people, those who killed and those who were killed. You have to understand that!” But Rossi finds the old man’s attitude a moral outrage; he has no patience with the old man, as such a rationalization turns his stomach. But it is exactly the explanation offered by the German Officer, albeit with more detail and shrewdness. When I first read the justification, which was so thoroughgoing and stated with such certainty, I was blown away by it. How could the human mind be so morally wayward as to accept the conditions of the Holocaust?
For the sake of comparison with Florian here is a portion of his explanation of why he did what he did.
“What I did, I did with my eyes wide open, believing that it was my duty and that it had to be done, disagreeable or unpleasant as it may be. For that is what total war means: there is no such thing as a civilian, and the only difference between the Jewish child gassed or shot and a German child burned alive in an air raid is one of method; both deaths were equally vain, neither of them shortened the war by as much as a second; but in both cases, the man or men who killed them believed it was just and necessary; and if they were wrong, who’s to blame...I do not regret anything; I did my work, that’s all…I probably did go little far too far toward the end, but by that point I was no longer entirely myself, I was off-balance, and anyhow the whole world was toppling around me. I wasn’t the only one who lost his head…”
And like Florian, the German Officer became respectable, married, had a family and became a successful businessman in, of all things, lace manufacturing.
The rest of “Descending Angel” was rather predictable, with Florian paying a heavy price for his big lie. But the main point of the movie for me was the monstrous justification both characters offer for their actions during the war. Yet, I would not like to be caught up in a similar circumstance. How do I know for an absolute certainty that is a killer isn’t hidden inside me? I don’t. We all have to recognize this as a possibility.
One of the great features of NETFLIX is it helps you catch up on films you missed when they were first released. “Descending Angel” was a HBO film that was released in 1990. I have no recollection of it at all, even though it stars George C. Scott and Diane Lane, a very lovely actress. I decided to order it to check it out and I am sure glad I did but for reasons I hadn’t anticipated. It was a story that looked back at the Second World War, and it reminded me of the novel by Jonathan Littell, THE KINDLY ONES, especially the opening chapter called “Tocata,” where a justification of the Holocaust was offered by an ex-Nazi, a German Officer, who managed to blend end with population at the end of the war. The main character of “Descending Angel,” Florian Strola (George C. Scott) who made it to the U.S. after the war, becoming a very successful antique dealer, was a Romanian Nazi collaborator and a now a prominent member of the local Romanian community. He has successfully covered up his past, just like the German officer of the novel, to the degree even his adult daughter, Irina (Diane Lane), knows nothing about it, seeing him as a survivor of Buchenwald, and that’s all, which was the story he has spun to cover his tracks. But trouble comes in the form of Michael Rossi (Eric Roberts), a young man Irina has fallen in love with and who she brings home to meet her father, hoping to get his blessing. The two men do not hit it off. He then meets a bitter survivor of the camps who witnessed the truth about Florian and his Iron Guard: he actually participated in the slaughter of local Jews. The Bishop at Florian’s church opens a file in the basement of the church and let’s Rossi read it; it further implicates Florian. When Rossi finds out the truth of Florian’s background he confronts the older man who explains what he did this way: “ Things were different then. I was in a world where there were only two kinds of people, those who killed and those who were killed. You have to understand that!” But Rossi finds the old man’s attitude a moral outrage; he has no patience with the old man, as such a rationalization turns his stomach. But it is exactly the explanation offered by the German Officer, albeit with more detail and shrewdness. When I first read the justification, which was so thoroughgoing and stated with such certainty, I was blown away by it. How could the human mind be so morally wayward as to accept the conditions of the Holocaust?
For the sake of comparison with Florian here is a portion of his explanation of why he did what he did.
“What I did, I did with my eyes wide open, believing that it was my duty and that it had to be done, disagreeable or unpleasant as it may be. For that is what total war means: there is no such thing as a civilian, and the only difference between the Jewish child gassed or shot and a German child burned alive in an air raid is one of method; both deaths were equally vain, neither of them shortened the war by as much as a second; but in both cases, the man or men who killed them believed it was just and necessary; and if they were wrong, who’s to blame...I do not regret anything; I did my work, that’s all…I probably did go little far too far toward the end, but by that point I was no longer entirely myself, I was off-balance, and anyhow the whole world was toppling around me. I wasn’t the only one who lost his head…”
And like Florian, the German Officer became respectable, married, had a family and became a successful businessman in, of all things, lace manufacturing.
The rest of “Descending Angel” was rather predictable, with Florian paying a heavy price for his big lie. But the main point of the movie for me was the monstrous justification both characters offer for their actions during the war. Yet, I would not like to be caught up in a similar circumstance. How do I know for an absolute certainty that is a killer isn’t hidden inside me? I don’t. We all have to recognize this as a possibility.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The End od the wallader Saga
2011_5_12 The End of the Wallander Saga
In THE TROUBLED MAN Kurt Wallander, Henning Mankell’s chief detective and ace investigator, is up against a clever Navy man, a retired commander of submarines that prowled the depths of the Baltic Sea. Interwoven with this spy story and contest between wits and wills, is a lot of personal stuff dealing with Wallander: his relationship with his daughter, Linda, and Klara her baby, his first grandchild; his long-lost girl friend from Latvia who is dying of cancer; his contact with old friends and associates who help him with his case; and his neurotic preoccupation with growing old and worrying glimpses of frightening mental deterioration. He’s only 60 but he talks like he is older than that, plus the thought of death unhinges him often. He’s concerned about mental lapses, short blackouts, and persistent problems with his memory. The anxiety that these concerns bring on keeps him, when he is away from work, in a state of debilitating gloom. Living alone is no help, so he gets a dog for company. These are all traits that have been present all along with the man, but things seem more acute and moving toward a crescendo of some kind. Only when he is involved with a case do his faculties brighten and come into play and he becomes proactive, energized, moving forward and less subject to the Blues.
Wallander’s introduction to the Commander is at his 75th birthday party at his home. The two men, neither feeling very social, retreat to his study, at which time the Commander, whose name is Hanak von Enke, relates unsolicited a story about a trapped foreign submarine back in 1980, while the Cold War was still with us, that has bugged him over the years, disturbed him because he has never gotten an explanation from higher ups what happened and why it happened. Wallander doesn’t understand why his telling him about this incident but he listen and tries to remember all the details. The Commander had the sub in a position where it could not get away without detection; it was in Swedish waters and he was about to force it to surface so they find out who dares snoop in Swedish waters. But suddenly he receives word from Command Center to back off. He questions the order but they tell him to just do it and of course he obeys the command and sub gets away. Wallander notices that he seems rather nervous while he relates these events, as if he was in danger for some reason. He also catches a glimpse of a man outside under a streetlight. Could it be the house was under surveillance? The next day Hanak von Enke disappears while he is taking his morning walk. Foul play is suspected, but no body has shown up. A few weeks later his wife, Louise, also disappears and her disappearance is equally perplexing. However, a short time later her body is found in some bushes and some classified material is found in her purse in a secret compartment. The verdict is she committed suicide because sleeping pills are found at the scene. The scene doesn’t smell right to Wallander but those papers in her purse force him to consider the idea that she could have been the Russian spy. Her suspects murder but he has to wait to find out how it was accomplished.
The story of the mysterious sub back in 1980 is more a diversionary tactic than anything else to throw Wallander off the scent. Von Enke knew damn well whose sub that was and it wasn’t the Soviets. As for Wallander, as he gets sucked into the case and the more he finds out the more things are not what they seem, but he can’t quite put his finger on what is going on. But when one of the Commander’s best friends mentions a tiny island off the coast of Ystad and that anyone could disappear there and never be found. The remark was innocent but Wallander decides to check it out and sure enough the Commander is living in a cottage on the island. Another long conversation ensues. When Wallander mentions the documents found in his wife’s purse Hanak launches into a long explanation about he has suspected her for a long time. He goes into detail about his suspicions. Wallander is close to being persuaded. Hanak advises him to se a CIA Agent in Berlin named George Talboth.
Talboth, a slick 72-year-old ex-operative, backs Hanak’s story about suspecting Louise as the Russian spy. He said for years they had tried to find a female but never turned one up. But on the way back to Sweden the detective had one of his flashes, where he sees the true nature of the case. He understand he has been barking up the wrong tree, so he goes back to the island, only this time he takes Hanak’s best friend with him, a man named Sten Norlander, who he stations outside the cottage. So Kurt confronts him with his new theory. He tells the Commander the submarine wasn’t Russian; it was American and he has been a spy for them for many years because he probably felt Sweden would need the protection of the most powerful nation on earth in case of a Soviet incursion. As for Louise’s death it was murder. An ex-member of Stasi in East Germany had told him they developed a kind of poison that could be put in sleeping pills and could not be detected. It was used when they eliminated someone and they wanted it to look like suicide. He probably instructed the CIA to take care of his wife. As we all know spying is a ruthless business. Hanak went to the fridge to get a beer but when he turned around he had a gun. Before Wallander could respond he puts it in his mouth and fires. But the bullet only goes through his mouth and cheek. At this point Sten has entered the cottage. Kurt tells him to keep pressure on the wound and he’ll get help, but he hears two gunshots before he reaches his boat. He runs back and finds Sten, who had heard everything, had shot his best friend in the forehead and turned the gun on himself. End of story.
When the bodies were found there was nothing there to indicate Wallander’s presence in the room. After all he was there while he was actually on vacation. No one would expect him to be there. He spent the next 8 months putting together his final thoughts on the case. It ended up being 212 pages and he mailed it to the detective in charge of the case, who had become a friend. He didn’t sign it but he’d know who wrote it. Otherwise he saw Linda a lot and delighted in his new granddaughter. He was also aware that he was slipping toward darkness; all the symptoms were growing more intense and more frequent. Eventually Alzheimer has its way with him. He lived on to 70 but he was no longer the Kurt Wallander we had all come to know and appreciate.
I suppose Alzheimer fits with his depressive personality, but even so I wish he could have gone out in a gunfight or by a heart attack while playing with Klara out in the garden, like Brando in “The Godfather.” On the other hand I knew what was coming, as there are plenty of indications how he was going to turn out. He will be missed.
In THE TROUBLED MAN Kurt Wallander, Henning Mankell’s chief detective and ace investigator, is up against a clever Navy man, a retired commander of submarines that prowled the depths of the Baltic Sea. Interwoven with this spy story and contest between wits and wills, is a lot of personal stuff dealing with Wallander: his relationship with his daughter, Linda, and Klara her baby, his first grandchild; his long-lost girl friend from Latvia who is dying of cancer; his contact with old friends and associates who help him with his case; and his neurotic preoccupation with growing old and worrying glimpses of frightening mental deterioration. He’s only 60 but he talks like he is older than that, plus the thought of death unhinges him often. He’s concerned about mental lapses, short blackouts, and persistent problems with his memory. The anxiety that these concerns bring on keeps him, when he is away from work, in a state of debilitating gloom. Living alone is no help, so he gets a dog for company. These are all traits that have been present all along with the man, but things seem more acute and moving toward a crescendo of some kind. Only when he is involved with a case do his faculties brighten and come into play and he becomes proactive, energized, moving forward and less subject to the Blues.
Wallander’s introduction to the Commander is at his 75th birthday party at his home. The two men, neither feeling very social, retreat to his study, at which time the Commander, whose name is Hanak von Enke, relates unsolicited a story about a trapped foreign submarine back in 1980, while the Cold War was still with us, that has bugged him over the years, disturbed him because he has never gotten an explanation from higher ups what happened and why it happened. Wallander doesn’t understand why his telling him about this incident but he listen and tries to remember all the details. The Commander had the sub in a position where it could not get away without detection; it was in Swedish waters and he was about to force it to surface so they find out who dares snoop in Swedish waters. But suddenly he receives word from Command Center to back off. He questions the order but they tell him to just do it and of course he obeys the command and sub gets away. Wallander notices that he seems rather nervous while he relates these events, as if he was in danger for some reason. He also catches a glimpse of a man outside under a streetlight. Could it be the house was under surveillance? The next day Hanak von Enke disappears while he is taking his morning walk. Foul play is suspected, but no body has shown up. A few weeks later his wife, Louise, also disappears and her disappearance is equally perplexing. However, a short time later her body is found in some bushes and some classified material is found in her purse in a secret compartment. The verdict is she committed suicide because sleeping pills are found at the scene. The scene doesn’t smell right to Wallander but those papers in her purse force him to consider the idea that she could have been the Russian spy. Her suspects murder but he has to wait to find out how it was accomplished.
The story of the mysterious sub back in 1980 is more a diversionary tactic than anything else to throw Wallander off the scent. Von Enke knew damn well whose sub that was and it wasn’t the Soviets. As for Wallander, as he gets sucked into the case and the more he finds out the more things are not what they seem, but he can’t quite put his finger on what is going on. But when one of the Commander’s best friends mentions a tiny island off the coast of Ystad and that anyone could disappear there and never be found. The remark was innocent but Wallander decides to check it out and sure enough the Commander is living in a cottage on the island. Another long conversation ensues. When Wallander mentions the documents found in his wife’s purse Hanak launches into a long explanation about he has suspected her for a long time. He goes into detail about his suspicions. Wallander is close to being persuaded. Hanak advises him to se a CIA Agent in Berlin named George Talboth.
Talboth, a slick 72-year-old ex-operative, backs Hanak’s story about suspecting Louise as the Russian spy. He said for years they had tried to find a female but never turned one up. But on the way back to Sweden the detective had one of his flashes, where he sees the true nature of the case. He understand he has been barking up the wrong tree, so he goes back to the island, only this time he takes Hanak’s best friend with him, a man named Sten Norlander, who he stations outside the cottage. So Kurt confronts him with his new theory. He tells the Commander the submarine wasn’t Russian; it was American and he has been a spy for them for many years because he probably felt Sweden would need the protection of the most powerful nation on earth in case of a Soviet incursion. As for Louise’s death it was murder. An ex-member of Stasi in East Germany had told him they developed a kind of poison that could be put in sleeping pills and could not be detected. It was used when they eliminated someone and they wanted it to look like suicide. He probably instructed the CIA to take care of his wife. As we all know spying is a ruthless business. Hanak went to the fridge to get a beer but when he turned around he had a gun. Before Wallander could respond he puts it in his mouth and fires. But the bullet only goes through his mouth and cheek. At this point Sten has entered the cottage. Kurt tells him to keep pressure on the wound and he’ll get help, but he hears two gunshots before he reaches his boat. He runs back and finds Sten, who had heard everything, had shot his best friend in the forehead and turned the gun on himself. End of story.
When the bodies were found there was nothing there to indicate Wallander’s presence in the room. After all he was there while he was actually on vacation. No one would expect him to be there. He spent the next 8 months putting together his final thoughts on the case. It ended up being 212 pages and he mailed it to the detective in charge of the case, who had become a friend. He didn’t sign it but he’d know who wrote it. Otherwise he saw Linda a lot and delighted in his new granddaughter. He was also aware that he was slipping toward darkness; all the symptoms were growing more intense and more frequent. Eventually Alzheimer has its way with him. He lived on to 70 but he was no longer the Kurt Wallander we had all come to know and appreciate.
I suppose Alzheimer fits with his depressive personality, but even so I wish he could have gone out in a gunfight or by a heart attack while playing with Klara out in the garden, like Brando in “The Godfather.” On the other hand I knew what was coming, as there are plenty of indications how he was going to turn out. He will be missed.
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