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!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
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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