For a Perfect January 2021 Night Of Escape, Go On A Date With Netflix's Lupin!

     . . . . Lupin (2020) season 1. Netflix-France. Master thief, master of disguise, from the 1900’s - 1920's classic French series.  

Contemporary Lupin is a son of a Senegalese immigrant. A poor person, a person so socially inferior in every way, a person so much higher in status and economic condition.  This is where the story begins.  "... how? I was always so good to him . . ."  Until you weren't.  But that shouldn't count, should it, in the balance of the times I was good! That comes quite early in watching, and that is when the viewer knows, "This is going to be very good."

Lupin is the perfect watch for the January of These 2021 Times, as our breath continues bated, exhaling, inhaling, between a violent insurrection aimed at bringing down the country's political institutions, and the longed for inauguration of a New Day. 

I do have a sort of criticism though -- I wouldn't wouldn't ?  Like many of the elegant self-conscious series these days, Lupin too plays silly buggers with the timeline. Here though, I think the purpose of this choice was for narrative clarity and establishment of characters and relationships, plus contributing suspense. Gotta say how admirably, efficient and succinctly it was done, giving the audience the information of how Lupin and his friend with the jewelry-antique shop, who is a master forger, etc., hooked up.

Beyond that, one suspects this timeline choice had a further objective, to equip thematic content. The strongest theme emerges via the nested narratives of father-son of past, into that of father (protagonist)-son of the present, both sets being taught how to be successful from the fictional Lupin, and in the current case, the current father revenging his own father and creating justice where it previously hadn't existed. It is here that the thematic concept of Lupin-dead father-protagonist father as 'gentlemen / knights vs. the barbarians is the strongest.

Then there is the nested theme -- can hardly get more contemporary than this -- of how pop culture pervades the daily life of 'ordinary' people.  For the positive side of this, the fictional 1920's Lupin is the model for a man that Diope's father and his sone adhere to, that of the gentleman's behavior -- courteous always to women, kind to the less fortunate, and righting injustice.  The negative is when identification with a fictional figure so permeates an 'ordinary', non super, but real human being, the human being can get to a point where s/he can no longer tell the difference between that fiction and her/himself.  There haven't been enough episodes to see where this will go -- the direction of Amazon Original's The Boys, or just drop as too distracting for the audience's eye. At one point an investigator announced, "He thinks he is Lupin!"  I am not sure myself this is the case, but with only 5 episodes in this series's first season, one cannot tell.

However, again, this being a French series, there are books everywhere, and people are reading the books-- and they are talking about the books.  In this case it's mostly editions, valuable and not, of author Maurice LeBlanc's fictional Lupin of the 1900's and '20s. Whenever I encounter this common trope of French television, the characters discussing books, I am delighted.

In the end, this is a television series, So, much like Killing Eve, neither the philosophy nor the capacity of the showrunners have the scope necessary to explore such matters in depth. Though, like Killing Eve, Lupin's glossy surface charm is a positive, as the protagonist is modeled on a pop culture, bigger than life figure, (like a superhero),  a master of disguise and illusion. "Fool the audience" is the mantra, which means first, fooling the the police, and whomever else, as auctioneers and nabobs of the Louvre.

We are given much to make Assane Diop sympathetic, and smplr to show those he’s going after are cruel, evil garbage. Mr Big, who set off the trajectory of vengeance, sold arms to terrorists to blow up a French embassy – and he’s French. and he's doing it only to stay rich, not even for an ideology, toxic or otherwise.  Can’t get more scumbag than that, and ya these are the people running the world everywhere.

Lupin somewhat reminds me of Orphan Black, in the sense the actor puts on a variety of characters.  But Maslany’s job was much more difficult and thus her achievement is more so, as she wasn’t disguising a protagonist, she was being different people. But this actor is very good too, and compels our eyes to watch him as much as Maslany does.

So disappointing there were only 5 episodes, though more are coming. So is an inauguration of a new POTUS.

Martin Walker: The Shooting at Château Rock

     . . . . Thanks to the opening of the library branch's  Grab 'n Go program, I have received the very last published volume in Martin Walker's Bruno Chief of Police series, published in May (2020), #18, The Shooting at Château Rock. Chief Bruno and the fluctuating cast of St. Denis and the Périgord region have been an ongoing part of my life since the later part of June. There's no gift more desirable to reader, than the discovery of a multi-volume series in which all the titles have already been published.

I wonder if there will be any more Chief Brunos. I can see Walker successfully creating more titles in the series set plausibly in the covid-19 era. his might not be the case for every series going by any means, particularly one with as many titles and regular, established characters and relationships. In this series though, it’s not as if Europe, France and this region of France haven’t suffered dreadfully in pandemics in the past.

One of Chief Bruno's French Basset boys typical positions, requesting tummy rubs from humans they like -- especially women.  Supposedly this is the breed from which George Washington received his own pack of hunting hounds from Europe. Like the varieties of wine that pour through the Bruno novels, so dogs, horses, cows, sheep chickens, geese, donkeys,  even snakes. 

Bruno's Balzac, his second basset, at two years, should now begin his duty to continue the breed, something only Martin Walker would have thought of as part of a police tale's story? Particularly as it seems French Basset males can need some human help in getting 'er done, particularly the first time. (Which to my mind never bodes well for the endurance of a breed of anything when it needs humans to have sex.)

An earlier post brings up the large place in these books taken by agriculture at large, wine making and drinking, and the raising, cooking and eating of food in convivial circumstances.  just the châteaux of the the Loire Valley have very long been the fantasy ideal of fairy tale castles, Walker’s St. Denis of the Dordogne is a French fairyland world, in which a community retains traditional cultural ways practiced 

for centuries, where all its vastly long history exists on top, around and through the present, where so much daily life is good (not to mention delicious), a world that is carefully cared for and nourished by its officialdom top down, from mayor and wealthy residents, to, above all, its Chief of Police, who operates almost like St. Denis’s personal guardian angel. Even so, very bad things happen there.

The region is always in flux.  In past it suffered invasions since at least the days of the Phoenicians; these days it suffers -- and prospers -- by floods of outsiders, whether summer residents from England who come to stay, tourists from the entire world or day trippers from Paris. From this flood emerge an endless procession of bad guys, whether as legacy from France's colonial evils, its Nazi occupation, or new ones that have blossomed on their own, such as the Russian oligarchs. Yet, there's always a purely local connection that brings them to Bruno's St. Denis, as befits the pull of the region human beings have inhabited continuously longer than anywhere else in Europe -- and before them, and co-habiting with Neanderthals too.  Whether newly discovered Neanderthal grave sites, the Caves of Lascaux, to what is embedded in the thousands of years of eating and drinking, this is as much a cradle of civilization as Mesopotamia or the Ganges.

The EU almost functions as the highway for the very bad things' presence. I like so much that the EU is a constant reference in the book. Its rules, regulations, trade agreements. and evidently its power, at least as regarded by the residents of a rural community, is in the way of them making a living. It is almost always outsiders that are the actors for the bad events.

The series may not be the best writing or even the best series, perhaps? but it was reliably engaging, and unpredictably quirky through out. The quirks are what makes its formula feel awake, not tired.  Original, yet formulaic enough, new books could trace pathways within the pandemic as it was / is happening in France, to deepen the community's relationships, official and personal, and provide new interests and development in the characters. This isn't literature, but it is terrific story telling, keeping us coming back for more, always wanting to know more.  The reader quite becomes part of the community. If we are fortunate enough to enter into such a community, becomes a part of it, so we are always interested in our friends and neighbors of St. Denis.  That's quite a lot of accomplishment -- the author should be pleased and proud.

Andrew Lang: Our Companion for Fairy and Adventure

     . . . .  Andrew Lang, editor of the multi-volume Fairy Tale series, labeled in colors, is the subject of a piece by Michael Dirda in the WaPo (pay wall). 

Why have I never thought of Lang, the person, and his life before, when I grew up with the fairy tale volumes, reading them over and over, in order!  Great Grand Mom had them all from her days as a teacher. She brought all the books they used in her classes at Teachers College on how and what to teach in English and history classes; she bought a lot of books for her country school kids as a library for that one-room school house that had none). 

Lang had a close friendship with H. Rider Haggard. He read King Solomon's Mines in manuscript and got it published. Haggard dedicated She: A History of Adventure, to Lang.

Lang wrote a good natured parody of She, titled He. Additional jump starts to writing careers for which he was responsible were those of Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson.  He championed Mark Twain in Britain, and so very much more.

He seems a great guy with whom to have hung out and whom to have as a friend.

His lecture on advice to would-be , "How To Fail At Literature", can be found full text online and is worth reading today:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2566/2566-h/2566-h.htm

So can be read his "Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody" -- in which Catherine Moreland of Northhanger Abbey meets Jane Eyre:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1991

or 

http://www.fullbooks.com/Old-Friends--Essays-in-Epistolary-Parody1.html

These are joyeous reads.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday was Day 1 of Month 6 of isolation, as far as isolation can be maintained.

Question: What Is Imagination?

     . . . .  Arturo Pérez-Reverte believes  a novel is made of three parts: documentation, imagination and personal experience.

He defines imagination as narrative talent.

Some readers have objected to where this author's own narrative talent and his experience, plus the Muslim and Christian documents he's studied, took him with the great national hero -- who, when the Cid lived, there wasn't even an idea of a 'reconquista', much less a nation called "Spain." After all, even Charlemagne's forays into al-Andulus were mercenary jobs, fighting some Muslim states on the behalf, for pay and booty, other Muslim states.

"El Cid was a guy who, in a turbulent, bloody and uncertain territory, was looking for his life. El Cid was a mercenary!"

Then there is the place of landscape in novel creation.  Though  Pérez-Reverte didn't include landscape in his definition of the parts that make a novel, he puts landscape in the title, "Sidi Un relato de frontera."  He sees Sidi moving in a world that is a John Ford Western, which makes so much sense in so many ways.

Which further explains why there are readers who feel offended by this portrait of Sidi -- they are are rejecting what this novel is, which above all is a novelist's vision. Additionally it appears that many readers were expecting something more along the lines of the Charelton Heston-Sophia Loren 1961 film, El Cid. Sometimes readers adore a novelist's vision of a notable historical figure, as readers adore Mantel's Thomas Cromwell.  Sometimes, as with many Spanish, and Sidi, they do not.  Think of how infuriated so many people in the US were / are. when shown, in a novel, in history, and on screen, that Thomas Jefferson kept an enslaved woman as his concubine for decades, until he died, and fathered several children on her.  It's like that, among a lot of Spanish readers. Reverte tried to create a Sidi who was a real man, not the glorious myth, who has been used as a convenient channel for whichever current political mythology was in fashion at the time.

~~~~~~~~~~

     .... Going back to 'narrative talent' ... would this explain why very young children's lies so often charm and amuse adults? 

Though little children's imagination is lively and vigorous, their experience, like their documentation, is sharply limited.  Since their lies  are transparent, without documentation and experience, "innocent", we tend to enjoy them rather than judge them. Maybe this is part of what Blake was pursuing, in his Songs of Innocence and Experience?

Today's Thoughts Include Edith Wharton

    . . . . Since my first reading of Age of Innocence, accomplished long after its initial publication in 1920, but chronologically set in the author's past of 1870's Gilded age New York, Edith Wharton has  high on my personal canon of fiction that never goes stale, whatever age we are in or whatever age we are when first reading it and re-reading it thereafter.

Devouring Age of Innocence, in which the destruction is merely bitter-sweet, I turned to The House of Mirth, set in the Gilded Age, which was still in effect in 1905, when it was first published. 

O the bitterness, the waste of a life -- a talented, struggling, isolated woman's life -- the sheer awe-fullness of it, eclipsed anything I'd read up that time, other than in George Eliot.  There was nothing warm about the people of this book other than the protagonist's fire to not be what she was condemned to be.

So, these quoted words of Wharton concerning centering a frivolous, useless society in one's writing resonate magnificently in the past, the present, and if there shall be one, no doubt in the future too.

Wharton had already written books including a novel set in 18th-century Italy and a volume on interior design when she began drafting a novel set in the rarefied world of moneyed New York. The challenge, she recalls in A Backward Glance, was to find the gravitas in such a world. “The answer was that a frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys. Its tragic implication lies in its power of debasing people and ideals. The answer, in short, was my heroine, Lily Bart.”

Presently we daily witness and experience ourselves, we who aren't members in our neo-Gilded Age class of heartlessly frivolous powerful and obscenely wealthy, the destruction they wreak upon us and the planet.

No wonder Dominick Dunne, one of our own literary chroniclers of the descendants of Wharton's people and those who came and come up to elbow them aside, named his novel, Too Much Money (2009), after them.

Colette (2018)

     . . . . Keira Knightly as the title figure and Dominic West as Willy, with other recognizable Brit television actors in secondary and supporting roles.

Colette's an old-fashioned period piece Hollywood big movie featuring two internationally recognizable faces, playing recognizable celebrity faces of the time, expensive, slick and glossy.

    Emphasis on celebrity. The author and her husband, and the infamous Claudine books (1900 - 1904) she ghost wrote and Willy took the credit for (and all the very significant profits, which he threw away profligately on race horses, the gambling tables, wine, women and song), were indeed all the rage when they came out. Yet these celebrity sequences seem more like now than then, yah?

As usual with historical drama, it's rather too clean and flat in panorama, mise-en-scène and close-up to be convincing (no broken down horses pulling public hacks, no manure in the streets, no bad teeth).  As Colette and Willy are writers, and writing is not a dramatic moving, action act, we have lots of tasteful noisy sex instead.

This viewer found the all-British cast and production hilarious, as everyone speaks in posh Brit English, but, when they write, we’re shown French pouring out of the nib, voiced-over in the posh English. 

Further hilarity ensues due to Dominic West as Willy, who is best known for playing Usian Baltimore detective cad-to-women, McNulty, on The Wire, and lately, for at least 4 seasons, the Usian novelist cad-to-women, Noah Soloway, on The Affair. Another point of hilarity is the current Poldark’s Demelza’s actor, Eleanor Tomlinson, playing bisexual sex scenes, in one of the worst so-called Southern accents evah – she’s supposed to be from New Orleans. Brit actors always murder Southern accents, seemingly not even understanding that there are very many different Southern ways of speaking. (Personal unpopular opinion -- Tomlinson's Demelza annoys the heck outta me. So far there's been no indication that Tomilinson can act, whether in period Agatha Christie's Ordeal By Innocence (2018), or on Poldark or in Colette.)

Points in favor of the flick: if not provocative of thought, it's gorgeous to look at; Knightly impresses with her non-body double or stand-in lengthy action scenes that involve a variety out of the standard repertoire of theatrical skills, from miming to dancing; Knightly is more convincing -- despite not being believable for a second as a 17-year-old - as a fin de siècle, Gilded Age figure than she was as the Georgian era title character, in The Duchess.

    ....(Colette eventually goes on the stage after leaving Willy, traveling music halls and theater throughout France, many of them ramshackle and many a gig that doesn't pay much more than for wine and cheese. This is part of her biography, but the film makes it look far less grueling and impoverished than Colette's own testimony, and those of others, inform us.)



    .... (Knightly was as wrongly cast for that one as Winona Ryder was in Scorsese's Age of Innocence, her Gilded Age flick -- though Michelle Pfeiffer was perfect as the USian Polish Countess-by-marriage -- Knightly even looks like Winona Ryder in this. Her body type did not conform in any way to the fashions as they were, nor did her body language, just as Ryder's did not.)

(2008)

Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day Lewis, Age of Innocence (1993)

Colette’s life in truth was messy, unlike this adult coloring book of luxe La Belle Époque France movie, which is splashed as “true feminist story!” Nor was Colette particularly feminist.  So much of her fiction, despite the bisexual frissons, was about women victimized by, sighing, dying for love – love of a male cad.

   



... (Her Chéri novels were a refreshing exception to that, as it is the young lover infatuated with an aging, retired courtesan is the one who dies for his love. The 2009 film, Chéri, centering one of my favorite to watch actors, Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea, the exquisite, retired courtesan from the days of les grandes horizontals, whom Chéri cannot grow beyond, is exquisite in all the right ways, faithful in tone and attitude to the novels.)

MIchelle Pfeiffer as Lea, Chéri, 2008

It was a holiday yesterday, but still the theater held a respectable number of audience members.  The variety of the audience was interesting: lesbian couples of various age cohorts; young hetero couples (one of whose male half kept getting up and coming back, disturbing everybody in lumbering oafish style for extended periods of time going and coming -- even clanging metal -- what? ); and a surprising number of young male-male couples, though these I had no way of knowing whether they were gay or not, and single young fellows.

The conversation in the line for the ladies room after the showing was disheartening due to the enormous amount of misinformation being bandied about as fact about Colette and her work.  I seem to have been the only one there possessing solid grounding in her life and the period she lived in, and the only person who had actually read her work.

A last point of hilarity: in the ladies room line, it was being repeated from the closing epilogue text verbatim, that "Colette was the most important woman writer in France. She changed fiction forever."  

This book, this edition, is still on my shelves.

This book is still on my shelves too.  I re-read it again, just last year.

I kept hearing Simone de Beauvoir's outrage. I recalled her gleeful, merciless dissection of Colette's helpless, hapless feminine dependency on having the love of a man, of being in love, in order to have meaning, significance and identity,  especially in The Second Sex (1949). This, though in many ways, hilariously, hers and Colette's novels have much more in common in this area than Beauvoir herself realized: so much doomed love, clothes making the woman, intellectual and creative and sexual rivalries as they contain. The difference though, is that Beauvoir’s stand-in in her autobiographical novel, She Came To Stay (1943), Françoise, literally, with her own hands, kills off her rival for Pierre’s devotion.  Perhaps Beauvoir believed Colette earned her condemnation by being too femininely weak to do the same . . . .  Actually, She Came to Stay is period novel I'd love to see turned into a film.

Hurricane Irma - Hurricane Jose On Her Heels + Reading Wednesday

     . . . . Hurricane evacuation looks to be in our (near) future.  This morning's models show the trajectory of Category 5  Hurricane Irma has again changed eastward, to head straight up the Atlantic coast.  This could very well include us.  But it's too early to know.

Computer models showing Hurricane Irma's projected path on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017. (Photo: tropicaltidbitscom)

This is the strongest Atlantic hurricane in the history of tracking Atlantic hurricanes.

Cuba is in the middle of the Caribbean portion, but they know how to do hurricanes there. (El V is supposed to be in Havana 9/20 through 9/24 for the WOMEX Etc. Cuba Conference.)

Maybe Hispaniola  will be just further enough on the northern side to not get creamed.

But Puerto Rico, dear, battered, broke Puerto Rico . . . . 

As with Florida (and Houston) we have so many friends about whom we are intensely worried. E-mails and phone calls have been flying back and forth, particularly among friends who have children who recently graduated and have begun their first jobs, have just moved, to say, for instance, Miami and Orlando.  Some have moved back to Cuba.  Others have joined other relatives in Puerto Rico.  To one and all, el V says, "Get them out of there, NOW!"

Everybody within the Atlantic coastal regions should be thinking of their own hurricane plans right now, not next week.

I wonder where we will go, if / when we need to leave.  We've been discussing possibilities for several days already -- and that was when Irma was still small, though already strong.  Now she's grown, and is stronger too.  Needed to take into consideration as to whether to go or not, is that NYU's classes began yesterday.  So -- cancel class or stay with the idea that we get only a glancing blow and the university as a whole will remain open?

Tropical storm Katia on the far left, Irma in the center, followed by Jose on the right.

Hurricane Jose is on her heels, likely to follow the same track as Irma.

And Katia is clobbering Veracruz and eastern Mexico, where we are supposed to be in a few weeks.

     . . . . I did read two more novels.

First, Brian Freeman's appropriately titled Season of Fear (2014) (and appropriately read while again experiencing the Season of Fear myself), set primarily in the present of Tampa, on Florida's Gulf Coast -- during a the approach and hit of a hurricane.  It features cops, investigators, thugs, politicians and their dirty tricks, oppo research and old murders. It moves as a fast as an approaching storm for which one is not prepared. It's also a joy to read fiction (and watch television and films) set in such a location in which there are a variety of latinos in prominent roles -- and not all of them Cubans --  with nothing made of these matters of fact. This is the second of Freeman's books to feature detective Cab Bolton: extra-ordinarily tall and attractive, and very well off because his mom, recently retired, was a very successful film star of the old-school sort.

The second novel read happens to have been the second Vera Stanhope in the crime series by Ann Cleeves, Telling Tales (2005). Unlike Cab Bolton, however, as we all know, while Inspeactor Vera Stanhope isn't the child of a glamorous movie star, her series has become a television star., one that I very much enjoy.  In her second vehicle, as in the first, Vera doesn't show up until quite some after the narrative gets going, and again, as in the first, she is introduced to the reader through the eyes of one of the several protagonist - narrators for the first time. Unless the reader is already in the know, the reader knows no more than the novel's characters who Vera is at that time -- but they will learn, up close and personal.  Whereas this is only the 4th Vera Stanhope I've read, I have read all her Shetland murder mysteries featuring Detective Jimmy Perez (also an excellent television series).  In both series Cleeves pulls off what cannot be easy -- several pov-protag-narrators -- including Vera herself.  However, these early Veras faintly show the signs of what becomes Cleeves the writer's besetting sin, which is most visible in the later Veras and too many of the Shetlands: she takes far too long to set-up, and this reader anyway, starts to grumble about how dull looking at peat under grass and wind and sky for 20 pages can be. However, in these first two Veras, things move along briskly from the first paragraph until the last.  And what one will appreciate most in these, as with all of Cleeves's novels, the reader will not guess who did it until Vera does.

     . . . . Non-fiction

I am engrossed by Stark Mad Abolitionists: Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle Over Slavery in the Civil War Era (2017) by Robert K Sutton, former chief historian of the National Park Service.  This is the first historical study I've read of the Kansas-Nebraska battles, that is dedicated only to the who, what and why in this long trajectory of violent terrorism that opens the War of the Rebellion.  The anti-slavery actors in these years, other than the martyr, John Brown, or the CSA-abetted criminals, Quantrill, Colter and the James brothers, tend to be forgotten.  But figures such as Amos Adams Lawrence and Eli Thayer are more than worthy to be remembered for their own heroic dedication to making anti-slavery the fact of the Territory.  Not only did they sacrifice their health -- they gave up their fortunes to make Kansas a free soil state.  As the pro-slavery actors were who they were, this is also a shoot 'em up, which the bad actors such as Quantrill and Jesse James did not give up even once the War of Southern Aggression was over, so to speak, making this another memo showing us that even the shooting part of that war was not really over when 'peace' was declared.

Five Best Selling Novels

     . . . . It must be summer all right.  I've read 5 novels already, and August still has 8 more days to go!

The historical fictions first . . . .

Martha Conway. (2017) The Underground River. Touchstone, New York.

Set on the Ohio, 1838, in a Floating Theater, featuring a seamstress, who finds herself by helping enslaved people escape from Kentucky to Ohio. The problem, however, is this is 1838, deep into the Panic of 1837. Van Buren is POTUS, inheriting  the consequences of Andrew Jackson’s ignorant, thus destructive economic policies, which the concentrically related conditions he created plunged the USA into the deepest and longest economic depression in the constant cycle of boom and bust economy of the country until the Great Depression of 1930’s. By 1837 - 38, businesses of all kinds, great and small, in the US and abroad, particularly England, from banks to leather shops are failing and have failed everywhere.  There is no, none, nada, credit to be had by anyone, except the very few richest individuals in the country. 

So then this reader cannot help wondering how these poor people along the Ohio River between Kentucky and Ohio find the bit of coin to pay admission to the Floating Theater, which isn't even a steamboat, but a barge? How in the world does the Floating Theater on such margins already, keep going? 

From the Ohio History Connection -- 

. . . .  In Ohio, many people lost their entire life savings as banks closed. Stores refused to accept currency in payment of debts, as numerous banks printed unsecured (backed by neither gold nor silver) money. Some Ohioans printed their own money, hoping business owners would accept it. Thousands of workers lost their jobs, and many businesses reduced other workers' wages. It took until 1843 before the United States' economy truly began to recover. . . .

IOW, the author did a lot of research into many areas, which show up delightfully in her pages, but missing are the economic milieu of the period, which should be crucial to the story she wants to tell -- slavery is always about economics.

This is too bad for this reader, let me emphasize, as everyone else who has read and reviewed this novel appear to have never even heard of the Panic of 1837. But for this reader, this knowledge flowed constantly into the story, creating a great deal of interrogation of character and storylines. The book's characters are for the most part are interesting and vivid.  But this lack of inclusion in the story of this crucial event of the 1830's and 1840's showed equally vividly the author's contrivances, which resulted in a sense of the plot becoming almost glib and as nearly as flimsy as the scenery of the plays presented by the Floating Theater.

It also got this reader recollecting Edna Ferber's Showboat (1926). which was anything but flimsy.  It is set during in the post-bellum era of the Gilded Age.  Every shiver in the economy, every part of racism,  affects the people working on the floating theater steam boat, The Cottonblossom, over the three generations of the characters in this substantial work of historical fiction. 

Linnea Hartsuyker. (2017) The Half-Drowned King. HarperCollins, NY.

Cold climate fiction 9th century Norway, which this reader looked forward to, as the perfect book for that very hot, polluted and humid first week of August.  

Enthusiastically positive review in the historical fiction sections.  Multiple foreign rights sales.

This is first of a trilogy set in the same sort of chronotype as Nicola Griffith’s Hild.  This is the author's first novel since retiring from tech and achieving an MFA from NYU, thus the author isn't yet as skilled as Griffith.  The first sections are somewhat muddy slogging, as the reader attempts to locate where, when and why.  This is made more confusing by sudden switches in protagonists and their limited 3rd person point of view.  The novel  improves about half way through, just about where this reader was going to jettison it. 

The novel's titles are different in different countries.  Seeing the title for the Dutch version perhaps explains some of my initial difficulties with the novel, trying to figure out who and what it was about.  We open with the brother, Ragnvald, so one tends to think he’s the ‘real’ protagonist (and nothing changes one’s mind about that as the book progresses).  But the sister, Svanhilde, gets pov as well --  except when they are in scenes together we get them from his pov.  But the title in Dutch is De Legende Van Swanhilde -- so is Svanhilde the actual protagonist?

I’m guessing at least one of these two siblings will be in Iceland in the second volume.


Sarah Perry. (2016) The Essex Serpent. Serpents Tail – UK / HarperCollins, NY.

Set between January through November in a single year of the late Victorian era, this is a 'literary' historical fiction, which received glowing reviews in all the venues that review such fiction. For this reader though, the various parts do not connect thematically, and did not meld via the laborious and labored metaphor of the serpent of the title.  This serpent writhes throughout the text in the guise of several visions: prehistoric, i.e. scientific of the real, material world, superstition of the infernal, mystical vision of the divine, creative impetus of the imagine. These and more meanings of the serpent cycles into the consciousness periodically of the people who live in a village upon the Blackwater River in Essex, close to the sea. 

For someone who has read enormously in the great century of Victorian fiction, the characters felt as lesser shadows of all the Victorian characters we already know -- particularly those out of historical fiction -- rather than original figures in their own right.  Except they are given to thinking as if they are no different from thos who in the 21st century, which is how the author has taken pains to tell her readers they are not.  There is an exception of one of the peripherals, Naomi Banks, a motherless child with a hard drinking fisherman father.  It's her story that is the interesting one, but we don't get much.

This reader got very impatient before the end arrived.  The book felt about 60 pages too long, and it felt as though nothing amounted to much at all -- which is perhaps where it is like so many people alive today?

Contemporary fiction . . . 

Don Winslow. (2017) The Force. HarperCollins, New York.

Police thriller suspense in New York City, glowing reviews, hailed frequently as "the perfect beach read." This reader naturally then expected it to be perfect for hot humid summer nights, of which this month there have been many (with respites, thank goodness!) 

But what it did it feel like was one of those grey and dreary, interspersed with violence of weenie-wag over testosteroned New York City types from the later part of the second decade of the 21st century. However, the protag keeps telling us we're on the mean streets of  present day NYC, though, naturally, mostly we're in the supposedly still Fort Apache neighborhoods of uptown baby and the 'jects and kingpin drug dealers of heroin . . . . 

Narrated from the strictly limited point of view of the leader of the narcotics special forces protagonist, it sounds like something written no later than the last decades of the 20th century, with that hardboiled consciousness and narrative tone that was common for such fictions.  Never fear, however, the pages are well laced with whinings about how unfairly the cops are regarded and treated by those they keep safe -- while they, particularly the protag -- committing one hideous crime after another from stealing and dealing and getting big moola by selling the drugs they take from the criminals -- not to mention spending sprees with the most expensive hookers going, and other infidelities to wives and families who are too protected and selfish to understand their special pressures. 

This reader did not like this book, so skimmed from the middle to the end.  At least protag dies. He dies, moaning, "All he ever wanted to be was a good cop."

Julia Glass. (2017) A House Among the Trees. Pantheon – Penguin USA / Random House. New York.

Ta -Dah!

This one is by far the winner of  this reader's August's fiction reading. Despite the NY Times's snarky review by David Levitt, this reader gobbled Glass's novel down in two long nights of reading, from first word to the last word.  Levitt does concede that though he despised the novel yet it was pleasing enough that one reads happily to the end -- and yes, not only does this novel provide a happy ending, but it provides several happy endings, all skillfully and plausibly wrapped together, rising out of who the multiple characters are. 

Other reviewers have observed that if one likes Australian novelist, Liane Moriarty's books, and I do (the recent HBO series, Big Little Lies, was adapted to Malibu from one of her books) one might well like this novel too.  But ultimately this reader doesn't see that they have much in common. For one thing, it's about the world of children's publishing.  But Glass gets in so many threads of our current entertainment media, including computer games, movies and television, biking, and even museums. 

It was almost like having another of Sue Miller’s splendid novels from the 90’s, (her first novel, The Good Mother, was published in 1986) when she was at the top of her form. Miller's the more graceful writer by several percentage points, but Glass's novel moves even more effortlessly than Miller's, which means I shall look out for Glass's previous novels.

Will I get in another novel before August melts into September and the fall's crazy schedule, including traveling to Cuba and to Mexico, kicks in? These last few weeks, as hot and unpleasant in some ways as they've been, have been the most relaxing I've experienced in years. It's kind of like being on vacation.  Books are good for that too.

I Read Books, Wednesday, Thursday, Who Cares? + The American Slave Coast

     . . . .  As I'd hoped, I did manage before July finished, to have read the 18th century Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York. (2016; published in US in 2017 )set in post Dutch, pre-Independence  1746 NYC, by the Brit author, Francis Spufford. The novel has been praised by literary lights and is --

WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD
WINNER OF THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 
WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
NAMED “NOVEL OF THE YEAR” BY THE UK’S SUNDAY TIMES

I should have liked Golden Hill better than I did, it having so much of my stuff in it, from colonial NYC, politics, class, finance, race, slavery.  Not to mention that there is more than a little modeling of the novel from the famed 18th century fictions of  Fielding, and the set piece illos of Hogarth. 

However, the stumbling block for this reader was that Tabitha, an obligatory female interest - conflict was unnecessarily unpleasant, mean and nasty, though very smart and competent.  Why was capable, talented Tabitha such a bitch, hmmm?  Just so she can be the narrator decades after the adventures, regretting and opining upon the events of the in her early life when this stranger, Mr. Smith, from London shows up in York (not yet called 'New' York, but York City) with an order that he be paid a thousand pounds in cash (cash hardly exists in the colonies, even among merchants and money changers). The author's choice entirely, to make her mean. It's his imagination.  Argh.  There is a twist, of course, for the picaresque Mr. Smith, which I shall not reveal -- despite me not necessarily buying into it.  Again, this is all the author's choices, which feel arbitrary, not imaginative.  But maybe this is just me.

     . . . . Golden Hill made a whole six novels read last month, more fiction than in a long time.  I do confess, however, that more nights than not while reading Golden Hill I put it down in favor of my re-read of amigo Ted Widmer's biography, Martin Van Buren (2003)  (my goodness, I just recall it was either July or August 2003 when we attended the publication party for it on the upper West Side, and our hosts' daughter was not able to partake of the festivities, but had to stay mostly in her room, having been discovered recently infected with Lyme Disease), from The American Presidents Series, General Ed., Arthud M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Martin Van Buren's birthplace. 1782, outside Kinderhood, NY.

As seen on this map, Kinderhook was a splendid spot in which to have a tavern, located on the post road to Albany.  So, though Van Buren's father wasn't a wealthy man (particularly compared to the old Dutch patroons), he was doing far better than those who weren't patroon, which included owning  nine slaves.

The astonishing life of Mr. Van Buren, born to a Dutch family in New York, in the middle of the War for Independence, the first President of the United States not to have ever been a British subject, really happened, and ultimately felt so much more interesting than those fictional figures of an imaginary "old New York."

     . . . . In the meantime, in the midst of mind-boggling cascades of derangement out of D.C. and across the country, we were informed that the audio CD package of The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-breeding Industry, had not only earned out, but earned royalties!  Boggled again, but this time in a good way.  It was only made about a year ago, and out some time after that.  As it is not inexpensive and it's a lot of hours, one rather presumes these were mostly library sales?

Wednesday in July Is For Fiction

     . . . . I may have read more fiction this month of July than in all of 2015 - 2016 and the first half of 2017 put together. 

This means novels that I started and read straight through, completing them to the last page.  I pick up a lot of fiction and give up on the book by the end of the first chapters, as well as many others where I get about half or two thirds through and quit due to do not care, and also, why is this so much longer than it needed to be? 

So July's fiction reading is much more than usual, that’s for sure.  Staying home alone during the brutally hot, polluted and humid 8 days that el V was off to hot and humid Cuba, and feeling physically crummy is probably responsible -- that, and maybe some novels I wanted to read.  

Brookmyre, Christopher. (2016) Black Widow.

Right after finishing this novel, which I'd picked off the shelves without any prior knowledge of either the book or the author, I learned Black Widow was just won the UK's Crime Writers' Association Golden Dagger award for 2016.

Nerd pop culture references all the way through, which gets wearing and doesn't wear well for readers of the future. The investigator of the mystery, and primary narrator is really too old for this stuff, so it was annoying as hell.  But since many of the other  characters were nerds and young and live in that culture I kept page turning / reading, until fairly close to the end I got all too familiar sensation that comes with trying read fiction, which is "Isn't this over yet?????" -- "gads, this is at least 50 pages too long!" --  so skipped to the end to find out who did it and why. Spoiler alerts! 

SPOILER CONTENT HERE

The conclusion was disappointing: two rich sibs caught in flagrant incest, cut out of the money by their outraged father, had concocted an elaborate plot to fake a murder, create a false identity for the sake of a life insurance policy and getting married in France.  But they needed to find a woman who would be plausible as a husband killer to take the rap. She is subjected to gaslighting to the highest degree. It this character, a brilliant women who is a surgeon, that kept me reading almost all the way through. It was fine, except for the incest. 

SPOILER CONTENT ENDS

Pop culture / nerd culture, you bet he does GOT too.  Feh.  He and his ending let me down, as endings so often do.

However the following books all have satisfying endings.

Cleeves, Ann (2016) Cold Earth.

The latest of her Jimmy Perez Shetland series.  It was slow-going, particularly in getting going, in an almost exact replication of the first Jimmy Perez - Shetland Islands book I read. In fact, the location is where the first one took place even. This in an on going problem in almost all of her Shetland books. though not in the television adaptations.

One of the many pleasures I receive from reading Cleeves (she's the author of Yorkshire's Vera Stanhope novels too -- the first one of which, The Crow Trap, originally published in 1999, I finally got to read last month!  And it was the very best of the Vera novels I've read so far), is how different the television series are from the books.  Both the Vera and Shetland tv series are among my big watching pleasures.  These provide good lessons in how to adapt successfully from print to screen. The first lesson, may well be the most important -- the casting makes all the difference, and when it's perfect, the visual adaptation may well be more compelling than the print, without being in the least faithful to the plots or even who the characters are -- but then television has its own rules, which may not be necessary for the page.  As said, an education in writing.

French, Tana; (2008) The Likeness.

I’ve read all of Irish writer French’s novels almost as soon as they were published in the US, except this, her second one.  It was involving, though the pretext, that divine, insulated group of college kids who are interested only in each other is rather more than tired. But so talented a writer as French (rather like the great talent that was Daphne Du Maurier for our age)  did something fresh with it. The problem, though, is is that they really aren’t kids, and don’t even feel in the early 20’s. So how does this undercover female detective protag manage, since, even though older than the 'kids', still her experience seems too deep for her early 30’s, as she says she is, even though she supposedly looks a lot younger.

But hey, it’s hot, I read in the bed, with the a/c cranked until deep into the night.  I turned the pages compulsively. This passed the hours most agreeably until I could relax enough and sleep while el V was in Cuba.

Leon, Donna (2016) The Waters of Eternal Youth: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery. 

Venice is drowning in tourists and their crap, immigrants, the mob and general corruption of everything.  But still, despite everything being online these days, the Commissario and his family continue to read the classics and eat the most wonderful meals at least three times a day.

Rankin, Ian. (2016) Rather Be The Devil.

Rankin's hard drinking, chain smoking, 60's rock and roller, rule breaking, ass kicking, Scott's cynic Rebus is retired from Edinburgh's police force. It's all caught up with him after many books in the Rebus series.  He's not smoking, but coughing disgusting crap with a shadow on his lung, trying to cut back on drinking.  But he’s still dueling with Big Ger, frustrating Siobhan Clarke and everyone who cares for him, but going to the center of what has happened in the past that has bled into the bloody present. Another change in Rebus --  the proverbial lone wolf detector, he's one of three -- and actually cooperating as much as Rebus can cooperate with them. This means the narrative provides additional povs beyond Rebus's in this convoluted case, which is about – what exactly? The disappearance of a banker, who seems to be connected to all sorts of nefarious financial deals, drugs, gambling, homicide – and, well, not Russians, but Ukrainians, laundering money in and through Scotland. But then Rankin's Rebus has never about the case, really, but about the wild ride he takes you on..

In the end, again, Rebus's nemesis, and in these later novels, now at least a frenemy, if not friend, Big Ger Cafferty’s back, old as he is -- as old as Rebus, but he's not over the hill yet, any more than is Rebus. But Rebus has learned to work with others, as much as Rebus can: Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke, and the male officer promoted and moved over her, to international crime, Malcolm Fox. They all get what they want. Further, Rebus still has his girlfriend from the previous book, Deborah Quant, who works post mortems for Edinburgh, has since the last book acquired a dog named Brillo – and he’s lost weight.  Neither Big Ger nor Rebus are anywhere near down for the count yet, and they glory in it -- and that they have both proved they are both still at the top of their intersecting game.

It was good reading for a hot and humid July weekend in NYC.

Today the weather is splendid, a perfect July summer day.  There's enough July left that I may be able to get in yet another novel.  Tonight I begin an historical set colonial Manhattan of 1746. I've been looking forward to this one. 

Spufford, Francis (2017) Golden Hill.

 If I am able to finish this one (it's not long) it would make a grand total of six -- 6 -- novels, I read this month!

Shame on HBO -- Morally and Historically Reprehensible

     . . . . The same untalented, ethically, socially and historically ignorant sexist and racist team that brought you limitless gratuitous graphic scenes of female nudity, rape and torture to HBO via Got, now presume to bring the the same, now set in an 'alternate' historical time line in which slavery remains legal because the CSA successfully seceded.

Just for that latter, a "successful" secession has Andrew Jackson spinning in his monument.  He didn't squash Calhoun, South Carolina and Nullification in 1832 for morally bankrupt 21st century media to make it entertainment.  See the Nullification Proclamation By Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, to South Carolina, here.

NY Time pay wall so the url rather than a link is provided:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/television/hbo-confederate-game-of-thrones.html

     . . . . In any case, the south couldn't have successfully seceded because Lincoln and many coalitions behind  him wouldn't allow it. As Jackson knew, neither division would have stood long before England and France picked both of them off. As it was during the first three years of the War of Southern Aggression a faction in both England and France did their best to help this along.  Also because the whole point of secession was to provoke a war with the non-slavery forces so the slaveocracy could then take over the entire nation -- they didn't want to be left alone with their peculiar institution.  Their objective was to aggressively force their peculiar institution upon all by the force of arms.  There is a reason that the U.S. Civil War's official name in the government records is "The War of Southern Aggression."

So Grant whipped Lee's army, and the CSA melted because it was essentially nothing but the Army of Northern Virginia, never a functioning nation. If you don't believe me, read some contemporary

military histories of the Virginia campaign by military historians, such Crucible of Command, and Lee's Army. Among the reasons the CSA was never a nation is that the CSA power elites didn't believe in government in the first place, and couldn't work together any better or effectively than the people in the White House right now do. 

Killing black people at whim with impunity, raping black women anywhere anytime at whim without repercussion, raping black children without even being socially ostracized, torturing and incarcerating at will, using as unpaid labor black people who are prisoners of the entire slavery system, in an what has to be (speaking from historical evidence), an all white country, since slave labor makes immigration unattractive if not downright impossible, since color-coded slave labor fills all the labor slots from housekeeping, to hair stylist to mechanic, to street cleaner, miner, etc . -- in our current climate in which lynch nooses and random, arbitrary of killing of African Americans and threats to do so happen all the time -- can anyone with any sense of artistic talent and social conscience really think this thing which didn't happen and couldn't have happened is a good thing for popular entertainment and the nation? 


This is the height of irresponsibility, as a member of our civic, economic, social and political polity. Media and entertainment does shape all these matters.  Historical accuracy, even in entertainment, is civic responsibility. Ask the  historic slaveocracy that blamed Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin for the Civil War.

Shame HBO and everyone involved, shame, shame, shame.

Reading In the 18th Century - Public and Participatory

     . . . . In 18th century England and Europe, with the technological innovations in what was still the rather new-fangled printing press technology books became available commercially to anyone who could afford them.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, self-taught scholar and poet of New Spain (Mexico).

No longer was reading for pleasure, inspiration or information limited to  academics and churchmen with access to archives and libraries, or exceedingly wealthy individuals who could patronize poets, scholars and historians, and buy expensive hand-written manuscripts and the finely crafted tomes.

Though the price remained out of reach for poor people, the rapidly expandng middle-class could easily afford books. Even those who served the middle-classes were able to acquire reading materials for fun and instruction.

Still, candles remained expensive, and so did fuel for fires.  Many people's vision was too poor to read for themselves in such dim light -- and it would be only at night they could find an hour for themselves.  So it was the most natural thing in the world that along with the flood of commercial reading materials came the practice of reading aloud in groups.

Abigail Williams has presented us with a lively account of the vastly popular activity of reading aloud in The Social Life of Books.  

Williams, who teaches at Oxford University, explains that from the vantage of our own age, saturated as it is with entertainment and information, “it is hard to imagine the excitement felt by previous readers at the possibility of gaining access to a new book.” 

.... In the pages of his magazine, the Spectator, Joseph Addison commanded that culture come “out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and in Coffee-Houses,” and it did. 

Review of The Social Life of Books here.

She explains how reading became something of a “spectator sport.” Of course, as with any type of performance, one had to be properly prepared, and this led to a surge of instructional manuals, further fueling what Williams designates “the great age of elocution,” in which Britons of all backgrounds were gripped with “a near obsession with learning to read out loud.” Tradesmen formed what were rather memorably known as “spouting clubs” for aspiring public speakers, relying on such handbooks as “The New Spouter’s Companion” and “The Sentimental Spouter.” Women, who very often found themselves omitted from public performances, quickly took to them in the home, entertaining friends and family with tales and poems while they knitted or otherwise busied themselves around the hearth.

One of the reasons this reader particular enjoyed Abigail Williams study of books as a popular social activity is because it brought back vividly my first ideas of reading aloud, entertainment, instruction and novels went together naturally.  It was an illustration, of a servant girl by the kitchen fire, reading aloud to the rest of the household staff, the latest installment of Samuel Richardson's Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded.

In the Book of Knowledge's history of literature section, it was carefully explained to the young reader how important reading and novels were in instructing the poorer, less educated classes in morality and social behavior. Pamela was the paragon of virtue that all young women should model themselves on.  The most important lesson of all that Pamela taught poor young girls who served in more prosperous homes that at all costs she must preserve her chastity from the household men who all would set siege to corrupt her from the paths of virtue.  But if she followed Pamela's example she would not only preserve her all important good reputation -- she may well marry the son of the house and become the lady of the house, no longer a servant.

I have looked and looked in vain for an 18th century illustration that shows a young servant girl reading aloud by kitchen fire light to her gathered sister - fellow servants, but have not found one. That illustration must have been commissioned by The Book of Knowledge staff for that section.

It seems that in the 18th century when servants congregated together below stairs, out of the view of their employers, the lower household orders did nothing that interested the popular press illustrator other than drinking and generally roistering upon their masters' substance.  Which reveals even more about the popularity among servants for reading aloud together 'improving' literature.

Alexandra Silber's Upcoming Novel Tells of Life 'After Anatevka'

     . . . .  This novel, which tells the story of Fiddler on the Roof's Hodel, Tevye's daughter who chooses to follow her the radical socialist lover, Perchik, to a work camp in Siberia instead of immigrating out of Russia with her family. It's one of the most heartbreaking moments in theater history, or so it is to me, who let us not forget, doesn't know much about theater, and is generally uninterested in musicals.  But Fiddler on the Roof is one of those exceptions.

Information about Alexandra Silber and her need to write this novel here -- in her acting career she has played the roles of both of Teyva's daughters.

Silber picks up  Hodel' story when she arrives at the work camp.  It's brutal, as these things were.

This is a novel I wish to read, even though Kirkus, among others, have been fairly snooty about it.

The New York Times wrote about this last year (pay wall, so here's the full url)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/books/for-fiddler-actor-turned-novelist-a-journey-from-stage-to-page.html