At first, I thought The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver was a bang-up book. I even mentioned that to the woman who recommended it for the September book club selection when I ran into her at the grocery store on Thursday. The farther I went into the story, the less I liked it: both for its blatant left-leaning stance and for its being padded with fictionalized fan letters and newspaper clippings referencing the main character Harrison Shepherd. When I was liking the book, it was retelling the story of Frida Kahlo's stormy relationship with Diego Rivera. I loved the movie Frida with Salma Hayek. Even though I knew the course of events with regard to Leon Trotsky, I liked Kingsolver's rendition. I guess her forte is all things Central American. She makes Mexico tolerably acceptable.
I have learned to be cautious of male authors with female leads and vice versa. Kingsolver mitigates this uncomfortable voice by making Harrison gay and aloof and the teller of the tale, Violent Brown, a sexless widow almost a score older than Harry. I read a review on the Internet today that compared Harry to Zeligman or maybe Forrest Gump, there when historic and unpleasant things were happening in America and either not understanding them or falling within their trap. Once the story ventured into the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, it lost me.
Kingsolver's ur-message was too blatant in this choice of topic. It would have been more interesting had Harrison not committed suicide and lived another 20 or 30 years to interpret both the media's and government's new messages. The 50's were no worse, just different from today. Tom Cuddy, Harrison's assignation heralds Mad Men and political spin doctors.
From a book club's vantage, it will be interested to focus a discussion on the distance between an artist and his / her work and the danger of that opus being interpreted by "officials."
I also finished a murder mystery, really more pulp noir novel called Galveston, a book written last year by Nic Pizzolatto. Like the Ripliad, this book does not satisfy my craving for social justice. The main character, after serving 13 years in Angola prison, after killing many while being hounded himself by the shady underworld characters he associates with, supposedly finds redemption by explaining a mother's death to an abandoned child twenty years later, just before he either succumbs to the ravages of lung cancer or the devastation of Hurricane Ike. Nothing I would recommend to the aging Nancy Drew gang.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
Off to Award-Winning Books -- Goodbye Passion
Am I ready to admit that the 2011 list of books has been cast aside, maybe for good. Yes, there are several more left without a corresponding check off date and even a couple that have been on library-reserve for months, but it is no longer seducing me.
So desperate for substantial themes to read, I looked up nominees and winners for Man Booker, National, et cetera awards. The first I finished is The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant, short listed for Man Booker in 2008.
It is the story of Hungarian refugees. One brother, a quiet unassuming jeweler with a mousy wife, living in a flat with eccentric neighbors. The story is narrated by his daughter, Vivian. The other brother skirts the law and eventually ends up imprisoned for being a slum landlord. Vivian, anxious to learn about her family history, maneuvers into becoming his scribe as he dictates his memories in Eastern Europe and London.
As a literary conceit, Grant does not use the metaphors of clothes as disguises or conveyors of social status heavy-handedly. Only the title reminds the reader to look for such references. Instead, rather quickly, the novel focuses on what it means to be dislocated and how that trauma effects not only the émigrés but their families for generations. Vivian so describes her parents:
“… Logic. Which nobody in my family had ever considered to be a trait worth cultivating or a methodology with any discernible purpose to it. You operated on instinct and emotions, mainly fear and cowardice. Principles were for other people, the kind who had sideboards and cut-glass decanters and documents with their names on that nobody in a uniform could quibble about. They were a luxury, like fresh flowers in vases and meals out in restaurants; you could aspire to be one day the sort of person who had the status and disposable income to afford principle, but the foundations of your existence were distrust and, if you were endowed with brains, cunning.”
The nest her parents constructed admitted no outsiders, and allowed contact with the world only to the extent that they left the news on when they were afraid that turning the set off after the game shows were over would cause it to go dead. Vivian grows up like a frail root-bound violet, escaping only to attend a second or third rate university, where surprisingly she meets her husband when he rushes into the bathroom when she is lolling smoking a cigarette soaking in the tub. The tall thin son of a vicar, he admits to marrying her to beef up his gene pool. Poor Alexander dies on their honeymoon and rather than falling back into the trap of her parents’ apartment, she goes to live in one of her uncle’s buildings.
This transition of her life into a rootless young widow, coming mid-point in the story is the most obvious play on the title:
“ … It was very hard in those days to stay up all night in London, you had to know where to look to find the young vampires … I was apprehensive. I didn’t know how to behave or dress … Looking back over that summer, I remember almost everything I wore. I can recount my whole wardrobe, but this night is a blank. I changed and changed and changed until the bed was piled with discarded clothes, mountains of silks, crepes, velvets, belts, scarves, high-heeled shoes, jeans, bell-bottom trousers, bras and knickers. Deep uncertainty about what to put on has wiped clean the memory’s slate and what the final choice was.”
So she is introduced to the edgy counterculture of London’s youth in the 70s, with its threatening skin heads, so reminiscent of the terror in Hungary in 1956. The threat of paramilitary thugs against the weak is compounded with the introduction of Vivian’s uncle’s girlfriend who is a Black woman from Wales who works in a chic boutique selling designer clothes. Eunice, more than Vivian, believes her outward perfect appearance is her ticket to social acceptance.
I am left with a sense that Grant used the perfect double-entendre title for it is not about disclosing or hiding oneself using apparel, but what it is like to be strangers in a strange land who had escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Done With Ripley
Although I did read them out of order, I finished my last Mr Ripley “murder mystery” today – The Boy Who Followed Ripley – which was actually the fourth of the Ripliad, coming before Under Water. Highsmith wrote about her protagonist over a period of thirty-six years, constituting a time line where Ripley held true to his talented traits, continuing to kill with blunt instruments and witnessing suicides and accidental deaths always near water. Maybe others have delved for symbolic meaning, but I do not feel up to it, or even interested.
As the Ripley saga matures, Highsmith endows his victims with baser qualities, connections to criminal activities themselves whether art forgeries, kidnapping or the Mob. Somehow, this might lead a reader to decide Ripley’s murders are more justifiable. Others could conclude that through his associates, he is lured into executing his proclivities towards the use of violence.
Ripley becomes “heroic” only because he encounters incompetence in his pursuers, indifference in his victims’ survivors and indulgence in his wife. Although not quite as unsettling as Ripley’s Game where he orchestrates the corruption and demise of a neighbor, in TBWFR, he tries to allay the guilt of a teenager who killed his father, initially as coldly and without apparent motivation as Tom’s youthful murders. Tom wants Frank Pierson to shed his guilt, enjoy his family’s wealth and get on with his life. Like Ripley, Frank’s family does not believe him guilty and the only person who does, like most of the characters Highsmith populates the Ripliad with, is made out to be unstable and unbelievable herself.
There will never be a Sherlock Holmes or even Columbo antagonist to bring Ripley to justice. His charm will forever cover his depravity and greed. A reader looking for an uber-theme has to focus on the concept of justice and retribution. One is left to question how comfortable it is to live in a world wherein the scales are not balanced all of the time. How ironic that I was reading these books during the trial of Casey Anthony acquitted in the murder of her three year old daughter. Will Casey become rich from writing her own “If I Did It” book? Will she revert to her partying days? Marry? Ever birth another child? The wisdom of the crowd calls for her punishment, as do those who get to know the fictional Mr. Ripley.
As the Ripley saga matures, Highsmith endows his victims with baser qualities, connections to criminal activities themselves whether art forgeries, kidnapping or the Mob. Somehow, this might lead a reader to decide Ripley’s murders are more justifiable. Others could conclude that through his associates, he is lured into executing his proclivities towards the use of violence.
Ripley becomes “heroic” only because he encounters incompetence in his pursuers, indifference in his victims’ survivors and indulgence in his wife. Although not quite as unsettling as Ripley’s Game where he orchestrates the corruption and demise of a neighbor, in TBWFR, he tries to allay the guilt of a teenager who killed his father, initially as coldly and without apparent motivation as Tom’s youthful murders. Tom wants Frank Pierson to shed his guilt, enjoy his family’s wealth and get on with his life. Like Ripley, Frank’s family does not believe him guilty and the only person who does, like most of the characters Highsmith populates the Ripliad with, is made out to be unstable and unbelievable herself.
There will never be a Sherlock Holmes or even Columbo antagonist to bring Ripley to justice. His charm will forever cover his depravity and greed. A reader looking for an uber-theme has to focus on the concept of justice and retribution. One is left to question how comfortable it is to live in a world wherein the scales are not balanced all of the time. How ironic that I was reading these books during the trial of Casey Anthony acquitted in the murder of her three year old daughter. Will Casey become rich from writing her own “If I Did It” book? Will she revert to her partying days? Marry? Ever birth another child? The wisdom of the crowd calls for her punishment, as do those who get to know the fictional Mr. Ripley.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Two More Ripleys Done
Now all that is left is The Boy Who Followed Ripley which I started last night. Read Ripley's Game out of sequence, after I read Ripley Under Water. Will review them however in chronological order. Ripley's Game is most unsettling. In Ripley Under Ground, Highsmith played with layer upon layer of false identities; here she introduces a pyramid of men each and all looking to find an agent to perform a criminal act so as to avoid being personally guilty of murder. Who is more guilty: Ripley for suggesting Trevanny to Reeves or Reeves for asking Ripley to find him some unsuspecting innocent to kill a couple of Mafioso looking to take over illegal gambling in Hamburg?
Is Trevanny less guilty in accepting the "job" because he is terminally ill with leukemia or because he is motivated to provide an inheritance for his wife and son? There is a review quote on the front of TBWFR from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that expresses my thoughts most clearly: "Highsmith skews your sense of literary justice, tilting your internal scales of right and wrong." Coincidentally, when a co-worker mentioned he saw John Malkovich as Ripley in RG and asked me whether I thought Ripley was a good guy or bad guy. I immediately said "bad," especially as in this novel, he entertains himself by using Trevanny as the hit man.
Later that night, I was mentally comparing Ripley to James Bond. Both pile up bodies, live high, and suffer no lasting consequences of their violent acts. But Bond has a license to kill ... Ripley acts exclusively out of self interest, to maintain a high society life style. His veneer of financially endowed well breeding is his cover for being a sociopath. His neighbors and fellow townsmen all seem to ignore the coincidences and rumors that surround his life. To quote: "Tom ... was aware of his reputation, that many people mistrusted him, avoided him. Tom had often thought that his ego would have been shattered long ago -- the ego of an average person would have been shattered -- except for the fact that people, once they got to know him ... and spent an evening, liked him ..." Only Madame Trevanny at the conclusion of the book expresses the readers' appraisal: she spits on him ... but then she doesn't go to the police, preserving her own husband's reputation and the ill-gotten gains that permit her to move out of the small village and move up in social standing.
On the other hand, Ripley Under Water seems to me to be the most contrived of Highsmith's plots so far. While it ties back to Ripley's dumping Murchison's corpse in a nearby canal, his victim from Ripley Under Ground, the character of David Pritchard who comes to France to dredge the waterways for his body seems to have dropped in with no clear motive or cause of justice. Pritchard and his wife are perceived by Ripley as low class almost hippie Americans, completely unworthy opponents. They are so beneath him intellectually, that his doesn't even have to dirty his hands killing them; there greed makes them self-destruct. It was not suspenseful, merely a bridge between others in the series, marking time.
In the meantime, I've squeezed in some movie nights and afternoons, finally finding The King's Speech perchance on the library shelves, despite being 182 in line on the reserve list. I liked it but not as much as the Hollywood hype lead me to expect as well as elevator talk at work. A bigger surprise and enjoyment was Nowhere Boy, the late teen years of Lennon as he grows into music. Excellent performances and engaging story.
Is Trevanny less guilty in accepting the "job" because he is terminally ill with leukemia or because he is motivated to provide an inheritance for his wife and son? There is a review quote on the front of TBWFR from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that expresses my thoughts most clearly: "Highsmith skews your sense of literary justice, tilting your internal scales of right and wrong." Coincidentally, when a co-worker mentioned he saw John Malkovich as Ripley in RG and asked me whether I thought Ripley was a good guy or bad guy. I immediately said "bad," especially as in this novel, he entertains himself by using Trevanny as the hit man.
Later that night, I was mentally comparing Ripley to James Bond. Both pile up bodies, live high, and suffer no lasting consequences of their violent acts. But Bond has a license to kill ... Ripley acts exclusively out of self interest, to maintain a high society life style. His veneer of financially endowed well breeding is his cover for being a sociopath. His neighbors and fellow townsmen all seem to ignore the coincidences and rumors that surround his life. To quote: "Tom ... was aware of his reputation, that many people mistrusted him, avoided him. Tom had often thought that his ego would have been shattered long ago -- the ego of an average person would have been shattered -- except for the fact that people, once they got to know him ... and spent an evening, liked him ..." Only Madame Trevanny at the conclusion of the book expresses the readers' appraisal: she spits on him ... but then she doesn't go to the police, preserving her own husband's reputation and the ill-gotten gains that permit her to move out of the small village and move up in social standing.
On the other hand, Ripley Under Water seems to me to be the most contrived of Highsmith's plots so far. While it ties back to Ripley's dumping Murchison's corpse in a nearby canal, his victim from Ripley Under Ground, the character of David Pritchard who comes to France to dredge the waterways for his body seems to have dropped in with no clear motive or cause of justice. Pritchard and his wife are perceived by Ripley as low class almost hippie Americans, completely unworthy opponents. They are so beneath him intellectually, that his doesn't even have to dirty his hands killing them; there greed makes them self-destruct. It was not suspenseful, merely a bridge between others in the series, marking time.
In the meantime, I've squeezed in some movie nights and afternoons, finally finding The King's Speech perchance on the library shelves, despite being 182 in line on the reserve list. I liked it but not as much as the Hollywood hype lead me to expect as well as elevator talk at work. A bigger surprise and enjoyment was Nowhere Boy, the late teen years of Lennon as he grows into music. Excellent performances and engaging story.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Ripliad
Our face to face book club is on summer hiatus. At the June meeting, several of us suggested we just meet showing our true reading addictions -- mystery novels. Blog buddy mentioned she'd like to read The Talented Mr. Ripley and maybe double header the group get together with the movie. No date was agreed to, but off I went into the wealth of Patricia Highsmith.
Finished TTMR over a week ago, and the movie, as I recall it, holds remarkably true to the novel. If anything, Ripley comes across as more swarmy, a very high functioning sociopath. What surprised me was that TTMR was the first of five Ripley-centered novels Highsmith wrote. Finished the second in the series published fifteen years later, Ripley Under Ground. These books are well-written page turners and I could hardly wait for Tom to kill his first victim and construct his rationalization and sit back for his alibis to successfully acquit him.
RUP has Tom involved in art forgeries. The theme of being something that is not appears everywhere in the plot line. As well as the artwork being faked, Tom and another character maintain disguises, both pretending to be the long-dead forged artist Derwatt. Now Tom has garnered a couple of slightly awry accomplices: the unexplained wife Heloise and Reeves who uses Tom to convey incriminating tapes.
Highsmith does not follow the standard murder mystery formula: Tom is not brought to justice. He is not a likeable rogue; she portrays him as a cold-blooded opportunist with a dandy's demeanor, hungry for the finest trappings life affords. Can't wait to finish the other three.
Finished TTMR over a week ago, and the movie, as I recall it, holds remarkably true to the novel. If anything, Ripley comes across as more swarmy, a very high functioning sociopath. What surprised me was that TTMR was the first of five Ripley-centered novels Highsmith wrote. Finished the second in the series published fifteen years later, Ripley Under Ground. These books are well-written page turners and I could hardly wait for Tom to kill his first victim and construct his rationalization and sit back for his alibis to successfully acquit him.
RUP has Tom involved in art forgeries. The theme of being something that is not appears everywhere in the plot line. As well as the artwork being faked, Tom and another character maintain disguises, both pretending to be the long-dead forged artist Derwatt. Now Tom has garnered a couple of slightly awry accomplices: the unexplained wife Heloise and Reeves who uses Tom to convey incriminating tapes.
Highsmith does not follow the standard murder mystery formula: Tom is not brought to justice. He is not a likeable rogue; she portrays him as a cold-blooded opportunist with a dandy's demeanor, hungry for the finest trappings life affords. Can't wait to finish the other three.
Summer Escape Movies
The past few weeks, I have been neither scholarly nor dedicated about reading or even watching movies, only marginally adhering to the 2011 lust list theme. Last night, did an old chick flick, the 1991 Oscar- nominated Prince of Tides -- mainly because I remembered the story was written by Pat Conroy, not for any movie idolatry of either star, Nick Nolte (before we knew he was a drunk) and Barbra Streisand at the acme of her NYC Jewish princess cycle. The movie is so old that Blythe Danner is Nolte's wife, but she still evidences the source of Gwenyth's acting ability and good genes.
And yes, the story is about adultery and Nick leaves NYC and returns to his wife and three daughters in South Carolina. Conroy writes of violence and repression and has a wonderful subplot of what it took Nick/Tom's mother to claw her way to social prominence whereas both Blythe and Barbra are credentialed doctors. Nick seems to have inherited his mother's dissatisfaction with life and it is only after another family crisis and a time of reaffirmation coaching Barbra's son, that he can re-center. I was going to say when I started writing about Conroy that most of his characters are portrayed as worthy. Even Barbra's cheating, taunting husband has passed his musical genius on to their son; Nick's mother, despite her greed and cultivated false facade, has made him resilient and sturdy.
In contrast, last week I watched Swept Away by Lina Wertmuller, that is the original 1974 version in Italian, not the remake with Madonna (I can't even imagine). Yes, the male lead slaps his women around and the sex with the wealthy woman he becomes shipwrecked with is at times rough. Funny, I remembered that I saw the movie before not during those scenes of sex on the beach, but when Giannini is in the phone booth at the end of the movie trying to convince Mariangela not to return to her husband. So how do I stretch a comparison of these two films? At the end of each, both are couples are back with their wedded partners. The movie-viewer is left to imagine which marriages will last, be happy, or even be improved from the adulteries. In my mind, Nick fares the best. Although he pines for a parallel life in NYC, he has matured and returns to an intact, functioning family where his wife's infidelity itself only was a call for attention. Barbra might lose her post-coital smile but she is left with her career and probably significant alimony. Mariangela's class identification and lust for money prevails ; her interlude of passion occurred only because of timing, place and crises. Comfort and status are restored and her previous posture and politics readily resumed. Giannini, too, seems to revert to his class surprisingly to a wife who has the innate talents to hold her own with his machismo.
Finally, a comment about both films having been directed by women (Streisand did hers). Although Prince of Tide is a stronger narrative thanks to the talents of Conroy, Barbra's version seems to women's movement dominant to me, with the heroine successful in terms of outer appearances and status symbols. Wertmuller's subliminal message is European class distinctions and the dance of their interactions and envies. Both cover themes in ways that are not nostalgic despite their releases 20 and 40 years ago.
And yes, the story is about adultery and Nick leaves NYC and returns to his wife and three daughters in South Carolina. Conroy writes of violence and repression and has a wonderful subplot of what it took Nick/Tom's mother to claw her way to social prominence whereas both Blythe and Barbra are credentialed doctors. Nick seems to have inherited his mother's dissatisfaction with life and it is only after another family crisis and a time of reaffirmation coaching Barbra's son, that he can re-center. I was going to say when I started writing about Conroy that most of his characters are portrayed as worthy. Even Barbra's cheating, taunting husband has passed his musical genius on to their son; Nick's mother, despite her greed and cultivated false facade, has made him resilient and sturdy.
In contrast, last week I watched Swept Away by Lina Wertmuller, that is the original 1974 version in Italian, not the remake with Madonna (I can't even imagine). Yes, the male lead slaps his women around and the sex with the wealthy woman he becomes shipwrecked with is at times rough. Funny, I remembered that I saw the movie before not during those scenes of sex on the beach, but when Giannini is in the phone booth at the end of the movie trying to convince Mariangela not to return to her husband. So how do I stretch a comparison of these two films? At the end of each, both are couples are back with their wedded partners. The movie-viewer is left to imagine which marriages will last, be happy, or even be improved from the adulteries. In my mind, Nick fares the best. Although he pines for a parallel life in NYC, he has matured and returns to an intact, functioning family where his wife's infidelity itself only was a call for attention. Barbra might lose her post-coital smile but she is left with her career and probably significant alimony. Mariangela's class identification and lust for money prevails ; her interlude of passion occurred only because of timing, place and crises. Comfort and status are restored and her previous posture and politics readily resumed. Giannini, too, seems to revert to his class surprisingly to a wife who has the innate talents to hold her own with his machismo.
Finally, a comment about both films having been directed by women (Streisand did hers). Although Prince of Tide is a stronger narrative thanks to the talents of Conroy, Barbra's version seems to women's movement dominant to me, with the heroine successful in terms of outer appearances and status symbols. Wertmuller's subliminal message is European class distinctions and the dance of their interactions and envies. Both cover themes in ways that are not nostalgic despite their releases 20 and 40 years ago.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
This Time, He Dies: To Be Sung Underwater
At the half way point of 2011, I guess I should assess my efforts so far on the lust list. It has not been all that I'd hope for ... including the latest novel, To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal. A bit reminiscent of The Last Time They Met, we have two middle aged people trying to reconstruct the passion of first love. Judith has her summer of Willy Blunt just before she leaves for Stanford from Nebraska. Willy marries her best friend Deena and Judith marries Malcolm. (I think the names have a subconscious, or not so hidden, class elitism implicit in them). Willy remains a carpenter, Judith an unfulfilled screen editor. Her boredom at work, her inability to connect with her daughter and her aloof husband who may or may not be having an affair, all contribute to her withdrawal from social engagements ... actually hiding out in a self-storage space with the furniture from Nebraska.
The stored bedroom set reminds her of the lazy summer afternoons of lovemaking with Willy and she hires an investigator to track him down, not difficult as he hasn't really moved. She calls, he says to come immediately.
Yes, all the key elements of passionate love are ticked off but rather formulaically. Rather than a lost love theme, I am left with the uber-theme of "what directs your life." Judith was already plotting her adult life out before she was legacied into Stanford. Malcolm appeared as the ideal husband to execute her plan. However, Judith also heard the chides of her mother along with the muted success of her father. She ends up as cynical about marriage and mothering and the book concludes with her living as before by default.
No, I wouldn't recommend TBSUW; but then again none of the R-rated French movies I'm watching appeal to me lately either. Rather than getting charged up from film or novels, I go to work happiest when I've seen a doe and her fawn in the yard followed by the rampant rabbits ... when I find two pair of jeans and two tees on sale for $42, total ... when I make three batches of kale chips ... when I read how my son and his fiancee didn't want to head back home after their visit. Yes, I am as restless as Judith; queasy at work, worried about my health, wanting to do something out of my normal boundaries. But I promised myself that over the summer I will live fully in the moment, the moment being my definition of pleasurable comfort.
The stored bedroom set reminds her of the lazy summer afternoons of lovemaking with Willy and she hires an investigator to track him down, not difficult as he hasn't really moved. She calls, he says to come immediately.
Yes, all the key elements of passionate love are ticked off but rather formulaically. Rather than a lost love theme, I am left with the uber-theme of "what directs your life." Judith was already plotting her adult life out before she was legacied into Stanford. Malcolm appeared as the ideal husband to execute her plan. However, Judith also heard the chides of her mother along with the muted success of her father. She ends up as cynical about marriage and mothering and the book concludes with her living as before by default.
No, I wouldn't recommend TBSUW; but then again none of the R-rated French movies I'm watching appeal to me lately either. Rather than getting charged up from film or novels, I go to work happiest when I've seen a doe and her fawn in the yard followed by the rampant rabbits ... when I find two pair of jeans and two tees on sale for $42, total ... when I make three batches of kale chips ... when I read how my son and his fiancee didn't want to head back home after their visit. Yes, I am as restless as Judith; queasy at work, worried about my health, wanting to do something out of my normal boundaries. But I promised myself that over the summer I will live fully in the moment, the moment being my definition of pleasurable comfort.
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