THE STREET PHILOSOPHER

HISTORICAL FICTION: THE STREET PHILOSOPHER – Matthew Plampin/Harper Collins (London) – 2009

This thoroughly engrossing historical novel ultimately turned out to disappoint. 

THE STREET PHILOSOPHER begins at the dawn of the Crimean War with the arrival of illustrator Robert Styles, dispatched from London’s Courier publication.  He is to round out a press trio comprised of the veteran correspondent,  Richard Cracknell and his associate, Thomas Kitson. Kitson is new to the post of war correspondent, having previously handled art criticism in London.  He was selected for his descriptive style.  He had great admiration for his senior’s aggressive style in obtaining information.  The Irishman Cracknell was a colorful character: rotund, fond of drink, women and good at obtaining information at the camp and on the battlefield.

Styles arrived at the preparing battlefield on a steamer, along with Mrs. Madeleine Boyce, the wife of Lt. Commander Boyce.  It was obvious that Styles was quite taken with the beautiful young Madeleine.  It was also obvious that Cracknell had taken an immediate dislike of Styles, wondering why his publication had picked this rather delicate artist to help cover the war.  We soon learn that Cracknell is having a passionate affair with Mrs. Boyce.  While Kitson was busy describing the gory details of the war and Styles depicted the gruesome scenes, Cracknell brazenly wrote pieces meant to discredit the pompous, egotistical and incompetent officers and demeaning the dreamy Styles.  As Cracknell’s pieces became more and more controversial, the Courier sold more copies.  He was becoming a celebrity.  The muckraking Cracknell was particularly anxious to discredit Boyce and Capt. Wray, both proving to be scoundrels.  It was most helpful that Cracknell was bedding Mrs. Boyce.  Not only did she detest her husband for his abuse, but was willing to share any information she could with her lover.  She’d only stayed in the Crimea because she was desperately in love with Cracknell and he fed that romance for his own purposes.

We are taken through horrendous battlefield injuries, poor decision making and the spread of cholera.  Kitson is increasingly alarmed about the mental state of Styles.  He is totally fixated on his gory  drawings and Madeleine Boyce.  He tries to convince Cracknell to send the troubled young man back to England.  Instead, Cracknell continues ignore him.  As the British and French armies progress in the direction of Sebastopol, the ever-vigilent Cracknell looks for ways to uncover the evil deeds of Wray and Boyce.  He notices that in the midst of battle, that Wray is given a note, summons Boyce and he leaves  in the opposite direction of the battlefield with two soldiers in tow.  Cracknell gathers Kitson and Styles and they follow him.  They arrive at  what is the country home of the Tsar.  It seems unoccupied.  They wind up in the kitchen and find they are not alone.  An obvious Russian accent is heard.  He is in the company of Boyce,  and the two soldiers who are standing guard.  Hiding, the journalistic trio listens carefully.  The Russian is unlocking a cabinet and heading to the basement.  He comes back with what appears to be a painting.  Kitson, the former art critic recognizes the painting as Raphael’s Pilate Washing His Hands,considered lost for centuries.  This is a priceless treasure!  Boyce kills the Russian and one of his soldiers.  He keeps the other one,  who is rather feeble-brained, as his personal assistant.  He leaves the scene with the treasure hidden in a cart.  He doesn’t realize there are further witness, the most prominent of which is just aching to exact monumental revenge.

Using Madeleine and other intelligence, Cracknell knows that Boyce will need an intermediary to get the art treasure back to England.  As predicted, Boyce summons rising industrialist Charles Norton to the Crimea.  He knows he can turn the greedy Norton into a war profiteer for his purpose of smuggling.  Norton is given lucrative contracts and tasked with carrying out the art.  He readily agrees.

As the battles drag on, the three employees of the magazine follow the campaign.  Styles is far gone.  He has beaten off a Russian soldier by shooting him.  Kitson again asks that Styles be sent home, to no avail.  At this point, Cracknell exposes Boyce and Wray in print.  This creates a scandal at home and with a letter to the editor anonymously written by Boyce, Cracknell is fired and Boyce is promoted.  The fires of revenge are burning in Cracknell. 

 

In a particularly difficult battle all three are cornered injured.  Cracknell wanders off with his injury but Kitson and Styles are dispatched to the makeshift army hospital.  Cracknell is now on a freelance campaign against his enemies.  He lingers in the Crimea as the war winds down but keeps away from the battlefield.  Kitson, thinking that Styles has been sent home, stays near a port city to heal his wounds.  He works as a nurse there and is happy in his new role.

When Kitson gets word that Styles is still in the Crimea, he knows the erratic young illustrator is in grave danger.  He is no longer afraid of killing or even dying.  Kitson goes back to the field in search of Styles on the front lines.  He finds him there.  What he doesn’t know is that Styles was in what was Cracknell’s former tent and viewed and illustrated what was clearly Cracknell and Madeleine having sex.  Styles died in the battle and Kitson’s dislike of Cracknell turned to hatred.  A soldier who hated Boyce circulated the drawings around the camp.  Cracknell got wind of this and seized the illustrations.  He enlisted the soldier who hated Boyce the most virulently and made sure that they got to Boyce.  Boyce more than suspected the affair, but when he saw the very detailed drawings, he went into a rage and killed his wife, blaming it on a Russian intruder.

Kitson returned to England, but knowing he was a witness to Boyce’s crimes, settled in Manchester.  He took a job on a minor publication, he kept a low profile as a gossip columnist.  Therein comes the title.  This position was called Street Philosopher in that era.  He prayed that he would just be left alone.

All characters came together in Manchester, including Norton.  The plot thickens as Kitson falls in love with Norton’s rebellious daughter.  Cracknell is driven by revenge and hires thugs to kill both Wray and Boyce and to undermine the wealthy and criminal Norton.

Plampin has a fine writing style interspersing the Crimea and Manchester and brings his experience as an art and culture expert of 19th Century England.  He engages the reader by making him or her weigh the motivations for truthtelling.  One has to evaluate whether the better man is Cracknell for getting the back story out or Kitson in his artistic verbiage but not engaging the powers that were as Cracknell did for his own purposes.

My major criticism of the book is that Plampin didn’t take a moment, prior to the story, to explain the factors leading to this war.  All we really learn is that there is an alliance between England and France to fight Russia.  We aren’t even told who won this war.  I was not happy to have to research this on my own.  Here’s what I was able to glean from a history professor who wishes to remain anonymous:

“The Crimean War grows out of the Great Power Game and the balance of powers established after the Napoleonic wars.  Within that game, as one power ‘grew’, the configuration became ‘unstable’–it’s kind of a plate tectonics theory of what foreign affairs are about.  The ‘growing’ power was Prussia.  And others were declining–most notably Austria/Hungary.  Then there was all kinds of debate over what made a country ‘strong’–population?  economic development? getting colonies?  foreign trade?  And how did you assess your power and the power of others?  The site hints at some of the considerations–Russia wanted access to the Mediterranean and was viewed as a potential ‘threat’.  I think the whole game was dangerous, and eventually came crashing down in World War I.  I don’t know anything about why Britain and France decided on such a pre-emptive strike, what they hoped to gain from it, and I haven’t followed the literature–I’m sure there are people making careers out of exploring the diplomacy.  

“As now, diplomacy has very limited use, and distracts from real things (water, pollution, starvation) but elites go on playing these games.  (And is it possible to stay out of them?  That was/is the issue of ‘isolationism’)  The Great Power Game is often called ‘realism’, as played by Bismarck and Kissinger and Brzezinsky.  I think A.J.P. Taylor wrote the old classic book on the diplomacy up to world war I, but could be wrong on that too.  I guess Plampin doesn’t have diplomats as characters; maybe he thinks the game is absurd, or maybe he thinks that his audience would know what it was ostensibly about.”

 

 It could be that Plampin wanted to keep this as vague as possible so we would apply this appalling war to an overall observation of the futility of war.  I think this missing information is really necessary (and I’ve written to the publisher to convey my message to Mr. Plampin);  otherwise, this is just another compelling story which happens to be set in war and you can fill in the blanks.  Plampin DOES inform via an end note that there is no such painting as Pilate Washing His Hands.

It’s  sad that Plampin didn’t incorporate Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”, written in 1854:

The Charge Of The Light Brigade

 By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

 

Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854

 

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d ?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter’d & sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FROZEN RIVER

FILM:  FROZEN RIVER/2008

  

If you love hardscrabble reality, you’ll find this indie a gem.  The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008, FROZEN RIVER exposes us to the almost-impossile fight for survival in a trailer-park wasteland (Messina, New York) near the river that separates the state from the Canadian border.  We come face to face with Ray Eddie (Melissa Leo) in extreme closeup.  She is middle aged and looks like forty miles of bad road.  The collector has shown up for the balloon payment which would have brought her family one step closer to a new double-wide trailer.  The money had been there for the payment, but Ray’s husband is missing and so is the money.  Left with two boys to support, she realizes that  her husband has resumed his compulsive gambling and the money is gone.  She goes in search of him at the Mohawk bingo parlor, finds out that he is not there, but sees his car being stolen by an American Indian woman, Lila Littlejohn.  She follows Lila to her humble camper and demands the car back.  Lila refuses and is threatened by Ray at gunpoint.  When Lila hesitates, Ray shoots into the camper.  Lila now says that she has a buyer for the car and can get $2,000 for it.  The buyer, however, is across the frozen river in Canada.  She claims that this is in Mohawk territory on both sides of the river and they are not subject to U.S. law, that business is conducted in this way all the time.  When they get to the Canadian buyer, however, the deal has changed.  The “buyer” tells Ray to pop the trunk and two illegals are to be smuggled into the United States.  Outraged but needy, Ray agrees and collects the money and delivers the illegals to the other side.  Lila has no qualms and this is just a business transaction for the women.  Ray is assured that as long as a white woman is driving into the U.S., they will not be challenged.  This turns out to be true.  Although the due date for the balloon pay ment is past due, Ray rushes to the sales trailer with the payment in hand and arranges for delivery.  She returns to her part-time job at a dollar store and asks to be put on full time.  The manager refuses.  She still needs money for her family.  With visible resignation she goes back to Lila for another ‘job.’  Lila has problems of her own.  A very young widow, Lila’s mother-in-law has taken possession of Lila’s baby and she needs to accumulate money to make a decent home for her child in order to reclaim her.  Ray has set aside her distaste for breaking the law.  She is just too desparate.  On this particular trip, though, she is upset to learn that she is smuggling a young Pakistani couple with a duffel bag.  She balks, remembering 9/ll and clinging to her instinctive patriotism.  The duffel bag is placed in the backseat, the Pakistanis are in the trunk.  As they travel across the frozen river, Ray worries that the duffel bag might contain explosives or poison gas.  She insists that they stop and leave the bag on the ice.  When they get to the Pakistani-managed motel, the money is paid and the couple emerges from the trunk, they realize that the left duffel bag actually contained a baby.  The couple is frantic and Ray and Lila realize that they must go back to the place where they left the bag.  Lila examines the baby and it appears dead.  She seems aloof, dispassionate, but Ray is frantic.  She starts administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but seemingly to no avail.  Since Ray is driving, she demands that Lila hold the child.  Reluctantly she does so.  After a couple of minutes, she realizes that the baby is alive.  Both mothers are bonded momentarily in the amazing realization.  On the way back into the U.S., though, Ray is pulled over by a trooper.  Both women are terrified, but are relieved to learn that the pullover was merely for a burned-out tail light.  They return the baby  to the overjoyed parents.  Things go downhill at this point, though.  The same trooper shows up at Ray’s dilapidated trailer on Christmas morning.  He’s there to advise Ray that her Mohawk passenger is a smuggler.  Ray claims that Lila has merely done some babysitting for her.  I won’t spoil the movie’s ending, but must say that it is very pragmatic and touching, without being saccharine.

 

The screenplay is written and directed by Courtney Hunt.  In our disastrous economy it is harder to feel smug superiority to these women.  The reality is getting closer that we might have to walk a mile in their shoes. 

THE MISSING PERSON

FICTION:  THE MISSING PERSON/Doris Grumbach – G.P. Putnam’s Sons – 1981

This is a finely crafted, raw, emotional book, chronicling the unfortunate life of a Marilyn Monroe-like character.  Grumbach has a long, distinguished career in fiction and non-fiction, especially writing about gays and lesbians.

Starting in the 1930s, we become intimately involved with the details of a child and young woman (Fanny Marker) starting out in Utica, New York.  Her mother is resentful of her very existence and treats her harshly.  Mom has a long series of unsavory boyfriends living in their squalid apartment.  Fanny retreats to the movies and fan magazines, creating an alternate universe for herself.  Knowing that she is unusually beautiful, she pictures herself as a screen goddess.  One day, while her mother is at work, she is savagely raped by her mother’s current boyfriend.  Fanny goes inside herself to her protective fantasy life.  Eventually she runs away.  Working in a Utica hotel, she hangs around the lobby and starts to pick up men for sex.  She experiences no pleasure from the act, but it reinforces her only commody, as a beautiful sex object.

Fanny winds up in New York, finds an agent and Fanny has emerged as Franny Fuller.  It doesn’t take long for this newly packaged silver screen goddess to become the object of every male fantasy.  Somehow, people notice that this vulnerable, beautiful creature with her dazzling smile, sexy whisper of a voice and platinum hair is a mass of contradictions.  She marries a famous football player, retreats into her secret world, and becomes very clingy and needy.  The young, unsophisticated jock is being eaten alive by Franny’s neediness.  They divorce.  Franny has become a blank slate, ripe for whatever a devouring public would like her to be.  She starts to disappear, running off to seedy Hollywood bars, dressed in ragged, dirty clothing, needing badly to bathe.  Then she resurfaces as the screen goddess.  Her emotional episodes are overtaking her.  She is considered undependable and difficult in her studio commitments.  But driven by her box office potential she is put up with and has achieved superstar status.

She meets Arnold Franklin, the poet and playwright in New York.  The Jewish intellectual falls instantly for the goddess.  He proposes and they marry.  Now in a world of very educated literary heavyweights and skilled actors, she continues to question her self worth.  Beauty only goes so far.  She thinks she needs acting lessons, but never follows through.  The couple moves to Los Angeles where Franklin is totally miserable.  He can’t deal with everything Hollywood and is at a loss to keep looking for Franny after each disappearance.  He files for divorce.

This book is very insightful and gives us a glimpse of how ‘idols’ are manufactured and disgarded.  We see what becomes of a silent film star who is thrown overboard because is speaking voice is too squeaky for the ‘talkies.’  We find out what drives a Hollywood gossip columnist who fuels the insane machine.  Most of all, we learn how a fragile, tormented child is tossed into the ‘star’ process, gets mangled by it and her only mechanism is to smile and disappear.

This thoughtful, mature, revealing book is worth reading.  I hope you can find it.

THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS

HISTORIC FICTION:  THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS/Caleb Carr -1997 – Ballentine

When I saw a familiar-looking cover sitting on the top of a trash can outside the Stand in New York, I examined it for dirt, bugs or other assorted unhealthy signs, saw it was relatively clean.  The price was right.  I saw that it was the sequel to Carr’s THE ALIENIST, which I read, liked but don’t remember.  I could see from the sepia cover photo, this book was also set in the late 19th Century in New York.  Great!  I settled in to savor the book.

With the familiar but different setting of New York over a hundred years ago, I was intrigued by the plot line, involving the abduction of the baby daughter of a Spanish diplomat.  I soon remembered the cast of sleuths that appeared in THE ALIENIST:  Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, Sara Howard, the gun-toting feminist turned detective, the Isaccson brothers, two brilliant men dealing in medicine and forensics and attached to the New York Police Department,  Cyrus, a black man turned from crime and living with the famous psychiatrist, Stevie Taggart, a fourteen-year-old former ruffian and John Moore, a well-healed newspaper man.

Sara, who has opened her own detective agency specializing the the problems of women, is approached to help her find her baby daughter.  Mrs. Lineras stresses that she doesn’t want to involve the police.  It is very sensitive and even her husband, a diplomat from Spain, is against involving anyone in the search for his daughter.  The political climate is tenuous and this could prove to spark an international incident.  The baby, Ana, was snatched right near the Metropolitan Museum of Art via a woman who pushed Mrs. Lineras and snatched the baby and disappeared.  Later, the team came up with a bold new idea:  Mrs. Linares had spotted the kidnapper and the child on the Third Avenue El as she stood on the platform.  The idea was to find an artist to draw a sketch from Mrs. Linares’s rather detailed memory.  The plot unfolded and Elspeth Hatch was identified as the kidnapper.  The former nurse seemed to have a suspicious past.  Babies in her care wound up dead.  They followed clues that took her history back to Ballston Spa, New York.  There was talk that she had a past that included a dead husband and two dead children.  One daughter survived but couldn’t speak.  They were dealing with a complex, mysterious, changeable female mass murderer. 

Ultimately, I found this book rough going and quite contrived.  It was very heavy handed in its political correctness, pushing hard an the reader with its use of ideas of feminism, racism, and anti-semitism.

Caleb Carr, who is a master of historical fiction, is meticulous in his detail of old New York and the Saratoga area of New York.  Some of his involvement of real people is just plain silly.  He brings in then Navy Secretary Teddy Roosevelt to enlist the help of sailors to apprehend the suspect, hidden and protected by a local gang near the Hudson.

Although I finished the book, my main objection was putting it in the words of an older Stevie Taggart.  This storyteller, now old and sick because of his smoking addiction (again politically correct) tells this story in a voice and sentence structure that is, frankly, hard to read.  Unschooled, but educated by his street smarts and exposure to the doctor’s world, consistently reveals the mystery, in the broken style of misused words and explanations of his use of big words prefaced by “what you might call…”  I believe that Carr made a bad decision to make Stevie the narrator.  This could have been an excellent book.

AWAKE

FILM:  AWAKE/2007

I was amazed to learn that 30,000 people each year are wide awake during surgery, despite being given general anesthesia.  It is impossible to tell whether the patient is still awake because the body is completely paralyzed and there is no way to signal the medical team.  The pain of surgery is felt, the incision is felt, and in the case of heart surgery, the ribs are felt being moved.

Screenwriter/Director Joby Harold has borrowed this horrific medical phenomenon for a taut psychological script.

Twenty-one-year old Clayton Beresford (Hayden Christensen) has inherited his father’s corporate empire and is a billionaire.  Clay’s life has already been saved from a heart attack by Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard) but has been advised by Harper to undergo a heart transplant.  Clay is on a waiting list, but has an unusual blood type which is making the wait longer. He has become friendly with Dr. Howard and wants him to do the transplant when a heart becomes available.

Since the Beresfords are so wealthy and aristocratic, Clay has kept his engagement to Samantha (Jessica Alba) a secret from his mother.  He knows without doubt that his mother (Lina Olin) would be vehemently opposed to a marriage to the obviously working-class woman.  Mrs. Beresford actually knows the woman – Sam is her secretary.  Sam is very upset about their relationship being kept a secret and she urges Clay to tell his mother.  One night, during a terrible conversation with his mother and his secret love, the mother is informed.  She, of course, is furious.  That same evening, he contacts his doctor friend and Jack sets up a church wedding in the middle of the night.  It takes a great buying into this chronology to believe that just after the wedding, a heart appears for the transplant.  We encounter all of the players in the hospital lobby, plus a very prominent cardiologist brought in by Mrs. Beresford.  Clay insists that his friend, Jack, will do the surgery.

Clay is taken into the operating theater and prepped.  He is given the anesthesia, told to count backwards.  His eyes close but is wide awake but unable to communicate.   During the course of his ordeal, he learns that he has been set up.  The set up involves the operating team and even Sam.  He is supposed to die at the conclusion of the operation. All of this is being discussed openly during the surgery.  Even Sam shows up in the O.R.  Clay finds out that she also has a medical background. 

I liked everything about this film, except that at 84 minutes, it seems a little short.  If you’ve ever undergone general anesthesia or is about to, this could be your worst nightmare.  It’s much scarier than any horror fiction out there!

REFLECTIONS ON 9/11/01

Essay:  Reflections on 9/11/01

I remember coming to work and noting what an astonishingly beautiful day it was.  I was in a good mood because I had plans to travel Upstate that evening to meet with a dear friend.  I anticipated another of our typical discussions involving various philosophical topics.  Always heady stuff.

Settling in at the office at about 8:45, I was frustrated that I couldn’t get online.  The phone rang.  It was a call from the son of one of our staff members.  He was screaming, “Why are you there?  Get out of town!”  “What!?”  Then he told me about the plane hitting the first tower.  He asked if his father was in yet.  He was not.  I was alone in the office, always first to arrive.  I ran for the tv and soon one of my co-workers arrived.  He had heard.  I told him to call his son.  I realized that I had been on the subway under the World Trade Center about twenty minutes before the attack on the first tower.  I started shaking.  (That station on the “R” line is still being rebuilt, eight years and counting.)  Each person on our small staff came in as we huddled in a small circle in disbelief before the TV.  The catastrophe was getting larger by the moment.  We were in Midtown so there was no external turmoil.  The uberboss came in and looked directly at me, scowling, and asked sarcastically asked if I would get him a cup of coffee.  Some things never change.  It was clear that to him, it was business as usual.  To him I was a slacker, even in the face of a monumental crisis.  I provided the coffee, scowling back, and decided that I’d better get to my desk.  He then directed me to get the members of his family on the phone for him, one at a time.  Gee, thanks!  One would think that he would suggest that I try to get through to my own family members!  I can’t forgive his behavior, even after his death a year or so ago.  I don’t know why he kept us there, but once he decided that no real business could be done, he let us know that we would close up at 1:00.  I am grateful that the two other executives (living in Manhattan) invited me and my other support staff worker to stay with their families, but I needed to get home (somehow) to my daughter and my husband.  This was not going to be easy.  I decided to try to get down to Union Square to meet up with my husband and then walk over the Brooklyn Bridge.  I went down to Fifth Avenue and actually saw a city bus.  It was only going down to 42nd Street.  As I was boarding, I saw a sightseeing bus go by, full of tourists.  This was one of the most bizarre sights I could imagine.  I also saw the smoke, even at this location.  Someone said the IRT was running, so I headed west.  Walking through Times Square was surreal.  A giant TV screen across the street was transmitting the minute-to-minute coverage, sans sound, as a homeless man on the sidewalk was screaming, “This is real!  This is not a movie!”  A cop stopped me from entering the IRT station.  It had stopped running.  Thankfully, I learned that the Eighth Avenue line was still operational.  I called my husband, telling him I’d meet him at home.  On the “A” train, some teenaged girls were acting out, oblivious of the chaos above ground.  I was glad to get to my neighborhood.  I decided to detour to the Promenade.  First I was assaulted by the smell, then I saw the smoke.  The sky above the Trade Center across the river was a horrible yellow, something like an egg yoke.  A car was parked on a side street with its doors open, the radio blasting the news.  Finally, I got home and eventually I was able to get through to my relatives to let them all know that we were o.k.  Of course they were frantic. My clever friend from upriver called to confirm that I was NOT coming up by rail.  Obviously not.  The days ahead were very frightening.  There was even a moment that showed a compassionate side of Bush as he stood on the pile with a worker.  We know more now.  He was asleep at the switch regarding a significant terror threat and then manipulated information that has led us into an unnecessary and ceaseless war in Iraq.  National security  became a shady business involving torture, snooping on citizens and an unhealthy climate in which even our patriotism could hinge on whether or not we wore flag pins or asked tough questions.  Thankfully, we are past that terrible time and the Bush Administration is history.  But we’re never going to be out of the woods.  There are people out there who hate us.  And there are people in our own country whose narrow perceptions and shallow understanding (devotees of Limbaugh &  Co.) who perpetuate the cowboy mentality that invites division nationally and courts danger internationally.  It is essential for our society to embrace a more thoughtful, analytical approach.  The bumper-sticker mentality hasn’t made us more safe.  We are really at a crossroads.  Hopefully we can again stand for what’s good and decent in the world.

INTO TEMPTATION

FICTION:  INTO TEMPTATION -Penny Vincenzi/Overlook – 2002

If you’re looking for a huge book with a complex list of characters and enjoy family sagas, Into Temptation is the book for you.  You should know that this book is the third of a trilogy, though.  Vincenzi certainly does fill in the blanks of what’s come before and the reader can be assured that this is a stand-alone work.

Despite its American Characters intermingled with the British ones, Into Temptation is essentially British.  I must say that Vincenzi hasn’t managed to make her American characters sound American.

Rather than try to explain the rather complicated Lytton family situation, I will say that it involves a family that’s in a long tradition of a private publishing house in London and New York.  The matriarch, Celia Lytton, is a woman hellbent on upholding the tradition of the business and has been actively involved in every aspect of it for generations. This book covers a turning point, as younger members of the publishing empire emerge and changes are envisioned and are successful.  The author covers about a decade of the intricacies of family interaction, the changes in the publishing business and the forces working for and against the publishing house.  Secrets are kept and then revealed, deception, lust and romance permeate. This ending volume of the Lytton family saga is set in London, Manhattan and the Hamptons from the mid-fifties through the early sixties.

 

I don’t think it would interest men much.  This is really on the level of soap opera.  I woman sitting with a glass of wine, a shawl and a roaring fireplace would probably enjoy this book.  With its almost 700 pages, one can lose oneself easily.  I particularly liked the author’s quick takes, leaving the reader anxious for the characters, poised on the brink of something interesting or shocking, to reappear in the next cycle.

Without being a spoiler, I totally disagreed with the ending.  It was a letdown to what we would imagine to be proper.  Also, unlike life, all stories resolved themselves at the same time.  It was efficient, but unsatisfying.  I am not sorry I read this book.  It gave me a long spell of escapism from my own life, and I would imagine most of our lives, unless we were part of a British publishing dynasty.

INSOMNIA

FILM:  INSOMNIA/2002

What do you call the opposite of Film Noir?  INSOMNIA, set in the Alaskan summer, might shed some unwanted light.  This remake of a Norwegian film from 1996, features Al Pacino, Robin Williams and  Hillary Swank.

Two Los Angeles homicide cops are called to Alaska by a former colleague to help with the murder of a teenage girl.  Both cops are under investigation in the police department back home and these anxieties follow them to the wilderness town where the murder took place.  They encounter a young female detective (Swank) who knows the detective’s reputation and considers him a hero.  They set out to investigate the murder and in chasing a possible suspect, the detective shoots and kills his partner in the fog, claiming that the perp was the shooter.  He had good reason to do this:  the night before, the partner told him that he was about to cut a deal with Internal Affairs. Was the shooting deliberate?

As they gather clues and interview the dead girl’s friends and her boyfriend in particular, the detective starts getting anonymous phone calls from the killer, who seems aware of the detective’s guilty secret and his personal and professional frailties.  They finally meet on a ferry.  The killer (Williams) is well aware of the dire consequences of losing sleep to Alaska’s perpetual summer daylight and he plays his cards with skill.  At the same time, the female Alaskan detective starts to question the evidence of the partner’s shooting.  She is correct in her assumptions about the L.A. detective, placing her hero worship in jeopardy.

This is a fine, layered, nuanced film with fine performances, especially by Pacino.  His emotional and physical changes are profound and his face is a roadmap of his remorse, confusion, and the images that constantly present themselves in his weeklong sleeplessness.

Robin Williams is chilling as he explains his relationship and murder of the young girl and even more frightening in his “wild card” to keep the detective from turning him in.

We are ultimately presented with a moral dilemma:  do the ends justify the means?