Deft. Devastating. Just the measured weight of the signature-Stoppard patter, the timing. The big subject lurking within the clever retorts and parrieDeft. Devastating. Just the measured weight of the signature-Stoppard patter, the timing. The big subject lurking within the clever retorts and parries. The pratfall, used sparingly here for Stoppard, some flourishes with tricks up the sleeves, and then the dagger through the heart.
This isn't moving from the to-be-read shelf. I'll read it again for pace, sleight-of-hand, and concision. Tom Stoppard's rosebud. Just on the precarious verge of bloom. ...more
... I said nothing during the meeting, but afterward I went to see Alexander Nix. "This can't be legal," I told him. To which he replied, "You can'
... I said nothing during the meeting, but afterward I went to see Alexander Nix. "This can't be legal," I told him. To which he replied, "You can't expect anything legal with these people. It's Africa."
To my way of thinking, the Cambridge Analytica operation explains about ninety percent of both the American and British nightmare scenarios of the last few years: Trump and Brexit. Mr. Wylie was in a position to see the way the company came to be, the disturbing inside track. He is someone who knows it inside out, in the right order, and with the right inflection, because he knew all the players--and was there.
Wylie is something of a tech nerd, who bounced around the various spheres of influence in North America and Britain--basically offering credible social-science number-crunching, for persuasion and turnout in political campaigns. Gigs in Canada for the LPC party, then the US for Obama, then to Britain for the Lib Dems, before the move to the shadowy SCL Corporation in Britain, who did all manner of political analysis, polling and disinformation campaigns, all over the world. If you needed a referendum tipped in the third world, if you needed to target certain demographics in elections, then SCL could arrange all of it discreetly.
(Later in the life of the scam, the head of SCL and its corporate twin, Cambridge Analytica, one Alexander Nix, would be caught in a devastating BBC video sting, offering an array of 'fixes' to an offshore interest. From voter suppression to bribery to honey-traps, Nix assures the would-be clients, SCL/CA could arrange things in ways profitable to all players in the deal.) It's probably best to let the book speak for itself, in exerpts :
Social Engineering Is Big Business. Let's start with Breitbart, the disruptive right wing enabler funded by the affluent Mercers, and operated after the passing of Breitbart himself by the ever-calculating, pre-trumpist Steve Bannon.
“When Andrew Breitbart (who had introduced the Mercers to Bannon) died suddenly in 2012, Bannon took his place as senior editor, and assumed his philosophy.�
“� the Breitbart Doctrine: Politics flows from culture, and if conservatives wanted to successfully dam up progressive ideas in America, they would have to first challenge the culture. And so Breitbart was founded to be not only a media platform but also a tool for reversing the flow of American culture…�
“At our first meeting, Bannon was the executive chair of Breitbart and had come to Cambridge in search of promising young conservatives and candidates to staff his new London bureau�. He had a problem, though. For all the site’s sound and fury, it became pigeonholed as a place for young, straight white guys who couldn’t get laid. Gamergate was one of the first, most public instances of their culture war: When several women tried to bring to light the gross misogyny within the gaming industry, they were hounded, doxed, and sent numerous death threats in a massive campaign against the “progressives� imposing their “feminist ideology� onto gaming culture.�
“Gamergate was not instigated by Breitbart, but it was a sign to Bannon, who saw that angry lonely white men could become incredibly mobilized when they felt that their way of life was threatened. Bannon realized the power of cultivating the misogyny of horny virgins. Their nihilistic anger and talks of “beta uprisings� simmered in the recesses of the Internet. But growing an army of “incels� (involuntary celibates) would not be sufficient for the movement he fantasized about. He needed to find a new approach. This is one of the odder moments in the Cambridge Analytica saga …�
Forging The Weapons For Dismantling The Culture. “Mercer looked at winning elections as a social engineering problem. The way to “fix society� was by creating simulations: if we could quantify society inside a computer, optimize that system, and then replicate that optimization outside the computer�. The structure chosen to set up this new entity was extremely convoluted, and it even confused staff working on projects, who were never sure who exactly the actually worked for. SCL Group would remain the “parent� of a new US subsidiary, incorporated in Delaware, called Cambridge Analytica…�
“Nix initially explained how this labyrinthine setup was to allow us to operate under the radar. Mercer’s rivals in the finance sector watched his every move, and if they knew that he had acquired a psychological warfare firm (SCL), others in the industry might figure out his next play—to develop sophisticated trend-forecasting tools—or poach key staff. We knew Bannon wanted to work on a project with Breitbart, but this was originally supposed to be a side project to satiate his personal fixations. Of course, this was all bullshit, and they wanted to build a political arsenal…�
All That Remained Was Finding Targeting Data. Enough Targeting Data. “One of the challenges for social sciences like psychology, anthropology, and sociology is a relative lack of numerical data, since it’s extremely hard to measure and quantify the abstract cultural or social dynamics of an entire society. That is, unless you can throw a virtual clone of everyone into a computer, and observe their dynamics. It felt like we were holding the keys to unlock a new way of studying society. How could I say no to that?�
Survey Says: Trust Facebook. Who Knows You Best? “He typed in a query, and a list of links popped up. He clicked on one of the many people who went by that name in Nebraska � and there was everything about her, right up on the screen. Here’s her photo, here’s where she works, here’s her house. Here are her kids, this is where they go to school, this is the car she drives. She voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, she loves Katy Perry, she drives an Audi, she’s a bit basic � and on and on and on. We knew everything about her � and for many records, the information was updated in real time, so if she posted to Facebook, we could see it happening.�
“And not only did we have all her Facebook data, but we were merging it with all the commercial and state bureau data we'd bought as well. And imputations made from the U.S Census. We had data about her mortgage applications, we knew how much money she made, whether she owned a gun. We had information from her airline mileage programs, so we knew how often she flew. We could see if she was married (she wasn't). We had a sense of her physical health. And we had a satellite photo of her house, easily obtained from Google Earth. We had re-created her life in our computer. She had no idea.�
“”Let me get this straight,� I said. “If I create a Facebook app, and a thousand people use it, I’ll get like 150,000 profiles? Really? Facebook actually lets you do that?”�
� � this means that, for an analyst, there’s often no need to ask questions: You simply create algorithms that find discrete patterns in a user’s naturally occurring data. And once you do that, the system itself can reveal patterns in the data that you otherwise would never have noticed. Facebook users curate themselves all in one place, in a single data form. We don't need to connect a million data sets; we don't have to do complicated math to fill in missing data. The information is already in place, because everyone serves up their real-time autobiography, right there on the site. If you were creating a system from scratch to watch and study people, you couldn’t do much better than Facebook…�
And That Only Sets The Stage. Wylie comes across as sympathetic, believable, and credible on the facts; he terminated his association with SCL/Cambridge within a year of Bannon's taking over, and before the Trump Campaign. If you had any lingering suspicion that the social media, elections or referenda in which you partake might be fair or unobserved by interlopers, you never will again. Recommended.
“On March 16, 2018, a day before The Guardian and The New York Times pubished my story, Facebook announced that it was banning me from not only Facebook but also Instagram. Facebook had refused to ban white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other armies of hate, but it chose to ban me.�...more
Spike: That’ll teach the selfish little bastard how to behave. I don’t see that we have much to feel superior about, as a species. Altruism is always Spike: That’ll teach the selfish little bastard how to behave. I don’t see that we have much to feel superior about, as a species. Altruism is always self-interest, it just needs a little working out. Hilary: Like you going miles out of your way to give me a lift home? Spike: Exactly. It’s a cost-benefit thing. I go miles out of my way because you might invite me in for coffee, and I throw in a tutorial to get into your-- Hilary: Pants. Spike: Good graces, I was going to say. But you’re basically right on the biology. Hilary: I’d rather not complicate . . . Spike: Hey, I’m your tutor, it would be an abuse of trust without precedent in higher education. Hilary: It’s a cost-benefit thing.
An elliptical joy-ride around the race course, a dutiful examination of a few branches of the Natural Sciences, a nod to Physics or its Meta cousin, a tilt to the Social Sciences, some digs at Academia, and a wary glimpse of how practicality and commerce may make uncomfortable traveling companions on this track. Everything we've come to expect from Mr. Stoppard, about whom I've long ago given up trying to be objective; everything he does is good, I'm afraid, and his flashes of brilliance-- are blinding.
Without going into detail, we have here yet another well-trained Stoppardian Squad of probingly intuitive characters, who slip and fall in the clinches, possibly due to willful denial, maybe due to setting up a cunning pratfall, and occasionally just due to being human. Stoppard's constant preoccupation is with the astounding capacity of mankind to be curious, to be intrepid in their imaginations --but tethered always to an earthbound humanity in their actual reach. Also of course, in their ability to be ridiculous.
This play is not Major Stoppardia, but it is one thing that all the other ramparts of the realm may not be, quite: short, sweet, one from the heart. Five the hard way. Stars that is....more
At first I wondered how complicated to get with this, because it isn't a simple story. But there isn't much you need to know, going in. A coming-of-agAt first I wondered how complicated to get with this, because it isn't a simple story. But there isn't much you need to know, going in. A coming-of-ager but in the Bell Jar or Catcher In The Rye vein; author Shirley Jackson's quirky, truthful-feeling book hits home with force, if not exactly heart-warmingly.
A sophisticated, naive ingénue narrates her abrupt path from daughter and child to "college woman", sometimes at a singing pitch of self-discovery, sometimes reading all the signs wrongly and foundering on the rocks. Can sophisticated and naïve both be present at once ? There's nothing new here, exactly, but it isn't the lyrics so much as the music, the fretful high-wire performance, the atmosphere of precocious youth wasting itself in girlish crushes, misread friendships and in the inevitable lonely vigils of the night, sighing ... that rings so true.
Jackson has worked out a kind of integrated second-person commentary, often in the voicing of a news reporter, a detective or some other questioning persona--- but within the narration of the main character, Natalie:
"She wanted to sing and did so, soundlessly, her mouth against the fogged window of the bus, thinking as she sang, And when I first saw Natalie Waite, the most incredible personality of our time, the unbelievably talented, vivid, almost girlish creature--when I first saw her, she was sitting in a bus, exactly as I or you might be, and for a minute I noticed nothing of her richness ... and then she turned and smiled at me. Now, knowing her for what she is, the most vividly talented actress (murderess? courtesan? dancer?) of our time or perhaps any time, I can see more clearly the enchanting contradictions within her--her humor, her vicious flashing temper, so easily aroused and so quickly controlled by her iron will; her world-weary cynicism (she has, after all, suffered more than perhaps any other from the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune), her magnificent mind, so full of information, of deep pockets never explored wherein lie glowing thoughts ..."
Stings. This can be fun, light and satirical, but it can also tilt toward the unnerving, as it is literally another voice in her head. Jackson is after the coping mechanisms that come to us in our adolescence, those that evolve to distance or protect us -- and those that are so witheringly critical that they are generally blunted and stomped by experience.
There is a great supporting cast, so naturally rendered that they somehow don't come off as instant 'characters'. Which they are. The insufferably vain Father character here is strikingly, embarrassingly funny and lame. His letters to Natalie at college are little masterpieces of self-importance and blocked empathy.
Movies come to mind. Resemblances stretch from the absolutely blatant fraudulence of Billy Liar all the way to the absolutely confoundingly weirdo Carnival Of Souls. Step right up.
There are three balanced and interlocked acts to this book, each with its own timbre and emotional charge; it isn't perfect, we overspend time in Natalie's internal argument that would have been better externalized-- but what gets across is compelling and the faults are minor. The third and Finale part is beautifully quirked-out and inspired. Probably best not to say how or why.
Giving this five stars, as much for intent and inspiration as for execution.
Blistering pace lurks just around the nearest corner in this unassuming little romp. There are miles to go before we sleep, but we start as one alwaysBlistering pace lurks just around the nearest corner in this unassuming little romp. There are miles to go before we sleep, but we start as one always must with London, by the river. Raw weather and constant fog are countered gallantly with gas fire and cup of tea. It's the edgy finish of Austerity Britain, with the city not just yet in 'swinging' shape.
It was a Sunday, I think, and everything was closed. It was a hideous ride with warehouses and smokestacks on one side of the river and Bovril and Milk advertisements on the other but by then I wasn't particularly in the mood to get upset about the looks of a river. It had rained almost steadily since I arrived and I thought London the ugliest city on earth. Marble Arch and Piccadilly Circus. Ugh. The dirty-green grass patch called Leicester Square surrounded by Movie Palaces, restaurant windows full of chickens revolving on their spits and the new Automobile Association Building � hardly Art Nouveau. Oxford Street. Ugh, ugh.
Elaine Dundy narrates a nicely-turned Rake's Progress tale, but from the female perspective. We are led along by a fascinating young American woman on the make (and on the skids, on the lam, on the razzle.. what else have you got?) It's really not so much a coming of age tale as it is the making of a young scoundrel-- endearing though she may be. Dundy has mentioned she was after doing a counterpunch to the Angry-Sink boys, notably Kingsley Amis, but here she channels the grand masters of grift, too-- Barry Lyndon and Moll Flanders come to mind. Entrepreneurial spirits all.
The novel quietly proceeds to a dive bar from that bleak beginning, and we're off. Dundy has her protagonist encounter a spectrum of untrustworthies, shy extroverts, eccentric flakes --and she decides on the spot that if she truly wants to mingle with the quality, she'll have to impersonate one of them. Along the way we get miniportraits of Britishers of all tints; our perky American of presumed great expectations becomes catnip to a whole range of suitors. An assumed name, a file of characteristics borrowed from an old friend in the states, and she's on her way.
Once we're grounded in the non-specifics of the heroine-- spoiler, she'll be shifting her identity a few times on a whim here and there-- Dundy's book begins to take shape. Once she proves she can navigate the crusty byways of London bohemia with enough flair, our narrator is invited along for that most novelistic of Uk pastimes-- the upcountry visit to a weekend manor party. Horses, drinks, shooting, drab skies, drizzle, the works. No cliché is spared-- the faded Aubusson stretching down long galleries, the pale Claret, even the classic of the genre, the Ruined Abbey:
... before she went, she wanted to tell me about the Abbey. The Abbey was on the grounds, not too far away, I could see it from the corner of my window. The Abbey, or rather its ruins, was a twelfth century one that had been razed to the ground during the reign of Henry the Eighth and all the monks slaughtered and I was in the Blue Room, Clara’s—she’d insisted on that because from there, if one was lucky, one could sometimes hear the ghostly voices of the friars at their matins. Clara hadn’t. It was one of their big disappointments. She devoutly hoped I might. And then she was off too. And now I was totally alone. After a few false starts I found my way back to my room and looked for my suitcase to begin unpacking. Gone. Wrong room? Nope, it was undeniably blue. What had happened was that invisibly fairy hands had pressed, folded, and hung up every stitch of my clothing, polished my shoes, laid out my toilet articles on the washstand and my make-up on the dressing-table, drawn my bath, made off with my suitcase and disappeared without a trace. I looked out of the window at the afternoon splendour, located the Abbey ruins pink in the sun’s reflection and lay down on the fourposter bed. A neat little fire had been lit in the fireplace. The peace, the quiet, the perfection—it was all rather exhausting.
Before heading back to London again, any sacred cow within spearing distance comes to an untimely misfortune. Lucky Jim and The Talented Mr. Ripley are the guideposts; in between cringeworthy brushes with withering stares and unforced faux pas, there is satire, brightly piercing the fug and ritual. Truly, "rather end-of-tethering," it is admitted by one of the participants.
As will be apparent, once this sort of thing is off the ground it becomes a performance piece, an anti-gravity act that can only be witnessed, not described (in a review). Dundy has enough up the narrative sleeve that she manages it with ease, floating deftly from upcountry back to London, a side trip to Paris and then back. The proceedings are certainly unwieldy, but the path is peppered with enough odd turns and detours that the reader just goes for the ride. Which of course ends up not where we may have expected. "Eau rarelie?" inquires one of the posh-monsters.
Just when it all seems too shaggy dog and quixotic-- Dundy brings the coda, an emotional scene with a purse, a comb, a streak of red lipstick-- that stands in nicely for the heroine's quest. A smear, a streak. A mad stab at time. A heartfelt lunge at life. Youth. You know the deal....more
Poignant, at times heart-rending. A novella's sensibility within a novel's scope, Ishiguro's first published book is a small gem, a beautiful set of mPoignant, at times heart-rending. A novella's sensibility within a novel's scope, Ishiguro's first published book is a small gem, a beautiful set of moments.
Really just a conglomeration of impression and memory, the narrative in A Pale View Of Hills slips inobtrusively between Japan in the aftermath of nuclear war, and placid, green postwar England. But gently, and without capital-D Drama.
Ishiguro had made it the business of his telling to obscure or imply major narrative developments, and keep the consciousness of the reader on the momentary or fleeting impressions, surfaces, and small talk. So that the significance of the bigger things is felt, not said or told. In spite of its mostly Japanese fundamentals, it is really a very English manner of conveying the emotional undertow in the lives of the characters.
Can't really go too much in depth without reducing what is a very substantial work-- the manner of the telling here does a pas de deux with the arc of the story, and it is well worth being in the audience as the lights go down and the curtain-- quietly, almost unnoticeably-- rises. Five stars....more
After some preliminary gasping and spluttering, when Uncle Nick pretended I wasn’t there still watching him, he moved off, and a minute later he had vAfter some preliminary gasping and spluttering, when Uncle Nick pretended I wasn’t there still watching him, he moved off, and a minute later he had vanished into the mist and smoke of the late October afternoon. I had three large glasses of champagne inside me; I had just agreed to exchange an office stool and a sensible life in Bruddersford for some unimaginable music-hall hocus-pocus; I was only twenty and had never been away from home...
To locate the 2016 reader right away, the context of Lost Empires is exactly that wherein the blustery Mister Carson, of Downton Abbey, had practiced his talents, as one half of a comic team on the stages of turn-of-the-century England, on the playhouse variety circuit. Before his eventual entry to butler service in a great manor house. Same exact era, same exact shabby, disreputable hearts of gold.
In the United States, it was called vaudeville, or variety; in England, ‘music hall�. In the days before the movies, a live, shaggy dog collection of novelty acts, comedians, sentimental song and a magic act. Possibly an interval with a dancing bear, or acrobats, or jugglers. A populist evening out, for a few pennies a seat, designed to divert and entertain, no message or agenda involved. In Britain (as in the US) there were chains of theatrical venues that sponsored and exhibited these practitioners, called perhaps the World, the Paramount, the Ritz or the Empire. It was, for that era, more or less what we now call “cable television�.
As with other popular entertainments, the more interesting story happens backstage, underneath the family-friendly veneer of matinee-ready clowns and tap-dancers. But author Priestley finds his subject as much in the color and atmosphere of Edwardian England as he does in the Music Hall milieu or any of the individual participants. And what makes it all so interesting is just that—a predictable behind-the-footlights drama is transformed by virtue of its also being a time machine, one that bears us to a distant world that even our grandparents have forgotten. We’re carried back to just before the Great War, when the ‘motorcar� is a futuristic conveyance, and the footlights run on gas.
Briefly, the outline of the story is the tale of an apprentice Illusionist, taken under the dark wing of his master-magician Uncle Nick. And yes, all the names in the story will have a vaguely allusive ring. Priestley frames the narrative as a present-day [early-sixties] reminiscence gazing back fondly to the lost world of 1913, gently sentimental but still-- avoiding none of the garish and gauche appointments we may expect in the circus world of music hall. The memoir here is a road movie—our narrator and his peculiar band of artificers make their way throughout the length and breadth of the England of the day, plying their wares on the industrial north as well as the seaside mainstays of the theater chain. What goes on backstage may change with the venue, and as the venues blur into one, the little company of players and stagehands become their own family mash-up, unpredictable and well, colorful.
When the unlikely bonds (and absolutely show-bizziest cliché moments) fuse the company into a working group of diverse humanity, the tour and the novel hit their stride; our wing-and-a-prayer career choice finds its groove, as does our reluctant apprentice sorcerer: ... we were all rising with the tide of packed houses and enthusiastic appreciation. Of course we were not like a theatrical company, which comes to an audience as one unit. We were so many entirely separate and independent acts, but because we were touring together, forming the greater part of one continuing bill, we could respond together to a heart-warming week like this. So for the first time, as far as my very limited experience went, dressing-room doors were left open, except when people were actually dressing, and congratulatory visits were exchanged, together with some drink, or there were smiling encounters along the corridors. There was almost a party atmosphere...
Soap opera and internal power politics aside (though there is much of both)—what Lost Empires has as card up its sleeve is that central connection to Illusionism. When the paper moons and painted backdrops are just about wearing thin, something or other allows our protagonists to engage their trick imaginations on the real world, offering what becomes the other major point of interest for the reader. In the course of these extra-curricular proceedings, the predictability of the two-houses-per-night is splintered and refocused. (In any theatrical memoir, it is always this clash of cultures & sensibilities, the outside world barging in through the stage door –that seems to be the catalyst. Truffaut’s Day For Night, and a million other backstage romances, come to mind immediately.)
The fixed points in the music hall constellation were the promenade and pier houses at the seaside. After the grim winter months touring the north, we land at what is the natural home base, the environs of Blackpool: Anything that could claim a few pennies or trap a sixpence was in full swing. From the rowdy-dowdy South Shore to the more genteel North Shore, the holiday money of the innocents was cascading, down into the shows, eating houses, shops that sold nothing worth having, the wine lodges and pubs, into the outstretched hands of pierrots and buskers, photographers, fake auctioneers, hoarse vendors of peppermint and pineapple blackpool rock and ice cream and candy floss, fortune-tellers, dealers in comic hats, false noses, miniature walking sticks, water pistols, balloons, and the things that rolled out as you blew and made rude noises. And there were mornings when nothing seemed real except the children hurrying with their buckets and spades, and the wind blowing from the sea...
Priestly builds to –surprise—a murder in the theater, amongst the travelling company, to create his final set-piece for the book. If it weren’t such an obvious ‘coda� and closing segment, it would be much more successful, and I’d argue that it could have been its own little mystery; where Priestley has it right, though, is that you’d never have such terrific exposition and character development, in any short mystery, as is already provided in the first two thirds of Lost Empires.
If this reader were to be completely honest, this is probably a very appealing four star novel; but there is something inexplicably dazzling to the eye and the imagination here, something maybe of an illusion-- that prompts five twinkly, period perfect silver-foil stars. ...more
If Finnegan's Wake is unfathomable, and it may as well be, if Ulysses is actually a coded literary formulation of lysergic acid, and it is-- then evenIf Finnegan's Wake is unfathomable, and it may as well be, if Ulysses is actually a coded literary formulation of lysergic acid, and it is-- then even the Artist whose portrait is rendered in A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man would have to agree :
Dubliners is the best book Joyce wrote in the English language.
Disclaimers aside, there is about Dubliners the certain, absolute mastery of the form, the understated accessibility, universality of the characters, and above all the simple-isn't-ever-simple thing, couched in ah-but-we'll-not-let-on -- that short form fiction needs if it isn't going to fly by, unnoticed.
Haven't read this all the way through in too long, ready for a full revisit. ...more
“In order to distinguish the noir series from ordinary detective stories or other film cycles, Borde and Chaumeton take a different approach from subs“In order to distinguish the noir series from ordinary detective stories or other film cycles, Borde and Chaumeton take a different approach from subsequent writers on the topic, placing less emphasis on narrative structure or visual style than on the emotional or affective qualities of the films, which they describe with five adjectives typical of Surrealism: oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent and cruel.� - James Naremore, from the Introduction
And that’s why we come to this, the ground-breaking French study, published right at the epicenter of Film Noir, in 1955. The analysis offered by Borde and Chaumeton goes right to the heart of what makes these movies uniquely influential. A quick rundown of their list may be best to start with. The central themes, and their examples: � gangster & brutalism : “The Killers� “Asphalt Jungle� � mistaken identity : “Shadow Of A Doubt� � planned crime, caper : “Rififi� � the thinking cop, policier : “Naked City� “Quai des Ofevres� � pathology, criminal psychology : “Strangers On A Train� � hunted man on the run : “Dark Passage� � tormentor & prey : “Sorry Wrong Number� � ticket to the underworld : “The Big Sleep� “The Third Man� � moral corruption, dirty money : “Night And The City� � femme fatale : “Lady From Shanghai� “The Postman Always Rings Twice� “Maltese Falcon�
The era that is covered in depth is mostly 1945 through 1953, and Borde & Chaumeton make the case that noir is or may be over, in their estimation, by 1955. Little did they know that the half-life would be almost impossible to calculate. Their visionary theory, though, was that the Noir sensibility invades other narrative genres, as time goes on; in this they were absolutely correct.
Noir was certainly well established before the Second World War, but B&C note that there was a period of absence, or gestation, maybe, as this style of film went undercover in the war years. The ‘anti-social� aspect of the noir conception was perhaps not acceptable in a world already under fire. Quarantined by mutual agreement to the kind of period suspense of something like “Gaslight� during the war years, the end of hostilities released the noir concept in the postwar years, in all of its wrenching, contemporary potential. To an audience that was sobered and more accustomed to grim reality than five years before. The atmosphere critical to the genre� uncertain motive, coincidence, dread, suspicion, treachery, ambivalence and paranoia-- was finally allowed to take the stage without any conflict with wartime propaganda considerations.
Before the war, the influence of the German Expressionist film (Murnau, Lang) was evident; as the postwar period took shape, world cinema was entranced with the gritty truths of Neo-Realism, and it is safe to assert that Noir was an unsung influence in both catalogues. A pillar of world noir is Luchino Visconti’s “Ossessione�, made from the same James M. Cain novel as “Postman Always Rings Twice�. The new, cold-blooded frisson of strange intrigues emerging directly from the evil in man himself-- or woman-- ran counter to the Hollywooden scheme of mixed up kids involved in high jinks. Happy endings were now recognizably pre-war and defunct.
The Noir atmosphere is not really a whodunit situation, but set within the criminal milieu itself; or at very least in the imagination of a man or woman considering criminal options. It is not a cop story looking to find the villain, but the suspense of a practical soul drawn to evil by his own worst angels. Informers, deception, blackmail, malaise, and desperation are regulars in this environment. For audiences, the films are a trip to forbidden worlds, where eroticism, sin, and morbid curiosity take hold. And there again we have the markers of Neo-Realism as well. But there is something delightfully taboo about the ambiguity of the noir world, where the rules are changed behind the scenes, and the innocent man may find himself holding the bloody knife as dawn breaks.
For the romance aspect, there is raw sensuality in characters stripped to their last desperate hopes, living for sensation alone; there is tension and the anticipation of (unlikely) release. And a dark erotic charge to the idea that the woman you hold in your arms may be a murderer, maybe your murderer, unknown and completely untrustworthy.
Borde and Chaumeton rightly focus on the disappearance of psychological bearings in the Noirs, the way a dream state is lived by the innocent in the underworld, and the ability of the films to induce that feeling in the audience. Their contention that the root of Noir is in the uncanny, the quality of strangeness and oneirism-- maybe found on a foggy night tracking a veiled woman through the narrow lanes in the Hollywood Hills-- is on target. Uncertainty and strangeness, the unreliability of any ground rules, mean that what is right and logical in the first act will almost certainly be meaningless in the second. It is the love song of the coldwar existentialist, and only anti-heroes need apply. ...more
We've all been there, sort of. That is, we've all seen this basic story unfold, the slow dawning of a worldly realization within the walls of a formerWe've all been there, sort of. That is, we've all seen this basic story unfold, the slow dawning of a worldly realization within the walls of a formerly impregnable fortress, the heady push into the free air, when the idols have crumbled and the game is up. We've not all been to a Convent School For Girls, though, exactly, and that's what makes this story instantly mesmerizing. Here, we are between the wars, 1930, and the convent school is place of sheltered neutrality for the female children of the aristocracy and well-heeled merchant class.
The Stations Of The Cross For this reader, there was no disconnect from the days when I was under the guidance of much the same kind of organization. The regulated systems all fall into place, like the different prayers and devotions for the passing hours, the shifts in stage-managing the seasons of the Church. There is weight and depth in the discipline of the faith, for ... well, for the faithful, anyway. The prayers might be thought of as scales are to the musician, etudes maybe. And the seasonal shifts taken as the natural synchronization of a living faith to the earthly indicators of God's infinite complexity, mirrored in the outside world. Catholicism wisely takes the cues and codes of the observable world and ritualizes them, imbues them with the glow of transcendence.
Alternately, the atmosphere of the classical Roman Catholic educational model may be thought of as relentless indoctrination, accompanied by sharp-eyed surveillance, and enforced with various kinds of cruelty, mental or physical. Just a matter of whether you found it inspirational, or not.
Cold Snap Frost In May brings on the omniscient Mother Superior, the gruff but kind worker-bee nuns, and their opposites, the vindictive brittle old nuns past any sense or hope of return to the race. Did I just read this or am I remembering ... Possibly the worst are the passive-aggressive, glenda-the-good-witch nuns-- all of them filling impressionable young adolescents, dangerously close to their delicate first maturity-- full of wishful nonsense and toxic backspin.
Stories of little-girls-who-just-wouldn't-listen, penances, privations and mortifications; secret reports and constant observation. There is one instance here of the 'famous game' wherein the nun called the Mistress Of Discipline judges where a hidden key may have been pocketed by one of the girls, strictly on the basis of sizing up their guilt with her withering stare. Played for carefully-instructive laughs, it is still agonizing. She is never wrong.
This is not to imply that the Lord's work is always accomplished in such a direct or straightforward path :
"� nothing is more pleasing to God than suffering bravely borne for our Lord’s sake. I expect you noticed that there were some children from the Poor School making their First Communion with you this morning. You must remember that they do not come from good homes like you; they are often quite pathetically ignorant. Well, one of the nuns was helping them to put on their veils and their wreaths, and one little girl called Molly had great difficulty with hers. So Mother Poitier fastened it on with a big safety-pin, but, as you know, she does not see very well, and she unfortunately put the pin right through Molly’s ear. The poor little girl was in great pain, but she thought it was part of the ceremony, and she never uttered a word of complaint. She thought of the terrible suffering of Our Lord in wearing His crown of thorns and bore it for His sake. I am sure Molly received a very wonderful grace at her First Communion and I should like to think that anyone here had such beautiful, unselfish devotion as that. She might have gone about all day with that pin through her ear, if she had not fainted just now at breakfast. Now, talk away, again children, and be as happy as you can all day long. But even in your happiness, never forget that a good Christian is always ready to take up his cross and deny himself and unite himself to the passion of Our Blessed Lord."
Heaven Can Wait The seasons ebb and flow, the misunderstandings get ironed out, and the onset of a holy occasion may bring the opportunity for an actual bright line to be drawn, in the murk and incense-laden atmosphere. Or, yet again, the opposite of that, in the confounding contrariness of holding real life to a mythical mirror.
Antonia White's characters are a study in natural opposites, and the girls are as intriguing as the nuns. As the clientele of the Convent Of The Five Wounds are anything but disadvantaged, the girls are often well-travelled, vaguely worldly and nearing the ripening verge of young womanhood. By turns childish, giddy, and then haughty, knowing and flirtatious, the 'little ones' are way too clever to fall for the idea of convent-forever, so devoutly pitched by the staff--the idea that a school girl would find her vocation, and choose to take vows and join the convent. The nuns know this generally won't sell, of course, but play along gamely, since the least-likely amongst the girls just may-- well, we've seen all of this embodied by Julie Andrews and Hayley Mills in cinemascope, so not much use letting the secrets out.
And the author has other ideas. Her novel is pitched to a counter-crescendo midway or more through the proceedings, where our central girls are laid up in the infirmary, faking measles; their devious hanky-exchange and breathing-on-each-other program has worked!-- at least to the extent of sharing the sniffles. And here they are allowed tea and toast, can read or write as they please, and they spend days by the fireside recovering -- most crucially from the convent itself, and its rules.
The Trouble With Angels Having drawn us along in the gearing-up to the liturgical year, the waves of penance and mysticism in the cold and forbidding nunnery, it is here in the glimmer of the fire-light that author White finds her tipping point. Tea and sympathy in a safe port of call, a lazy pause, a weightless lull in the strictness and conformity--before the inevitable fall.
It doesn't really matter what that fall may be, as for the nuns it is the rarest of their charges who doesn't fall, who doesn't succumb to the worldly temptations of debutante balls and the ongoing jazz age outside the walls of the convent. There is sublime clarity and certainty in Antonia White's prose, a sense of having lived it, too, that counters neatly the tensions and uneasy doubts that it portrays. Five stars....more
By day and even by night, the peasant can normally go about his lawful avocations in safety. Yet now and again, as he struggles along the more diff
By day and even by night, the peasant can normally go about his lawful avocations in safety. Yet now and again, as he struggles along the more difficult trails, he may catch a momentary glimpse of eyes in the undergrowth on either side, and hear soft movements and the snapping of twigs ...
This is so close to perfect that it has to be five-starred, in spite of some noticeable quibbles that I can't even remember now.
A master class from the Innocent-Enmeshed-In-Grand-Plot school of suspense, with all the right riffs and pauses to pace the proceedings on an upward, breath-held sweep toward the ending.
Notably present is the coldwar-gray wallpaper of Austerity England, the atmosphere of weary civility that seemed to emanate from the British Twentieth Century... Politely-observed upheavals, then the consequent denial and reflexive return-to-form. That 'carry-on' thing, in spite of the slightly appalling, the unexpected shock, the absurdly transgressive moment when civility shatters.
I was reminded of the atmosphere and vibe of Patrick Hamilton's "Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky"-- that postwar condition of having run on shortages and adrenaline for years on end, the ragged nerves and peculiar veneers of patience that were left in place. Or possibly, of his "Slaves Of Solitude", if... well, if there had been murders in that one.
In his pitch perfect rendition of the Brighton boarding house, Bingham notes the tenor of the sociable surroundings at hand :
"The Bower Hotel, with its overheated rooms and somber exterior was not merely a home for many ... It was an enclave in which there were smooth waters, where sails were easily trimmed to any light breezes which might from time to time arise. Such thunder as was heard came only distantly, from the noisy, brash, modern hinterland, and any lightning was of the harmless, flickering summer type."
The mystery reader may rest easily, though, as all that seaside charm and decorum won't be enough to save the day ... "The Bower Hotel was not fitted to withstand forked lightning of the killer variety. I arrived in time for lunch, and..."
Bingham is as deft as Hamilton with his characterizations, too, driving straight to the point without much abiguity : "...She was a heavily built woman of about fifty, with iron grey hair cut in an old-fashioned bobbed style, a muddy complexion, a square face, and pale blue eyes. She was dressed in a brown blouse, a dark grey cardigan, a skirt of a lighter grey, thick beige stockings, low heeled shoes, and wore a single row of large, cheap, pink artificial pearls. The big square ashtray on her desk by the window was half filled with cigarette stubs. I judged her a woman whom no man had loved. The Hotel was her empire ..."
Into this overarching realm of loss, malaise and had-your-tea-yet-? we are coerced into a Hitchcockian psychological mystery that unfolds with all the bells and (silent) whistles in the night. The beauty of the innocent-man-enmeshed gambit is that it has no need of first-person duplicity or layering-- the innocent is exactly what he is and has much deeper enigmas to solve than the average Conflicted Modern protagonist; no time for your approach-avoidance lark, grandma, just get to your story and be quick about it ...
Rather than expand here my version of what takes place, I recommend this to the interested reader. The perfect winter-staycation read. Ooops, gotta go, that looks like the Constable at the door .. and kind of late for a social visit ... ...more
"I believe I've managed to strip myself bare, to liberate myself from the many unnecessary formal techniques that are so common...I've rid myself of s
"I believe I've managed to strip myself bare, to liberate myself from the many unnecessary formal techniques that are so common...I've rid myself of so much useless technical baggage, eliminating all the logical transitions, all those connective links between sequences where one sequence served as a springboard for the one that followed."
Michaelangelo Antonioni
Superbly comprehensive but compact Cinema History book, and one that would be perfect for survey courses-- or the refresher course many of us might wish to undertake, in class or not.
This gets five stars for a couple of reasons, first of which is that it is so ridiculously confusing to try and categorize world cinema into any useful shape or size; to explain different movements and offshoots, without resorting to endlessly resummarizing films on paper, which generally doesn't work very well. Next is that there is a line between rendering a 'compact' timeline, versus a bloodless one, wherein condensing films and their contexts takes the life out of them. So as much for what it doesn't get wrong as what it gets right, and for sensible concision, a strikingly useful guide.
Two interesting points for this reader, randomly encountered...:
Very intriguing to note that Georges Franju, journeyman documentarist, surrealist and troublemaker director, is given substantial credit in Parkinson's discussion of the French Nouvelle Vague; Franju is called a "vital link between traditional French Cinema and the New Wave". Bold assertion there, adding Franju to the traditional list that generally includes Godard, Truffaut, Resnais (but not Franju). But a welcome, if micro, reset of the books.
The fascinating fact that the film that is credited as the fundamental starting-gun of the Italian Neo Realist movement*, Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, is based on the American noir classic, 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', by James Cain. Nothing groundbreaking about that, but kind of a Rosebud of film history, then, in that Noir emerged in several versions and locations in the postwar milieu, and its concerns were common to the Italian avant garde, the French in their homages, and the Americans in their indigenous pulp mystery genre. Kind of a keystone in the edifice of postwar fiction, whether on the page or on film.
Both of the above, I suppose, might be notable for what they foreshadow-- that what would be considered Cinema after 1960 or so would explode everyone's definition of the terms, and would crash all of the conventions.
So what came immediately before, in grim social-documentary and surrealist irony, elaborate mise-en-scene on low-budget terms, coldwar fascination with the edgy, lawless, failed side of war-torn can-do industrialism, the doubt & nightmare of the noir world-- holds the keys to the sixties and beyond.
After the early practitioners, Murnau, Lang, Pabst, who showed that narrative connections might be made in many ways, or mid-century masters, Renoir, Ophuls, Huston, Lean, teaching the camera to tell tall tales in convincing ways-- the grand intersection occurs, the century pivots on the "waves" that struck in the late fifties and early sixties, in Italy, France, Japan, Czechoslovakia, and even Hollywood, Germany, by the seventies. David Parkinson's History Of Film goes a long way towards offering a pocket-sized view of a big subject.
It should be mentioned that somehow or other, the photographs in this volume, small, black and white but consistently excellent, are another reason that this is a better cine-survey guide to own. Not sure how or why, but contrary to the 'historically-valuable-but-poor-resolution' variety that is the routine in most books, the selection here is worth complimenting. International scope, crisp photos, concision & brevity; buy it.
* although, ask any film major what the first Italian neo-realist movie was and they will say Rome, Open City by Rossellini. Which was made three years later. Parkinson's right.
"...workers are changing the world, just as they demolish, build, forge, throw bridges across rivers. We will throw a bridge from one universe to t
"...workers are changing the world, just as they demolish, build, forge, throw bridges across rivers. We will throw a bridge from one universe to the other. Over there: the black and yellow peoples, the brown peoples, the enslaved peoples .. Words no longer followed her thoughts in their ineffable flight. The shimmering crosses of the churches attracted her eyes. Old faith, we will break you too. We will take the crucified one down off the cross. We want people to forget him. No more symbols of humiliation and suffering on the earth, no more blindness; knowledge, the clear eye of man, the master of himself and of things, rediscovering the universe afresh. From the mouth of a pink street surged trucks, bristling with bayonets. They came bounding out, shaking the ground, jolting and pitching, over the broken pavement ..."
Conquered City tells the story of the prototypical players in the siege of St. Petersburg in 1919. It is a fictional account of the story, written by Victor Serge, himself a witness. Told through direct quote, hearsay, confession, declamation, remembrance and interior monologue, by a gallery of other witnesses. Each is poignant, direct, convincing, and true for the moment-- but the truth is that many of these identities and narrative positions are subject to change. Abrupt change or revision, at the mercy of the events of the day.
A political stance, a moral conviction, a genuine human connection-- all may be sold out to the swings and shifts of the Revolution. No one can be relied upon, and what is true earlier in the week will have changed by the weekend; spies and executions are routine, but the charges may be cooked. The greater-good being used at every stage, whether for good or ill. All of the most perilous kinds of slippery slope there can possibly be. And yet, someone had to witness it, and somehow get it down so that it might be examined later.
There is much to be said about the structure of this book, which might be said to be portmanteau or haphazard, at least until the final chapters when the weight of what is happening bears down on the frame of the narrative. Absolute chaos arrives at the next tick of the clock.
Author Serge wrote the account(s) here from exile throughout the twenties, hounded by the Soviet secret police from country to country. So it is necessarily compartmentalized, densely episodic, but also -- unified. It is the resolution of millions of disparate elements that makes this so impressive.
What must be said is that the Foreward in the Nyrb edition is a glowingly successful example of a well-researched, insightful, Afterword. (There seems little appetite these days to put any 'extras' in books at the end, when they would make sense, when the reader can fully absorb the scholarship at hand. To place this before the text is to mystify a lot of readers, and to place a barrier before almost all excepting the specialist.)
Translator Richard Greeman is an authority on the work of Victor Serge, and the Foreward is comprehensive and thorough, answering a lot of questions that come up over the course of what is a thin (198pp) but richly condensed text. Much of the wide frame of action and political thought that comprises the book is examined, questions answered and discussed, in the Foreward. But save it for an Afterword and dive right in at the deep end. Conquered City is no dusty historical allegory; the history is in brilliant period technicolor, and the themes are still with us in every day's news.
"Dostoevsky..." began Platon Nikolaevich. "I don't read him. No time, you understand. The Karamazovs split hairs with their beautiful souls; we are carving flesh itself, and the beautiful soul doesn't mean a damn thing to us. What is serious is to eat, to sleep, to avoid being killed, and to kill well. There's the truth. The question has already been decided by the sword and the spirit. A sword which is stronger than ours, a spirit we don't understand. And we don't need to understand, in order to perish. We will all perish with these books, these ideas, Dostoevsky and the rest; precisely, perhaps, on account of these books, of these ideas, of Dostoevsky, of scruples, and of incomplete massacres. And the earth will continue to turn. That's all. Good evening."
The days got longer, heralding white nights. The snow melted on the steppes, revealing patches of black earth and pointed yellow grasses. Streamlets ran in every direction, babbling like birds. They glistened in every fold of earth. Swollen rivers reflected pure skies of still frigid blue. Scattered bursts of laughter hung in the woods among the slim white trunks of birches. Specks of dull silver seemed to hang in the air. The first warm days were tender, caressing...
"Why do you think I fought the war? To get back to Sylvia." "And why did you fight the war, Mr. Steele?" Sylvia's smile wasn't demure; she made it t
"Why do you think I fought the war? To get back to Sylvia." "And why did you fight the war, Mr. Steele?" Sylvia's smile wasn't demure; she made it that way.
I don't see how you do this much better than Dorothy Hughes does here. Taut, streamlined, inevitability so physically definite you see it approaching like a wall. Of brick, maybe, but more likely spanish stucco, like any dump just off Wilshire. Or perhaps like the wall of fog that envelops you, as you drive west to the ocean from L.A. Sea spray and eucalyptus, misunderstood intentions, and a strangler out there in the night.
Author Hughes has an equation, a kind of an understanding with the reader, which works like this:
1. Reader knows one secret thing. 2. Author encodes that subtext into every glance, every splice of everyday narrative. 3. Equates to Reader immersion in raw, guilty, jangled nerves; every interaction is electric.
One of the High Commandments of Noir is the familiar expectation that at a certain point, everything you know must be wrong, that the rug can and will be pulled out, without notice.
For others, this is an effective plot device, a jarring theatrical coup in the center of the story. For Hughes this function is served by the city itself; the sparkle of a desert town that is also a Metropolis in its own right, the otherworldly light and spectacle of the day as the big sky goes purple and amber in the lead up to darkness. And then the fog and half-light. The sea, the opposite but constant companion to the somehow upside-down desert town of Los Angeles. The First City of Noir.
To talk of plotting or characters would be all spoiler, so we won't. Be advised that the book is nothing like the film rendition with Bogart, and is infinitely more chilling and deadly. A tour de force....more
Shooting for the moon, knowing it would fall back to earth, this is Burgess at the height of his considerable powers, spinning a lopsided globe with oShooting for the moon, knowing it would fall back to earth, this is Burgess at the height of his considerable powers, spinning a lopsided globe with one hand and, well, trying not to laugh too hard. The impossibly lofty account of civilization's status, set in an inauspicious moment, at the end of the twentieth century.
Haven't read since it was first published, but on the eve of a re-read -- an easy five stars....more
If Helen's face launched a thousand ships, and if the Velvet Underground record launched a million garage bands, certainly Robert Frank's dense monogrIf Helen's face launched a thousand ships, and if the Velvet Underground record launched a million garage bands, certainly Robert Frank's dense monograph is the photographic equivalent.
Beautifully elegant images in a harsh, electrifying thematic vein. Read through it, see into it, read it through, and try not to weep....more
Borges believes in intersecting continua; the dreamer who writes the story that is the dream of the writer who envisions the reality that is after allBorges believes in intersecting continua; the dreamer who writes the story that is the dream of the writer who envisions the reality that is after all, only a dream. He believes that when writing or when dreaming we are simply functioning on different planes, and that 'real life' may be only the most useful, or most convincing of these at a given moment. He believes that somebody may have dreamed us.
He believes a lot of things that cheerfully contradict each other, and has no problem with the faulty seams. Like a jump cut in the cinema or a blackout in the theater, transitions come in all shapes, sizes, flavors.
So for the lecture on Nightmares in his Seven Nights series, he's very much on home ground. At a certain intersection, in fact...
... I remember a certain nightmare I had. It took place, I know, on the Calle Serrano, I think at the corner of Serrano and Soler. It did not look like Serrano and Soler-- the landscape was quite different-- but I knew that I was on the old Calle Serrano in the Palermo district.
I met a friend, a friend I do not know; I saw him, and he was much changed. I had never seen his face before but I knew his face could not be like that. He was much changed, and very sad. His face was marked by troubles, by illness, perhaps by guilt. He had his right hand inside his jacket. I couldn't see the hand, which he kept hidden over his heart. I embraced him and felt that I had to help him.
"But my poor Fulano, what has happened? How changed you are!" "Yes," he answered, "I am much changed".
Slowly, he withdrew his hand. I could see it was the claw of a bird. The strange thing is that from the beginning the man had his hand hidden. Without knowing it, I had paved the way for that invention ...
A tantalizing look into the broadly conversational side, the obligingly entertaining lecturer, that JLB could be. If this were an obscure Lp recording, it might be Borges Unplugged. Despite appearances, there is actually very little pretense here, the man inhales literature as others take deep drags on cigarettes; the topics are complete and well constructed. 'A' may lead to 'B' and then directly over to eleventh-century Zoroastrian practice, but--- you are fairly well assured that somewhere or other, sooner or later -- you will be led home again. But all along the way, you are as a blind man being guided by another whose sight you can't really trust.
Too often in the lofty realms of The Arts, some of the most admired turn out to be secretive and suspicious, steeped in their own myth and willing to say anything to carry on the image. Not the case, I have to think, with Borges. I really liked this; it's a rarity that a master of intellectual mesmerism lays down the wand to discuss how the rabbit is extracted from the top hat, and this is as close to that as we may get.
... I had paved the way for that invention: that the man had the claw of a bird and that I would see the terrible change, the terrible misfortune, that he was turning into a bird. It also happens in dreams that are not nightmares: they ask us something, and we don't know how to answer; they give us the answer, and we are astonished. The answer may be absurd, but in the dream it is exactly right. Everything has been prepared. I have come to the conclusion, though it may not be scientific, that dreams are the most ancient aesthetic activity.
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