Vienna after WWII, sliced into four sectors with pocked-marked buildings and rubble from bombings, is a powerful character in Greene's THE THIRD MAN....moreVienna after WWII, sliced into four sectors with pocked-marked buildings and rubble from bombings, is a powerful character in Greene's THE THIRD MAN. The street grates separate the light from the dark of human nature, and yes, "Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this."
Holly Martins arrived in Vienna just in time to attend Harry Lime's unexpected funeral. Martins, a writer of cheap novelettes, hears an unconvincing story of his friend's accidental death...he has been run over by a truck. It is reported that Lime was carried away by three men, Baron Kurtz and Popescu, but who was THE THIRD MAN?
Major Calloway, an investigator in the international police force, tells Martins that his friend's death was the best thing that ever happened to Lime, the worse racketeer that "ever made a dirty living in this city." Martins doesn't believe the accusations and sets out to prove the Major wrong.
Holly finds loopholes and inconsistencies in everyone's report of Lime's life in the devastated city. Was he selling diluted penicillin on the black market causing the deaths of children and war victims? And was Lime still alive, hiding in the Russian sector giving up information about his friends including his lover, Anna, to buy him time to get away from the closed city?
When Holly sees his friend standing in the shadows of an archway, a cat playing with his shoe laces, he knows the truth. Harry is alive, guilty of greed and murder, yet free and protected from arrest and conviction. Holly is now willing to be Calloway's "dumb decoy duck" to lure Lime from the shadows.
Their meeting at the ferris wheel, a reminder of happier times, reveals changes in Harry Lime, as he rationalizes his behavior...The Borges of Italy murdered, caused warfare and terror, and produced a Michelangelo. The Swiss proclaimed brotherly love for five hundred years, and all they produced was the coo-coo clock.
Graham Greene wrote this novella with a screenplay in mind. Bringing the story to the screen has left a permanent record of intrique when the rules of society were negated, and the resulting ruin of war and morals could be easily observed. Like "Citizen Kane" for American audiences, THE THIRD MAN is said to be the favorite movie in England. Due to the masterful plot and vivid characterizations, I would have to agree with the Brits. Highest Recommendation!(less)
It is said that the truth will set you free, but Graham Greene contrives a complex morality tale in THE TENTH MAN that asks, free from what?
It is true...moreIt is said that the truth will set you free, but Graham Greene contrives a complex morality tale in THE TENTH MAN that asks, free from what?
It is true that the two detainees who own pocket watches in the Paris Gestapo prison have power over the other thirty men, but their power is replete with fear that their deceit will be found out. You see, they do not always remember to wind the watches, so predicting the death hour of seven o'clock in the morning becomes a lie.
Among the prisoners is an insecure lawyer, Jean-Louis Chavel who offers his personal wealth and property to anyone who will assume his fate...death by firing squad in the morning. He has drawn one of three marked ballots assuring his extinction in exchange for good behavior from the civilian population. A young man named Janvier offers his life in exchange for the security Chavel's wealth will provide his sister and mother after his death.
The initial power Chavel experiences in the bargain will later produce anxiety that the freedom he gained by cowardice and cunning will become known to his contemporaries. His escape from death has not set him free! Where can he go after the war, and how will he earn a wage with the dishonor he has brought on himself?
Chavel, penniless and shamed, finds his way back to his old home and the new occupants designated in the contract with Janvier. Theresa Mangeot and her mother now live in his home, and it is to their generousity that he begs for an unpaid position in service to them. His deceit continues when he realizes that Theresa hates the man who took her brother away from his family, so he presents himself with an altered identity.
Carosse, with a long criminal history, appears on the rural estate claiming to be Chavel, not realizing how vile that name is to Theresa. His cunning and protective concern for Theresa wins her over to the detrament of her relationship with the real Chavel.
The deceitfulness and cowardness of the lawyer Chavel must end to protect Janvier's sister and mother from this interloper. What will he discover about truth that had failed him before? Greene seems to posit that truth provides freedom from self, not circumstances, but only if one finds the courage to look at his choices and consequences and make changes for the future. Highly Recommended!
Ernest Hemingway in "A Moveable Feast" says he discovered Turgenev at Shakespeare and Company book store in Paris and through Sylvia Beach's lending l...moreErnest Hemingway in "A Moveable Feast" says he discovered Turgenev at Shakespeare and Company book store in Paris and through Sylvia Beach's lending library, read everything by the Russian author. Turgenev's economy of words had a profound influence on Hem's writing style, and readers are fortunate for their like mindedness.
Turgenev's FIRST LOVE is a novella of the space in one's life when love inexplicably takes center stage and rationality exists right. Almost impossible to describe the exhilaration, despair, isolation, joy and "thunderstorm of feelings" felt for the first time, Turgenev is remarkable in this tale which succeeds at every level.
Three successful Russian men in their forties, after dinner and cigars, task each other with telling the story of their first love. After two are unanimously rejected, one complies with a written account of his sixteenth year in Moscow when a beautiful twenty-one year old daughter of a Princess moves in behind his house.
What is born, flourishes, and not surprisingly dies, is the making of a man from a boy, revelations about family, the disregard of a young woman's sense of the other, and a reckoning of what love is and isn't.
What would our reading experience be without the great Russian writers of the nineteenth century? Not to be missed...Highest Recommendation! Favorites. (less)
We are attracted to an ideal, a beautiful woman 'well turned out'. Expecting all our subsequent feelings to be this straightforward, we despair when c...moreWe are attracted to an ideal, a beautiful woman 'well turned out'. Expecting all our subsequent feelings to be this straightforward, we despair when contradicting thoughts take hold. We often proclaim we like complicated natures in others, but do we?
Daisy Miller is foolishly naive, brash, ego-centric, overly confident, and a flirt. She is repeatedly described as innocent which implies simplicity, so why does Frederick Winterbourne feel as if he's lost his bearings when he's with her, constantly surprised by her confusing rhetoric, and ultimately abandoned because of his harsh judgment of her behavior? In less than a year he is both obsessed and reviled by the pretty American.
Annie Miller (Daisy for the genial flower favorable in every environment) is traveling with her timid, ineffectual mother and her rambunctious nine year old brother on the Grand Tour of Europe. In beautiful Lake Geneva she meets Frederick Winterbourne, whose last name proves fitting, and he is immediately smitten.
Winterbourn is an expatriate living in Geneva over a number of years. He is conflicted by his American instincts of spontaneity and his acquired European rules of formality. His attraction to the natural, unguarded Daisy, and his fear of social ostracism from women in the upper class take an emotional toll too great to sustain.
The novella, published in 1878, satisfies on every level, from beautifully written prose to the inability of society to view Daisy Miller as anything but negatively. Her behavior represents all that was looked down on in American society by Europeans, and the Continent's class distinctions and rules of separation represented everything that Americans wanted distance from. More than the vastness of the Atlantic separated the two cultures.
Winterbourne regrets his condemnation of Daisy Miller when she dies of malaria after visiting the Colosseum of Rome at night. Americans were particularly susceptible to the disease, and she'd been warned!
Maybe complexity is too threatening, otherness too foreign to our natures...and the price of engagement too high to pay. Highest Recommendation! (less)
Beethoven wrote the Kreutzer Sonata during a time of personal crisis while recognizing his encroaching deafness. His music referenced struggle and her...moreBeethoven wrote the Kreutzer Sonata during a time of personal crisis while recognizing his encroaching deafness. His music referenced struggle and heroics during this period.
Tolstoy wrote the novella by the same name during a time of religious crisis. Unable to reconcile his behavior with the ideals of religious dogma, his view of life became dark and uncompromising. Love, marriage, sensuality, children were compared with the words of scripture, and none measured up to the rules applied, the promises anticipated, and the commitment required.
Reconciliation of reality with the ideal is fodder for the analyst's couch. The mental conflict, confusion, and instability expressed in this revealing work, is particularly poignant when measured against the calmness, security, and confidence of internal clarity. It is a fundamental truth that we must learn to live with our inconsistencies, and to reign-in guilt and retribution for acceptance of self and others.
It appears from this writing that mastering self was beyond his reach. Deafness encompasses more than the ear. Highly Recommended!(less)
On Saturday night in the summer-time, from the first tee, you can see the younger set dance in the Country Club with the worst intentions!
F. Scott Fi...moreOn Saturday night in the summer-time, from the first tee, you can see the younger set dance in the Country Club with the worst intentions!
F. Scott Fitzgerald's BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR is all about intentions...to be accepted, popular, to influence others, for power and recognition, and control of your life. The results of this kind of expenditure are familiar to all ages and the bedrock of memories easily conjured up when reading Fitzgerald's story of adolescent angst.
Bernice from Eau Claire is spending a month with her cousin, Marjorie who describes herself as one of the "gardenia girls" with three or four men in love with her. With self-confidence to spare and mastery of all things essential to being popular, she turns her critical eye on her witless cousin, Bernice. The enlightened one heeps wisdom of how to dress, tame eyebrows, and project approbation onto needy dance partners. The intention is to be what you are not!
And when the new role becomes stale, promise to do something outrageous to keep everyone's attention...cut your long locks into a modern bob! Even better, charge for the viewing of your transformation.
What is all the outward change worth when you don't recognize yourself inwardly? We are all at various stages of intimacy with ourselves. Lasting change is typically slower than cutting your hair. Highly Recommended!
Mary and Ned Boyne, two romantic Americans who had made themselves financially comfortable investing in the Blue Star Mine, wanted to secure the most...moreMary and Ned Boyne, two romantic Americans who had made themselves financially comfortable investing in the Blue Star Mine, wanted to secure the most remote, disagreeable, uncomfortable home in Dorsetshire. It must possess the "vulgar necessities" including a ghost! They were assured by their friend, Alida Stair that Dorsetshire is "full of ghosts", and the home that fit all the couple's desires would have a ghost "but you'll never know it--well, not till afterward".
Giving themselves to harmonious activities, planting and gardening for her and book writing for him, the couple declared they could not go far enough from the world, or plunge deep enough into the past. They were happy in their home called Lyne, and though there seemed to be no supernatural enhancements, the house was good enough in itself.
Within months Mary felt her first occasional brush of intense memory. She noticed a preoccupation, a darkening within Ned and wondered if there was a secret between them. One day, sitting on a narrow roof with Ned, she heard a "Hullo" apparently from a figure of a man walking on a road beside the home in grayish clothes with something remote about him. "Wait!" Ned called, but by the time he descended the stairs, the figure had vanished.
"When one sees the Lyne ghost one never knows it."
This is a supernatural tale of loss and domestication to the Horror of knowing you will never know what happened! The house knew, the floor, the books, the dusky walls were all witnesses to what occured that day, but nothing would be revealed until long AFTERWARD. Highly Recommended!(less)
The aging process becomes all-powerful at the funeral of a loved one. It marks the containment of a life; there is no more to be added. When we welcom...moreThe aging process becomes all-powerful at the funeral of a loved one. It marks the containment of a life; there is no more to be added. When we welcome an infant, we celebrate all that there is to come; the possibilities are truly limitless.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's fable is about this journey in reverse, as a man of seventy years with the language capabilities, interests, and the physical infirmities familiar to old age, begins his life in 1860's Baltimore, the first child of Mr. and Mrs. Button. He is an old man with a long white beard sandwiched in a hospital nursery crib complaining of the crying babies all around him.
As the years pass, Benjamin seeks fun and frivolity while his wife of forty is appropriately mature, staid, and critical of his behavior. But what is he to do? His energy and zest for life is at its peak, so he enrolls in Harvard and leads the football team to an overwhelming victory over Yale. There is the desire to attend preparatory school, and then kindergarten, and soon he is too young for anything but a crib and a diet of milk. Finally, he remembers nothing...a blank slate with all memories washed clean, as we imagine an infant's mind might be.
Our imaginations and empathic responses are quickened when reading THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. We may initially wonder what it would be like if physical prowess were optimally coupled with mature thinking, but ultimately the process of aging backwards is be too foreign to our experience, though interesting to contemplate.
The stages of the aging body, while unwelcome at times, are reliable and predictable truths to us, but it's safe and fun to play with this reality when it's between the covers of a book. Highly Recommended.(less)
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