" Caution -- spoilers (such as they are)
OK, there is a mystery as to why two dead guys would drift onto a beach in Sweden on a life raft, having been sh...moreCaution -- spoilers (such as they are)
OK, there is a mystery as to why two dead guys would drift onto a beach in Sweden on a life raft, having been shot, but then dressed in expensive clothes. That's never solved. Why would Latvia want Wallendar, who speaks not a word of Latvian to come to Latvia to solve the murder of a police major? Couldn't they have just interviewed him at home? Is there no competent cop in Latvia (other than the guy who died)?
And Wallender doesn't do much. He runs around being led by others, for no good reason, and when he "solves" the mystery comes up with the wrong guy and is saved by that guy getting killed. Even the small stuff is wrong. One night he is out of money and needs his handler among the Latvian underground, to lend him some money to get a hotel room. The next day he is flush with money, buying restaurant food and music at a department store. How'd he get that money? Did Latvia have a lot of ATMs in 1991? Did he carry his Swedish versateller card along with his fake German ID? And why did the Latvian underground give him a German ID when he didn't speak German? A bit embarassing if anyone should check it. No, this just made no sense at all.(less)"
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"Rent the movie rather than rending the book"
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I am of the age where, until his death in 1994, I considered Nixon to be the omnipresent evildoer. He was around when I was born, and he was still around 47 years later. You couldn't get rid of him. I felt the boomers would be more correctly call...moreI am of the age where, until his death in 1994, I considered Nixon to be the omnipresent evildoer. He was around when I was born, and he was still around 47 years later. You couldn't get rid of him. I felt the boomers would be more correctly called the "Nixon Generation." I was too young to remember him vilifying Helen Gahagan Douglas, but I do remember him as Vice-president getting (literally) stoned in Caracas. I remember him running againt Pat Brown for Governor. His, "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" speech. His secret plan to end the Vietnam war. Every word that came out of his mouth was a lie. And when it got exposed in 1973-1974 it was so much fun to watch the hearings on television and see his weasels and gofers up before the Senate Watergate Committee turning on each other as Nixon solemnly stated: "I am not a crook." That was when congresspersons and senators had some guts and would bring up a sitting president on charges.
Perlstein was born in 1969, the first year of the Nixon presidency. He writes, however, like he was in the middle of it. His narrative is lively, ironic, and ultimately, depressing. The country, in the years since, has not progressed but regressed. Nixon, in retrospect, looks like a wise man. Despite his "enemies list" he seems a civil libertarian compared to what we have now. Surely he is responsible for the beginnings of what American politics have descended into, but other, more skilled practitioners have dug the hole far deeper than Milhouse could ever have dreamed.
Perlstein takes us through the years 1964-1972 as if they had happened yesterday. That was when America fractured into what Perlstein terms the Franklins and the Orthogonians, representing very roughly the in crowd and the out group and Nixon's Whittier College. We are now red and blue staters.
Perlstein, with a few exceptions, gets it right. (The SDS chant was "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win" and not "Ho Chi Minh is gonna win."
A must read for anyone who wants to understand late 20th century history. My only quibble is that Perlstein stopped with the election of 1972, and did not bring it forward to the more fun and amazing Watergate scandal times of 1973 and 1974, when we all watched the hearings and marveled at Sam Ervin ("I'm just an old country lawyer") digging up things we could not believe.
Now everyone takes that same dishonesty, immorality and dirty tricks in the white house as base-line normality.(less)
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Benjamin Black is the pen name of John Banville, a Mann-Booker Prize winning author. He is doing a series of mystery fiction. Not much mystery here, you can figure out whodunnit well before the end of the book if you are paying any attention at all...moreBenjamin Black is the pen name of John Banville, a Mann-Booker Prize winning author. He is doing a series of mystery fiction. Not much mystery here, you can figure out whodunnit well before the end of the book if you are paying any attention at all. What is interesting is that of all the alcoholic, dysfunctional, erratic, failures that populate the anti-hero role of investigator, Black's protagonist Quirke, has got to take the cake. He is a pathologist in a Dublin hospital in the 1950's. He married the woman he didn't love and has been pining for her for the 20 years that she has been dead. He was an orphan, adopted out to a wealthy judge who saw to his education. He lives alone, drinks, and occasionally meets his niece, Phoebe, for a drink. He notices his adoptive brother -- and brother in law -- changing the death notice for a woman who died in childbirth and starts following leads. Another woman is beaten to death. He himself is beaten and hospitalized. He seems to be carried along by events rather than actively participating. There are signs that the book was written too fast as descriptions --- although good ones, repeat themselves. This is a Dublin without color, wealth, or happiness. Parts of the story are set in wealthy Boston in a home that reminds one of the movie "The Big Sleep." But the characters are the strong point, and Black does very well at drawing them out. I recommend it with the caveat that the book is some sort of hybrid between mystery and literature. Sometimes this is to the advantage of both, but their are other points when each pulls the other down.(less)
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Richard Price has been writing for a long time, back to The Wanderers in 1974. He was one of the primary writers on The Wire, IMHO the best series ever on tv. His new novel, Lush Life is set in the partially yuppifying, partially project world of th...moreRichard Price has been writing for a long time, back to The Wanderers in 1974. He was one of the primary writers on The Wire, IMHO the best series ever on tv. His new novel, Lush Life is set in the partially yuppifying, partially project world of the Lower East Side of NYC. The book is "about" a murder that happens when, with a gun pointed at him, a robbery victim informs the would-be robber, "Not tonight my man." A huge mistake. Most of the book is from the point of view of one of the cops who is trying to find the killer, and makes mistakes. But the book delves into the lives of a companion of the victim who was too traumatized to call 911 even though he had his cell phone with him, and too ashamed to admit that to the police. He is working as a manager of an upscale restaurant-bar, thinks he should be doing something else and is stealing from the tip pool. There is a Yemeni-run grocery nearby whose freezer forms a frosted image of the virgin mary and which becomes an impromptu neighborhood shrine. There is the young man, beaten by his stepfather who does the killing (no spoiler here, you know that early on) and who has a talent for impromptu rap lyrics. There is the frustrated actor, so drunk that he fell down and saved himself during the robbery, who stages an over-the-top funeral for the victim, but it is really a pageant for him to star in. And sadly, there is the father of the victim, so blown out that he cannot face the rest of his family.
What is amazing about this is that Price has affection and respect for all of these characters. He writes about them -- all highly flawed -- and gives them full credit for their humanity. He makes their fates interesting and we care about them even though we know that they have done awful things and will continue to do awful things. The book also looks at events with an off-center but not dark sense of humor so that in otherwise inappropriate places you find yourself laughing out loud.
Much as we (or I, anyway) got involved in The Wire, I got involved in this book. I highly recommend it.(less)
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