Wesley Britton's Blog, page 21
March 7, 2018
Book Review: Lou Reed: A life by Anthony DeCurtis
Lou Reed: A life
Anthony DeCurtis
Hardcover:768 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (October 10, 2017)
ISBN-10:0316552429
ISBN-13:978-0316552424
https://www.amazon.com/Lou-Reed-Life-...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
Take a walk on the wild side.
Yes, the line above was the title of Lou Reed’s 1972 hit single, certainly his most famous, most popular song. The sentence can also serve as a succinct summation of the life of the singer/songwriter/ guitarist who spent many years immersed in New York’s wild side, especially during the 1970s. The line can also serve as a summary of rock critic and Reed confidante Anthony DeCurtis’s 2017 biography of a figure DeCurtis knew well for many years.
Speaking of many years, I’m happy to admit Reed got on my radar screen all the way back in 1967 when The Velvet Underground and Nico was released. I was apparently one of the 30,000 listeners who had a copy of the LP with the original Andy Warhol peel-off banana skin cover. Through the ‘70s, I was aware of Reed’s connections with the “glam rock” and punk-rock circles including David Bowie and Mick Ronson, of Reed’s close association with hard drugs, and his very public intimacy with the gender-benders of New York’s gay and trans-sexual populations. But I had only a surface awareness of these aspects of Reed’s public and private life, nothing like the detailed depths revealed in DeCurtis’s very surprising journalism.
While I owned some of Reed’s 20 solo albums released between 1972 and 2009, Rock and Roll Animal being my absolute favorite, I never had the depth of knowledge or insight into Reed’s music DeCurtis demonstrates on nearly every page of his biography. That’s because DeCurtis’s focus is on Reed’s musical legacy and much of his book is critical analysis of all those albums with a special emphasis on the more important songs, Reed’s musical development over the years, and the unique up and down pattern of Reed sometimes fighting commercial success, sometimes courting it.
I wasn’t really aware of Reed’s rejection of all the drug and sexual trappings in his life inspired by his second wife, Sylvia Morales, in the 1980s. That relationship is but one of many DeCurtis analyzes to show how both musical collaborators and personal friends and lovers could be close to Reed one minute and then exiled from his confidence the next whenever the thorny musician felt he had been slighted or misused. In some cases, it was simple pride or paranoia or insecurity that precluded Reed from accomplishing some goals, such as his insistence he be seen as the main motor of the Velvet Underground during the failed reunion attempts in the 1990s.
Gratefully, Anthony DeCurtis gives us a multi-dimensional portrait of Lou Reed, warts and all, as the expression goes. Wild warts, in this case. If you’re like me, after reading this book, you might be inspired to track down some of Reed’s work you didn’t explore before. Most music fans likely know about the mostly unsuccessful collaboration between Reed and Metallica and/or the romance between Reed and performance artist Laurie Anderson. I didn’t know about Reed’s staging of some of his earlier albums in the 21st century, his latter-day interest in martial arts and meditation, or his interest in sonic technology and photography. I didn’t know about the soft-skinned Reed many people saw when they met Reed during his final days with Anderson until his death in 2013.
Clearly, any reader picking up this title will be a fan wanting to learn more about Reed, the Velvet Underground, or the sub-genres of rock Reed contributed to or influenced. All such readers will be handsomely rewarded. Drawing from his own past experiences with Reed, interviews with Reed intimates, and more basic research, Anthony DeCurtis has given us what will certainly be the definitive retrospective of a significant figure in rock history.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 7, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/ihc8kYx
Anthony DeCurtis
Hardcover:768 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (October 10, 2017)
ISBN-10:0316552429
ISBN-13:978-0316552424
https://www.amazon.com/Lou-Reed-Life-...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
Take a walk on the wild side.
Yes, the line above was the title of Lou Reed’s 1972 hit single, certainly his most famous, most popular song. The sentence can also serve as a succinct summation of the life of the singer/songwriter/ guitarist who spent many years immersed in New York’s wild side, especially during the 1970s. The line can also serve as a summary of rock critic and Reed confidante Anthony DeCurtis’s 2017 biography of a figure DeCurtis knew well for many years.
Speaking of many years, I’m happy to admit Reed got on my radar screen all the way back in 1967 when The Velvet Underground and Nico was released. I was apparently one of the 30,000 listeners who had a copy of the LP with the original Andy Warhol peel-off banana skin cover. Through the ‘70s, I was aware of Reed’s connections with the “glam rock” and punk-rock circles including David Bowie and Mick Ronson, of Reed’s close association with hard drugs, and his very public intimacy with the gender-benders of New York’s gay and trans-sexual populations. But I had only a surface awareness of these aspects of Reed’s public and private life, nothing like the detailed depths revealed in DeCurtis’s very surprising journalism.
While I owned some of Reed’s 20 solo albums released between 1972 and 2009, Rock and Roll Animal being my absolute favorite, I never had the depth of knowledge or insight into Reed’s music DeCurtis demonstrates on nearly every page of his biography. That’s because DeCurtis’s focus is on Reed’s musical legacy and much of his book is critical analysis of all those albums with a special emphasis on the more important songs, Reed’s musical development over the years, and the unique up and down pattern of Reed sometimes fighting commercial success, sometimes courting it.
I wasn’t really aware of Reed’s rejection of all the drug and sexual trappings in his life inspired by his second wife, Sylvia Morales, in the 1980s. That relationship is but one of many DeCurtis analyzes to show how both musical collaborators and personal friends and lovers could be close to Reed one minute and then exiled from his confidence the next whenever the thorny musician felt he had been slighted or misused. In some cases, it was simple pride or paranoia or insecurity that precluded Reed from accomplishing some goals, such as his insistence he be seen as the main motor of the Velvet Underground during the failed reunion attempts in the 1990s.
Gratefully, Anthony DeCurtis gives us a multi-dimensional portrait of Lou Reed, warts and all, as the expression goes. Wild warts, in this case. If you’re like me, after reading this book, you might be inspired to track down some of Reed’s work you didn’t explore before. Most music fans likely know about the mostly unsuccessful collaboration between Reed and Metallica and/or the romance between Reed and performance artist Laurie Anderson. I didn’t know about Reed’s staging of some of his earlier albums in the 21st century, his latter-day interest in martial arts and meditation, or his interest in sonic technology and photography. I didn’t know about the soft-skinned Reed many people saw when they met Reed during his final days with Anderson until his death in 2013.
Clearly, any reader picking up this title will be a fan wanting to learn more about Reed, the Velvet Underground, or the sub-genres of rock Reed contributed to or influenced. All such readers will be handsomely rewarded. Drawing from his own past experiences with Reed, interviews with Reed intimates, and more basic research, Anthony DeCurtis has given us what will certainly be the definitive retrospective of a significant figure in rock history.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 7, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/ihc8kYx
March 1, 2018
When Blindness Becomes a Writing Tool
When Blindness Becomes a Writing Tool
By Dr. Wesley Britton
(This post first appeared at my blog at Book Likes.com today at:
http://wesleyabritton.booklikes.com/p...
Last week, I had very different intentions about what I was going to say in this blog post. I planned to write about how my own disability, my blindness due to the genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa, had helped shape my main protagonist of the Beta-Earth Chronicles, Malcolm Renbourn. After all, the launching point for the entire series was my wondering what would happen to a human who is blinded when he’s drug through a barrier separating the multi-verse and taken to an alternate earth. How could a blind man turned into a blind alien cope with a planet where he doesn’t understand the language, see anything at all around him, and adapt to a culture completely different from anything he has ever known?
But rather than delve into those matters today, I thought I’d share with you a writing lesson I learned this weekend. For my ghost-loving grandson, we went to see the movie Winchester for his birthday. Unless you’re blind yourself or have gone to the movies with someone who is blind, you probably don’t know about the headsets that provide audio descriptions of whatever movie you’re seeing.
I’ve been relying on audio descriptions for years, but at Winchester I was really struck with the depth of details I was hearing. Perhaps that’s because the mansion where the story is set is so strange that the audio track had to be very vivid. The narrator had to describe long hallways with boarded up rooms and staircases that went nowhere. He had to describe strange faces and appearances by spirits that weren’t human. Well, at least not alive.
But in addition to the weird, the narrator also had to describe normal curtains blowing in windows, what items were on tables or cabinets, what things were hung on the walls or dangled from the chandeliers. He had to describe what the characters looked like, what they were wearing, and what their expressions and movements conveyed to viewers. If they looked pensive, that’s the adjective he used. Or aggressive, resolute, all manner of terms on the emotional spectrum.
In the theatre, blind viewers got every scene and setting painted for us in colors, lighting, cleanliness, atmosphere, sizes, you name it. In short, the audio track had to do just what we authors need to do for readers on the printed page.
So I’m proposing that a useful exercise for authors is to pretend we’re creating a narration for an audio description when we’re creating our settings, characters, meals, movements, anything visual a reader would want to see in their minds. For a blind writer, this was a good lesson as I’m naturally not visually oriented. For all the things I needed to describe in my books, I had to rely on very old memories or emulate imagery from my reading.
Since my stories are set on a different planet, I didn’t have to try to capture any recognizable places. Instead, I had the challenge of world-building, that is, crafting settings largely from scratch. To make them believable, recognizable or not, the descriptions had to be vivid and multi-sensory. Whether I was successful or not, that’s your judgement to make. Whether you’re successful or not in your own writing, well, why not consider how a blind movie-goer would experience the time and place where your characters are doing their things?
By Dr. Wesley Britton
(This post first appeared at my blog at Book Likes.com today at:
http://wesleyabritton.booklikes.com/p...
Last week, I had very different intentions about what I was going to say in this blog post. I planned to write about how my own disability, my blindness due to the genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa, had helped shape my main protagonist of the Beta-Earth Chronicles, Malcolm Renbourn. After all, the launching point for the entire series was my wondering what would happen to a human who is blinded when he’s drug through a barrier separating the multi-verse and taken to an alternate earth. How could a blind man turned into a blind alien cope with a planet where he doesn’t understand the language, see anything at all around him, and adapt to a culture completely different from anything he has ever known?
But rather than delve into those matters today, I thought I’d share with you a writing lesson I learned this weekend. For my ghost-loving grandson, we went to see the movie Winchester for his birthday. Unless you’re blind yourself or have gone to the movies with someone who is blind, you probably don’t know about the headsets that provide audio descriptions of whatever movie you’re seeing.
I’ve been relying on audio descriptions for years, but at Winchester I was really struck with the depth of details I was hearing. Perhaps that’s because the mansion where the story is set is so strange that the audio track had to be very vivid. The narrator had to describe long hallways with boarded up rooms and staircases that went nowhere. He had to describe strange faces and appearances by spirits that weren’t human. Well, at least not alive.
But in addition to the weird, the narrator also had to describe normal curtains blowing in windows, what items were on tables or cabinets, what things were hung on the walls or dangled from the chandeliers. He had to describe what the characters looked like, what they were wearing, and what their expressions and movements conveyed to viewers. If they looked pensive, that’s the adjective he used. Or aggressive, resolute, all manner of terms on the emotional spectrum.
In the theatre, blind viewers got every scene and setting painted for us in colors, lighting, cleanliness, atmosphere, sizes, you name it. In short, the audio track had to do just what we authors need to do for readers on the printed page.
So I’m proposing that a useful exercise for authors is to pretend we’re creating a narration for an audio description when we’re creating our settings, characters, meals, movements, anything visual a reader would want to see in their minds. For a blind writer, this was a good lesson as I’m naturally not visually oriented. For all the things I needed to describe in my books, I had to rely on very old memories or emulate imagery from my reading.
Since my stories are set on a different planet, I didn’t have to try to capture any recognizable places. Instead, I had the challenge of world-building, that is, crafting settings largely from scratch. To make them believable, recognizable or not, the descriptions had to be vivid and multi-sensory. Whether I was successful or not, that’s your judgement to make. Whether you’re successful or not in your own writing, well, why not consider how a blind movie-goer would experience the time and place where your characters are doing their things?
Book Review: Bitten by Alan Moore
Bitten
Alan Moore
Paperback: 440 pages
Publisher: Independently published (February 7, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1980200890
ISBN-13: 978-1980200895
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
Bitten is one of those novels that’s very difficult to try to pigeonhole. Yes, it’s dystopian in that it’s set in the future when the consequences of global warming are affecting the earth. But much of the story has absolutely nothing to do with any normal science fiction trope. True, many passages can be best classified as horror. Others are best defined as belonging to the thriller genre. In short, many of the plot lines take us to places and down roads no reader could predict. I think that’s a good thing.
One major character is ecologist Claudia Mattioli, one of the world’s most important experts on mosquitoes. That’s a key role to play as climate change has produced a horrifying increase in the size and potency of all species of mosquitoes. Bearing all manner of deadly and incapacitating diseases, they’re attacking humans and animals in swarms that are eating up flesh in major cities all over Italy. At first, Claudia’s job is to gather samples of the types of mosquitoes in various regions before she’s asked to come up with a plan to eradicate them. Problem: Claudia doesn’t think humans should declare war on mosquitoes but rather find a way to live with them.
Claudia’s much older lover is New York publisher and editor Scott Lee who wants to make a deal to produce high-quality art books of Italian painters. As author Moore spent twenty-five years as a publisher and considering many of the pleasures Lee enjoys in Bitten, it’s hard not to wonder if Lee’s experiences are a bit of wish-fulfillment for his creator. Whatever the case, Lee is on hand with Claudia threw a series of shocking adventures, including a human-set fire that destroys much of Venice. That’s before Lee is tempted to go over to the dark side by the alluring femme fatale, Francesca Maruichi.
A third important player is Lee’s friend, Lawrence Spencer, an Italian intelligence officer using the cover of being an art expert. He’s called on by the Mafia in Florence to certify whether or not a certain painting reputedly by Raphael is genuine or not. After all, the criminals are very familiar with the black market, arms smuggling, sales of plutonium to Iran, but not art reportedly stolen in World War II by the Russians. An ongoing mystery involves those who have the painting wanting to set up a silent auction without anyone actually seeing the merchandise before the stolen art is stolen again.
So what has all this intrigue in the art world have to do with climate change and the theme Moore tells us is the important purpose of his book, that of demonstrating how nature will have revenge on humanity in response to thousands of years of poor stewardship of the planet? Are mosquito swarms but the opening shots of Mother Nature giving humanity fair warning of what she can do?
I can’t answer that. I can say I was continually kept interested in the various plot twists and turns because of the engaging, well-sketched characters, the vividly described settings, and the surprises at the end of many of the passages. That sometimes-kinky wish fulfillment Scott, Claudia, and Francesca enjoy is a bonus for, at least, male readers until the kinkiness goes a bit over the edge. One genre Bitten doesn’t fit in is YA.
In addition, Moore adds verisimilitude with an obvious familiarity with colorful Italian cities, the process of authenticating Renaissance paintings, and gives his science credibility by occasionally referring us to the two non-fiction appendices at the end. Bitten is a book for readers who like the unexpected and who don’t need their stories defined by a particular genre. It’s a page-turner with Moore keeping reader interest with a fast pace and all the ingredients spelled out above.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 1, 2018:
https://waa.ai/zp53
Alan Moore
Paperback: 440 pages
Publisher: Independently published (February 7, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1980200890
ISBN-13: 978-1980200895
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
Bitten is one of those novels that’s very difficult to try to pigeonhole. Yes, it’s dystopian in that it’s set in the future when the consequences of global warming are affecting the earth. But much of the story has absolutely nothing to do with any normal science fiction trope. True, many passages can be best classified as horror. Others are best defined as belonging to the thriller genre. In short, many of the plot lines take us to places and down roads no reader could predict. I think that’s a good thing.
One major character is ecologist Claudia Mattioli, one of the world’s most important experts on mosquitoes. That’s a key role to play as climate change has produced a horrifying increase in the size and potency of all species of mosquitoes. Bearing all manner of deadly and incapacitating diseases, they’re attacking humans and animals in swarms that are eating up flesh in major cities all over Italy. At first, Claudia’s job is to gather samples of the types of mosquitoes in various regions before she’s asked to come up with a plan to eradicate them. Problem: Claudia doesn’t think humans should declare war on mosquitoes but rather find a way to live with them.
Claudia’s much older lover is New York publisher and editor Scott Lee who wants to make a deal to produce high-quality art books of Italian painters. As author Moore spent twenty-five years as a publisher and considering many of the pleasures Lee enjoys in Bitten, it’s hard not to wonder if Lee’s experiences are a bit of wish-fulfillment for his creator. Whatever the case, Lee is on hand with Claudia threw a series of shocking adventures, including a human-set fire that destroys much of Venice. That’s before Lee is tempted to go over to the dark side by the alluring femme fatale, Francesca Maruichi.
A third important player is Lee’s friend, Lawrence Spencer, an Italian intelligence officer using the cover of being an art expert. He’s called on by the Mafia in Florence to certify whether or not a certain painting reputedly by Raphael is genuine or not. After all, the criminals are very familiar with the black market, arms smuggling, sales of plutonium to Iran, but not art reportedly stolen in World War II by the Russians. An ongoing mystery involves those who have the painting wanting to set up a silent auction without anyone actually seeing the merchandise before the stolen art is stolen again.
So what has all this intrigue in the art world have to do with climate change and the theme Moore tells us is the important purpose of his book, that of demonstrating how nature will have revenge on humanity in response to thousands of years of poor stewardship of the planet? Are mosquito swarms but the opening shots of Mother Nature giving humanity fair warning of what she can do?
I can’t answer that. I can say I was continually kept interested in the various plot twists and turns because of the engaging, well-sketched characters, the vividly described settings, and the surprises at the end of many of the passages. That sometimes-kinky wish fulfillment Scott, Claudia, and Francesca enjoy is a bonus for, at least, male readers until the kinkiness goes a bit over the edge. One genre Bitten doesn’t fit in is YA.
In addition, Moore adds verisimilitude with an obvious familiarity with colorful Italian cities, the process of authenticating Renaissance paintings, and gives his science credibility by occasionally referring us to the two non-fiction appendices at the end. Bitten is a book for readers who like the unexpected and who don’t need their stories defined by a particular genre. It’s a page-turner with Moore keeping reader interest with a fast pace and all the ingredients spelled out above.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 1, 2018:
https://waa.ai/zp53
February 27, 2018
Tues Beta-Earth Chronicles Updates--
Read a new interview with author Wes Britton and new excerpts from all six of the Beta-Earth Chronicles at--
http://readersreviewroom.com/series/t...
Before day is done, expect new news about character cards, our upcoming newsletter, and more!
http://readersreviewroom.com/series/t...
Before day is done, expect new news about character cards, our upcoming newsletter, and more!
February 23, 2018
Book Review: Mad About Mystery: 100 Wonderful Television Mysteries from the Seventies by Donna Marie Nowak
Mad About Mystery: 100 Wonderful Television Mysteries from the Seventies
Donna Marie Nowak
With an Introduction by Stefanie Powers
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: BearManor Media (February 1, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1629332550
ISBN-13: 978-1629332550
https://www.amazon.com/Mad-About-Myst...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
Like Cesar’s Gaul, Donna Marie Nowak’s Mad About Mystery is divided into three parts.
Part One is a lengthy collection of profiles of made-for-TV mystery movies from the ‘70s. Happily, Nowak doesn’t simply give readers a mere plot summary with some production details for each film. She also economically gives us quick critiques and analysis of the merits, or lack thereof, of each offering. As the title of her book implies, she’s “Mad About Mysteries,” so she is mainly complimentary about each film from The Adventures of Nick Carter to Get Christie Love to The Legend of Lizzie Borden to Salem’s Lot.
The same is true for part two of the book which provides overviews of many TV detective series of the era, like the most famous from Cannon to The Rockford Files to hart to Hart to Columbo. I admit being puzzled by some of her choices. Why Wonder Woman and not the other super-powered champions for law and order like the bionic pair or David McCallum’s Invisible man? Scooby-Doo Mysteries?
My favorite section of the book is part three which includes a string of very insightful interviews with participants who were there including actors, writers, producers, and a stuntman including Sharon Farrell, Peter Fisher, Robert Herron, and the always magnetic Diana Muldaur. Without question, any reader interested in how television films and shows were made will pick up tidbits and lore they never knew before. And not just about the ‘70s—one of the questions Nowak posed to everyone is what changes have they seen in the industry over the years?
Nowak’s overview is told from the point-of-view of a knowledgeable and enthusiastic fan who, again, lives up to her book’s title on nearly every page. I suspect her most interested audience will be fellow Baby Boomers who will have seen most, if not all, of the movies and series she discusses when they first aired. If you watched TV in the ‘70s, this book is a romp down memory lane with many spotlights on cultural events and popular moments for those of us who watched TV when we had three, maybe four channels to choose from. Beyond the favorites we can recall off the tops of our heads, Nowak brings alive shows we might have once loved but forgotten over the years. Me, for example, well I’d forgotten Kolchak: The Night Stalker was both a pair of TV movies as well as a series I watched religiously. As many of these series and movies have been syndicated and rebroadcast countless times in the decades after their initial airings, no doubt there are younger readers who will also enjoy this collection. I’d wager there is no shortage of Columbo or Charlie’s Angels fans who weren’t around when Peter Falk, James Garner, Lynda Carter, and Farrah Fawcett (then Fawcett-Majors) were seriously major stars.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 21, 2016:
http://1clickurls.com/DMLGC4d
Donna Marie Nowak
With an Introduction by Stefanie Powers
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: BearManor Media (February 1, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1629332550
ISBN-13: 978-1629332550
https://www.amazon.com/Mad-About-Myst...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
Like Cesar’s Gaul, Donna Marie Nowak’s Mad About Mystery is divided into three parts.
Part One is a lengthy collection of profiles of made-for-TV mystery movies from the ‘70s. Happily, Nowak doesn’t simply give readers a mere plot summary with some production details for each film. She also economically gives us quick critiques and analysis of the merits, or lack thereof, of each offering. As the title of her book implies, she’s “Mad About Mysteries,” so she is mainly complimentary about each film from The Adventures of Nick Carter to Get Christie Love to The Legend of Lizzie Borden to Salem’s Lot.
The same is true for part two of the book which provides overviews of many TV detective series of the era, like the most famous from Cannon to The Rockford Files to hart to Hart to Columbo. I admit being puzzled by some of her choices. Why Wonder Woman and not the other super-powered champions for law and order like the bionic pair or David McCallum’s Invisible man? Scooby-Doo Mysteries?
My favorite section of the book is part three which includes a string of very insightful interviews with participants who were there including actors, writers, producers, and a stuntman including Sharon Farrell, Peter Fisher, Robert Herron, and the always magnetic Diana Muldaur. Without question, any reader interested in how television films and shows were made will pick up tidbits and lore they never knew before. And not just about the ‘70s—one of the questions Nowak posed to everyone is what changes have they seen in the industry over the years?
Nowak’s overview is told from the point-of-view of a knowledgeable and enthusiastic fan who, again, lives up to her book’s title on nearly every page. I suspect her most interested audience will be fellow Baby Boomers who will have seen most, if not all, of the movies and series she discusses when they first aired. If you watched TV in the ‘70s, this book is a romp down memory lane with many spotlights on cultural events and popular moments for those of us who watched TV when we had three, maybe four channels to choose from. Beyond the favorites we can recall off the tops of our heads, Nowak brings alive shows we might have once loved but forgotten over the years. Me, for example, well I’d forgotten Kolchak: The Night Stalker was both a pair of TV movies as well as a series I watched religiously. As many of these series and movies have been syndicated and rebroadcast countless times in the decades after their initial airings, no doubt there are younger readers who will also enjoy this collection. I’d wager there is no shortage of Columbo or Charlie’s Angels fans who weren’t around when Peter Falk, James Garner, Lynda Carter, and Farrah Fawcett (then Fawcett-Majors) were seriously major stars.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 21, 2016:
http://1clickurls.com/DMLGC4d
February 21, 2018
Book Review: Scheherazade's Last Night and Other Plays by Jules Verne
Scheherazade's Last Night and Other Plays
Jules Verne
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: BearManor Media (January 11, 2018)
ISBN-10: 162933197X
ISBN-13: 978-1629331973
https://www.amazon.com/Scheherazades-...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
For many years now, the North American Jules Verne Society has been offering English-speaking readers long overdue translations of Verne works previously only available in the author’s native French. Of course, many potential readers of these translations know Verne best for his ground-breaking sci fi adventures like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon or other high-adventure novels like Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island, or Five Weeks in a Balloon.
As a result, most of the 11 volumes of the Society’s Palik Series are full of material likely to interest Verne scholars and aficionados, but probably few general readers. This is especially true as most of the plays and stories were written in Verne’s youth and are more traditional fare of the era. Then again, the series has given us, so far, the long overdue translation of the 1874 stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days. Volume 2 of the series, “Shipwrecked Family: Marooned with Uncle Robinson” morphed into Mysterious Island. In Volume Seven, Bandits and Rebels, Verne’s “San Carlos” presents a Spanish smuggler who used a submersible to evade authorities a decade before Captain Nemo piloted The Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Now, the eleventh publication in the series presents three Verne plays translated by Peter Schulman. Each have their own charms for those looking to possibly find insights and foreshadowings into Verne’s more substantial works. I’m not familiar enough with the Verne canon to see direct lines between any of these plays and Verne’s later fiction, but those in the know may well find elements from these early plays that are developed in the more mature novels. “An Excursion at Sea,” for example, is certainly reminiscent of similar romps from Gilbert and Sullivan, most notably “The Pirates of Penzanze.” There’s a healthy streak of humor in Verne’s story of two lovers, a character in disguise, and a ship of would-be pirates and smugglers. Hmm, maybe the links between this play and Captain Nemo and company are more overt than I first suspected.
The collection’s title story, “The Thousand and Second Night” is a character study of a stubborn Sultan who insists on yet another bedtime story even as his storyteller has hit a potentially fatal writer’s block. Is there some unexpected plot twist that will let Scheherazade live?
For my money, the most interesting play in the trio is “Le Guimard,” in which we meet an artist involved in an art contest in Rome. He’s in love with a seductive but crafty model while a dancer has her eye on him. In this love triangle, we hear some rather interesting dialogue on the meaning of art and life. After all, dialogue is what these plays are all about as we get minimal description beyond the scant stage instructions.
Again, these plays are mainly going to entertain Verne experts and likely scholars of 19th century French literature, especially drama. Peter Schulman’s introduction is clearly written for the most serious of readers, the sorts of folks who want their footnotes and scholarly apparatus reliable and thorough. Sci fi buffs aren’t going to see much that would connect this collection with that particular genre, but it is interesting for us non-specialists to learn about the depth and breadth of Verne’s creative scope. And, as many previous reviewers have noted, these plays also demonstrate Verne’s humorous side in ways we didn’t see in the more popular novels. Verne can still entertain us without putting us in hot air balloons, submarines, or rocket ships to the moon.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 21:
http://1clickurls.com/NS4bnw2
Jules Verne
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: BearManor Media (January 11, 2018)
ISBN-10: 162933197X
ISBN-13: 978-1629331973
https://www.amazon.com/Scheherazades-...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
For many years now, the North American Jules Verne Society has been offering English-speaking readers long overdue translations of Verne works previously only available in the author’s native French. Of course, many potential readers of these translations know Verne best for his ground-breaking sci fi adventures like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon or other high-adventure novels like Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island, or Five Weeks in a Balloon.
As a result, most of the 11 volumes of the Society’s Palik Series are full of material likely to interest Verne scholars and aficionados, but probably few general readers. This is especially true as most of the plays and stories were written in Verne’s youth and are more traditional fare of the era. Then again, the series has given us, so far, the long overdue translation of the 1874 stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days. Volume 2 of the series, “Shipwrecked Family: Marooned with Uncle Robinson” morphed into Mysterious Island. In Volume Seven, Bandits and Rebels, Verne’s “San Carlos” presents a Spanish smuggler who used a submersible to evade authorities a decade before Captain Nemo piloted The Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Now, the eleventh publication in the series presents three Verne plays translated by Peter Schulman. Each have their own charms for those looking to possibly find insights and foreshadowings into Verne’s more substantial works. I’m not familiar enough with the Verne canon to see direct lines between any of these plays and Verne’s later fiction, but those in the know may well find elements from these early plays that are developed in the more mature novels. “An Excursion at Sea,” for example, is certainly reminiscent of similar romps from Gilbert and Sullivan, most notably “The Pirates of Penzanze.” There’s a healthy streak of humor in Verne’s story of two lovers, a character in disguise, and a ship of would-be pirates and smugglers. Hmm, maybe the links between this play and Captain Nemo and company are more overt than I first suspected.
The collection’s title story, “The Thousand and Second Night” is a character study of a stubborn Sultan who insists on yet another bedtime story even as his storyteller has hit a potentially fatal writer’s block. Is there some unexpected plot twist that will let Scheherazade live?
For my money, the most interesting play in the trio is “Le Guimard,” in which we meet an artist involved in an art contest in Rome. He’s in love with a seductive but crafty model while a dancer has her eye on him. In this love triangle, we hear some rather interesting dialogue on the meaning of art and life. After all, dialogue is what these plays are all about as we get minimal description beyond the scant stage instructions.
Again, these plays are mainly going to entertain Verne experts and likely scholars of 19th century French literature, especially drama. Peter Schulman’s introduction is clearly written for the most serious of readers, the sorts of folks who want their footnotes and scholarly apparatus reliable and thorough. Sci fi buffs aren’t going to see much that would connect this collection with that particular genre, but it is interesting for us non-specialists to learn about the depth and breadth of Verne’s creative scope. And, as many previous reviewers have noted, these plays also demonstrate Verne’s humorous side in ways we didn’t see in the more popular novels. Verne can still entertain us without putting us in hot air balloons, submarines, or rocket ships to the moon.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 21:
http://1clickurls.com/NS4bnw2
New Beta-Earth Book Trailer Narration
Some visually impaired friends of mine complained my Beta-Earth Chronicles YouTube trailer wasn’t very helpful for the sight impaired. I took heed. So a new YouTube trailer with narration is now up at:
https://youtu.be/A7SsUFTeMFg
https://youtu.be/A7SsUFTeMFg
February 20, 2018
Book Review: My Days: Happy and Otherwise by Marion Ross
My Days: Happy and Otherwise
Marion Ross
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Kensington (March 27, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1496715152
ISBN-13: 978-1496715159
https://www.amazon.com/My-Days-Otherw...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
89-year-old marion Ross clearly understood anyone wanting to read her memoirs would do so because of her years starring as Marion Cunningham on the ABC television hit, Happy Days. As a result, Ross’s descriptions of her life before the series and the decades afterward in My Days essentially bookend a very detailed overview of her time as Mrs. C from her point-of-view as well as most of the other cast members as interviewed by Ross’s collaborator, entertainment reporter David Laurell.
For most readers, Ross’s overviews of her early years demonstrate how a woman with drive and determination can make it in a very competitive business if one is willing to dedicate themselves to learning their craft and putting their working life ahead of everything else. This work ethic kept her working continuously from 1953 on, beginning with her first film role in that year’s Forever Female starring Ginger Rodgers and William Holden. In the same year, she played the Irish maid on the TV series, Life With Father. Until Happy Days, Ross was rarely not on a film or television lot but never as a break-out star or marquee headliner.
Yes, this section of the book has its fair share of name-dropping but not to the extent of many other celebrity autobiographies. It’s a very fast read that really fills in the background, character, attitudes, and the reasoning behind why Ross did what she did, notably staying in a pointless marriage long after it was clearly dead. The actress’s unhappiest days occurred during her 1951-1969 marriage to alcoholic, unmotivated would-be actor Freeman Meskimen. As she reminds us many times, in those days alcoholism wasn’t treated like the disease it is today but rather something to be accepted as part of normal life. That was one reason ending that marriage took as long as it did. In fact, that relationship is about the only part of the book that can be labeled “unhappy days.”
Then, we hear the oft-told story of how Ross was cast as Mrs. C and how life went for the largely happy cast of Happy Days. The only discordant note is her brief discussion of how Tom Bosley wasn’t the cheeriest of co-stars who took some time to accept Ross on an equal footing. In fact, Bosley’s presence is rather slight in the book compared with Ross’s descriptions of the rest of the cast followed by Laurell’s interviews with Ron Howard, Anson Williams, Donnie Most, Henry Winkler, Scott Baio, and the late Erin Murphey. To each, Laurell posed many of the same questions, mostly what the actors had to say about Ross, how they interacted with her on and off the set, and their relationships after the show’s cancellation. Uniformly, all the younger players said Ross was an important ingredient in keeping the set free of rancor, was a reliable source of good council and wisdom, was a literal good sport in Garry Marshall’s Happy Days softball team, and remained a steady friend in the decades after the demise of Happy Days. Strangely, neither Ross nor any of her co-stars mentioned the 2011 lawsuit they brought against CBS for contracted royalties they were due for Happy Days merchandising, especially on gambling machines. Perhaps this was for legal reasons? Or perhaps an unhappy afternote to much happier memories wouldn’t have fit the book’s thematic flow.
Ross asked Laurell to not only interview her TV family, but her two actual children as well, Jim Meskimen and Ellen Kreamer. After all, many fans want to know how Marion Ross the mother compared to Marion Cunningham the mother. Well, the two women were quite different but the children of Marion Ross seem perfectly happy with the mother that raised them.
In many ways, the story of Marion Ross is the story of a pioneer who was an independent working woman long before that status was acceptable or encouraged in Hollywood or anywhere else for that matter. She was a woman whose success didn’t come until her 40s and who didn’t have a fulfilling romance until she met Paul Michael when she was 60.
So, again, this is a book essentially for Happy Days fans. I’d say it would also be a good, very fast read for those who like positive, upbeat tales of successful women who, from the early days of their lives, determine what they want to do and what they want to become and go for it, full throttle and resolute.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 19, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/UOsw03D
Marion Ross
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Kensington (March 27, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1496715152
ISBN-13: 978-1496715159
https://www.amazon.com/My-Days-Otherw...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
89-year-old marion Ross clearly understood anyone wanting to read her memoirs would do so because of her years starring as Marion Cunningham on the ABC television hit, Happy Days. As a result, Ross’s descriptions of her life before the series and the decades afterward in My Days essentially bookend a very detailed overview of her time as Mrs. C from her point-of-view as well as most of the other cast members as interviewed by Ross’s collaborator, entertainment reporter David Laurell.
For most readers, Ross’s overviews of her early years demonstrate how a woman with drive and determination can make it in a very competitive business if one is willing to dedicate themselves to learning their craft and putting their working life ahead of everything else. This work ethic kept her working continuously from 1953 on, beginning with her first film role in that year’s Forever Female starring Ginger Rodgers and William Holden. In the same year, she played the Irish maid on the TV series, Life With Father. Until Happy Days, Ross was rarely not on a film or television lot but never as a break-out star or marquee headliner.
Yes, this section of the book has its fair share of name-dropping but not to the extent of many other celebrity autobiographies. It’s a very fast read that really fills in the background, character, attitudes, and the reasoning behind why Ross did what she did, notably staying in a pointless marriage long after it was clearly dead. The actress’s unhappiest days occurred during her 1951-1969 marriage to alcoholic, unmotivated would-be actor Freeman Meskimen. As she reminds us many times, in those days alcoholism wasn’t treated like the disease it is today but rather something to be accepted as part of normal life. That was one reason ending that marriage took as long as it did. In fact, that relationship is about the only part of the book that can be labeled “unhappy days.”
Then, we hear the oft-told story of how Ross was cast as Mrs. C and how life went for the largely happy cast of Happy Days. The only discordant note is her brief discussion of how Tom Bosley wasn’t the cheeriest of co-stars who took some time to accept Ross on an equal footing. In fact, Bosley’s presence is rather slight in the book compared with Ross’s descriptions of the rest of the cast followed by Laurell’s interviews with Ron Howard, Anson Williams, Donnie Most, Henry Winkler, Scott Baio, and the late Erin Murphey. To each, Laurell posed many of the same questions, mostly what the actors had to say about Ross, how they interacted with her on and off the set, and their relationships after the show’s cancellation. Uniformly, all the younger players said Ross was an important ingredient in keeping the set free of rancor, was a reliable source of good council and wisdom, was a literal good sport in Garry Marshall’s Happy Days softball team, and remained a steady friend in the decades after the demise of Happy Days. Strangely, neither Ross nor any of her co-stars mentioned the 2011 lawsuit they brought against CBS for contracted royalties they were due for Happy Days merchandising, especially on gambling machines. Perhaps this was for legal reasons? Or perhaps an unhappy afternote to much happier memories wouldn’t have fit the book’s thematic flow.
Ross asked Laurell to not only interview her TV family, but her two actual children as well, Jim Meskimen and Ellen Kreamer. After all, many fans want to know how Marion Ross the mother compared to Marion Cunningham the mother. Well, the two women were quite different but the children of Marion Ross seem perfectly happy with the mother that raised them.
In many ways, the story of Marion Ross is the story of a pioneer who was an independent working woman long before that status was acceptable or encouraged in Hollywood or anywhere else for that matter. She was a woman whose success didn’t come until her 40s and who didn’t have a fulfilling romance until she met Paul Michael when she was 60.
So, again, this is a book essentially for Happy Days fans. I’d say it would also be a good, very fast read for those who like positive, upbeat tales of successful women who, from the early days of their lives, determine what they want to do and what they want to become and go for it, full throttle and resolute.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 19, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/UOsw03D
February 15, 2018
Hot new SF Giveaway and Interview with Wes Britton!
In a very busy day for Wes Britton’s Beta-Earth Chronicles, here are two brand-new cool things for you by way of Book Likes:
Here’s your chance to get a free copy of The Blind Alien:
http://booklikes.com/giveaways/show/2...
Here’s a new interview with Wes Britton:
http://blog.booklikes.com/post/164077...
Here’s your chance to get a free copy of The Blind Alien:
http://booklikes.com/giveaways/show/2...
Here’s a new interview with Wes Britton:
http://blog.booklikes.com/post/164077...
Creating a Multi-Verse, Part 2
“Creating a Multi-Verse, Part 2” by Wes Britton is up at:
http://wesleyabritton.booklikes.com/
http://wesleyabritton.booklikes.com/
Wesley Britton's Blog
This just came in. My favorite two sentences of all time!
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
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