|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0671506323
| 9780671506322
| 0671506323
| 3.73
| 10,750
| Jan 01, 1980
| Jul 01, 1981
|
it was amazing
|
review of Gregory Benford's Timescape by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 24-27, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/C review of Gregory Benford's Timescape by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 24-27, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticB... So far, I've only read 2 other bks by Benford: In the Ocean of Night (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) & Artifact (the truncated review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). I basically have no memory of the 1st one. I have a better memory of the 2nd & I remember liking it. Then again, I like more or less everything I read - w/ very few exceptions. This one, however, struck me as special, I found it satisfying at many levels. The bk was copyrighted in 1980 & part of it is set in a future of 1998, now, obviously, the past. The novel's 1998 is the time of a rapidly increasing ecodilemma that's accompanied by a substantial social decline. Scientific funding is mainly going to research hopeful of solving the crisis. ""Okay. Thanks, Daddy. I'll leave it here. I know you're doing frightfully important work. The English master said so." ""Oh, did he? What did he say" ""Well, actually . . ." The boy hesitated. "He said the scientists got us into this beastly mess in the first place and they're the only ones who can get us out of it now, if anyone can." ""He's not the first one to say that, Johnny. That's a truism." ""Truism? What's a truism, Daddy?" ""My form mistress says just the opposite." Nicky came in suddenly. "She says the scientists have caused enough trouble already. She says God is the only one who can get us out of it and He probably won't."" - p 2 There're food & fuel shortages. "["]No meat again this week, but I got a bit of cheese at the farm and I pulled some early carrots. I think we may have some potatoes this year.["]" [..] "The last bit of cycling, nipping through the outskirts of Cambridge, was the worst. The streets were difficult to negotiate, with cars parked every which way, abandoned. There had been a national program to recycle them" - p 3 The main subject of the novel is an attempt to communicate w/ the past using tachyons. This communication is hoped to tip the past people off about how to prevent the coming eco-disasters. ""Well, we've got a large indium antimonide sample in there, see—" Renfrew pointed to the encased volume between the magnet poles. "We hit it with high-energy ions. When the ions strike the indium they give off tachyons. It's a complex, very sensitive ion-nuclei reaction." He glanced at Peterson. "Tachyons are particles that travel faster than light, you know. On the other side—" he pointed around the magnets" - p 7 ""Hold on," Peterson said, putting up a hand. "Aim for what? Where is 1963?" ""Quite far away, as it works out. Since 1963, the earth's been going round the sun, while the sun itself is revolving around the hub of the galaxy, and so on. Add that up and you find 1963 is pretty distant." ""Relative to what?" ""Well, relative to the center of mass of the local group of galaxies, of course. Mind, the local group is moving, too, relative to the frame of reference provided by the microwave radiation background, and—" ""Look, skip the jargon, can't you? You're saying the 1963 is in the sky somewhere?" ""Quite so. We send out a beam of tachyons to hit that spot. We sweep the volume of space occupied by the earth at that particular time."" - p 9 Right away, I respect the ideas put forth. How many time travel novels take into consideration that a different time for Point A will have Point A also in a different space? It seems to me that most time travel novels have people traveling in time & then coming out in the same place at a different time. SO, if the time traveler goes 20 yrs in the future, starting next to a young tree out in a field they arrive in that same field w/ the tree 20 yrs older & bigger. Instead, they'd arrive in the same point in space, where the field & the planet wd no longer be. The wife of the scientist, Renfrew, just explaining the tachyon project, is married to Marjorie. She talks to plants. "It was early in the year, but a few roses were blossoming already. She talked to each bush as she passed it. ""Charlotte Armstrong, you're doing very well. Look at all those buds. You're going to be absolutely beautiful this summer. Tiffany, how are you? I see some greenfly on you. I'll have to spray you.["]" - p 11 Marjorie gets threatened by one of the local displaced people who's started squatting near her. ""Your kind 'ave 'ad it all their way. There'll be a revolution and then you'll be beggin' for 'elp. And you think you'll get it? Not bloody likely!"" - p 13 That helps set the social mood. This being a well-rounded novel, there's more scientific theorizing for the entertainment of nerds like myself. ""I think the hardest thing to see," Greg said, starting as if he were composing an article in his head, "is why particles traveling faster than light should mean anything about time."" [..] "["]His tachyon experiment takes Einstein's ideas a step further, in a way. The discovery of particles traveling faster than light means those two moving observers won't agree about which even came first, either. That is, the sense of time gets scrambled." ""But surely that's merely a difficulty of communication. A problem with the tachyon beams and so on." ""No, dead wrong. It's fundamental. See, the 'light barrier,' as it was called, kept us in a universe which had a disordered sense of what's simultaneous. But at least we could tell which way time flowed! Now we can't even do that."" - p 32 Welp, Renfrew does succeed in sending his tachyon msg back to 1962 to an appropriately alert scientist who struggles w/ trying to figure out what's happening. ""Hey, try this," Cooper said, jarring Gordon out of his musing. "Suppose we're seeing a time-varying input here, the way you said it was, you know, days ago—when we started searching for outside noise sources. Our transcribing pen is moving at a constant rate across the paper, right?" Gordon nodded. "So these spikes here are spaced about a centimeter apart, and then two spaced half a centimeter. Then a one centimeter interval, three half-centimeters, and so on."" - p 40 ""Like a goddamned code," Cooper finished. "Cooper wiped at his mouth and stared at the x-y recordings. ""Do you know Morse code?" Gordon asked him quietly. "I don't." ""Well, yeah. I did when I was a kid anyway." ""Let's lay out these sheets, in the order I took the data." Gordon stood up with renewed energy. He picked the broken pencil off the floor and inserted it in a pencil sharpener and started turning the handle. It made a raw, grinding noise." - p 41 As I sometimes point out in my reviews, my attn is attracted when a detail in a bk somehow reverberates in my own life. "The waiter brought Peterson's ale and Markham's Mackeson stout." - p 67 Mackeson's Triple Stout is one of my favorite beers. "Markham sighed. "Until tachyons were discovered, everybody thought communication with the past was impossible. The incredible thing is that the physics of time communication had been worked out earlier, almost by accident, as far back as the 1940s. Two physicists named John Wheeler and Richard Feynmann worked out the correct description of light itself, and showed that there were two waves launched whenever you tried to make a radio wave, say." "Two?" "Right. One of them we receive on our radio sets. The other travels backward in time—the 'advanced wave,' as Wheeler and Feynmann called it." ""But we don't receive any message before it's sent." ""Markham nodded. "True—but the advanced wave is there, in the mathematics. There's no way around it. The equations of physics are all time-symmetric. That's one of the riddles of modern physics. How is it that we preceive time passing, and yet all the equations of physics say that time can run either way, forward or backward?"" - p 70 Not surprisingly, I find that conundrum fascinating. I don't really know diddly-squat about Feynmann & Wheeler's work but I did watch a documentary about Feynmann 20+ yrs ago (about wch I remember next-to-nothing). "["]The mass of these particles isn't what we'd call an observable. That means we can't bring a tachyon to rest, since it must always travel faster than light. So, if we can't bring it to a stop in our lab, we can't measure its mass at rest. The only definition of mass is what you can put on the scales and weigh—which you can't do, if it's moving. With tachyons, all you can measure is momentum—that is, impact."" - p 72 Now that's the theory re tachyons in 1980. Reading that got me to wondering where tachyon theory is at in 2023. "Tachyons are hypothetical particles that always move faster than light. They have never been detected and are believed, by some, to be impossible. "This is because particles that move faster than light would break our current understanding of the laws of physics. "The term "tachyon" is derived from the Greek word tachy, which means fast. However, if they are real, such particles might be utilized to transmit signals faster than light. According to the Theory of Relativity, this could defy causality and result in logical dilemmas like the "Grandfather Paradox." "This paradox is exemplified by the impossibility of someone traveling back in time to kill their grandfather. Since that person could no longer go on to create their own parent, it would not, therefore, be possible to go back in time in the first place. "You simply wouldn't exist. "However, there are ways to get around the paradox within the confines of contemporary physics without doing away with time travel entirely. "In any case, it would be strange for tachyons to speed up as their energy goes down, and it would take infinite energy to slow down to the speed of light. There is currently no conclusive experimental proof that such particles exist. "Gerald Feinberg, a physicist and science author, suggested that tachyonic particles may be created from excitations of a quantum field with "imaginary" mass in a 1967 paper entitled "Possibility of faster-than-light particles." "Still, it was quickly shown that Feinberg's model didn't actually account for superluminal (faster-than-light) particles or messages and that tachyonic fields only cause instability, not violations of causality. "However, rather than referring to faster-than-light particles, the term "tachyon" is frequently used in current physics to describe fictitious mass fields. These fields are essential in contemporary physics. "Interestingly, some complementary kinds of particles are known to exist and are referred to as luxons (which always move at the speed of light) and bradyons (which always move slower than light)." - https://interestingengineering.com/sc... Well, well, it seems that tachyon theory hasn't advanced since the writing of this novel & that, in fact, this novel addresses its possibilities in a fairly thorough manner insofar as it hypothesizes a way around the Grandfather Paradox. Bravo! "["]What's the rate of the passage of time?" ""Well, it's—" Peterson stopped, thinking. "How can time move? The rate is one second of movement per second! There's no conceivable coordinate system in physics from which we can measure time passing. So there isn't any. Time is frozen, as far as the universe is concerned."" - p 75 "stamped in red on a black cover—The Geography of Calamity: Geopolitics of Human Dieback by John Holdren." - p 78 I assumed that the bk was fictitious given its dramatic death-reporting nature but I looked for it online just in case I was missing something. I didn't find it. I DID find an entry re "John Holdren": "Holdren was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania and grew up in San Mateo, California. He trained in aeronautics, astronautics and plasma physics and earned a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1970 supervised by Oscar Buneman." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ho... THAT made me wonder whether it was coincidence or, perhaps, an in-joke of the author's about someone he knew or knew of. ""I see you have some Pernod there. Could I have a Pernod and tequila, with a dash of lemon, if you please?" ""Jeez, what a mixture, Is it good? I don't often drink hard liquor myself. Liver, y'know. Sit down. I'm pretty sure we have some lemon juice. My wife will know. Does that drink have a name or did you invent it?" Kiefer was acting erratically again. ""I believe it's called a macho," Peterson said wryly." - p 102 Sheesh! Can you imagine drinking that?! There was a time when I loved Pernod & water, Pastis, but the last time I drank it it acted as such an irritant on my body that I had a herpes outbreak the next morning. That was it for me, no more Pernod. Just consider that story as a personal equivalent to the following msg rc'vd via tachyon Morse Code by the 1962 characters: "ALYN YOU MUST STOP ABOVE NAMED SUBSTANCES FROM ENTERING OCEAN LIFE CHAIN AMZSUY RDUCDK BY PROHIBITIONS OF FOLLOWING SUBSTANCES CALLANAN B471 FOUR SEVEN ONEMESTOFITE SALEN MARINE COMPOUND ALPHA THROUGH DELTA YDEMCLW URGENT" - pp 110-111 "Once he spent the whole week trying to crack Fermat's Last Theorem, skipping lectures to scribble away. Somewhere around 1650, Pierre de Fermat jotted the equation xn + yn = zn in the margins of his copy of Diopantus' Arithmetic. Fermat wrote that if x, y, z and n were positive integers, there were no solutions to the equation for n greater than two. "The proof is too long to write in this margin," Fermat scribbled. In the 300 years since, no one had been able to prove it. Was Fermat bluffing? Maybe there wasn't a proof." - p 116 "In 1993, after six years of working secretly on the problem, [Andrew] Wiles succeeded in proving enough of the conjecture to prove Fermat's Last Theorem." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%... Then Simon Singh wrote a bk about that called Fermat's Last Theorem ( https://www.amazon.com/Fermats-Last-T... ). I read that & wrote my own heretical math bk called Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory) ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book201... ) wch referenced Singh's bk. In other words, all this nerd stuff ties together. Here's another example: "" 'Take the prisoner to the deepest dungeon," he said condescendingly." "Gordon frowned, puzzled, sure the wine had scrambled the man's brains. "Penny volunteered, "It's a Tom Swiftie." ""What?" Gordon rasped impatiently. Cliff nodded sagely. ""A, well, a joke. A pun," she replied, imploring Gordon with her eyes to go along, to let the evening end on a happy note. You're supposed to top it." ""Um . . ." Gordon felt uncomfortable, hot. "I can't . . ." ""My turn." Penny patted Cliff's shoulder, in part as though to steady him. "How about 'I learned a lot about women in Paris,' said Tom Indifferently?" "Cliff barked with laughter, gave her a good-humored slap on the rear, and shuffled to the door." - p 129 (See my review of 'Victor Appleton II's Tom Swift and His Flying Lab: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63... ) Gordon, the 1962-1963 scientist who's rc'vd the tachyon Morse Code, has shared the msg w/ various colleagues. ""I cracked it," Saul said tersely. "The message." ""What . . . ?" ""The dots and dashes at the end? That spelled no words? They aren't words—they're a picture!" "Gordon gave him a skeptical look and put down his briefcase. ""I counted the dashes in that long transmission. 'Noise,' you said. There were 1537 dashes." ""So?" ""Frank Drake and I and a lot of other people have been thinking of ways to transfer pictures by simple on-off signals. It's simple—send a rectangular grid."" - p 138 It's exciting, isn't it? Isn't it basically what a fax machine does? "The first recognizable version of what we consider the telephone fax was invented in 1964 by the Xerox company, but the technology that led to that advancement was created much earlier. In fact, it was Alexander Baine in 1843 who invented the electric printing telegraph. His development simulated a 2D image on paper, taking the limited communication potential of the telegraph to another level." - https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-ta... "Peterson and Renfrew were still unable to resist sniping at each other. Peterson was obviously drawn to the experiment, despite his automatic habit of distancing himself. Renfrew appreciated Peterson's support, but kept pushing for more. Markham found the ornate dance between the two men comic, all the more so because it was virtually unconscious. With their class-calibrated speech patterns, the two men had squared off at the first differing vowel. If Renfrew had stayed a laborer's son he would have got along smoothly with Peterson, each knowing his time-ordained role. As a man swimming in exotic academic waters, however, Renfrew had no such referents. Science had a way of bringing about such conflicts. You could come out of nowhere and make your mark, without having learned any new social mannerisms. Fred Hoyle's stay at Cambridge had been a case in point. Hoyle had been an astronomer in the old mold of seeker-after-truth, advancing controversial theories and sweeping aside the cool rational mannerisms when they didn't suit his mood." - p 152 Thank the holy ceiling light I don't live in England, class conflict is already too intense in the US, in England it must be insufferable. "He passed a construction site, where overalled chimps carried stonework and did the odd heavy job. Remarkable, what the tinkering with the DNA had done in the last few years." - p 153 & that's the 1st & last mention of THAT - it cd be taken as part of the explanation of why so many humans are out-of-work & squatting. "On the corner of St. Andres and Market streets was Barrett's barber shop, a faded sign proclaiming, "Barrett is willing to shave all, and only men unwilling to shave themselves." Markham laughed. This was a Cambridge insiders' joke, a reference to the logical trickery of Bertrand Russell and the mathematicians of a century ago. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 18, 2023
|
May 28, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0671655957
| 9780671655952
| 0671655957
| 3.26
| 35
| 1964
| Oct 01, 1986
|
liked it
|
review of Mack Reynolds & Michael Banks's Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 24, 2023 This is, maybe, the 23rd Mack Reyno review of Mack Reynolds & Michael Banks's Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 24, 2023 This is, maybe, the 23rd Mack Reynolds bk I've read. The last one might've been After Some Tomorrow (For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticA... ). If I understand correctly, this is one he wd've left unfinished when he died, finished by Banks. Dean Ing has done the same thing for other incomplete manuscripts. I'm glad, I always enjoy reading them. This is essentially another fracas novel, but instead of mercenaries there're gladiators. The premise is that the mercenary fracases were getting too large scale, too expensive to be sustainable, so the powers-that-be switched to gladiators as an alternative to keep the tranquilized boob-tube watchers pacified. "The amphitheater covered an area of some ten acres, slightly more than seven hundred by six hundred feet. The arena itself, the fighting arena, was two hundred eighty by one hundrd seventy, surrounded by spacious and comfortable seating facilitis for approximately fifty thousand persons. On an occasion such as this they packed in more than double that." - p 1 I imagine that Reynolds, who seems to've always been a stickler for historical accuracy, did some research on gladiator fighting & the spaces & weapons used. Back in the near-future world of Reynolds's stories, there's the usual element of the rigid class structure & the participation in the fracases as a way of trying to raise one's status. "Denny brushed it aside. "I'm only a Mid-Middle, myself." ""At that, we're probably the highest-ranking combatants to make the finals. Once in a while, you'll get some dilettante Upper who'll participate in the earlier eliminations, just for the glory of it—" "Denny chuckled. ""—but most of the poor bastards out there are Lowers," Zero continued, "and Low-Lowers at that. Making their fling for a bounce in caste and some extra common shares to make life more bearable."" - p 20 There's still an opposition between the US (in its mutated form) & Russia (in ITS mutated form) in this near-future but it's been mostly taken care of by international arms restrictions & the like. Nonetheless, secret police continue. "Yuri sat down and crossed his legs. He wondered vaguely what it was this time. The nature of the ministry for which he worked had changed considerably in the long decades since the Revolution. He wondered whether Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Pole who had organized the Cheka back in Lenin's day, would recognize the organization it had become. The name had changed, down through the years. Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MVD, and this department and that department within the Komissiya, the MGB and KGB, but the heart and soul of the organization remained the same. The peasants who had once been purged in the millions were not tranquil, if indeed you could call them peasants any longer, and the military correlation of forces had stablizied after a fashion, but the ministry's function remained to repress dissent in Eastbloc and foment it elsewhere." - pp 38-39 About the development of gladiator matches out of the fracases: "["]When you were a lad, Denny, just how big were the gladiatoiral meets?" "The question caught Denny by surprise. "Why, I don't even remember . . ." ""Of course not. They're a fairly modern innovation. The fracases got to the point where it took whole divisions to fight one. They were approaching the level of the wars of the Twentieth Century, with a more formal set of rules. The country was being bled white, as Rome was once bled white to support its games. So we had to taper off the fracases, build up a considerably cheaper method of satisfying our mob and of accomodating those members of our society who fit the mold of the professional soldier—the man of action, as it were." - pp 72-73 Reynolds is excellent at class analysis. ""The scum!" she railed. "But it's just what you have to expect. A hereditary aristocrat! Have you ever heard in history of a hereditary aristocrat that was worth last year's credit card? Sure, sure, the first generation slugs its way to the top. He's an outstanding warrior, or possesses an unusually agile mind. Then the second generation comes along, inheriting the old boy's titles, position, and wealth, and he's a second rater. The the third, raised by his generation, is a molly. By the time you get to the fourth generation, you get the hemophilia of the Romanoffs, the withered arm of the Kaiser, and the chinless wonders of the Hapsburgs. Zen knows what their brains were like!"" - p 87 It appears that Yuri is Trotskyite, a secret group. I can't rejoice too much at that conisdering tha Trotsky's the one who suppressed the Kronstadt Rebellion, reputed partially to be about free speech for anarchists. "["]Why, do you realize that at a reception the other evening I stood in a discussion in which several of the local politicians, members of the Premier's party, expressed the opinion that Trotsky lives on in Mexico." "Startled, Yuri Malyshev looked at him a long moment befire quietly voicing the response, "And will never die." "The other's eyebrows went up. "So. You are one of us."" - p 108 I wonder if the Trotshyite touch is from Banks & not in the original Reynolds ms. "Of course, what was it that his last lover had told him, on the eve before he left for the national games? Yes, she'd said, "A woman wants to be wanted, Denny—why do you think we make men do all the work?"" - p 119 It wd be interesting to read a compilation of male comments on women as expressed thru fiction. Denny & 2 others is forced into defending the West World's right to own a deadly weapon in a special combat against the "Pink Bloc". Their trainer for the fight-to-the-death is none other than the mercenary hero of previous fracas novels. Again, I have to wonder whether this is Banks touch or in the original. "The position of Joe Mauser, the old pro, in all of this was not an enviable one. As advisor, he was at once coach, drill sergeant, and more. He would have far rather participated himself, but he held no illusions. Twenty years ago, yes, he would have taken his stand as one of the three—and proudly, for he had never been one to shirk his duty to his country, or to himself, despite his distatse for his chosen vocation. But the dealing of death is a young man's game, as Mauser well knew, and one does not become an old pro in the game of death by having illusions." - p 144 In organizing against the status quo the suggestion that the cell system be used for self-protection is proposed. "he was nodding. "First of all, the cell system." "She scowled. "The what?" ""The cell system. Five persons to a cell, one of whom is an elected leader. The nihilists, back in the Nineteenth Century, were the first to develop it, I believe. I can study up on the details and report. The general idea is that you know no one in the organization but the other four memebers of your cell. If you're captured, it is possible for you to betray only four people. If you are a police spy, you will learn the identity of only four people."" - p 225 "In Benjamin Franklin's day, so little reading material was available that each man capable of reading read everything he could hands to—including the so-called "inflammatory" pamphlets of Thomas Paine. But buy the Twentieth Century, not to speak of the Tweny-first, when for all practical purposes everyone could read, few did. Less than five percent of the population bought books, and they were usually devoted to sex or mayhem—preferably both." - p 228 "But above all, the average reader refused anything that proved hard to read, that moved too slowly." - p 229 & isn't that where we are today, but worse? How many people do you know who can & will read long & 'hard' works that aren't just about sex & mayhem?! Well, there's me.. & perhaps a few others I know of on Goodreads. I'm sure they're out there but we're in an extreme minority. In my personal experience, very few university professors qualify. I knew one professor who was trying to get a job teaching the writing of science fiction. Her qualifications? Well, she liked a particular SciFi TV show. That was enuf for her. Thank goodness it wasn't enuf for the people deciding whether to hire her. The 1st printing of this was in October, 1986. I find it prescient in its predictions about credit cards. ""You know, this system of credit cards is undoubtedly one of the greatest aids to keeping track of one's people that has ever been devised. For everything you purchase, you must submit your credit card.["]" - p 240 In this day & age I like businesses that accept cash only - but how much longer will they be able to do that? "The Gracchi brothers attempted to initiate changes to turn their fellow citizens back into men. Denny, you're our historian. What was the final destiny of the Gracchi?" "Denny said slowly, "They were killed by a mob. Their opposition promised the Roman proletariat even greater reforms, more free handouts—more bread and bigger circuses, I suppose. And the mob killed the Gracchi."" - p 265 "The Gracchi brothers were two brothers at the start of the late Roman Republic: Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus. They served in the plebeian tribunates of 133 BC and 122–121 BC, respectively. They have been received as well-born and eloquent advocates for social reform who were both killed by a reactionary political system; their terms in the tribunate precipitated a series of domestic crises which are viewed as unsettling the Roman Republic and contributing to its collapse." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi... The Wikipedia entry is significantly different from the version presented in this bk. I don't know wch is more accurate. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 30, 2023
|
May 24, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1412856809
| 9781412856805
| 1412856809
| 3.45
| 29
| Feb 17, 2015
| Feb 28, 2015
|
liked it
|
review of David L. Phillips's The Kurdish Spring by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 9, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintek review of David L. Phillips's The Kurdish Spring by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 9, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticK... I can't claim to be particularly aware of world affairs in any thorough way. I didn't learn about Rojava & its potential interest to me as a fledgling autonomous zone until I read a review titled "The Rojava Revolution is a Women's Story" by Paul Buhle of Janet Biehl's Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War and the War on Isis in the fall 2022 issue of Fifth Estate. Almost immediately after reading that I read mention of Rojava again in Peter Lamborn Wilson's bk Conversazione. Those 2 reads led me to think I shd learn more. I'd been hearing for decades that the Kurds are a supressed people, particularly in Iraq. SO, I looked online for bks about the Kurds & Rojava & found a top 5 list provided by Janet Biehl. It might've been this list here: https://shepherd.com/best-books/rojav... . I bought 5 bks & decided to read them in chronological order from oldest to newest. They're all fairly contemporary. I started w/ The Kurdish Spring (copyright 2015, the Author's Note is dated October 1, 2014). Let's start w/ the publisher, Transaction Publisher: Who are they? "Transaction began on July 1, 1962, as part of a multiplex grant sponsored by the Ford Foundation at Washington University in St. Louis. From beginnings as a social science magazine, Transaction: Social Science and Modern Society (later Society), Transaction Publishers evolved into a full-fledged publisher of books (Transaction Books), journals (Transaction Periodicals Consortium), and eBooks. "In 1969, Transaction relocated to the newly formed Livingston College, on the Livingston campus of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Many editors, authors, and advisors are drawn from the faculty. Close to 200 faculty members have been authors and editors of Transaction books. "AldineTransaction was an imprint of Transaction Publishers. Formerly a division of Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Aldine Publishing Co. was acquired by Transaction in July 2004, and the books were then published under the imprint AldineTransaction. AldineTransaction published classic books in the fields of sociology, anthropology, economics, sociobiology, physical anthropology, and public policy. It acquired book lists from Precedent Publishers in 2009 and the Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research (CUPR) in 2011. "Transaction published more than 6,000 titles." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transac... In "Studies in Intelligence" vol 48, No 4, 2004, "The Intelligence Officer's Bookshelf Intelligence in Recent Public Literature Compiled and Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake This section contains brief reviews of recent books of interest to the intelligence professional and the student of intelligence." a review of "Cees Wiebes. Intelligence and The War In Bosnia 1992-1995 . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003. 463 pages, index." ( https://www.cia.gov/static/c4224ff351... ) is provided. I find it interesting that there's an online source for learning about what publicly available bks might be of interest to intelligence officers. I never expected such a thing. I made a cursory search for "Intelligence Officer's Bookshelf Kurdish Spring" & didn't find anything. It wd've been very interesting to read a review of this bk from an "intelligence professional"'s POV. My 1st impression was that the work is scholarly.. almost tooooo scholarly in the sense that its seeming objectivity seems suspect as a little bit tooooo pat. That + reading about the author made me wonder whether he's CIA. In Bernard Kouchner's Foreword it's written: "David L. Phillips deciphers all the figures of contemporary threats and crisis. He also believes in the resources of our democracies, however threatened they may be. He knows how to turn international law into an instrument for peace. His capacity for analysis acts as a detector of conflicts to come. "Rather than retreat to the quiet of his reading rooms, predicting the past and lamenting about done deeds, Phillips likes to travel to the most forlorn places on the planet, an active witness of current turmoil." - p ix The above writer refers to Phillips as "The Activist Professor" & I reckon I've known at least one professor who fits that description - but to be "an active witness of current turmoil" involves more than being an activist, it means going into war zones, places not necessarily even easily entered w/o some sort of way of getting there. There are people who know how to get across borders surreptitiously & there are people who are able to get across them w/ official assistance. Phillips strikes me more as the latter. From the Author's Note: "President George H. W. Bush encouraged the Kurds to rebel against Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi regime did not collapse. Bush turned a blind eye when Saddam launched a counterattack, driving more than 1.5 million Kurds across the borders of Iran and Turkey. Kurdist militia—peshmerga—tried to defend Kurds against Saddam's superior forces. The term perhmerga means "those who face death."" - p xi & in my late 1990s days of activism against the sanctions against Iraq I heard an Iraqi speaker talk about this. The speaker sd that the US promised support for an insurrection so they went ahead w/ the rebellion only to find no US support forthcoming, leaving the rebels in a dramatically vulnerable position. "In February 1992, Jalal Talabani convened a meeting of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Sulaimani. Karim and I made the long drive from Diyarbakir in Southeast Turkey across the Habur Gate into Iraqi Kurdistan. The road was covered with a long slick of black crude. Oil drums were strapped underneath the carriages of trucks, smuggling crude in exchange for food needed in Iraqi Kurdistan. "The mood was celebratory. Saddam's forces had been expelled; Kurds enjoyed self-rule. They erupted in wild cheers when I called for freedom, democracy, and human rights (Azadi, Demokrasi, and Buji). At Masoud Barzani's meeting of the Kurdistan Deomcratic Party (KDP) in August 1993, I proposed that the United States establish a consulate general in Erbil. Kurds enthusiastically welcomed an "American flag in Kurdistan." The US Department of State set up a consulate in Erbil after Saddam was overthrown." - p xii Now a mere "activist professor" wdn't have the power to make such a suggestion. But Phillips is described on the back-cover bio thusly: "David L. Phillips is director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights. Phillips served as foreign affairs expert and senior adviser to the US Department of State during the administrations of presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama." The above-mentioned Institute has a website that offers this self-description: "The Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) was established in 1978 at Columbia University. ISHR is committed to its three core goals of providing interdisciplinary human rights education to Columbia students, fostering innovative academic research, and offering its expertise in capacity building to human rights leaders, organizations, and universities around the world. "ISHR was the first academic center in the world to be founded on an interdisciplinary commitment to the study of human rights. This remains one of ISHR's most distinctive features. We recognize that on a fundamental level, human rights research must transcend traditional academic boundaries, departments, and disciplines, reaching out to the practitioners’ world in the process, to address the ever-increasing complexities of human rights in a globalized world. ISHR’s emphases on interdisciplinarity, engagement, and globalism draw from and complement the strengths that have long characterized intellectual life at Columbia." - https://humanrightscolumbia.org/about... This webpage shows a picture of a wall on wch is engraved: "FREEDOM OF SPEECH FREEDOM OF WORSHIP FREEDOM FROM WANT FREEDOM FROM FEAR" Well, it's hard to find fault w/ that, eh? But talk is cheap, including talk about "freedom, democracy, and human rights" & the US government's PR supporting the same. But let's not forget that this same US government has endorsed torture (so much for "freedom, democracy, and human rights") during the same Bush that Phillips worked for & is not above more than a little deception to get control of oil-rich areas such as Kurdistan. & then what about some FREEDOM FROM WORSHIP? That might help things (although it didn't seem to help the USSR much). & then there's "ISHR’s emphases on interdisciplinarity, engagement, and globalism" - "interdisciplinarity" is all well & good as far as I'm concerned - but "engagement" can mean many things, including war - and "globalism" is a huge problem as far as I'm concerned - b/c despite the heavenly promises of 'global visionaries' like Klaus Schwab (Chairperson of the World Economic Forum) globalism strikes me as just-another oligarchical power-play. Today's version of 'globalism' has certainly curtailed freedom of speech & freedom from fear, the past few yrs during wch most countries have been expected to unite into a global entity to fight a very dubiously real health crisis has resulted in more excuses than ever to stop freedom of speech, all justified w/ an insanely high level of fear-mongering. I'm reminded of Visconti's great film "The Damned" in wch wealthy Germans were browbeaten into supporting Nazism only to find themselves trapped in a nightmare that most certainly didn't serve their best interests. I wonder if any of the early supporters of today's 'globalism' are beginning to similarly realize that the promised paradise of peace-on-Earth comes at a price of death-of-the-mind w/o even delivering the peace? Then there's the Introduction: "Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world. An estimated 32 million Kurds live in what is called Kurdistan, a geographic area consisting of Turkey (North Kurdistan), Iraq (South Kurdistan), Syria (West Kurdistan), and Iran (East Kurdistan). The Kurds were divided by Western poers in the twentieth century and subjugated by Arabs, Ottomans, and Persians. According to a Kurdish proverb, "Kurds have no friend but the mountains." Today, however, Kurds are evolving from a victimized people to a coherent political community with viable national aspirations. "The Kurdish Spring is a contemporary political history, describing the struggle of Kurds for rights and statehood. It chronicles their betrayal and abuse in the twentieth century. The 1980s was a low point. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to kill up to 182,000 Iraqi Kurds, including 5,000 in a single day at Halabja; 4,500 Kurdist villages were destroyed during the Anfal Campaign between 1986 and 1988. [1]" [..] "Kurds rebounded. After the Gulf War, the US-led Operation Northern Watch successfully protected Iraqi Kurds and created conditions for their return and self-rule." - p xvii Note that here we have the 1st of many endnotes. Endnote 1 is fairly typical: "KRG Representation in the United Kingdom." KRG Representation in the United Kingdom. N.p.,n.d. Web 16 Feb 2014. ." - p xxiii Note that "N.p.,n.d." means "No publisher, no date" & applies to online sources. I decided to check out the provided link. This led to "Not found". I double-checked my copying of the URL & found it to be correct. The reason why I went to this trouble was b/c this was one of the 1st of many assertions that Phillips makes that Hussein used chemical weapons. Readers might remember that the the main reason why the US invaded Iraq was b/c it was purported that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that included chemical weapons. As I recall, no such weapons were found. In other words, the story that Iraq was using chemical weapons has been heavily questioned since that time but Phillips's story sticks to it. & why is his only endnote source for this genocide a no-author-listed, no publisher, no date online article that apparently at the very least doesn't exist at the same URL anymore? There IS a "KRG Representation in the United Kingdom" website: https://gov.krd/dfr-en/krg-representa... - & perhaps the info about the genocide can be found somewhere there. But what I wonder is: weren't there any other sources that cd be used as references? A source not directly a Kurdish one? Surely, someone wd've noticed & reported on such atrocities other than the Kurds themselves?! "Iraqi Kurdistan used to be thickly forested before Saddam Hussein denuded the region as part of Iraq's scorched-earth policy toward the Kurds." - p xxi I decided to look into this a bit more. I'd already heard about the draining of swamps as a means of repression but I hadn't heard of deforestation. This led to a long article online entitled "Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds", listing the publisher as "Human Rights Watch" & giving the publication date as "July 1993". Authors are listed (Geroge Black being the primary writer) & there's a disclaimer: "This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States." All in all, this mode of presentation seems trustworthy to me. "In the March 1991 popular uprising in northern Iraq, Kurdish civilians and members of the Kurdish political parties stormed and took control of offices of the Iraqi government and its agencies, including the various intelligence agencies. Several of these buildings were heavily damaged, or even burned to the ground, but others survived unscathed. The Kurds thus came into possession of the inventories of many of these facilities. Matters taken include large quantities of documents, logs and registers, as well as audiotapes, videotapes, films and photographs. "In the days before the uprising was crushed by advancing Iraqi troops, the Kurdish parties succeeded in removing the majority of the documents they had captured from the towns to strongholds in the mountains. In the spring of 1992, one of the two largest parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), agreed to a tripartite arrangement in which Middle East Watch and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee were the other two partners. Under this arrangement, the PUK agreed to send the documents in its possession to the United States for research and analysis; the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed to turn the documents into official records of the U.S. Congress and store them in the facilities of the U.S. National Archives; and Middle East Watch agreed to conduct research on the documents for human rights purposes, including the pursuit of a genocide case before the International Court of Justice at The Hague. "The PUK cache consists of fourteen tons of documents contained in 847 boxes. The total number of pages has been estimated at over four million. In May 1992, the PUK placed these documents in the temporary custody of Middle East Watch and they were then flown, in the presence of the director of Middle East Watch, to the United States. In Washington, D.C., the documents were then handed over to the U.S. National Archives and placed in its storage facilities, while remaining under the joint custody of the PUK and Middle East Watch." - https://www.refworld.org/docid/47fdfb... This article doesn't explicitly mention deforestation but it includes the destruction of trees in the general havoc: "After hiding out in the mountains for weeks, several people from Garawan crept back into their village in search of food. Some homes had been destroyed by shelling, but most were still standing at this point and official records suggest that the destruction was carried out sporadically over the next several months. But leveled they were: When inhabitants were at last able to return to Garawan in 1991, after the post-war uprising, they found that "everything had been destroyed, exploded by dynamite; even the pipes were taken that brought the water from the spring." All signs of life had vanished, even the beehives. The poplar trees used for roofing material had been cut down. Even this was not enough, it seems. "They also destroyed a martyrs' cemetery [for peshmerga who had fallen] that had been built in the area of Zenia," said a fighter from Garawan, who was hiding nearby and had relatives interred there. The man watched from the mountainside through binoculars as a group of jahsh and soldiers dynamited and desecrated the graves." - ibid There's also this mention of scorched-earth policy: "Yet Qala Dizeh may best be seen, perhaps, as a postscript to Anfal--a return to the same logic of anti-Kurdish activities that had gone on for years. The best answer to our question may be that the logic of Anfal ended when the behavior of the Iraqi bureaucracy shifted into a perceptibly different gear. This is not the same as saying "when the killing stopped," or "when the deportations ended," or "when the last village had been burned and bulldozed." For killings and deportations and scorched earth policies have been a feature of life under the Ba'ath Party for many years, and they continue to this day. But, by the spring of 1989, it is safe to say that the Iraqi regime felt that all the goals of Anfal had been met, and on April 23, the Revolutionary Command Council issued its decree No.271, in which the special powers conferred upon Ali Hassan al-Majid were revoked. The sense that the Kurdish problem was now fully under control is further reinforced by Saddam Hussein's December 1989 decision to abolish even the Northern Affairs Committee of the RCC, which had been in existence for more than ten years." - ibid For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticK... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 26, 2023
|
May 17, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0879973528
| 9780879973520
| 0879973528
| 3.50
| 62
| 1978
| Jan 17, 1978
|
really liked it
|
review of A. Bertram Chandler's The Way Back by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 27, 2023 This is the at least 27th bk by Chandler that I've read & review of A. Bertram Chandler's The Way Back by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 27, 2023 This is the at least 27th bk by Chandler that I've read & reviewed. As I noted in my review written yesterday about Chandler's The Broken Cycle, even tho his bks seem to be mostly serial, I read them out-of-order. The Way Back is, according to the "Book Series in Order" website, the last of 6 bks in the Rim World Books. Gateway to Never preceded it, my truncated review of that is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Thanks to Goodreads cutting out their "My Writing" section the full review is no longer available online. The story starts off w/ Grimes & co lost in space & time, similar to The Broken Cycle. "The Commodore came to a decision. "Mr. Carnaby," he ordered, "set trajectory for Earth. Once there we shall have determined where we are, and we should be able to make an intelligent guess as to when. Bring her round now." ""But, sir. . . Earth. . .How shall we find it? We don't have the charts, the tables, and the ship's data banks weren't stocked with such a voyage in mind.["]" - p 9 I don't really remember Gateway to Never but, as, I suppose, w/ most serials, some backstory is worked in. "It seemed that The Outsiders' Ship existed, somehow, as a single entity in a multiplicity of dimensions. It was at a junction of Time Tracks. Another Faraway Quest, with another Commodore Grimes in command, had joined the party, as had the armed—heavily armed—yacht Wanderer, owned by the ex-Empress Irene, who had once ruled a Galactic Empire in a Universe unknown to either of the Grimeses. And there had been a Captain Sir Dominic Flandry in his Vindictive, serving an empire unknown on the Time Tracks of either of the two Confederate Commodores or the ex-Empress. There had been flag-plantings, claims and counter claims, mutiny, piracy, seizure and, eventually, a naval action involving Faraway Quest II, Vindictive, Wanderer and Adler. This had been fought in close proximity toThe Outsiderand The Outsider had somehow flung the embattled ships away from it. They had vanished like snuffed candles." - p 15 Sound complicated? That's just beginning. In order to transport of Earth Grimes had to work w/ the ship's telepaths to retrieve is deeply buried homing info. "It was a good painting. "Clarisse stood before it, sagging with exhaustion, an incongruous figure among her smartly uniformed shipmates, spatters of paint on her naked upper body, smears of pigment on the bedraggled fur kilt that was her only garment. She had dressed the part, that of a cavewoman artist. She had played the part, with a massive dose of hallucinogenic drugs to put her in the proper trance state while she worked." - p 20 As usual, Chandler's ship captain experience provides detail of interest to me: ""Isn't the sea too deep here to use an anchor?" "Grimes sighed. "A sea anchor is not the sort of anchor you were thinking of. It's not a hunk of iron or, as it probably is in these times, stone. Ideally it's a canvas drogue, not unlike the windsock you still see used on some primitive air-landing strips. It's paid out from the bows of a ship on the end of a long line. It is, or should be, completely submerged and not affected by the wind. The ship, of course, is so affected and is blown to leeward of the sea anchor, which has sufficient grip on the water to keep her head up to wind and sea.["]" - pp 62-63 Some day, when I'm on a sailing ship in danger of going down from roiling seas, I'll impress the captain, no doubt a highly sexed woman who'd previosuly found my age of 125 to be intrigueing but sexually repulsive, by suggesting a sea anchor as our salvation. OR, I'll end up swallowed. ""He. . . he was a passenger aboard that ship. Some kind of preacher. He was bound for. . . Nineveh. His name. . ." ""I don't think you need to tell me,"" - p 69 Grimes & crew do end up on Earth in ancient Greece where they proceed to interact w/ the locals. ""And what's the king saying?" ""He's ordering his women to present the gifts to you." ""Oh. And what do I do?" ""Accept them graciously. Smile. Say something nice. You know." ""Mphm. I think that can be managed. And do I reciprocate?" ""Only to the king, sir. His name, I think, is Hektor . . ."" - p 94 After the 1st intercultural awkwardness is gotten over the space-time travelers are eventually invited to a party in their honor. "The sun was well down and the silvery sliver of the new moon, swimming in the afterglow, was about to lose itself behind the black peaks to the west'ard when the invitation to the feast was delivered. From the village marches a small procession—six men bearing aloft flaring, pine-know torches, four drummers, two pipers. All of them were wrapped in cloaks of sheepskin against the evening chill. They paraded around the ship to the squealing of their pipes and the rattle of their drums. "Said Grimes sourly, "It could be a serenade . . ." "Mayhew told him, "I'm picking up on their thoughts. It's a traditional melody, John. It could be called Come To The Party . . ."" - p 105 One of the bevereges at the party was dones w/ mushrooms. The results for the Commodore & crew were a bit wilder than was safe under the conditions. ""John!" It was Mayhew, his voice urgent. ""What is it, Ken?" Grimes could not hear the telepath's reply for the renewed skirling of the pipes. ""Speak up, man!" ""It's the wine, John," almost shouted Mayhew. "Not the same wine as we had analyzed. Something in it. Mushrooms, I think . . ."" - p 111 Well, to cut to the chase, some of them get out of that pickle & end up in the brine. On Mars, this time. "Dwynnaith clambered with arthtopoidal agility up a short ladder that was extended from the open door of the gondola." - pp 152-153 I was hoping I was going to learn a new word but I reckon it really is a typo: "any of a phylum of invertebrate animals (as insects, arachnids, and crustaceans) having a segmented body, jointed limbs, and a shell of chitin that is shed periodically. arthropod adjective." - merriam-webster All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The retelling of the Noah story & the story of ancient gods was most entertaining. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 26, 2023
|
Apr 27, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0030140412
| 9780030140419
| 0030140412
| 3.43
| 28
| unknown
| Jan 01, 1976
|
really liked it
|
review of Emmett Grogan's Final Score by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 27, 2023 I read Grogan's Ringolevio long ago, probably in the 1980s, & had review of Emmett Grogan's Final Score by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 27, 2023 I read Grogan's Ringolevio long ago, probably in the 1980s, & had great admiration for it & for its author & his friends. It made it to my "Top 100 Books" online list: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100B... . Recently, I was doing some research for a review I was writing about Peter Werbe's Summer on Fire, A Detroit Novel ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticW... ) & for that review I wrote: "I move on to checking Grogan's Ringolevio (1969-1972) on the Digger Archives ( https://www.diggers.org/ringolevio.htm ). Instead, I watched the TV program called "To Tell the Truth" w/ Emmett Grogan on it. Oh. My. Fucking. God. Even tho I stopped watching TV in 1969 or 1970 I highly recommend checking this out. On the show Grogan makes a quick plug for a bk he's writing: "I'm also writing a book on the impossibility of fair play in democratic society because of loneliness." Wow. I'm intrigued, I'd like to read an elaboration of that b/c it resonates w/ me. The only other bk of his that I found online is a novel called Final Score so I bought a copy." I was hoping that Final Score wd be Grogan's bk "on the impossibility of fair play in democratic society because of loneliness." As far as I can tell, it isn't that bk - unless one abstracts that msg from the plot, wch I didn't. Alas, while I liked this bk, if I hadn't known Grogan's intense background I wdn't've necessarily found this to be that intriguing - after all, there're plenty of heist novels out & about & most of them are probably written by people who, at least, (sortof) know what they're writing about - as Grogan does here. If anyone out there knows of Grogan's ms for his bk "on the impossibility of fair play in democratic society" existing I'd be interested in publishing it. There're several main characters in Final Score: a quartet of 'anti-heros', hardened criminals skilled at their trades, & a religious nut serial killer whose path crosses theirs. ""Shot dead right through the back of her head, Poley." ""Like Ulric?" ""Like I said, it's funny. Ain't it?" ""Hey, Cobez! They shot Bertha May, too!" ""Who's they?"" - p 6 The killer, Billy Jamaic, picks his victims based on whether they seem down & out to him. He considers it a mercy killing. "After one of his bullets introduced an unfortunate to his Maker, Billy tried his best to see that the meeting would be cordial. He did this through the application of the holy oil to the organs of sense and a recital of prayer over the newly departed." - p 9 Grogan does seem to have substantial knowledge of criminal trades, presumably gleaned from direct experience & information given to him by trusted associates. "Pete Man wasn't anybody's name. It was slang for safe-cracker. A professional who just leaves word because it's the other guy's prerogative to respond. Leo Warren was out and the caper was on. It was only up to Terry whether or not he himself was in." - p 18 "Leo was wise to what the LA police do when they come upon a crime in progress. They shoot to kill. His only chance was his nakedness. It's relatively easy for officials to explain away the death of an unarmed man as justifiable homicide. But they'd be hard put to find an excuse for the shotgunning of a nude male. Unless the cops swore they mistook his penis for a pistol." - p 24 There's plenty of dark humor in Final Score & that might be what distinguishes it the most from other 'hard-boiled' crime fiction. Final Score is copyrighted 1976, 2 yrs after the February 4, 1974, kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the SLA; & 2 yrs before Grogan's death on April 6, 1978. "Since the Hearst girl had been kidnapped, the whole Bay area was burning with heat. There was no way Leo could have arranged for a set of papers through normally simple channels without the possibility of a rumble. Every cop's mind was like a dogcatcher's." - p 46 The dark humor is probably most evident in the descriptions of Jamaic, whose clumsiness is of slapstick proportions. "He would have murmured a pleasant "alleluia" if the steam hadn't misted him from the mirror, nor the bath overflowed. Instead, he yelped and charged the tub, plunging his hand into the hot water to unplug the drain. Unfortunately, the hand he chose for the task was the same which held the .32 automatic, and the instant the fingers of that hand merged with the scalding water, they flinched and the trigger jerked off a round. Hand and weapon recoiled simultaneously from the bath. The bullet mushroomed in the rubber stopper, popping it from the mouth of the drain." - p 64 It was a mild surprise to see a bit of Dickens appear. "Fagin", of course, was a villain in Dickens's Oliver Twist who taught young boys to commit crime & then lived off their spoils. Dickens's novel having been written in 1838, the perseverance of "fagin" as a term shows that his sense of the 'bad guy' is still one many can identify w/. "A shrewd, shifty, unpleasant little nickle-nurser of an old gink entered as if he was about to begin scattering pennies around the barroom. He was a small-time fagin who set up marks for others to score. By always speaking in a creaky undertone, he acquired the name Squeaker. The greed in his aging, hollow eyes brought a grin of recognition to Leo Warren's face. He stood up, stretched his arms, and said, "There's one thing I'm sure about that saloon." ""What's that?" Terry said. ""I sure enuf ain't never going in there," Leo said. "Specially with lying sacks of shit like Squeaker around. He'd make me in a second and trade me in a minute. That cocksucker's been dropping dimes on people fro twenty years. Beats me how the fuckin' snitch is still alive. Why they let him work outta there in the first place?"" - p 69 More dark humor: "After the passengers had fallen over each other and spilled into the street, heads began popping out of windows and doorways and peering from slowly moving cars to observe the riotous mass that was spreading and swelling around the Flatbush Avenue bus whose driver was enduring more nausea crawling around his stomach, until the corner cop entered and poked him with his club and pulled him from his seat and told him to come on outside which he did, after heaving his guts up on the nape of the cop's neck, splashing it chicken-noodle-soup warm, with the frostbitten cop stiffening as the warmth trickled down his spine so smoothly that it relaxed his bladder completely and he took a throughly comfortable piss in his pants beneath his closed rain slicker." - p 75 "A bus! Yessir, the contract on Doctor David Leigh Rabinovitch aka Arthur Skidmore was filled today by our man from Teamsters Local 007. A perfect hit, sir. He used a bus. Hit him with a plain old city bus, Splat!" - p 76 The details about deactivating alarms & robbing safes seem accurate to me - although I imagine things have changed these 47 yrs later. "The Ford sided to the curb and Terry walked over to the telephone. He dropped in a dime, dialed a number, and listened to it ring a few times. He then jammed a celluloid splinter beneath the cradle to prevent an accidental disconnection and cut the coiled wire from the side of the box, tossing the receiver into some shrubbery. He returned to the car and they drove off. "The number was one of two at the plumbing supply company. The line was used as an inexpensive alarm system, known as a "dialer." When the alarm was activated by an intrusion, it was set to automatically ring a secret precoded telephone number at both partners' nearby homes with a recording stating that a burglary was occurring on their premises. Terry had easily deactivated the system by occupying the only free line on which the dialer could operate." - p 86 "Leo was behind the building, kneeling over a utility grate. A combination padlock lay open on the ground beside him. It was opened because a few weeks earlier, DayDream had copied the serial numbers stamped on its exterior and Terry located them in his locksmith's reference books, then cross-indexed the numbers to find the factory-set combination which Leo simply dialed to unlock the grate and get at the alarm's self-contained switch enclosed in a small weatherproof housing unit." - p 98 Even tho the novel's basically crime fiction, a subtext of socio-political observation peeks thru from time-to-time. ""Ninety seconds, all he said was how glad he was to be back on the air to tell everybody what Esso wanted the country to know and he never says. But on the next commercial break, he's back with all sorts of visual aids and on-and-on reasons about why Esso's changing its name to Exxon. The third segment, he mourns the passing of Esso for obvious sentimental reasons, but times are changing and sentiment can't stand in the way of progress, so remember, 'Exxon.' In the final part, the animated tiger wraps it all up with some futuristic nonsense about why it has to be Exxon. To further illustrate this point, the tiger says he's gonna stay around for as long as it takes to drum it into our heads. ""The tiger wasn't kidding. That month, month and a half, I drove over seven, eight thousand miles of road. Everywhere I went, Esso was being changed to Exxon. Service stations, as part of America as the corner drugstore, changed into abstract symbols. Esso meant gas and oil. Exxon means power.["]" - p 184 &, yet, at the same time, the character who's giving this speech is just being manipulated by Terry - who's pretending to be an environmental activist to get the speaker's cooperation. ""Well, the nonsense was stopped is all," Terry said. "Hard and quick. Made the survival of the environment into an unpopular cause with the phony energy crisis routine's going on. Put ecology down, same way any interference always gets put down. With power.["]" - p 186 "The Arab oil embargo of 1973 put the United States economy on the back foot, causing fuel shortages, a quadrupling of oil prices and long lines at gas stations." - https://www.history.com/news/energy-c... It's funny for me to remember those days in retrospect. The 'gas crisis' wd've been fairly contemporary as of the time of the writing of this bk. I was alive at the time, 19 & 20 yrs old, I had my driver's license, & I lived w/ my mom & stepdad. Being the youngest in the family getting gas devolved to me at least once during this time. The gas-lines stretched out of the gas stn lot to the street for 50 or 60 cars. I remember gas being as cheap as 25¢ a gallon in 1972 so I reckon it went up to a dollar or so by this time. People were outaged then but, now, a dollar wd seem incredibly cheap. Terry creates a distraction & a false lead to direct attn away from where he & Leo are about to perpetrate their next theft. "From the case, he took a piece of cardboard with letters cut out and taped it to a wall, spraying it with the paint. The stencil read WOBBLIES UNDERGROUND. He peeled it off and, holding it by the strip of tape, ran with the case to the far end of the floor, where he repeated the procedure in the space by the freight elevator. "With the television lenses sprayed and the stencil lettered on a wall and the last flare burning atop the elevator button, Terry tossed the paint can aside and pulled the pins on three more smoke bombs, exploding them in different directions on the floor. he checked his watch. It was 5:13:25." - p 205 Grogan is positively sardonic. Terry & Leo & DayDream are shown to have a genius for their respective crafts, the heist is pulled off - &, yet? ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 15, 2023
|
Apr 27, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0879974966
| 9780879974961
| 0879974966
| 3.26
| 122
| 1975
| Oct 02, 1979
|
liked it
|
review of A. Bertram Chandler's The Broken Cycle by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 26, 2023 I tend to be reading several bks around the same time. review of A. Bertram Chandler's The Broken Cycle by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 26, 2023 I tend to be reading several bks around the same time. There're usually at least 2 or 3 sitting on or near my bed. For a time, I had one sitting near my front door that I'd take outside to read in warm weather. Then there're the ones that're small enuf to fit in my pocket for when I go on a walk & stop to read on a bench or whatnot. Fascinating, right? NOT (probably). I picked this one to read b/c the other bks I was reading at the time weren't small enuf for my pocket. I like Chandler, I've read & reviewed at least 25 of his bks prior to this one. He's in my canon of favorite SF writers. I don't exactly find his work profound but I always find it entertaining & worldly-wise. They seem to've been written mostly in a serial-like fashion but I've just read them pell-mell & I don't seem to've suffered a mental breakdown as a result. Looking online to try to make sense of the order in wch the John Grimes bks might be most linearly readable I get confused. On the "Book Series in Order" website, where the people obviously understand what's going on better than I do, I find the Grimes stories divided into 4 categories: "Commander Grimes Books", "Grimes in the Rim World Books", "Grimes in Federation Service Books", & "John Grimes Saga Books". Publication Order of Commander Grimes Books Rendezvous on a Lost World (1961) The Rim of Space (1961) The Ship from Outside (1963) The Deep Reaches of Space (1967) Catch the Star Winds (1969) The Far Traveler (1977) To Keep the Ship (1978) Matilda's Stepchildren (1979) Star Loot (1980) The Anarch Lords (1981) The Wild Ones (1984) The Last Amazon (1984) Tramp Captain (1990) Lieutenant Of The Survey Service (2000) Survey Captain (2002) Rim Runner (2004) Reserve Commodore (2004) Publication Order of Grimes in the Rim World Books Into the Alternate Universe (1964) Contraband from Otherspace (1967) The Rim Gods (1968) The Dark Dimensions (1971) Gateway to Never (1972) The Way Back (1978) Publication Order of Grimes in Federation Service Books The Road To The Rim (1967) False Fatherland / Spartan Planet (1968) To Prime the Pump (1971) The Inheritors (1972) The Big Black Mark (1975) The Broken Cycle (1975) Star Courier (1977) Publication Order of John Grimes Saga Books To the Galactic Rim (2011) First Command (2011) Galactic Courier (2011) Ride the Star Winds (2012) Upon a Sea of Stars (2014) If I were to try to organize them all together, a daunting task for me, I'd probably just try to have them all lumped in one sequence. Anyway, I've gotten into this b/c I wanted to figure out what bk preceeded this & what follows it. It appears that The Big Black Mark (I reviewed that on June 18, 2016: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... ) preceded it & that Star Courier (I appear to've not read this one yet) followed. The point is that while I was reading it things were familiar but I didn't really remember the specifics. Chandler, having been a ship's captain in his non-fiction-writer life, often has his Grimes character called something like 'the Horatio Hornblower of sci-fi'. That's fair enuf, I suppose. Hence, don't be surprised (or even a little ruffled) when I call this a swashbuckling adventure. Fairly early on, Grimes & his work companion start to enter a spaceship only to have it blow to smaller bits than smithereens - a fate that shd've included them but that instead drove them into a different time & space, stranding them in parts & time unknown. "Aboard the ship, for many, many months, the miniaturized Carlotti receiver had been waiting patiently for the signal that, owing to some infinitesimal shifting of frequencies, had never come. The fuse had been wrongly set, perhaps, or some vibration had jarred it from its original setting, quite possibly the shock initiated by the explosion of either of the two warning bombs. And now here was a wide-band transmitter at very close range. "Circuits came alive, a hammer fell on a detonator, which exploded, in its turn exploding the driving charge. One sub-critical mass of fissionable material was impelled to contact with another sub-critical mass, with the inevitable result." - p 39 What wd you do in such a circumstance?! Why, head for whatever signal you cd pick up in hope of rescue, of course. "At intervals of exactly twenty-three minutes and fourteen seconds the signal continued to come through. It was the same message every time, the same words spoken in the same high-pitched, unhuman voice. Dizzard waling torpet droo. Waling torpet, waling droo. Tarfelet, tarfelet, tarfelet.. It was no language either or them knew, or, even, knew about." - p 55 They land on an unknown planet. "He strained his eyes to try to catch some glimpse of human or humanoid or even unhuman figures on the ground. But there was nobody. The whole planet seemed to be no more than a great, fully automated factory, running untended, manufacturing the Odd Gods of the galaxy alone knew what." - p 78 Probably cell-phones. Well, if you don't watch out, the next thing you know you'll be inside an alien. ""Panzen." ""Are you . . . invisible?" ""No.." ""Then where are you?" ""Here." "Grimes neither believed or disbelived in ghosts. And there was something remarkably unghostlike about that voice, "Where the hell is here?" he demanded irritably. ""Where I am." And then, with more than a touch of condescension, "You are inside me."" - p 81 Well, what's going to happen next?! "They took inventory. With one exception, the life support systems were untamperd with. That exception was glaringly obvious. Whatever had taken off their helmets had also uncoupled and removed the air bottles, and there were no spare air bottles in their usual stowage in the storeroom. The pistols and ammunition were missing from the armory, and most of the tools from the workshop. The books were gone from their lockers in the control cabin." - p 100 That's a fine fettle of a pickle kettle! 'Inevitably', I think of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. "["]Suppose we're taken to a zoo, somewhere . . . Can't you imagine it, John? A barren planet, metal everywhere, and a cage inside a transparent dome with ourselves confined in it, and all sorts of things—things on wheels and things on tracks and things with their built-in ground effect motors—coming from near and far to gawk at us . . . 'Oh, look at the way they eat! They don't plug thmselves in to the nearest wall socket like we do!' 'Oh, look at the way they get around! Why don't they have rotor blades like us?' 'Is that the way they make their replacements? But they've finished doing it and I can't see any little ones yet . . .' "" - pp 106-107 Yes, Grimes's companion, Una, is a woman. She was protected against fertility for awhile but that wore off. ""Keep away, you fool!" Then her manner softened, but only slightly. "If you must know—and you must—I'm a re-entry in the Fertility Stakes. From now on, lover boy, no more fun and games. We got to bed to sleep. And we don't sleep together, either."" - pp 124-125 Haven't these people ever heard of oral & anal sex?! Anyway, you get the idea.. or AN idea. This was fun to read but I forgot about it almost immediately after finishing it. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 14, 2023
|
Apr 26, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1904738419
| 9781904738411
| 1904738419
| 3.55
| 4,136
| 2005
| Jan 01, 2010
|
really liked it
|
review of Claudia Piñeiro's Thursday Night Widows by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 7-8, 2023 I had this shelved in my personal library under "Mys review of Claudia Piñeiro's Thursday Night Widows by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 7-8, 2023 I had this shelved in my personal library under "Mysteries" b/c I thought it was crime fiction. I was reading it w/ that categorization in mind. Hence, when people die near the beginning I was waiting for a crime to be committed as the bk delved into backstory. Well, ok, a crime was committed but I'm going to reshelve this as "Literature". I'm not saying that as a criticism, I enjoyed this bk very much. The story takes place in a gated community in Argentina during an ongoing economic crisis. That, in itself, was interesting to me & was sufficient to keep me engaged. Gated communities are, of course, for the upper middle class & beyond - Argentina being no exception. "It's called The Cascade Heights Country Club. Most of us shorten the name to "The Cascade" and a few people call it "The Heights". It was a golf course, tennis courts, swimming pool and two club houses. And private security. Fifteen security guards working shifts during the day, and twenty-two at night. That's more than five hundred acres of land, accessible only to us or to people authorized by one of us." - p 21 "We'd all love to live in a cul-de-sac. Outside a gated community, it would be hair-raising to walk down that sort of street, especially at night; you'd be afraid of being attacked, or ambushed. But not in The Cascade – that wouldn't be possible; you can walk wherever you like, at any hour, safe in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen to you." - p 23 "To stand at the tee on the first hole and let your eyes wander over a vista of never-ending green is a privilege that those of us who live in Cascade Heights sometimes take for granted. Until we lose it. People get accustomed to what they have – especially when what they have is wonderful. Many of us can go for months without playing a single hole, as if we didn't care that the course was a few yards from our house and entirely at our disposal. "You don't have to be a golfer to enjoy such natural beauty – "natural" because it comprises grass, trees and lakes, not "natural" in the sense of belonging to a landscape that was here before we arrived. This used to be a swamp. The course was designed by engineer Pérez Echeverría" - p 70 The detail about a person who keeps fake bks on their bkshelf for 'show' amuses me. Such people do exist. I worked in the bkstore business for 8 yrs & there were people who just wanted bks for show & didn't care what their content was. "Meanwhile I took care of the book, dusting off Juani's footprint. Returning it to the shelf, I noticed how light it was, and turned it over. It was hollow. There were no pages inside, just hard covers: a box of fake literature. On the spine I read Faust, by Goethe. I put it in its place, between Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. All of them were hollow. To the right of these there were two or three other classics, then the sequence was repeated: Life is a Dream, Faust, Crime and Punishment, in gold filigree letters. The same series was on every shelf." - p 29 One of those fake bks wd've made a good hiding place. It was the details about how life functions in the gated community that kept me interested, they built a picture. In this case, one woman resident is tending to the plants of another. "Teresa left the hosepipe to one side and tried to straighten a papyrus that had inclined too much towards the sun, upsetting the symmetry of the border. Lala bent down to help her. "Listen, honey, I know your man's got no job, and everything's grim, but this is about more than that. Don't let yourself get pulled down by his depression." Teresa let the papyrus go and stood up. "This will have to be tied, because otherwise it's not going to stay. It's trying to rebel. I mean, it's why we have savings, isn't it? For emergencies like this." Teresa took out of her pocket a little reel of ochre-coloured twine and, with Lala's help, secured the plant. "Recycled sisal thread – never have anything non-biodegradable in your garden. Lala helped her to attach the plant's tie. "Think about it: the centuries go by, we are gone, and the plastic's still there. Speaking of plastic, weren't you going to get your tits done this year?"" - p 154 "El Tano was checking his emails. There was a note inviting him to a course on "Business management in the new millenium"; an email from an old university friend, attaching a CV "in case you hear of anything"; a chain letter that must not be broken and which he broke by hitting "delete"; a bulletin from an economic service explaining how Standard & Poor calculated a country's risk index, and two or three other bits of junk. No responses to any of the searches put out on his behalf by the headhunters. Actually, there was one: "This search has been momentarily suspended. We'll keep in touch. Thank you."" - p 180 The well-to-do people in the Cascade are being hit by the recession but they're keeping up appearances as long as they can. The bread-winners are living off of stale bread & the wives are making money thru services offered to the Cascade residents themselves. One handles real estate as residents resort to selling their homes. Their private security force protects them & any internal problems are handled w/o police - instead they enforce their own senses of propriety. It's a very safe place to live. "The Discipline Committee comprises three country club members. They deal with any infraction reported within the community. The talk is always of "infractions" rather than "crimes," because technically there are no crimes in Cascade Heights. Except for those that may be committed by servicemen, domestic staff or other workers, but in those cases, the matter proceeds along different lines. As regards members of The Cascade, if one of them, or their children, relations or friends commits a crime, no formal report is made to any authority outside the gates of the neighborhood. We try to resolve everything behind closed doors. Behind the barriers. Theft, collisions, assault: all kinds of infractions come before the Discipline Committee." - p 206 It's sort of a rich person's anarchy, a way of saving face & keeping the peace. The ecological discussion of earlier was a hint of things to come. "I would not let them remove Ronie's pins. Then I thought of silicone implants, too. Silicone is another intruder that outlives its host. Implants would survive burial, the body's wastage, the damp soil, the worms. In my grave someone will one day find two silicone globes. For what they were worth... They will find silicone globes in the graves of almost all my female neighbors, too. I imagined the private cemetery where they buried the women from Cascade Heights sown with silicone globes, orphaned now from the breasts that had owned them, six feet below that immaculate lawn. Bones, mud and silicone. And teeth. And pins." - p 246 Now imagine the remains being exhumed by beings who don't know any better. They might think that the creatures WERE globes, conjoined globes, perhaps. Or they might think that as the bodies decayed they became purified into globes, perhaps a religion wd be built around these conclusions. Hints of the attacks on the USA that happened on September 11, 2001, are represented as destabalizing the entire world's economy - even that of Argentina. "The television was on and a reporter was announcing an imminent attack on the part of the United States against the country thought to be responsible for the Twin Towers atrocity." - p 269 There's so much more to be sd about this bk but I think this background sketch is enuf on its own. Recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 31, 2023
|
Apr 08, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 9781948501118
| 1948501112
| 3.83
| 35
| unknown
| Mar 12, 2021
|
really liked it
|
review of Peter Werbe's Summer on Fire, A Detroit Novel by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 22-27, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idio review of Peter Werbe's Summer on Fire, A Detroit Novel by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 22-27, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticW... 1st off, I want to say that I learned some things of importance to me from reading this & that its being in novel form helped me be entertained at the same time. I'm giving this bk a 4 star rating, wch is positive, & I want the reader to understand that I liked & value it. I'm starting off this way b/c much of what follows is a bit critical & I don't want the reader to think I'm writing off this bk or its author. Whenever I review something I'm likely, or 'inevitably', going to bring something to the review that 'filters', i.e.: influences, it. In this case, it cd be something as 'simple' as personal experiences of Detroit &/or the tales of other friends' personal experiences there. Wd that it were so simple. Since the yr that's central to this bk's tale is 1967 & since I was alive then, albeit younger than the author, my memories of that time are going to influence what I get out of the bk. E.G.: Werbe mentions music of the time, bands that played at the Grande, & most of these are bands that I listened to as well so there's some shared territory there. Given this shared territory that means that I make comparisons between my own experience & those recounted by the author. That helps me gauge how realistic I think the story is. Most importantly, I'm an anarchist & so's the author. Given that I try to avoid divide-&-conquer traps that also means that even when I'm critical I don't want to write off the author's POV (Point Of View) b/c I want to respect the diversity of anarchist opinions. That's where it gets tricky b/c I can be a very fractious person - it seems that even in my simplest most affable form I find myself in conflict w/ my fellow humans. SO, I approached reading this bk & I approach writing this review w/ some trepidation b/c I am, after all, a CRITIC, a highly unpopular type of person but someone who tries to mean what they say instead of just saying what other people want to hear, but also someone who wants to further many or most of the causes presented in the story. What I'm getting at, before I even get to the bk under study, is that reading about these subjects in novel form creates a whole different set of problems for me than reading about them in non-fiction form. I prefer Alexander Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist or Ann Hansen's Direct Action - Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla, both of wch I took to be fairly honest & straight-forward accts of political activism of a nature I haven't personally participated in, to reading a fictionalized acct of any activism, regardless of whether it's similar to my own or not. In my review of my friend Spat Cannon's fictionalized activist autobiography Press Here and it will all Make Sense I wrote: "The problem w/ reviewing a friend's bk is simple: if you give it a good review, everyone's happy, the author's happy, the friendship becomes even stronger, life is good. But, for me, life is never simple, to me, writing the obligatory good-review-of-a-friend's-bk does intellectual standards a disservice. An honest review is what the world needs, not more bullshit. "DON'T MISUNDERSTAND: I am not giving this bk a bad review, the review might be more critical if I didn't know Spat, if we weren't friends, but, basically, I'm not giving it a bad review, I'm giving it a complicated one, one that acknowledges that I'm reading this from a somewhat deeply invested perspective & that that investment dominates the reading. "For one thing, this 'novel' is thinly disguised autobiography. People who know Spat will know this from the get-go. While Spat waxes philosophical & introspective in his guise as "Max Sutton", the narrator, for me the writing of it as 'fiction' gives it a strange feel of avoidance at times. I think I wd've preferred it as straight-forward autobiography. Of course, writing it as 'fiction' makes the interpersonal aspects less embarrassing & revealing for all concerned. Hence, it's perfectly reasonable for it to be fictionalized. Spat can tell the truth w/o having his fellow travelers feel too betrayed." - truncated review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... [the full review is no longer available online] Now, I don't know Peter Werbe personally, we've had some sparse email communication & that's it. Therefore, I'm not likely to know who the fictionalized characters are or to be critical of those fictionalizations. Therefore, the 'problem' that I might have w/ Werbe's bk might be closer to those that I had w/ Jacob Wren's Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed: "But what was perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of reading this (& others of its activist-novel ilk) was the question of: WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT WRITING NOVELS ABOUT POLITICAL ACTIVISM AT ALL? Most of my own political writings are deliberately non-fictional - they don't purport to represent "the whole truth & nothing but the truth" b/c I find such a notion to be highly problematic - but they DO attempt to be accurate & w/ my own opinions & experiences transparently displayed. In other words, I don't purport to believe in 'objectivity' but I do try to not LIE or GLAMORIZE, etc.. - & here's where the problem of fictionalization of activism comes in. "I was interested in this B/C it's a fictionalization of an activism that may be somewhat close to the anarchist activism that my own political activities have been primarily connected to. But what I wonder is: does the fictionalization of activism open the gates to people living in fantasy worlds instead of actually BEING activists? I think of things like Arnold Schwarznegger starring in the Philip K. Dick based "Total Recall" - no doubt many an enthusiast of revolution has cheered on Schwarznegger's character in this while paying to see a movie that enriches the coffers of a man whose actual politics are never likely to come anywhere close to those of Dick's character (at its most revolutionary). In other words, activism & revolution, once displaced into fiction, run the risk of becoming escapist fantasy - no matter what the author's intention." - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... But that doesn't quite apply here either. What might apply more is my wondering whether I'd find the novel 'bourgeois', in 'disguise' as anarchism - wch doesn't mean that I have any strong basis for expecting this to be the case. SOO, I'll explain why this possibility wd be tickling my backbrain (sounds uncomfortable doesn't it?!). Werbe is a member of the editorial board of Fifth Estate magazine. Fifth Estate has been around since 1965 & is currently called an "Anarchist Review of Books". I 1st encountered the term "anarchist" or "anarchism" or "anarchy" when I was 16 yrs old in 1969 or 1970 & realized that I was an anarchist. I became aware of anarchist (a)periodicals in the 1980s when I was publishing & trading frequently. I'm sure I wd've known about Fifth Estate by then, probably the mid-'80s at the latest. But, for whatever reason (or lack thereof), I never had much interest in Fifth Estate. I think it seemed somehow too 'mainstream' for me, I was based in Baltimore where the oldest anarchist activity that I was aware of was Social Anarchism & their associated radio program The Great Atlantic Radio Conspiracy. I only have 3 publications by them in my extensive personal library: the "Winter, 1980 Vol. 1, No. 1" issue, the "Volume 3, Number 2 1983" issue, & "Research Group One Report No. 25". The latter being the one most appealing to me b/c it has a sense of humor & an imaginative design. Still, all in all, Social Anarchism was too academic for me. My life at the time that I discovered Social Anarchism was extremely different from what I took to be the lives of their writers & editors. It was hard for me to relate. I remember writing a hand-written letter to them questioning whether they cd be so staid & still represent anarchists. I was working hard labor construction & getting drunk & partying fairly constantly, taking risks in my life & still managing to be constantly creative. The Social Anarchism crowd seemed so safe in contrast. I imagine that I seemed like a cliché to them. I don't think they ever replied. I remember talking w/ one of their younger staff at the 1986 Haymarket Centennial in Chicago, proposing that I collaborate w/ them, & he replied in exactly the bourgeois way I expect saying that he didn't think we'd be compatible or some such. He was vvvveeeerrrrryyyyy straight & I was very much the opposite. Still, I considered collaborating w/ Social Anarchism b/c I figured we were all BalTimOre-based anarchists. The point here, vis à vis Fifth Estate is that when I was talking w/ a fellow Pittsburgh anarchist recently about them she sd they never interested her very much b/c they seemed so academic. In other words, she had a similar reaction to my own. The anarchist (a)periodicals that I had the most interest in were the ones where I felt like I cd trade w/ the editors, where there were no grammatical or spelling rules to reign in one's writerly imagination. To quote from my review of Brian Gentry's Adventures in Ontological Dissonance - or Why I Have No Money: "Perhaps Anarchy & Fifth Estate seemed too much like commercial products. I've had the closest connection to the anarchist magazines that I published: "DDC#040.002 & Street Rat(bag) "to the ones that I contributed to the most: "Factsheet Five, Popular Reality [was that anarchist?], & Reality Sandwich "& to a few others that didn't have the longevity of Anarchy & Fifth Estate that may or may not've been entirely anarchist: "The Monthly Me@nder, Mad Woman, Krylon Underground, Black Eye, Awake! - the second yearly report of !po-po!, Guinea Pig Zero, Green Anarchist, & at least a few others. "Ones that were also known to me that I never contributed to were: Love & Rage, The Match, Eat My Shit, a New England based publication inspired by Lysander Spooner, an Appalachian-based Earth First type publication, etc.. At this point, there're too many whose names I've forgotten." - http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticO... Fifth Estate provides a "Manuscript Style Sheet" that they expect 'submissions' for publication to adhere to. Below is an excerpt from that: "Manuscript Style Sheet "Manuscripts should be submitted in 12pt Times New Roman, 1.5-spaced between lines, flush left. We prefer them in Microsoft Word, but will accept and consider all formats including typescript and handwritten. "No indentation; the InDesign desktop publishing program has an auto indent function which will be screwed up by any in the manuscript. "No underlined words; use ital. Book and publication titles in ital; articles and movies with quote marks. "Single space between sentences; no space between paragraphs. Do not use bold for anything in the text. Use ital sparingly for emphasis; never use capital letters for this. "No use of Post Office abbreviations in text. Michigan is Mich., not MI; California is Calif., not CA." - https://www.fifthestate.org/contact-f... To me, that "style sheet" is authoritarian & antithetical to creative anarchist writing. No Concrete Poetry allowed? In their "Writer's Guidelines" they state: "The Fifth Estate accepts articles, essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry. We strive to maintain a tone in FE that is engaging and informative to all readers. To that end, we seek writing that is plainly written, free of jargon, and in a non-academic style." ( https://www.fifthestate.org/contact-f... ) To me, these rules are akin to the popular notion that all working class writing must have a small vocabulary b/c 'working class people are stupid & borderline illiterate'. Well, I'm working class & if all the writing that I ever read was by people like Charles Bukowski I'd find it awfully depressing. Restrictions such as the above-quoted "No indentation; the InDesign desktop publishing program has an auto indent function which will be screwed up by any in the manuscript" are perfect examples of what I call the effects of AU (Artificial Unintelligence). Instead of doing the work to over-ride the limitations of the app they use the editors choose to restrict the contributors to the limits of the app instead. The omnipresence of algorithms is creating this effect on a vast scale. A movie that I made called "List4n" (on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/NVaxAJJXJI8 - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/list-4n ) calls attn to the limits of AU vs the human mind insofar as the synthetic voice that reads the text is unable to make adaptive leaps that the human mind can. Another relevant movie of mine is called "Artificial Unintelligence" (on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Iw-rTflW-EQ - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/artificia... ). I make a distinction between academic & scholarly that the FE staff apparently don't: academic means towing the line of 'correct procedure' that's taught to people, it's something that one is expected to conform to if one wants to 'make the grade'. Scholarly is something that backs up its assertions by referencing other sources - Ivan Illich is a great example of a scholarly writer whose superabundance of footnotes might be extremely off-putting to lazy readers. Fifth Estate, to me, is conventionally journalistic at a meta-level that's important, again, to me, to scrutinize or, at least, take into consideration. In Peter Werbe's "Take the Big Stuff" article quoted below he states that "This newspaper has concentrated its observations on the hippie, new left, and avant garde community it serves." Note the presence of "avant garde". I find that interesting since there's nothing particularly avant garde about FE that I've noticed. Conventional journalism is written at an 8th grade reading level in order to be readable to the 'masses' - whether it's the mainstream newspapers or the underground ones. Alas, that's also the approach of TV 'News'. Ultimately, such LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) 'reporting' tends to reinforce a simple-mindedness that's more susceptible to propaganda. SOOO, as you've obviously figured out, I have a less-than-enthusiastic attitude toward Fifth Estate & knowing that this novel is written by one of the editors I was immediately wary. In their 1st issue, it's stated: "Editorial by Harvey Ovshinsky Fifth Estate # 1, November 19-December 2, 1965 "There are four estates, the fourth of which is journalism. We are the fifth because we are something different than Detroit’s other newspapers. We hope to fill a void in that fourth estate a void created by party-controlled newspapers and the cutting of those articles which might express the more liberal viewpoint. That’s what we really are–the voice (I hate that word) of the liberal element of Detroit. This does not mean that everything in the paper will be slanted or written with the so-called “far left” creeping through every space. We want to be a truly free press. If it’s good, if it has a name, and if it’s sincere, it will be in the Fifth Estate. If not, you can probably find it in the News. "There is no editorial because this paper does not have a policy. I may have personal bias and certainly will print it but not here and not in an editorial. If I want to say something, it will be in a column. This paper is only a sounding board for new ideas, events that would need and do not get proper publicity. Letters to the Editor not published in the News or Free Press can be printed in our letter column. We will be labeled radical, socialist and communist. But you can call us just “honest”. It’s what were going to try hard to be." - https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/1... Now I respect that statement, esp the "you can call us just “honest”" but you'll notice that anarchist doesn't enter into it, they self-define as "liberal". That was 1965. The novel's main action takes place in 1967 & Fifth Estate is described throughout as anarchist. SOOOO, one of my 1st 'duties' as a reviewer here is to check whether Fifth Estate was identifying itself as "anarchist" in the summer of 1967. "“Get the big stuff” by Peter Werbe Fifth Estate # 35, August 1-15, 1967 "“The chickens are coming home to roost” —Malcolm X, Nov. 22, 1963 "Malcolm was right, of course, and the chickens have come home so many ways since that grim day four years ago. Vietnam, Malcolm’s own death, riots across the country and now the biggest chicken of them all—the Detroit riot. "Detroit always does things up in a big way. "The destruction, looting, killing, and violence have been chronicled to such an extent that no repetition is necessary here. "This newspaper has concentrated its observations on the hippie, new left, and avant garde community it serves. "The geographical center of that community—the Warren Forest area near Wayne University—was relatively untouched by the holocaust. "The Fifth Estate office at Warren and John Lodge was unharmed as were the adjacent offices of the Artists’ Workshop, Trans-Love, Energies, and the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Our newspaper office sported a “soul brother” sign and two large banners were hung from Trans-Love reading “Peace on Earth” and “Burn, Baby, Burn.” "Hippie and political residents of the Warren Forest area reacted to the situation just like their poorer neighbors—they took whatever wasn’t nailed down." - https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/3... For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticW... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 21, 2023
|
Mar 27, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1891729004
| 9781891729003
| 1891729004
| 3.33
| 12
| 1934
| Mar 01, 1998
|
liked it
|
review of Norvell Page's Reign of the Silver Terror by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 21, 2023 It's extremely rare for me to not enjoy or somehow review of Norvell Page's Reign of the Silver Terror by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 21, 2023 It's extremely rare for me to not enjoy or somehow appreciate a bk I've read. That means 1. that I almost always pick something to read for a reason likely to prejudice me in favor of the bk, 2. that I'm open-minded to a variety of types of writing. In this case, I wanted to read something that was 'classic' pulp, something that whips right along in the spirit of one cliff-hanger to another, something by someone I've never heard of who probably adequately engaged their readership at the time but weren't like to make it into the pantheon(s) of the 'great writers'. This is a tale of "The Spider", a rich guy who uses his wealth & abundance of time to be an anonymous crime-fighter who fights outside the law & is willing to kill before being killed. Sound familiar? I'm hardly expert on such things but The Shadow & Batman both immediately spring to me. The Spider was created in 1933 by Harry Steeger, The Shadow was created in 1930, Batman's 1st appearance wasn't until 1939. SO it seems that The Shadow deserves the most credit for originality - although he can be traced to the even earlier French Judex. SOO, this story was originally published in THE SPIDER magazine in September, 1934, & written under the pen-name "Grant Stockbridge". To quote The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers: "In the 1930s, the golden decade of the American pulp magazines, Norvell Page wrote some of the most entertaining, outlandish, wildest pulpiest pulp fiction ever committed to two-column type and rough-wood paper. Though his most enduring and acclaimed writings would disguise his authorship with a house name, Page has long been properly credited for his amazing contribution to popular fiction, and his place in the pulp Valhalla is secure." [..] "But for all these goodies on Norvell Page's résumé, his everlasting enshrinement among pulp fans is primarily for the nearly 100 book-length adventures he wrote about a mysterious crime-fighter, that "Master of Men" known as the Spider." - p 207, The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers "Page himself was said to have been something of a mysterious, eccentric figure, wrapped up in his stories and his characters, particularly the Spider. His boss Henry Steeger recalled that page would wear a wide-brimmed black hat and black cape and may have come to believe he was his famous superhero. Others remembered Page in the same outfit, roaming up and down the sunny beaches of Ana Maria, a resort and pulp writer colony on Florida's Gulf Coast." - p 208, The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers Gotta love it. Except for the rich-guy-vigilante & "Master of Men" part wch doesn't really fit into my world view in any positive way. STILL, given that these novella-length stories had to be churned out one a mnth to meet the deadlines, Page's production of almost ONE HUNDRED Spider stories is mind-boggling. I've only read this one so I don't know how repetitive he was but even attempting to produce that much w/ the pace of the stories being what they are wd've been an amazing accomplishment. In an introduction Will Murray writes: "Anyone who knows will tell you that Norvell W. Page didn't write the first Spider novel (that was R.T.M. Scott) or the last (Prentice Winchell has that honor) but he did write the most and best of them — including Reign of the Silver Terror. Page jumped in at the end of 1933 when R.T.M. Scott bailed out after only two stories. Nobody living knows why. Page churned them out over the next three years in a white-hot frenzy in which he would rewrite the all-important openings over and over while pounding out frantic and wonderfully illogical endings strictly first draft." - p 3 Now, why it's "Harry Steeger" in the bk I'm reviewing & "Henry Steeger" in the encuclopedia I don't know. Just like I don't know why he's credited w/ writing Spider stories for 9 yrs in the encyclopedia & only for 3 yrs in this intro. The bk I'm reviewing is from 1998, the encyclopedia's from 2002. I think I'll trust the encyclopedia. The story starts off w/ an immediate attempt on the Spider's life. Do Spiders have 9 lives like cats? "A Huge boulder was tumbling down the shaft! So large it blotted out daylight, the boulder hurtled downward with express-train speed, rushing straight at Wentworth!" - p 6 The weird thing is that the Spider gets killed immediately & the rest of the story is about his girlfriend joining the bad guys & the bad guys triumphing. Just kidding. Of course, the point of the above is that there's a formula at play & there's no realistic expectation on the reader's part that the formula's going to be broken: the Spider isn't going to get killed, the villains aren't going to triumph. W/ those restrictions in mind, it was quite a challenge for the writers to keep the suspense going. "Facts were assembling themselves in Wentworth's mind. Tony Sinclair was a radical agitator, a leader in the communist miner's union. There had been newspaper magazine spreads on his leaving his foster-father's house to join the Communists. He had even defied the threat of disinheritance to work for "the Revolution." The reason for all that was clear now. Young Sinclair had discovered his supposed foster-father's betrayal of his mother and Tony's love for her—his hatred for the man who had wrecked her life—[h]ad grown into a hatred of the entire capitalistic class." - p 14 Well, it's 1934, & the Palmer Raids of January 1919 & 1920 weren't that far in the past. Communists were still easy targets in pop culture. HUAC started 4 yrs later. & who's better qualified than a millionaire vigilante to go up against such a menace? "His lips were grim as he made a reservation on the morning plane to Chicago, called his Hindu body servant, Ram Singh, in Washington" - p 18 Nothing like a "Hindu body servant" to evoke the good old days of British colonialism. The power dynamics are kept a bit ambiguous. Is it the Coms or the Caps who're plotting the overthrow of the American government? ""There is a slight chance that the measure might be vetoed," said the massive leader. "I do not think the Vice-President, if he had the power, would dare veto." "Ferrara's face straightened with a suddenness that would have been comical had not stark ferocity glittered from his eyes. His curse was searing. ""Ees that an order, Señior Sinclair?" he asked softly, "or just a—what you say—perhaps?"" - p 29 The CONSPIRACY will control the US government by hook or by crook. Throwing a decadent party for politicians might be the way to go.. then there's always having them die in an 'accident'. "Wine bottles were everywhere. Two spilled their red blood upon the silver of their table. Men in evening dress were lolling in gilded chairs. From the shadows the rumba orchestra played. And a dancing girl spun and whirled upon the silver table. She was entirely nude except for two overlarge fans of ostrich plumes which she flicked with suggestive half-revelations of her exquisite shape. He hair glistened like silver, her eyes shone. "The music halted abruptly and the girl sprang down from the table. A stout Senator whom Wentworth recognized reeled to his feet and staggered after her into the shadows while his companions guffawed. A deep voice boomed out and Wentworth wrenched his attention to the head of the table." - p 61 The Spider, operating outside the law, is always fair game for a frame-up. ""Daddy was murdered!" she sobbed. "The Spider stole his body! He strangled another man, too—Daddy's bodyguard—and took his body also." "Nina stood rigid, her arms about the girl. "Daddy?" she asked. "You mean Roscoe Sinclair?"" - p 68 We're even told that the Spider has been killed! Tell me it ain't so! &, yeah, he faked his death but, knowing this guy's life, it won't be long before he's back in the thick of it again. In fact, in the back, there's a checklist of adventures showing the titles & release dates of 118 stories published in as many mnths! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 15, 2023
|
Mar 21, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1098317750
| 9781098317751
| 1098317750
| 4.50
| 2
| unknown
| Aug 08, 2020
|
really liked it
|
review of Joy Toujours & Babs DeSully & Sean Martin's A Frog's Tale by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 21, 2023 My friend Joy gave me this bk. It's review of Joy Toujours & Babs DeSully & Sean Martin's A Frog's Tale by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 21, 2023 My friend Joy gave me this bk. It's written for little kids. He & his coauthor Babs parented a child that they had in mind for it. It's strange for me to review a bk like this b/c while the idea of the bk originates w/ the txt, what makes it most engaging is the art & the art doesn't have to be the sort of art I'm interested in - to the contrary, the art is illustrative, it's not stand-alone or conceptual, so I don't have my ordinary basis for critiqueing it. If I were a little kid again wd I like this bk? Probably. The story: a little kid meets a talking frog. The frog explains that frogs were once dragons. The frog further explains that the dragons became endangered b/c humans hunted them ruthlessly so the dragons shrunk to frogs so that they'd be too small for humans to notice so they'd be able to get on w/ their lives & survive. The child is sceptical. The frog demonstrates the truth of its statement by turning into a dragon in front of the child. The illustrations are 'professional'. Maybe Joy hired the artist. At any rate, they did a good job, it's obviously 'their thing', I mean they have a certain 'look' that everyone will get immediately. The bk is both fantasy & something w/ a moral to it about adults & our propensity for destruction of the marvelous & children & their relative appreciation & gentleness vis à vis the marvelous. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 08, 2023
|
Mar 21, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1852422831
| 9781852422837
| 1852422831
| 4.04
| 4,428
| unknown
| 1993
|
liked it
|
review of Walter Mosley's White Butterfly by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 20, 2023 I'm continuing w/ my project of reading crime fiction writers review of Walter Mosley's White Butterfly by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 20, 2023 I'm continuing w/ my project of reading crime fiction writers I haven't read anything by before. Sometimes I tend to think of some of the 'hard-boiled' mysteries that I read as being inevitably from the 30s, 40s, & 50s - but Mosley was born the yr before me & didn't publish his 1st bk until 1990. That brings up the question of how much of the nitty gritty of this is from personal experience & how much is from what he heard/read from others. Such things probably matter but whatever the case I don't think it effected my appreciation of the story. The main character, Easy Rawlins, gets essentially blackmailed &/or cajoled into working w/ the police b/c he's a black man w/ connections in black areas where the police have trouble getting cooperation. ""I'm under arrest?" ""No. No, not at all, Mr. Rawlins." "I knew when he called me mister that the LAPD needed my services again. Every once in a while the law sent over one of their few black representatives to ask me to go into the places where they could never go. I was worth a precinct full of detectives when the cops needed the word in the ghetto." - p 10 Have you ever been to a court & watched case after case of poor people get prosecuted for petty 'crimes' that amt to far less than the crimes being perpetrated against them in the courtroom? It's very educational. "Robert had argued with a market owner. He said that a quart of milk he'd bought had soured in the store. When the grocer called him a liar Robert just picked up a gallon jug and made for the door. The grocer grabbed Bob by the arm and called to the checker for help. "Bob said, "You got a friend, huh? That's okay, 'cause I got a knife." "It was the knife that put Bob in jail. They called it armed robbery." - p 18 3 black women had been murdered by an apparent serial killer. They didn't make prominent news. Then a white woman got killed. "WOMAN MURDERED 4TH VICTIM KILLER STALKS SOUTHLAND "Robin Garnett was last seen near a Thrifty's drugstore near Avalon. She was talking to a man who wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and a broad-rimmed Stetson hat. The article explained how she was later found in a small shack that sat on an abandoned lot four blocks away. She was beaten and possibly raped. She had been disfigured but the article didn't specify how. The article did explain why this murder was front-page news where the previous three were garbage liners—Robin Garnett was a white woman." - p 46 Easy goes to the local library where he's on a 1st name basis w/ the white woman who manages it. "What did she know about the language we spoke? "I always heard her correcting children's speech. "Not 'I is,' she'd say. "It's 'I am.' " "And, of course, she was right. It's just that little colored children listening to that proper white woman would never hear their own cadence in her words." - p 56 I'd like to think that that sort of cultural imperialism is dying out but I'm sure it isn't. The white victim was written about as a 'babe in the woods' college girl. That turned out to be not quite true. ""I don't know nuthin' 'bout no Robin what-have-ya but I know that white girl got her picture in the paper. That was Cyndi Starr an' they ain't no lyin' 'bout that." He looked at a stool next to me. Maybe a stool she'd once sat in. "Yeah, Cyndi—the White Butterfly."" - p 59 Easy has a friend that the police arrest to put pressure on to force Easy to 'cooperate'. ""What about Mouse?" ""He stays in jail until we have something better." ""On what charges?" "Naylor put down his pencil and looked at me. "No charge. He stays here two more days, then he gets transferred to the Hollywood station. After that we send him downtown. We could keep him tied up for months and even the commissioner wouldn't be able to find him." ""You proud'a that?"" - p 140 Easy starts suspecting that the killer might have syphilis. ""What can you tell me about syphilis?" I asked. ""Why?" Regina's had stiffened and she pulled away from me. ""Not because'a me, baby," I said. "But maybe this killer has it. I heard that he had been taking sulfa drugs." ""How long has he had it?" ""I don't know really. But they say that it's pretty bad." ""If it is bad then all kindsa things could be wrong with him. VD can make you insane."" - p 166 Easy starts getting too close to something incriminating to a powerful influential party so he gets framed for extortion. "I grabbed at my lawyer's jacket. ""Lemme talk to my man a minute," I begged. ""What do you want, Mr. Rawlins?" the little man, whose name I never knew, asked. ""What am I in here for an' what happems now?" ""You're in here for extortion, Mr. Rawlins, and you go to jail until somebody posts twenty-five thousand dollars or your trial comes up." - p 251 "At one time I would have said that white people had those rights but colored ones didn't. But as time went by I came to understand that we're all just one step away from an anonymous grave. You don't have to live in a communist country to be assassinated; just ask J.T. Saunders about that. "The police could come to your house today and drag you from your bed. They could beat you until you swallow teeth and they can lock you in a hole for months." - p 252 Do not be dismayed. There's a sortof happy ending in wch Easy gets out. All in all, this was good, this was fine. I'm just too jaded right now. If I'd read it at another time it might've been important to me. That's not Mosley's fault as a writer, that's mine as a reader. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 08, 2023
|
Mar 20, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1570273669
| 9781570273667
| 1570273669
| 4.00
| 4
| unknown
| Jan 06, 2020
|
really liked it
|
review of Istvan Kantor's Hero in Art - The Vanished Traces of Richard Hambleton by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 13-14, 2023 For the complete re review of Istvan Kantor's Hero in Art - The Vanished Traces of Richard Hambleton by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 13-14, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticH... It's often difficult for me to write reviews (even though I've written over 1,600 of them). Sometimes I prefer to write reviews of bks that few or no other people will write about. Whether this bk is in that category or not I don't know but I suspect that it is. The author is a former friend of mine who it's easy for me to be hyper-critical of - but I've had some excellent times w/ him too so I try to keep those in mind. The subject of this bk was also a friend of mine, albeit not a close one & only from about 1980 to 1983, after wch I lost touch w/ him. I don't consider Richard Hambleton's life to be 'heroic', I consider it to be tragic. He destroyed his life w/ heroin addiction & his health was further destroyed by scoliosis - something that cd've been prevented if he'd taken better care of himself. I'm originally from Baltimore, a small city only a few hundred miles from New York City where it was common for artists to want to move to New York where they hoped to become famous. However, once they moved to New York it was common for these aspiring artists to find themselves mired in extravagant rents for slum apartments in areas where heroin & cocaine were easly bought & where addiction was much easier to achieve than fame. While there were plenty of amazing cultural things to experience in NYC people cdn't necessarily afford to spend much time enjoying them b/c they'd have to work long hrs at shitty wages just to make ends meet. Richard Hambleton was the only person I know who actually 'made it', who started to sell his artworks for prices that cd get him out of the economic cesspool - but he squandered the money on the addiction he picked up quickly along the way. That's tragedy. There's a foreword by Anthony Haden Guest. He got to know Richard sometime in the '80s. He quotes him: ""This is the first piece of public art I ever did," he told me, holding up a pocket mirror. He said that he had stuck up some mirrors all over Vancouver, including the text: Have You See This Face Before? He put up this work under the name of R. Dick Trace-It" - p 5 Perhaps Hambleton's art cd be divided into 3 phases: Mail Art, "Outdoors Art" (as Hambleton is reputed to've preferred over the more common Street Art or Graffiti), & the "beautiful paintings" (sd to be Turner-esque). I'm only familiar w/ those 1st 2 phases. The above-described use of mirrors is wonderful to me & exemplary of Richard's innovativeness as a guerilla artist. "Image Mass Murder, which he made by drawing chalk outlines on the ground to indicate a murder victim and splashing red paint around it, and which he pulled off in fifteen cities of Canada and the US, had been his first public breakthrough and it is no wonder, as Kantor/Cantsin makes plain, that Richard Hambleton was none too happy when he was categorized as either a graffiti artist or a street artist. "Outdoors art" was his preferred term." - p 6 I, personally, see nothing wrong about the terms "Street Artist" or "Graffitist" but I can appreciate people having their preferred deviant lingo since I do the same. In Kantor's preface he says: "Richard told me, during our very last conversation on Orchard Street in 2015, that he always thought that one day I'd become the head of New York's criminal organization and take control of the city. I guess my early museum interventions and police arrests inspired his mind to come up with this fantasy. At that time, both of us were young and ambitious, with a vivid fantasy of taking over the city and making history ourselves." - p 15 Richard's purported fantasy of Istvan as a crime lord just shows how delusional he was. As for the fantasy of "taking over the city"? I find it hard to relate to such a desire for power but it plays into the author's frequent self-designations as things like "The Leader of the People of the Lower East Side" - a position that, as far as I know, none of the people that he apparently thought he was leading were in any way in support of. In Kantor's acknowledgments he lists me on page 17. I'm grateful for that. In the author's prelude there's this: "He definitely loved towers, tall buildings, and monuments, like the Statue of Liberty, the architecture of the Einstein Tower, or Vladimir Tatlin's design of the never built Monument to the Third International. Inspired by their architecture, he even designed a "Perpetual Tower" that functioned as a cyclic calendar." - p 19 & Richard gave me one of those. It's called "R. Dick Trace It's PERPETUAL CYCLIC CALENDAR To The Year 2000". This object is a cardstock rectangle measuring 3&5/8ths by 9&1/8th inches. On one side there's a graph off to the left that has this explanatory caption: "This perpetual cyclic calendar can be used by you, however it has been specifically designed for the Investigation Department as a functional plan to base a series of works through to the year 2000." On the right there's a blank field intended for writing addresses on so the object can be sent thru the mail. In the upper right there's a black & red image of Hambleton's face w/ "CANADA 2000" underneath it - made to look like a postage stamp. On the flip side is the calendar itself. It has machine-like imagery & near the top there's a screw image that can be pulled upward to align dates on the left w/ days on the right. Hence, Jan & Oct of 79-90 align w/ Sun 7, 14, 21, & 28. All in all, this is a well-made object that has a meticulousness that I associate w/ Richard's early dapper appearance. It appears to've been manufactured rather than hand-made. Near the end of the bk Kantor writes: "It's important to mention that I constructed my manuscript without a need for illustrations, which therefore necessitates the reader's collaborative attention and the use of active imagination, something these days that is usually replaced by bombarding images." - pp 262-263 I find this statement odd for various reasons, one of the most important of wch I'll get into later. The cover has an illustration & there's a portrait of Richard before the author's preface so the bk isn't completely w/o images. My description of the above calendar is all well & good but an image of it wd've been better, IMO. A few other images of selected artworks wd've been helpful too. Istvan/Monty has a picture of Hambleton in his later yrs that wd've been a good illustration too. I have to wonder whether something else is at play - such as 'image rights' owned by a non-cooperating gallery or some such. The preface continues thru a suicide fantasy: "Richard's big plan was to jump from the top of the Empire State Building onto a white canvas, and thus create a painting composed of the imprints of his fallen body, marked by blood stains." - p 22 I don't really romanticize this. As a person whose life has been full of suicidal ideation I, instead, empathize w/ the suffering that wd underpin such a dramatic yearning for self-destruction. There's nothing romantic about suffering, it's just a drag. Kantor put some effort into providing background detail, this enriches the bk for me: "The now-gone building at 337 W. Pender had a fascinating history. It was built in 1906, housed the Dominian Hall that later became the Boilermaker's Hall, and then the Pender Auditorium. In the 1960s, it was the original home of the Afterthought, Vancouver's first psychedelic club. The Grateful Dead played their first Vancouver show there on August 5th, 1966. The Pender Auditorium was originally an old labor hall, with a heroic mural covering the entire east wall, painted by Fraser Wilson, depicting "a view of a worker's waterfront." Richard often stopped in front of this monumental artwork, went close to it, touched it, brushed the image with his hand as he walked towards his office." - p 31 Kantor founded Neoism, or, at least, coined the name, & launched it as such when he performed his "Neoist Chair Action" on May 22, 1979. Since that time he's very single-mindedly pursued 'making a name for Neoism' over large parts of the world, he's obsessed w/ having Neoism become a movement accepted on the same level or higher as many movements that've preceded it. There're times when this obsession shapes his perception of events in a way that some of us find overblown. I say this from the POV of someone who's been involved w/ Neoism since the fall of 1980 & who was involved w/ other things prior to then that cd be sd to've been a zeigeist aligned w/ Neoism. "Richard joined the Neoist Conspiracy in its early stage, and took part in apartment festivals in Montreal, Baltimore, and New York. Neoism was spreading across Canada and the USA through mail-art communication, and Neoist cells and embassies popped up in most major cities, and even in remote country places." - p 35 Richard DID attend "81 APT", the 3rd Neoist Apartment Festival & the 1st one in BalTimOre that I organized. It was a pleasure to have him there & he & I went out one night for him to wheat-paste up one of his "I only have eyes for you" life-size blackprint self-portraits - w/ me acting as his lookout. That cd be sd to've been his taking part in the APT Fest but it seems to me that it was just him doing what he did wherever he went & no-one other than me witnessed the action. Furthermore, he didn't stay for the entire festival, he might've stayed for one or 2 nights, I'm not sure. Later on in this bk, Istvan recounts Richard's showing up for a night of APT 4, a Neoist festival in the end of 1981. I was there for the whole thing & I don't remember Richard being there but Monty sent me a photo of Richard cutting a silhouette portrait of Napoleon Moffat there so I'll take Istvan/Monty's word for it. Monty's account of Richard's arrival doesn't exactly sound like taking part any more than his appearance at 81 APT did. Then Richard DID appear on at least one day of activities at Des Refusés where part of the 5th International Neoist Apartment Festival took place in New York at the beginning of 1982. I remember him being there as an audience member who talked w/ François "Moondog" Mignault about his paintings but didn't otherwise participate. The point being that I think Monty's description of Richard's presence as a taking part in the festivals is his attempt to connect Hambleton more deeply than I think he really was to Neoism. As for "Neoist cells and embassies popped up in most major cities, and even in remote country places"?! That's just plain self-aggrandizing bullshit. Monty might've declared some correspondents "Neoists" w/o their consent or w/o their even caring - but even that wdn't acct for his grossly exaggerated claim. I was in touch w/ many or most of the people who were interested in Neoism & pre-1984 such people in the USA cd probably be counted on 2 hands. After 1984 the number grew considerably but there might've been 10 cities in the US, maximum, where there were 3 or 4 people who'd heard of Neoism & had some vague interest in it but who had very little actual participation. In Canada, I suspect the number of places was even smaller. "Before Richard started his series of shadow figures, he posted his life-size photographic self-portraits on the streets. These were cheaply made blueprints, and eventually they faded away. Instead of black paint, Richard would have a can of glue in his shoulder bag, and also some cheap hardware store brushes. First he would splash glue on the surface of the walls, then on the backs of his posters. He then would use his hands and some rags ro push down bubbles and flatten the papers firmly on the wall, so people couldn't easily pull them off and discard them. He was fast, but also very precise." - p 39 & this brings me to one of the strange parts of this bk for me. Richard had made bk copies of the "I only have eyes for you" blackprints in wch they were folded & enclosed in a cover. When Istvan was writing this "bionovel" he learned that I had one of the bks & he asked me to have pictures taken of me w/ the unfolded self-portrait that he cd use as an illustration in Hero in Art. I was glad to do this, I liked Richard & I liked his work. So, I asked my friend, photographer Julie Gonzalez, to take some pictures for me & I sent them to Istvan. He wasn't satisfied & asked me to do it again. I did, & he still wasn't satisfied so he asked me to do it a 3rd time. I did, & 41 pictures later he picked one he was satisifed w/. THEN he told me he knew a gallery or an art collector who wanted to buy a copy of this blackprint & asked me if I wanted to sell mine. I told him NO b/c, after all, it was a present from Richard & I valued it for that rather than as something to make money off of. Istvan didn't make a specific offer. I never heard anything about the bk again from Istvan. Expecting to have my photo in it I also expected to get a complimentary copy, preferably 2 copies so I cd give Julie one too - it was the least Istvan cd do for getting us to do 3 photo sessions instead of just accepting the 1st batch I offered him. THEN I found the bk for sale online so I just bought a copy for myself. Lo & Behold!, there was no photo in it. It didn't occur to me until later to hypothesize that Istvan might've actually been asking me for the photos to sell to a collector & never had any intention of using them in the bk OR of sharing the money w/ me. My website detailing this experience & showing the photos is here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... . ""A few years later, he told me that he got money from his sister to pay for the blow ups, because you know it was not cheap. And soon we started seeing these ominous, life-size photos on the streets, his portrait in his black suits, with hand reaching into his breast pocket as if to pull a gun. Also looking quite crazy."" - p 108 Actually, blackprints & blueprints were the cheapest way that I know of to make such large prints. One of the reasons for this was that they did fade pretty quickly so they only had a limited commercial usefullness. I had some made at the time that were about half the size of Richard's that might've cost me about $5. Of course, Richard wd've had hundreds made so that wd've added up (& probably gotten a discount). "The images were printed using a low-cost "blueprint" method and as a result, sooner or later they would fade to white shadows. That evening, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE went out on the streets with him to paste some up. tENT enjoyed his company, and almost forty years later, in an email he sent me on January 31st, 2018, he described Richard as friendly & debonair. "I thought it was fantastic that he appreciated what was happening enough to attend 81 APT even though he wasn't performing, except, perhaps, by doing street paste-ups. By doing that, it showed how invested he was in this underground culture that almost no one else cared about."" - p 142 "Street locations were the primary battlefield for Richard's work of conducting a successful guerrilla offensive against the hypocritical consumer society. Most young East Village artists were begging gallery owners for shows, hoping to sell out after the sudden wind of commercial interest in their painting." - p 40 "Yet, that's not why he started making works on canvas, his primary impulse wasn't financial; the impulse came, rather, from the fact that the short term, only temporary duration of his street works made him depressed. His depression was one of the other reasons why he became addicted to drugs, and then his addiction then jailed him in his messy studios. Eventually, he became what he never wanted to become, and lived in the messy world of an old-fashioned studio artist, high on drugs, starving, careless of his health, looking like a loser, surrounded by crime." - p 41 In other words, a perfect victim for heroin pushers & art world parasites. But parasites, esp human ones, have a way of not caring whether the host survives, figuring, probably, that a new host can always be found & that, in the meantime, the current host can be exploited as much as possible. The result can be that the victim goes so far down that it's hard to even suck their blood anymore. "Years later, Richard himself became a living shadow figure several times when he got evicted and lived on the streets, wondering why is it like that? Richard's reason for being homeless might have been different, but let's note that by the end of the 1980s, the population of homeless people on the Lower East Side had increased to about 80,000. The 1988 Tompkins Square Police Riot was a clear sign of the homelessness crisis in a collapsing society." - p 44 Indeed - & NOT living in the outrageously expensive NYC wd be a good step away from this crisis b/c other cities are much more affordable - but for Richard AND for the author, the lure of NYC is the lure of becoming famous. Is it worth it? Not to me, it's a carrot-on-a-stick. "Everything he did was a strategy to build up his fame. He calculated it all, way before coming to NYC, and he always knew what was the next step to take. He was happy to be doing the things he only fantasized about when he was younger, living in Vancouver in a very conservative environment. He had to keep going and find different destinations in order to achieve the fame he so desired, He needed to supply his soul with perpetual freedom, his robotic, Frankensteinian body needed special fuel." - p 46 "Everything he did was a strategy to build up his fame"? "He calculated it all"? I doubted that he calculated his curvature of the spine, I doubt that he calculated his losing his nose to cancer. "Artists always survive in the slums, and in even worse places. We are the ones who share the holes in the walls, the dry ledges in the sewers, the wind and noise under the bridges, living in the company of rats and roaches." - p 49 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticH... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 05, 2023
|
Mar 15, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062447904
| 9780062447906
| 0062447904
| 3.65
| 389
| Jan 01, 2015
| Nov 08, 2016
|
liked it
|
review of D. A. Mishani's The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 10, 2023 I've been making my way thru my persona review of D. A. Mishani's The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 10, 2023 I've been making my way thru my personal library's crime fiction / mysteries section, reading work by authors I hadn't previously read, in alphabetical order. Now, I'm up to "M", the 13th letter of the alphabet, roughly halfway thru. I'm sticking to this project but I'm beginning to get a bit bored by mysteries. So, e.g., when I read the following.. "He put the umbrella on the floor without thanking her, and it was this of all things that put her over the edge. "Are you seriously set on celebrating our anniversary like this?" she asked, and when he got up she almost screamed at him, "Kobi, do you hear me at all? Do you hear that I'm talking to you? It's Mali from class. The war started." He turned to her and his eyes lit up and it was then that she must have understood that something terrible had happened." - pp 17-18 ..I didn't care - more human drama, ho hum. I'm not saying it was poorly written, it's just my state of mind, I'm sick of human drama, fictional or factual. Heavy rain is happening & the detective who's just been promoted is about to investigate his 1st murder case. "Most of the police in the district were busy clearing the roads clogged up with rain or evacuating flooded buildings or dealing with traffic accidents. This is what he, too, did on days like this during his first years with the police. Now he was commander of Investigations and Intelligence, thanks to solving an assault case that occurred not far from their spot on the boardwalk and to those two boys he saved from death." - p 24 The detective Avraham Avraham, goes to the scene of the crime & asks the neighbor on the floor below whether he heard any disturbance. "Yeger was a quiet neighbor and she usually rested in the afternoon hours, like the neighbor himself. So he opened the door and walked up half a flight of stairs, only then it got quiet and he decided not to knock on the door. But his afternoon nap had already been disturbed, so he didn't go back to bed, and a few minutes later he heard footsteps and through the peephole saw a policeman going down the stairs. He thought that someone had called him because of the noise and that the policeman had checked into the matter, so he didn't call the police himself." - p 33 Kobi, the person we're led to believe is the prime suspect, tells his wife Mali something-or-another to explain his recent odd behavior. "And even in retrospect she thought that there was no way to know that he was lying. He said, "Mali, the police are looking for me," and she looked at his red eyes." - p 94 The reader muddles thru the what & why of it along w/ the detective. "Diana said that it wasn't anything important. She wanted to return to a policeman who had been at her place a few days earlier the umbrella he had forgotten, and because she didn't remember his name and didn't have his phone number, she called the station and asked to speak with Avraham." - p 107 "on his way back from a job interview, Kobi struck a pedestrian with his car who had charged into the street without looking. That was their anniversary." - p 119 Avraham Avraham searches surveillance camera footage for something showing a policeman leaving the scene of the crime. Something is found. "If he had received permission from Saban to do it, he would post it the same day on the police Facebook page or ask that it be broadcast on the television news in order to receive the public's help in the search." - p 157 As is so often the case in police fiction, the detective's personal life makes things more difficult for him when his wife's parents come to visit from Belgium w/ the intention of convincing the wife to return home to Belgium from Israel where she & her husband are living. "["]And it is important to us to emphasize that we have nothing against Avi, just the opposite, we respect him, and actually because of that we hope that he will understand and help you to leave."" - p 166 Fortunately, Avi realizes that the in-laws are the murderers & shoots them in self-defense. Just kidding. You know that you're in the 21st century when Facebook plays a role. "He wanted to know where Bengston worked and what car he had, and if it was photographed in the area of the scene on the day the murder took place. He even asked Ma'alul to find out if Bengston had a Facebook account and what kind of material he posted there." - p 219 &, of course, Kobi's cellphone plays a role too. "Yaakov Bengston's cell phone was found in his pants' pocket" - p 268 "Bengston asked Leah Yeger to say her full name and her identity card number, and then said, "Tell me, please, about the rape,"" - p 269 "And for some reason it was written that the killer's cell phone was found in a search that the detective team conducted in the apartment where he resided, and that the voice file in which Yeger was recorded minutes before her death was successfully restored by the Advanced Computing Unit of the Israeli police, even though the killer had erased it from his device." - pp 274-275 "He reminded himself over and over that Mazal Bengston told Vahaba in her questioning that her husband wanted to be caught because he couldn't suffer anymore and that he didn't even erase the incriminating file from his cell phone." - p 278 All in all, this was fine, it was subtle, a good glance at an occluded look at a dysfunctional human being blundering thru an obsession. Still, I didn't care that much - but that probably has more to do w/ my mood than w/ qualities of the bk. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 03, 2023
|
Mar 10, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1570273774
| 9781570273773
| 1570273774
| 4.00
| 1
| unknown
| Apr 01, 2021
|
really liked it
|
review of Jason Rodgers's Invisible Generation by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 4-9, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleint review of Jason Rodgers's Invisible Generation by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 4-9, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticR... I usually feel like I live in a mostly illiterate or subliterate environment. I don't mean to say that being illiterate, per se, i.e.: unable to read, is something that devalues a person. My displeasure w/ this situation is more rooted in my observation that many of the people I know who consider themselves to be fully literate, including university professors, are, IMO, people who rarely read & people who read at a less-than-8th-grade level. Imagine a psychotherapist who reads a few self-help bks a yr & who, b/c of this, considers theirself to be fully informed & expert. Contrary to this sub-literate commonality are my friends who write bks. There're many - & since this lot tends to be better-read I rejoice in their literateness even if I don't always like their bks 100%. I write bks, very few people read them, even my literate friends. I also review bks, at the moment I've reviewed 1,614 of them. My friends send me their bks for review or I buy them. Not surprisingly (& I don't blame them), they expect me to write glowing reviews of their genius.. or, at least,very favorable reviews. However, for me, review-writing isn't about trying to get my friends to love me, it's about trying to say what I have to say about the bks. More often than not, I go to considerable lengths to entice the review reader into being interested in the bk.. - but I sometimes say things that my friends get offended by. It's common for reviewers of peotry bks to give the bk a 5 star rating w/o even saying anything about the bk - giving the appearance that they mightn't've even read it. I figure that if I'm going to review a bk I shd 1. actually read the thing from cover-to-cover, 2. actually say what I think about it - otherwise, what's the point? At least ONE critic shd write something they mean once in a while instead of trying to win a popularity contest. Of course, the result is that I sometimes lose friends. I DO feel bad about this. I even usually pull my punches - but, still, a little jab gets in here & there. NOW, it might seem like that preface implies that I'm about to be negative about Invisible Generation - but I'm not. I'm not really sure WHAT I'm going to write. I know that I'm going to express some perplexity about my own position in relation to Rodgers's socio-political philosophy. That's partially rooted in my gut reaction to this as being very akin to thinking in the 1980s anarchism that I was heavily involved w/. It's not a 'bad' thing that it seems rooted in that time, b/c I think that was a very vital time, it's just that I'm in a different phase of my life - one that's probably individualist in a way that makes it hard for me to identify w/ just about anyone's socio-political philosophy anymore. I was 1st contacted by Jason in the fall of 2002 w/ a mailing including $5 for a copy of my Street Ratbag 6 + the 7th issue of his Psionic Plastic Joy zine. At the time I reckon it was remarkable enuf that he even knew about SRB b/c the days when Factsheet Five broadcast knowledge of my publications far & wide were long gone. Having been publishing since 1977 & having a huge personal zine library it was, by now, rare for me to run across any zines or other publications of any kind that distinguished themselves w/ extraordinary imagination. PPJ wasn't one of them, I downright disliked the collages & found the reviews of what I sent him to be lacking in depth or understanding. There, that's the negative part. Now, 20 yrs later, Jason's sent me Invisible Generation & I find that his texts are more sophisticated & the collages, while I still don't really like them, work for me in the context of the bk. I shd explain that I'm not really singling out Jason's collages: I was approached by another friend to write an intro for a friend's collage bk & I declined b/c I find more or less all collages to be lacking in depth of inspiration. Collages from the time of Adolf Wölffli & Hannah Höch interest me b/c they were fresh then. Now they just seem lazy & cliché. Maybe if Rodgers changed his name to Rödgers? Following the 1st collage on p 7, there's what seems to be a flier intended for guerrilla public display, such as on poles. There's a collage background w/ blocks of text put overtop of it. There's a title: "Infinite War Games", 3 text blocks, & a PO Box address for "Campaign to Play for Keeps". Such an intervention into the mediated environment appeals to me & I probably wd've copied the address if I ran across such a thing in my wanderings & then written to it. Some of the text: "I know life is a game and I intend to play for keeps. Time to get serious about joking and work at play. It is time to play hard and play the ultimate game, war games. ""There is no rest for my rebel spirit except in war, just as there is no greater happiness for my vagabond, negating mind than the unihibited affirmation of my capacity to life and to rejoice. My every defeat serves me only as symphonic prelude to a new victory" - Renzo Novatore "The winning strategy in the game of life is the game of insurrection. Civilization teaches lessons in zero sum games of winners and losers. The closest to infinite games are grand narratives of progress where those who are ground up serve the greater good. A new rule set is necessary. Maybe without winners and losers, or maybe disregard such petty concerns as winning or losing." [..] "Struggle is life and anti-entropic. When a person engages in struggle, they are infused with vitality. If they are not actively engaged with struggle, every passing banality crushes them. Struggle is the opposite of sacrifice. The means are more important than the ends. The possibility of ends is merely an added bonus." - p 8 I take it for granted that Rodgers is sincere. At the same time that I like what he wrote, I still find it a bit rhetorical. Such proclamations as Renzo Novatore's are impressive when the proclaimer is backing them up w/ action, w/ praxis instead of theory, as I understand Novatore did. But I, personally, don't want war, for myself or anyone else. IMO the US has been at war for my entire 69 yr life. I've been spared the direct consequences of those wars that the millions of victims haven't been. Nonetheless, there's the Class War, the war waged by the oligarchies on the wage slaves, the war constantly in progress that keeps the vast majority 'in its place'. I've struggled against the domineering interests since I was at least 5. That struggle hasn't necessarily been bad for me but I wonder what my life wd've been like if I'd had a higher percentage of classless good times. Anyway, the rhetoric here, if it isn't unfair to call it rhetoric, is of less interest to me than recountings of what a person has actually done. I reckon that's my pragmatism. What interests me is that I built an addition on my house & what I've done w/ that building, what interests me less are peoples' plans for castles in the sky. Not that "castles in the sky" is what I'd call Rodgers's philosophical hopes. The next page has another street flier w/ a collage background & much smaller blocks of text: "Shoot out at the consensus reality corral. "The six gun swami mounts an offense against the razor wire fence of the black iron prison. The guards in the head have been ambushed." - p 9 I'm happy to see "consensus reality" referred to. That seems like an important idea that's been mostly lost, perhaps not many people ever 'got it' in the 1st place. For me, mediated 'reality' is a construct, one that seems to dominate most people's minds, it's 'reality' b/c people have a 'consensus' that that's what's what. But is it really a "consensus"? To me, the 'consensus' of 'consensus reality' is really an implant, something that "The guards in the head" have planted there in such a way that the people going along w/ it think is of their own creation when, in fact, it isn't. It doesn't originate w/ them at all, it originates w/ their rulers, the people they can barely even acknowledge exist let alone analyze or criticize. "Reality is a constructed process. For most of us this is a symbol system we inhabit to interpret perceptions. It is not simply the same as subjective experience. Language works in an occult fashion, creating the very structure of the reality we inhabit." [..] ""Reality," Carey argues, ""is a product of work and action, collective and associated work and action. It is formed and sustained, repaired and transformed, worshiped and celebrated in the ordinary business of living. To set the matter up in this way is neither to deny, ignore, nor mystify social conflict; in fact, it is an attempt to locate such conflict and make it intelligible. Reality is, above all, a scarce resource.["]" - p 10 Note that this is a humanocentric discussion. What is 'reality' for non-humans? This is a minor observation & one probably of little interest to many other than myself: In 1987 I wrote a letter published in: KAOS (Number 10) (London, England, uk; edited by: Joel Biroco) in wch I stated "as 4 t he spelling "magick": i may prefer t he simpler "magik" as a spelling sufficiently distinct from "magic"" (p 14) & I remember Peter Lamborn Wilson (perhaps writing as Hakim Bey) chiming in somewhere in agreement w/ this. Now, b/c of the following, I wonder if Feral Faun was another advocate of getting away from the spelling "magick" (wch I thought of as a quasi-'ancient' spelling that didn't really resonate w/ me). "Feral Faun expressed the promise and dangers of using magic as a tactic of combating control when he wrote "Magik is the wonderful, erotic relation we can have with every being in the universe. All that is, is alive. Order has separated us from the rest of the universe.["]" - p 13 Once Invisible Generation gets into these essays, the more I find the ideas expressed to be very clear - & as the essays become more recent the more I find them to be even clearer. "We are already surrounded by occult warfare. This battlefield of civilization and consumer culture is composed of warring sigils locked in deadly combat. Corporate logos, organization symbols, advertisements, chain letters, propaganda, mail art, and graffiti. These are all sigils, occult symbols. The environment is covered in corporate sigils in the form of advertising, logos, and billboards. Common tactics such as graffiti are an intuitive and natural reaction to this. This warfare is totally asymmetrical; there is a need to find ways to even the odds." - p 14 "This is a struggle to seize the means of reality production, semiotic guerilla warfare." - p 15 &, indeed, I agree. There're forces at work who're trying to define 'reality' for us all b/c it serves their purposes for us to believe their story. These forces use every means they can think of to achieve this. Now that most people carry around 'smart phones' accessing their attn thru postings to sd phones is one of the most immediate means. Some of us try to counter these attacks on us, trying to 'out-clever' the 'reality'-definers w/ a greater degree of creativity & tactics such as rendering mind-numbingly 'definitive' statements ambiguous &/or suspicious. "Writing is my way. It is the way I gain knowledge. It is the way I spread knowledge. It is the way I communicate. It is the way I confront. It is the only way I know. "I continue to believe that writing, theory, poetics can change the world. They are able to reveal the mechanisms by which control functions. They are able to work out strategies to confront such, They are able to imagine other modes of living. I continue to believe this, maybe because I am very stupid. "Even as I believe in the value of writing I am finding it harder to see what difference it makes to anyone. I know fewer people who even bother to read at all. They might browse something on their phone, but this is not reading, no more than watching the scroll at the bottom of Fox News is reading." - p 20 & here is where I felt an even more heartfelt identification w/ Rodgers. I love reading & writing, I love bks; I've reviewed every bk I've read since the fall of 2007. That's a huge critical thinking project. However, unlike Jason, "It is" NOT "the only way I know." I live in Pittsburgh now - but when I lived in BalTimOre most of my friends read bks, it was central to their intellectual development - & they HAD intellectual development. A small group of us cd get together in the 1970s & talk about, say, Djuna Barnes's Nightwood. Cd I do that now?! NO WAY. Friends who read bks are extremely rare - esp in my local environment. I've written 16 bks, NONE of my friends locally has ever expressed even the slightest interest in any of them. They certainly wdn't even read a single page. I attribute this partially to a mass death of intellect, of intellectual curiousity. I, on the other hand, read every day - it's an essential part of my life. For other people I know it's as if reading means nothing to them - why wd they read? It's as if reading wd be the equivalent of staring at a rock for days on end, there's no point to it for them. But, for me, reading means exposing myself to information & stimulation that I won't find elsewhere. E.G.: I never heard of "coolhunting" until I read this: "One textbook on advertising represents them as a form of anthropologist, stating that "the Advertising has long appreciated the value of qualitative data and is currently moving to even more strongly embrace extended types of fieldwork. Coolhunts do this by getting researchers to actually go to the site where they believe cool resides, stalk it, and bring it back to be used in products and its advertising" (O'Guinn, Allen, & Semenik 248). Firms with this as their stated goals began to arise in the 1980s. These marketing firms "search out pockets of cutting edge lifestyle, capturing them on videotape and return to clients like Reebok, Absolut Vodka and Levi's"" - pp 28-29 It's funny thinking about this, imagining being somewhere & seeing someone who you suspect of being a coolhunter. What if what's 'cool' about the people there is that they're readers of heavy philosophy & they don't wear Reeboks or Levis & are teetotalers? "It may be possible to find ways to get the marketers to inadvertently disseminate their own undoing. Of course this subversion may be quickly neutralized; thus all the more reason for nomadism. By the time the subversion is neutralized, the next stage will have already begun, having used the initial subversion as a jumping off point." - p 30 Why not? "Freddy Perlman contructed Leviathan man as "a monstrous body, a body that has become more powerful than the Biosphere. It may be a body without any life of its own. It may be a dead thing, a huge cadaver. It may move its slow thighs only when living beings inhabit it." - p 31 What I think of is a 'superorganism', I see humanity as being deliberately herded together into a superorganism. People who had some individuality are no longer useful as individuals so they're being dumbed down so that they're easier to manipulate as a mass. The less people have to think for themselves in order to function, the more they become dependent on a hierarchy that they have no say in the management of. "Max Stirner wrote that "The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us to no longer let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and set no glittering hopes on 'institutions.'" (Stirner 316). It is not working within the institution, but a rejection of institutions themselves." - p 33 Fair enuf, I suppose - but I don't believe in revolution or insurrection, if I believe in anything at all it's more a matter of what an individual manages to do w/ their life independent of such relative concepts. "As the minor composition does not strive to become a major composition, a component of mass media, or a new hegemony, tactics of invisibility are adopted. "Sometimes clandestine struggles do not necessarily have to aspire to become something else, but can remain so because it makes sense compositionally for them to do so" (Shukaitis 211). Within mass culture the insurrectionist and radical is outnumbered and overpowered. Instead of confronting these situations directly it is probably more useful to work on a different level, in order to deal with this asymetrical situation. Rather than become a fixed mass formation, a subterranean project can remain flexible and dynamic." - p 38 Guerrilla Warfare, or, as I prefer, Psychological Playfare, is most effectively conducted from a position where one can't be immediately pinned down. Hit'n'run. Either that or one has to have a superhuman strength of character, an ability to clearly express & manifest a vision that's more compelling than that of the sizeable opposition. "Where libertarian was once a synonym for anarchist or anti-authoritarian, it now is associated with free market economics. The free market program has proven to be far from liberating" - p 44 I lived w/ the president of the MD Libertarian Party in 1982. He was a rich megalomaniac in his 30s who didn't have to work & whose expenses were pd for by his father, who owned a big car dealership. When his father died, he lost his house on a double lot in a rich neighborhood & moved into the no-longer-in-business car dealership. When I was in Barcelona in 2004 I stayed w/ an anarchist couple who hadn't previously known me but who took me in b/c the 'friend' who I was supposed to stay w/ had 'changed her mind' at the last minute. My Spanish anarchist friends used the word "libertarian" interchangeably w/ anarchist. 'Free market economics' just means that the rich have the legal 'right' to exploit whoever they want to in whatever way they want to in order to maximize their own profit. Anarchists are against governments & laws b/c they take away individual responsibility & impose a fake substitute. 'Free Market' Libertarians are against governments & laws b/c they interfere w/ their being as irresponsible as is convenient for them. Then again, some Libertarians are mainly concerned w/ legalization of drugs & police brutality & surveillance issues - so there's still some crossover between anarchism & libertarianism. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 25, 2023
|
Mar 09, 2023
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||
| 1590177207
| 9781590177204
| 1590177207
| 3.74
| 1,136
| 1972
| Jul 15, 2014
|
liked it
|
review of Jean-Patrick Manchette's The Mad and the Bad by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 4, 2023 As I've written before, When I was in my late tee review of Jean-Patrick Manchette's The Mad and the Bad by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 4, 2023 As I've written before, When I was in my late teens & trying to discover sophisticated literature I thought of Mysteries, or what I'm more prone to call Crime Fiction these days, as an inferior genre, as escapist literature mainly intended to take the reader for a ride w/o any more profound content. It might not've been until decades later that I started discovering mystery writers whose talents I started to appreciate. Now, decades later again, I've found many mystery writers who have qualities that I appreciate - but I've also started to get too jaded to really enjoy them much anymore. It seems that I've really reached that point w/ reading this novel in particular. I've been going thru my personal library's Mystery section in roughly alphabetical (w/ chronological sub-organization) order & picking bks by authors there that I've haven't read yet. I probably added a few bks by Manchette b/c he was written about enthusiastically in a Taibo novel, Taibo being one of my favorites. & this was good, I mean the idea was somewhat interesting & the playing out of it was well-done - but I found myself not particularly caring, I found myself back to my original criticism of mysteries: that there really wasn't the sort of content that I'm looking for. Now the author is reputed to be a 'Leftist', mocking & criticizing the exploitative economic world by having the main Bad guy be someone who's rich & unscrupulous - & the main Mad person thwarts him by being a loose cannon. That's all well & good - but I think I need to go back to SF in wch a profound imagining of the future provides a different type of stimulus. Still, I'll probably read more by Manchette eventually. Anywho, the translator, Donald Nicholson-Smith, translated Taibo too: "He also translated works by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Henry Lefebvre, Raoul Vaneigem, Antonin Artaud, Jean Laplanche, Guillame Apollinaire, and Guy Debord." - p ii Interesting. It can be hard to judge a translation if one doesn't read both languages involved. I usually judge it by how fluidly it flows & by whether there're interesting idiomatic expressions that seem to fit & add liveliness. This translation seems perfect on all fronts. It's also interesting to me that Nicholson-Smith translated 2 Situationists & then Artaud & Apollinaire. It seems that he has a penchant for the French avant-garde. How Taibo fits in there I don't know given that he writes in Spanish. I'll be on the lookout for other bks translated by Nicholson-Smith. From the intro by James Sallis: "When Manchette began to write his novels in the mid-1970s, the French polar had become a still pool of police procedurals and tales of Pigalle lowlife. Manchette wanted to throw in rocks, disturb the calm surface, bring up all the muck beneath—to demonstrate that the crime novel could be (as he said again and again) "the great moral literature of our time." "For Manchete and the generation of writers who succeeded him, then, these novels became far more than simple entertainment; they became a means of facing society's failures head on. One after another the curtains will be torn back. Pretense. Deceit. Manipulation. Till there in the small, choked room behind it all we witness society's true engines—greed and violence—grinding away." - p vii & there's the promise that crime fiction does deliver on that's what I want from the writers whose work I like.. but in my current jaded state it's not enuf. Crime fiction writers can be great at exploring the psychology of ulterior motives & I appreciate that b/c it's truly observant of the slippery human nature that's usually hidden - but I want more than just human nature, esp human nature under capitalism. "Though dredged from the same dark sense of purloined promise as Chandler's, Manchette's profoundly leftist, distinctly European stance may be something of a problem for American readers. Like many of his generation, Manchette was influenced by the Situationist Guy Debord, whose theories, elaborated in The Society of the Spectacle, were everywhere during France's 1968 insurrections. Situationists held that capitalism's overweening successes came only at the expense of increased alienation, social dysfunction, and a general degradation of daily life" - p xi This translation is from 2014. The Ken Knabb edited Situationist International Anthology was published in the US in 1981. Anyone who participated in or otherwise followed the American political activist underground, esp the anarchist part of it, knows that Situationist ideas were widespread & widely emulated & respected. The Society of the Spectacle, in bk form, is quite short & easily read in a short time. The film might not've become available after a 25 yr hiatus until 1995ish. I know that Keith Sanborn & I screened a VHS copy of it in Buffalo at the end of 1995. As such, I think Sallis's statement re the "distinctly European stance may be something of a problem for American readers" is more than a little naive & underinformed. Furthermore, does this novel really apply a Situationist critique? Perhaps, but IMO it's not really much of one. The Bad guy is a symbol of how PR covers over the real dirt behind making money. That PR cd be sd to be part of the Spectacle. Big deal. I don't think that that particular Bad guy type originated w/ Manchette or that a critique of how false surface values cover over & generate degraded everyday life originated w/ the Situationists. Look at something like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's mystery entitled Unpunished (1929). This particular Bad guy's character is established, a little ambiguously from the get-go: "The redhead inspected the rear of the Lincoln, then straightened up. ""No damage. Why don't you stop them from throwing stones?" ""Self-discipline. You wouldn't understand." ""You pathetic bitch."" - p 7 The redhead is at an insane asylum to ostensibly 'hire the handicapped', i.e. the "Mad" of the story, to be the caregiver for his adopted child. ""I'll write you a check." "The doctor raised his eyebrows. ""A gift," said the redhead emphatically. "A gift for your institution." ""Very well, if you wish. But it is not necessary." ""What you do is interesting." ""Anti-psychiatry, you mean?" ""I don't know," said Hartog. "I mean minding crazy people."" - p 9 More interesting for me than any Situationist influence is this brief reference to anti-psychiatry. The Mad woman goes back to the Bad man's home where he's immediately attacked by someone on his parking lot. The Mad woman, loyal to her new employer & not yet wise to his ulterior motives, defends the redhead Hartog: ""Stop or I'll kill you!" she cried. "The guy looked at her. He had a flat face, a pug nose, and large, very pale gray eyes. On the top of his head the hair was beginning to thin. Yellowish strands lay there limply. ""The safety isn't even off," he said. "With a burst of laughter he whacked the revolver with his rolled-up magazine. The Arminius went skittering across the cement." - p 18 Now, what do you get from the description? The characters of all involved having not been fully established yet one might get a Bad impression based on the "flat face" & "pug nose" that're often associated in crime fiction w/ thugs who've punched in the face frequently. Julie, the Mad caregiver is kidnapped w/ Little Peter, her charge, & told: "["]We're going to let you go later, with a letter. Hartog will pay up. We'll return the kid. Everybody will be happy.["]" - p 43 But have you ever noticed how often people LIE? But Julie, a former juvenile delinquent & someone w/ more than a little cynicism about the motives of others, has quick reflexes & is resourceful enuf to shock the shit out of her hardened criminal captors: "Julie popped into his line of sight, just by Cleaning Products. Her right arm was covered in blood. It looked as if she were wearing a high glove. With her left hand she lobbed a flaming bottle of denatured alcohol at Coco. The thug pressed the trigger of his big Colt and the round buried itself in the ceiling. Coco fell over backwards, uttering a shocked exclamation when his skull struck the floor. Close by him there was a sound like a lightbulb giving up the ghost and he found himself in the middle of a slick of blazing liquid. Little blue flames licked at his pants." - p 107 Go, girl. Anyway, the Mad win out in the end b/c the Bad's single-mindedness was no match for the Mad's unpredictability. A Bad & Mad time was had by all. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 17, 2023
|
Mar 04, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1570274010
| 9781570274015
| 1570274010
| 4.00
| 1
| unknown
| May 01, 2022
|
really liked it
|
review of Peter Lamborn Wilson's Conversazione by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 1, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintek review of Peter Lamborn Wilson's Conversazione by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 1, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticW... PLW & I started corresponding w/ each other sometime in the mid 1980s, possibly as early as before 1984. I don't know wch of us initiated the exchange, we were both very active in outreach, looking for fellow travelers. I even sent him a copy of my very 1st bk, something that I'm unlikely to do now, they're rare enuf so that I charge $50 for one. Our correspondence wasn't frequent, probably less than 1 thing a yr up 'til about 1996, followed by a roughly 15 yr hiatus when we reconnected when I visited him in his home in New Paltz at the end of 2010. Now Peter is dead. Long Live Peter Lamborn Wilson!! He & I crossed paths occasionally: at the Without Borders Anarchist Gathering in San Francisco in 1989, at Dreamtime Village in 1992, at the aforementioned home in December, 2010, & probably elsewhere, maybe NYC. It seems to me that we'd already met in the flesh by SF b/c I remember immediately recognizing him & talking to him there. The point is, we knew each other for almost 40 yrs, I'd read at least 4 or 5 of his bks during that time, I liked his bks, I liked him personally.. &, yet, I never got to know him as well as I shd have.. & now he's dead & it's too late. I find that I miss him very much already. I got this bk for the partially egotistical reason that the editor of "No Quarter" zine told me that Peter calls me a "genius" in it. No Quarter published an excellent memorial issue re PLW. I don't get compliments very often so I esp appreciate one from someone whose opinion I respect. Of course, I also got this bk b/c I wanted to read what're at least close to Peter's last words in print up to now. PLW was an excellent conversationalist, he was always knowledgable & always extremely inspired, AND friendly. All 3 of those qualities seem underappreciated to me at times. "Foods you personally should never have eaten." [..] "I had an idea some years ago, and I think it's a fairly original idea, because I at least have not come across it in anybody's writing, and that is that Christianity is the only religion in the world that has no food taboos—and which in fact is based on overthrowing food taboos. In other words, the basis of Christianity, if you read the bible straight on, is oh you can eat pig now, you can have pigs, you can have crabs, you can have lobsters, it's what the angel tells Saint Peter: it's not important what goes into your mouth, but what comes out, in other words what you say. By which I think the angel meant inspiration. How inspired is your speech. How true is your speech. That's what's important." - pp 9-10 Had you ever thought about that? Christianity having no food taboos? I hadn't, so I get interested. Of course, whether that's true or not might be another thing. I certainly don't know about all religions. "The founder of Futurism, Marinetti, wrote a whole cookbook. "TP: You've read it? "PLW: I've seen it, I've not managed to get hold of it and read the whole thing. One thing I remember is that he said there would be no pasta recipes in that book. That pasta was destroying the Italian personality. We futurists are going to give up eating pasta." - pp 14-15 & I HAVE a copy of the English translation of Marinetti's The Futurist Cookbook but can't locate it at the moment in either my "Miscellaneous" or my "Art" sections of my personal library. I remember some of the recipes as humorously inedible so I was hoping to quote one of those. Instead, I'll just have to quote a June 23, 2022 article by Amanda Arnold that I found online: "In 1932, a charismatic Italian poet with a propensity for provocation declared war on his country’s most sacred idol: pasta. It was “an absurd Italian gastronomic religion,” Filippo Tommaso Marinetti decried in The Futurist Cookbook, and those known to enjoy the “passéist” dish were “melancholy types” who “carry its ruins in their stomachs like archaeologists.” They suffered from “incurable sadness,” he railed against his fellow countrymen. And they were weak, pessimistic, and maybe even impotent. "In short, pasta was emasculating. And emasculation had no place in Italian Futurism, the bizarre and nationalist art movement founded by Marinetti in 1909 on the belief that Italy could never gain primacy if its feeble men were so preoccupied with history and tradition. For a strong, Futuristic Italian man to exist, Marinetti wanted anything that celebrated the country’s heritage literally destroyed—museums, libraries, even spaghetti." - https://www.bonappetit.com/story/the-... "Other heroes of food? "Charles Fourier, the Utopian Socialist, was a distant cousin of Brillat-Saverin, as it happens. He invented the term gastrosophy. He took food very seriously, and in his utopia there were whole societies of people who specilaized in growing and eating one kind of pear. There were people who were, not just banquet societies, but banquet societies that specialized in like, old roosters. Old roosters as opposed to fresh young hens. A lot of taste in old roosters, if you know how to cook them right, they can be quite great. Roland Barthes, taking a hint from Fourier, wrote about his favorite meal, which was old rooster accompanied by couscous with rancid butter. He meant that when butter gets sort of cheesy, people call it rancid but it isn't really rancid, it's just butter on its way to being cheese. So in other words, very strong flavors, and he dedicated that meal to Fourier. He wrote an essay about Fourier, a very good essay. Also—the Russian scientist N.N. Vavilov who discovered the origins of apples and cannabis. Stalin murdered him." - pp 18-19 & PLW wrote a small Fourier related bk called The Universe - a mirror of itself published by Miekal And & Elizabeth Was's Xexoxial Endarchy in 1992. I was at Dreamtime Village when they were working on the bk & I was delighted that PLW knew about Fourier who was someone I'd had interest in. In fact, I'm credited in the bk as having done "typesetting", something I don't actually remember my doing. Fourier predicted that followers of his philosophy wd grow tails w/ hands on the end & an eyeball in the palm. This appendage was dubbed the "archibras". I have a tattoo of one in motion w/ 6 fingers on my lower back where the tail wd hypothetically grow. "PLW: Now you're asking not for an objective but a subjective view and I have to say that the one thing I've found about old age and debility is that one by one the pleasures leave you. You simply can't do them anymore. If you try to spend a charming evening drinking champagne and eating fried oysters, you're very likely to deeply regret it the next day. Or even immediately. So right now I feel denuded one by one of the things that I always considered to be pleasures in my life. I don't smoke anymore. I don't smoke pot anymore. I barely drink alcohol anymore. There's so many foods that I can't eat, that my diet is ridiculous, might as well be puritanical, but it isn't really because it's not based on any kind of logic, it has to do with certain chemicals that I can't have anymore. And so on and so forth, and of course the greatest pleasure of all, which is love or sexuality is pretty much closed to old farts." [..] "Everyone always says when I go on my Luddite rant and rave, well at least there's one thing that's really progress and that's modern medicine. And I say no, I'm sorry, I have to give you a critique on that, too. As my friend Jake said, well I expected nothing less. But I have a very deep critique of it, it's not my critique alone, it also comes from the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich who has written on the subject very brilliantly, I recommend her work on big med to everybody." - p 35 This delights me b/c I'm extremely critical of the Medical Industry & I've written 2 llloooonnggg bks on the subject: Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... ) & its sequel of sorts: THE SCIENCE (volume 1) ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... ). In fact, what modern medicine represents to me is an opportunity to have oneself experimented on at great cost so that a side-effect can result that is, in turn, experimented on at great cost, ad nauseum until one's financial resources are fully tapped out & one dies. AND to be treated like an imbecile by people who ARE imbeciles if one dares to offer critical analysis. "When the drug for Hepatitis C came on the market, I think it was, what—$600.00 per pill?" - p 36 According to a publication called "The Medical Letter" that provides drug information to drs w/o influence from the pharmaceutical industry: "one dose of Hemgenix costs $3,500,000." Hemgenix is a gene therapy used for the treatment of hemophilia B. That's the most extreme example that I know of of the prohibitive cost of 'modern medicine'. What happened to the idea of taking care of oneself & having a knowledge of local plants w/ medicinal qualities that cd be picked at no cost? If the Medical Industry has its way such things will be completely replaced by EXPENSIVE PRODUCTS. Buy your health from us, WE OWN IT! On Hungary: "But I've been told that back in the days of late communism, goulash communism, that there was a big sexual boom in Hungary. "TP: As a child I remember seeing people walk around almost naked, in nothing but gauze veils or whatever. Scandalous stuff like that. "PLW: By the river you mean? "TP: No, anywhere. Down the street. I mean, this is mid '90's, so maybe it's a survival of what you're talking about." - p 41 I was in Hungary in 1997 & I remember seeing a woman walking in Budapest wearing a pair of shorts that were closer to a thong than to pants - her ass cheeks were completely exposed. As both a nudist & a lecherous heterosexual I was deeply impressed. "PLW: I must have found out about it in Freshman Latin. Or, possibly, from Will and Ariel Durant. You don't know who they were probably. They were a married couple, who in fact were anarchist activists in New York in the '40s. The way they made their living was they wrote a series of books about the history of civilization." - p 45 The Story of Civilization, the 1st volume is credited to Will Durant alone. There're 11 volumes. I have 3 of them. This is the 1st I've heard tell about them being anarchists! Their bks were so omnipresent that I always vaguely imagined that they were history-belongs-to-the-victor kind of stuff. SHEESH. Now I'm going to have to read at least one of them! How will I ever live long enuf?! On the subject of affordable pleasures: "You can always afford sex. Think of the image of the hillbillies sitting in their cabins, what have they got to do in their spare time. Used to have rather baroque sexuality you know. "There are certain places like Baltimore, which is a working-class city to a large extent, which is famous for their sexual "perversion." You've seen the films of John Waters, I always used to say that's Baltimore social realism." - p 47 Ha ha! I think it was in an anarchist discussion group called "Class Class" that we had some readings of a study done by a North American academic in South America about population growth or some such. It was as if the person or people conducting the study were afraid to even mention sex. It was all about economics. What struck me was that nowhere was it mentioned that people FUCK b/c it's so damned enjoyable & it's generally free (except under the worst capitalist conditions). In other words, it's exactly what PLW is commenting on. As for John Waters's films being "Baltimore social realism"? This is exactly the kind of idea that PLW is full off & that I love about him so much. I didn't even realize or remember that PLW was from BalTimOre until I read this bk. "Wilson" was my mom's maiden name so that makes me wonder what relation, if any, PLW was to me. I wish I'd asked him about his family while he was alive. I tried asking him after he was dead but just got dead silence. "You're not going to have a social revolution in the world on fire. "CS: Well, you have it from the ashes. "PLW: This is what's probably happening in Rojava as we speak. What will turn out to be the last idealistic attempt at a social revolution is being destroyed by the Turks, by Covid, by environmental degradation, by drought, and essentially by the world on fire. I hope not, but I've been following it fairly closely, and it looks to me like a real possibility. They will turn out to have lasted only about as long as the Spanish anarchist utopia. If the Zapatistas are still going I don't even know what they're up to. You don't hear about them anymore. Some people say they're still trucking, but they certainly gave up their international ambitions. You don't hear about them trying to convince other people anymore. So that's that." - p 59 "The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij, and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part. "While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state except for the Catalan Parliament. The AANES has widespread support for its universal democratic, sustainable, autonomous pluralist, equal, and feminist policies in dialogues with other parties and organizations. Northeastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians, Circassians, and Yazidis. "The supporters of the region's administration state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology, and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural, and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence. The region's administration has also been accused by some partisan and non-partisan sources of authoritarianism, support of the Syrian government, Kurdification, and displacement. However, despite this the AANES has been the most democratic system in Syria, with direct open elections, universal equality, respecting human rights within the region, as well as defense of minority and religious rights within Syria. "The region has implemented a new social justice approach which emphasizes rehabilitation, empowerment, and social care over retribution. The death penalty was abolished. Prisons house mostly people charged with terrorist activity related to ISIL and other extremist groups, and are a large strain on the region's economy. The autonomous region is ruled by a coalition which bases its policy ambitions to a large extent on democratic libertarian socialist ideology of democratic confederalism and have been described as pursuing a model of economy that blends co-operative and market enterprise, through a system of local councils in minority, cultural, and religious representation. The AANES has by far the highest average salaries and standard of living throughout Syria, with salaries being twice as large as in regime-controlled Syria; following the collapse of the Syrian pound the AANES doubled salaries to maintain inflation, and allow for good wages. Independent organizations providing healthcare in the region include the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Syrian American Medical Society, the Free Burma Rangers, and Doctors Without Borders." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonom... I'm tempted to move there. "PLW: For years and years his admirers would say why doesn't someone make a movie, and it's well known there were famous directors who had taken options on some of his books, and it didn't happen until I'm pretty sure the first one was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which got made into a movie by the title of Blade Runner. I think that was the first P.K. Dick movie." - p 75 I thought I had a printed-out list of all movies based on works by P.K. Dick, a list that included many movies made before Blade Runner. However, I cdn't find that list in the 2 places where it shd've been. SO I looked for such a list on Wikipedia & what I found only listed ONE movie made before Blade Runner: "Imposter", made as an episode of a TV show in 1962. "The first piece that Bob" [Wilson] " put on took place in a ruined caravanserai in Shiraz that had many rooms, and in each room something was going on, and it was all going on simultaneously, and it was in his style, which I don't know if you're familiar with. It was all very beautiful, painterly, and terribly slow. He started life as a painter and then he realized that his work had to be in motion, but it couldn't be in fast motion it had to be in slow motion so that everybody could see everything. That was the key to his work. This was one of his early pieces too. He had put on stuff in New York for sure before I knew him, but this was one of his early works, and the next time he came to Shiraz he put on Seven Nights on Ka Mountain where they gave him an entire mountain with several buildings and he put on a play that lasted non-stop for seven days and seven nights. I was there for all of it." - p 84 Coincidentally, I recently read Carolyn Brown's Chance and Circumstance (you can read my complete review here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticB... ) in wch I read about the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing at the same Iranian festival. For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticW... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 15, 2023
|
Mar 03, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1771837543
| 9781771837545
| 1771837543
| 4.25
| 4
| unknown
| Nov 01, 2022
|
really liked it
|
review of Alan Lord's High Friends in Low Places by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 21-28, 2023 For the complete version of my review go here: h review of Alan Lord's High Friends in Low Places by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 21-28, 2023 For the complete version of my review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL... "Instead of "No Future", to me Punk meant No Bullshit—a punk speaks his mind bluntly, gets to the heart of a matter, and tells you what's what. Which is the exact opposite of polite social conventions and "being diplomatic"—which is shorthand for bourgeois hypocrisy." - p 16 That seems ok in theory but in actuality it can just mean that any idiot can blurt out any stupid thing in a spirit of total self-righteousness. Just b/c someone says something bluntly doesn't mean that they get anywhere near the "heart of the matter" - wch brings me to writing reviews in general & to writing this review in particular: I've known Alan for 40 yrs. I consider him to be a friend, I'm certainly glad we know each other & that we still communicate. I'm very glad to have read this autobiography - but that doesn't mean that I agree w/ him about everything. SO, I'll be blunt: For me, the people who were & are really serious about rebelling against mainstream society take a stance that there's no turning back from. I remember being in Chicago in 1986 for the Haymarket Centennial, an anarchist gathering, the 1st for a very long time & the 1st in a series of such gatherings to come. I met a woman there who had a mohawk. She told me she'd gotten it for that weekend in Chicago, she was a weekend warrior, she was just going to comb her hair down again to look normal when she went back to her NYC office job on Monday. I was disgusted, I didn't like her at all. She was very loud in her belligerent mouthing off but it was just her act, something to make her feel like a hero. She was a poseur. I had long since been leading a life that pretty seriously showed me as rejecting normality 24/7. A yr later I got my 3D brain tattoo on my head. I kept my head shaved for yrs to make it so people SAW THE TATTOO. Once I got that done I knew I'd have a helluva time getting work to support myself w/, I wasn't rich, I was pppooooorrrrrrrrrr & I needed to survive somehow. That meant that if I got a job the employer had to accept me as is, I was a flagrant weirdo & that was that. Even tho Alan was a 'punk', he was a punk who cd get a straight job any time he needed to. Look at the cover of his bk, he looks pretty damn normal. I wanted to get that out of the way 1st. So much for bluntness. Did I cut thru the bullshit? Maybe. But I also took the risk of alienating Alan, of destroying our friendship. Maybe diplomacy doesn't have to be "bourgeois hypocrisy", maybe it can mean being sensitive to the other person. In this case, I can recognize that Alan has led an extraordinary life, it doesn't have to be an exemplar of what I was going for - & this bk expresses it very clearly. I've been lucky to receive a USB stick w/ "ALAN COMPLETE ARCHIVES" on it that includes things like recordings from his bands. That's a good companion volume to this bk. Alan also sent me this: "HIGH FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES — CLICKABLE WEB LINKS The following web links are the ones referenced in the book's footnotes; you can click on them to access them immediately. They are listed by chapter. The Appendix B web links are also included." This is a very conveniently organized list of the links scattered throughout the bk. I'll list the relevant ones here at the end of every chapter that I comment on & quote from. If you're interested in underground musical & literary culture in Montréal (& beyond) in the 1980s (& beyond) this is an excellent resource. The 1st chapter begins thusly: "I smoked a joint with Burroughs at sunset and fucked Kathy Acker's brains out at dawn. At the time I was a hot shit sunglassed guitarist in the coolest band in town, single and miserable, lonely with six girlfriends and a few unspellable venereal diseases. And stoned whenever possible. We were well into the Eighties and I was still not using condoms. Splodging into gummy plastic wasn't in my DNA. Sure, it was high risk, but what's the point if things aren't exciting? "Welcome to my Eighties. I had high friends in low places. Mostly at the Foufs—or Les Foufounes Électriques" - p 1 Alan provides the translation as "The Electric Buttocks". When I played there on tour in 1992 I was told it meant "The Electric Vagina". An online translator has it as "The Electric Vulva". Maybe it's "The Electric Cloaca". "Or how about the time in New York, when Pop artist James Rosenquist poured me a glass of champagne. Chris Burden explained to me how to drop steel beams from a helicopter clean through concrete pads, Grace Jones had a fit during her birthday party, and Divine walked in on my brunch? I also once had a hilariously futile phone conversation with Nam June Paik, and J.G. Ballard wrote to me on the back of photos of his cat. "This is not boasting, it's not name dropping, it's the icing on the cake of the crazy life I had throughout the Eighties—which were my Sixties, except I remember 'em better because blow and champagne don't fog up your brain like weed and acid." - p 4 I'm inclined to think that it is, indeed, name dropping b/c otherwise why wd it be worth mentioning that someone walked in on yr brunch or wrote something to you on the back of a picture of their cat? Nonetheless, it's interesting for me since all the people named are of interest to me. Alan mentions me, usually in a complimentary way, quite a few times in this. Given that I'm as ego-starved as the next guy (No, not him - the one lurking in that corner over there), I enjoyed that & I make sure to carry the bk w/ me at all times so that I can shove relevant pages in front of the faces of girls that I want to have sex w/ who are then horrified that this dirty old man is coming anywhere close to them. Still, ya gotta do what ya gotta doo. My 1st appearance, however, isn't one that many people are likely to pick up on: "No, we weren't "high on life". We were high on killing normality before it killed us" - p 5 Kill Normality Before It Kills You being one of my main slogans & one that I wd've introduced to the Montréalers in 1983 at APT 6 (more about that later) - although sometimes I used the alternate version: Stop Normality Before It StopsYou. Somewhat astonishingly to me some people are actually threatened by the version in wch "kill" is used as if "normality" were a flesh & blood being being threatened instead of an abstraction. If I sd Kill Geometrics Before It Kills You wd people feel as threatened? Maybe if they were a geometer. Chapter 1 — PLEASED TO MEET YOU Page 3: MTL Punk movie trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHPUK... Page 3: Montréal New Wave movie trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LG7b... "The work was easy. I just had to hop around the construction site with my surverying instrument, and plant rows of sticks showing the height to which earth graders had to pile the subbase gravel. The doofusses driving the dump trucks had fun careening roughshod and regularly snapped whole rows of my precious work, so I had to start all over again. I figured that was my job security." - pp 7-8 People are like dust, you can clean as often as you like but the unwanted will always be there again the next time. Might as well get used to it. "England's '77 Summer Of Hate turned into 1978, and at the end of spring I wrapped up that semester's studies. When Elvis Costello's This Year's Model came out I was utterly demolished. It felt like an insulting gauntlet flung at my feet: if such a dweeb could put out an album, well then so could I! I bought myself a guitar, slowly dusted off my chops, and out of nowhere I immediately began writing songs—something I'd never been able to do." - p 12 Elvis Costello so immediately struck me as mediocre that I never took him seriously. When someone like that has such a prominent media presence there's inevitably some money backing them. How that backing comes into being can be quite arbitrary. I think it might've been John Cougar Mellencamp that I read an interview w/ who stated that his career got a kickstart when a British guy just liked his accent & decided to invest heavily in him. Maybe it was somebody other than Mellencamp. Whoever it was didn't attribute their 'success' to any special talent they had - just to the lucky break of having some rich guy fancy him. How often has that sort of thing happened? "Tracy and Scott got together and soon evolved into the superb five-piece Heaven 17, and gave a show at the McGill Ballroom. In addition to Scott and Tracy they now had Roman Martyn from the Young Adults on guitar, and new faces—Kim Duran, and the luscious Lysanne Thibodeau on keyboards." - p 17 & it must've been a combination of Thibodeau's lusciousness & her having used German underground pop stars in her film "Bad Blood for the Vampire" that led to that film being included in "La Première Rétrospective Filmique Mondiale du Néoisme" in Québec in January, 1999, as well as in a smaller Neoist film fest in Windsor, ONT, in November of the same yr - b/c her film certainly had no connection whatsoever to Neoism & was just being used by the curator in an attempt to associate himself w/ Blixa Bargeld of the band Einstürzende Neubauten. Anyway, if you want to watch a 6 minute close-up of her mouth you can do so here: https://youtu.be/fhYqGKCBTlA . Chapter 3 — MONTREAL PUNK Page 17: Vertigo — by The Screamers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0-w0... Page 21: Love On A Leash — by Arson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0I2k... In the next chapter, Alan quotes a member of a Montréal band called "222" in its early days: ""The following day, a car couldn't be found to return the goddamn Cerwin Vegas" [speaker cabinets] "to the rental store. Since no one in the band had a solution and the rental was in his name, poor Johnny had no choice but to bring back the huge cabinets by himself. He pushed one of the wheeled cabinets from our rehearsal space downtown on Beaver Hall, all the way uphill to Marrazza—a distance of over 7 kilometers. Then he had to go back for the other unwieldy cabinet and do it all over again."" - p 21 My kindof guy! I really respect that he was honest enuf & responsible enuf to do that. Very few people wd. I'm reminded of a time when I was in Baltimore & I saw a woman pushing a guy w/ amputated lower legs in a wheelchair. They were both obviously dirt poor & the guy was trying to get to a hospital for some emergency he was in the midst of. The woman wasn't a relative or a friend she was just someone who took pity on him. When she saw me she recognized a kindred spirit so she asked me to take over & I pushed the guy the last mile or 2. What misery. "My first gig was set for May 11th and 12th" [1979] ", under the name of Alan Lord & The Marauders." - p 23 & on the USB drive holding Alan's life in a nutshell there're 4 recordings of Marauder songs: "I Guess I Like Her", "Feelin Fine", "Go On", & "Just One More Chance". Listening to them, if I didn't 'know' they're 1979 Montréal punk I might think they're 1966 Brit rock. Anyway, they're standard rock instrumentation: rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums, vocal. The playing is simple & primitive & competent for what it is. The rhythm guitar has amp reverb on it. I can imagine young people drinking, dancing, & flirting to it. What more do you need? "For the Nelson gig I pasted up my own posters that asked the burning question: "Who is Alan Lord?" Indeed, who the hell was he? I sure wanted to know, I was still looking for him." - p 23 The Marauders were far from original but, what the hell, I'm sure the audience didn't give a shit as long as they got laid at the end of the night & I'm sure they had fun. Chapter 4 — MONTREAL NEW WAVE Page 25: Public Image — by PIL (Public Image Limited) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjzkN... Alan writes about meeting Bernard Gagnon, a synthesizer player, & starting to collaborate w/ him. "After a few jams we saw things gelled between us. I sang and played rhythm guitar, Gagnon played Minimoog on half the songs, then switched to lead guitar for the rest. We recruited Phil Nolan on bass, Angel "Dust" Calvo on drums, and I christened the band Alan Lord & The Blue Genes." - p 27 How about Alan Lord & The Alan Lords? or Alan Lord & The Self-Promoters? Those wd've been funnier band names. There's one song from what they turned into on Alan's USB stick called "DNA". There were hundreds of pop bands in the 1970s w/ synth players but it was still alot fresher than the typical rock instrumentation listed above. Still, synths were expensive. I built a function generator from a (maybe $60) kit in 1976 but it was stolen from me in 1982. That was more my kind of electronic instrument in that era. That & the toy Muson sequencer/synthesizer that cost about $25 & that I wish I still had! One was priced at $714.37 (+ $60.78 shipping) on Reverb 6 yrs ago! What. A. Rip. Off. One thing that I particularly love about this bk is that Alan is truly thankful, truly appreciative of his fellow insider outsiders. "Without the Nelson Grill the nascent scene could have been strangled at birth. So a big Thank You John to Spike. Without him I would have been nothing, I would have remained a frustrated office slave with his pipe dreams quickly dashed." - p 26 In BalTimOre, the thx shd probably go to Roger & Leslee who ran the Marble Bar & the Galaxy Ballroom in the Congress Hotel. Both were havens for the weirdos. The Marble Bar was more of a punk rock club & Roger is reputed to've died in 1984 from a heart attack while dancing there, presumably under the influence of too much coke. The Galaxy Ballroom was where the weirder stuff happened, that's where I did things, that's where part of the 3rd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention happened, that's where part of the 7th International Neoist Apartment Festival happened. In other words: I feel ya, Alan - w/o people like Spike & Leslee & Roger so many of us wdn't've had a place to be as wild as we were. Lardy knows the Marble Bar tolerated my more human-time-bomb aspects. "After the Nelson Grill show, Phil left us to form Ulterior Motive, and we no longer had a bass player. I changed our name to the simpler Vex, and in July we recorded our seminal song DNA" - p 31 Chapter 5 — FROM NEW WAVE TO POST-PUNK Page 30: Nancy Beaudoin — by Aut'Chose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV9HB... Page 32: DNA — by Vex https://soundcloud.com/user-55178726-... Chapter 6 — THE RETURN OF JOHNNY SHIVERS Page 37: Did You No Wrong — by The Sex Pistols https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niaIR... Alan recounts meeting his soon-to-be close friend Mario Campo. As w/ his appreciation of the guy who ran the Nelson Grill, Alan's love for & appreciation of his friend is apparent. "When it was his turn to go onstage, Mario Campo walked up to the mic, holding a sheet of paper. Instead of reading from it, he violently scrunched it into a ball against the mic—which gave loud crinkly sounds coming out of the speakers. He then tossed it at the audience and left in disgust—to howls, hoots and whistles of approval and disapproval." - p 40 Had I been there I suspect I wd've loved the elegance of this gesture of exasperation. "Dave shot me up. I immediately felt woozy and started teetering. "Uh oh," he said, "maybe I gave you too much." Exactly what I didn't want to hear. I collapsed onto the couch and felt happy as a cooing Tribble. I was fine. The great feeling you get on heroin is like sinking into a warm bubble bath and enjoying it eyes closed, a happy mollusk in the suds. Right then I knew I should never get into smack, because that was the only thing I'd ever need in my life. Then I threw up a little retch. Every twenty minutes an unpleasant little retch. Well that nailed the fun out of Junkie Life for me." - p 45 Personally, I've been shot up w/ heroin & dilaudid, I drank paregoric & oral morphine, & smoked opium. I don't recommend any of them. I remember being on heroin while a gay friend read a passage from a bk about how sperm supposedly contains the active ingredient of heroin that supposedly makes you feel so good. I didn't feel good, I just didn't care, I didn't care about my friend or about much of anything else. I was taking heroin b/c I was being self-destructive b/c I'd broken up w/ a woman that I was obsessed w/. The one time I drank oral morphine I was performing w/ my band "Something That Dissolves The Shadow of Something That Was Next to Something That Combusted Twice. Once." (1989.11.04) ( https://youtu.be/yamGE-mVW8A?t=1h26m51s ) in a concert that lasted 4 or 5 hrs. We'd pre-planned that we were going to play a section as hard & fast as we cd for an hr. Just before this section I drank the morphine. I'd been drinking hard alcohol all night. It occurred to me that I might've overdone it so I really plunged into the hard & fast section in an effort to work the morphine & alcohol thru my system in the hope of not ODing. I cd go on & on about such foolishness but I never had the slightest urge or inclination to be a junkie. People often become addicts in the process of trying to escape from their lives & end up more trapped in them than ever. Fortunately, I don't seem to have an addictive biology. I've seen friends shoot heroin & end up under house arrest or worse w/in mnths b/c of their absolute lack of self-control. "But Mario didn't have to travel far to find trouble. Usually he found it in the biker dives of Montréal or at Peter's, where he liked to go get beaten up. Or else in a drunken fit at home, smashing his toilet door, throwing beer bottles at the wall or down the corridor of his apartment building, bringing the cops at three in the morning." - p 52 I met Mario in early 1983 at APT 6 (more about that later) where I witnessed his performance at his apartment & where he translated my English into French for my "Practice for Blo-Dart Acupuncture &/or Ear Piercing". He seemed to be a good translator, taking it seriously & doing me the favor in good faith. While I can believe that he had his bad times, such as those described above, I'm glad to say that I met him when he seemed to be up. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 10, 2023
|
Feb 28, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.00
| 1
| unknown
| 2012
|
really liked it
|
review of Ivora Cusack & Stéfani de Loppinot and by Pip Chodorov (for English speaking audiences)'s Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) review of Ivora Cusack & Stéfani de Loppinot and by Pip Chodorov (for English speaking audiences)'s Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen by Michael Snow by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 20, 2023 Michael Snow, December 10, 1928 – January 5, 2023. Michael Snow is Dead! Long Live Michael Snow! I probably 1st read about Michael Snow's films in Parker Tyler's Underground Film A Critical History (1969, Grove Press) wch I wd've read probably sometime between 1973 & 1976. This was an important bk for introducing me to a subject that's been near & dear to me ever since. I didn't get a chance to actually see any of those movies until The Baltimore Museum of Art presented "The American Independent Film Series" from October 7, 1976 to June 4, 1977. I still have the program notes from most of the series that I attended. I also have the catalog called A History of the American Avant-Garde Cinema (1976, The American Federation of the Arts). This series of films was incrdibly important to me. I'd already made my 1st film in 1975: 001. a. "Lamar "Chip" Layfield / Carol / Pat Brown /tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE" - super 8 - indefinite duration - fall '75 b. "Lamar "Chip" Layfield / Carol / Pat Brown /tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE" {'inappropriate' quasi-document of semi-correct gambling presentation} - featuring Dan Sacktan as the gambler - 1/2" VHS cassette - 32:10 - fall '75/january '95 c. "Lamar "Chip" Layfield / Carol / Pat Brown / tentatively, a convenience" {'inappropriate' quasi-document of semi-correct gambling presentation + relelvant additions} - with addition of titles & of a reading & display of the relevant section of my 1st book tagged on at the end + a picture of the filmmaker at approximately the time of the film's being made - Quicktime movie - 48:35 - 1700X1275 (HD) - fall 1975/january 1995/May 27, 2017 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/uraX7UhTmxc At the time of my making my 1st film I didn't know of anything else like it. In fact, there's still very-little-to-nothing like it to this day that I know of. Perhaps, I might retrospectively call it "Materialist", perhaps I might compare it slightly to Robert Nelson's "Bleu Shut" (1970). Whatever the case, the films that I felt most aligned to were the ones called Structuralist, a term I wasn't previously familiar w/. Michael Snow's "Wavelength" screened at the BMoA on March 17, 1977. I absolutely loved it. I wd've been 23 at the time. I made my 1st video a few mnths later & my 2nd film in the fall of 1978. What now seems like a mere 15 yrs later, I shot a scene that was a take-off of "Wavelength" for my movie entitled "The "Official" John Lennon's Erection as Blocking Our View Homage & Cheese Sandwich". In Snow's original, a man is seen walking into a loft who then falls to the floor out-of-shot to be then discovered, presumably dead, by 2 women who enter. In my 'remake', the 2 women help the man stand up, he isn't dead. That scene is from here: https://youtu.be/nRqfWwHAdqA?t=1754 to here: https://youtu.be/nRqfWwHAdqA?t=1895 . Actually, it goes on longer but it's intercut w/ other things past this point. On September 12,1995 I got to play w/ CCMC, the free improvising group that Michael Snow was in, at the wonderful Music Gallery. I had already been in touch w/ CCMC's John Oswald thru the home taper network & w/ Paul Dutton in his capacity as a proof-reader for MUSICWORKS magazine but I hadn't communicated w/ Snow yet. Thanks to Monty Cantsin (Istvan Kantor) this was videoed & I made the following movie: 170. a. "w/ CCMC" - featuring: Michael Snow: piano, John Oswald: alto sax, Paul Dutton: voice singing, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: sampler (w/ live sampling), synthesizers - shot by Istvan Kantor / Monty Cantsin September 12, 1995 @ the Music Gallery, Toronto - edited to DVD sometime around 2002 - VHS -> DVD - 27:39 b. "w/ CCMC" (YouTube version) - this is the excerpt used on the "UNCERTS" compilation w/ title & credits added around November 4, 2009 - VHS -> mini-DV -> computer file -> mini-DV -> YouTube - 3:31 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/epsDAADK2XA I did live sampling of the CCMC players (thanks to the assistance of sound man Paul Hodges) in order to surprise them. Since I was using a fairly primitive 8 bit Mirage sampler that had something like a 3 second sampling limit across 61 keys & that had to have its samples & sequences (limited to 333 key-downs) stored on floppy discs this was a somewhat more laborious & time-consuming process than one might expect. I had just played a different show at the Music Gallery On September 8, 1995 ( https://youtu.be/kjkDZsaWhkk ) & Paul had told me that he thought I was too loud then so he had me potted down more than I wd've liked at the CCMC concert. Oh, well. Despite the slowness caused by the live sampling process & my volume being slightly lower than I preferred, this was an excellent event (albeit for a very small audience). Snow was the greatest pianist I've ever played w/. Michael apparently liked what I was doing enuf to lead to his inviting me to play w/ CCMC whenever I wanted to. I was thrilled. Alas, the extremely decrepit car I had broke down for good & I had to move away from CacaNada soon thereafter so I never got to play w/ them again. This is something I will forever regret. At some point I got a copy of Snow's excellent photography bk entitled Cover to Cover (1975), another work I absolutely love & possibly my favorite photography bk. You can read my silly little review of that here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... . I've also been able to hear a few of his recordings, all of wch are amazing & original. In the meantime, over the decades since I 1st witnessed "Wavelength" I've had the opportunity to see very few other films by Snow: "New York Eye & Ear Control" (1964), "La Region Centrale" (1971), & "<—————>" (aka "Back and Forth") (1969). Considering his importance to experimental filmmaking it's astounding how few the opportunities to see his work have been. I remember John Oswald telling me that when "Rameau's Nephew" premiered in Toronto that he & Snow were the only people in the audience. SO, on learning of Snow's death I decided to look online to see what movies of his, if any, might be available for sale & I found "Presents" (1981) & "Rameau's Nephew" (1974) - both available from RE:VOIR via Anthology in NYC. I bought them. "Rameau's Nephew" came w/ a 176pp bk, the bk that I'll probably get around to reviewing here in some way or another eventually. I read the original Diderot at the same time to look for parallels w/ Snow's film. You can read my review of that here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticD... . I didn't really find any parallels. Perhaps someone wd say: You fool! Jean Philippe Rameau's music is played in one scene ("Polyphony") & the Penguin paperback edition of Diderot's bk (the same edition I reviewed) appears in another ("Commentator"). Diderot's original is just one scene. Snow's film is divided into 25 very heterogeneous sequences: "Whistling" (amazing in & of itself), "Focus", "Mom (Piano)", "Credits", "Mental (1)", "Voice Scene", "Plane", "Sink", "Dennis Burton", "Polyphony", "Bus", "Fart", "Dub", "Piss Duet", "Embassy", "Commentator", "Laughing Chair", "Rain", "English Comedians", "Hotel", "Four", "Mental (2)", "Cymbal-Symbol", "Erratum", & "Addenda" - w/ "Colors" used as transitions. I didn't, personally, find there to be much of an overarching theme. It seemed to be that what unified all the material is that it was just what Snow was thinking about at the time. Snow, & others, might strongly disagree. If you love close looks at complex & difficult experimental films this whole package is for you. Each sequence is analyzed in French & English, small stills from the film are shown, & images of Snow's scripts are there too. This is about as thorough as it's likely to get. If you're NOT an experimental film lover, this whole package will probably be extremely confusing. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 31, 2023
|
Feb 20, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 3.67
| 1,509
| 1769
| 1966
|
liked it
|
review of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew / D'Alembert's Dream by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 13-19, 2023 For the complete review go here: http:// review of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew / D'Alembert's Dream by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 13-19, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticD... Michael Snow is dead, Long Live Michael Snow! Wha?! In the last yr at least 2 people died who I didn't really feel the importance of to me until after learning of their deaths. One of them was Michael Snow. It occurred to me that, despite knowing of his work since the 1970s, I'd seen very few of his movies. SO, I looked online for copies of them for sale & got a copy of his Rameau's Nephew (not the full title) wch came w/ a bk. I watched the movie & started reading the bk & realized that I'd just have to read Diderot's original to get a fuller picture of the whole meaning of it all. Fortunately, I'd had a copy of this bk in my personal library for decades & I think it's even the very same edition that appears in Snow's movie in one scene. SOO, I decided to read this 1st before finishing the bk about Snow's movie. From the FOREWORD: "Le Neveu de Rameau, in form as in other respects unique, veers bewilderingly in style from the inflated, rhetorical and bombastic to the simple, slangy and coarse, and often the face value of what is said is not the author's intention, for he is being ironical as well as humorous." - p 7 I'd never read anything by Diderot before & while I found him interesting I'm not so sure I wd've wanted to be a character in either of these 2 bks. Diderot seemed bizarrely insensitive to the people he used. "It was his work as a translator which prompted a syndicate of publishers to entrust to him, after one or two false starts with others, the task of translating Chambers's Cyclopedia, a fairly modest compilation, into French. But like so many things Diderot touched, the simple publisher's project rapidly enlarged itself until the work became the first great Encylclopedia of the modern world, running to seventeen folio volumes of text and eleven supplementary volumes of plates, and taking in all about twenty-five years to reach completion." - p 9 "An eternal adolescent, he was bursting with enthusiasm and curiosity about the worlds of science, art, music, the theatre and technology, full of the excitement of discovery, always elaborating some new theory, arguing with the wrong-headed, an idealist and a realist, sublime but not averse to the smutty joke, a down-to-earth materialist yet haunted by moral scruples and a highly developed social sense, a scientist always in a state of febrile emotion and seldom far from tears, a deadly enemy but the kindest and most companionable of men." - pp 10-11 That's quite a description isn't it? Some people can be unconscious of their contradictions & accept them as necessary to having flexibility of reaction. Others might be unconscious of their contradictions & might seem to be hypocritical or confused. Perhaps the bottom line is that a complex person isn't reducible to a single dogma. "And finally Rameau's Nephew, a work belonging to no recognizable genre, neither novel nor play nor essay nor, in spite of its sub-title, satire, and unique in French literature." - p 11 &, perhaps, that's the description that comes closest to also describing Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen by Michael Snow from roughly 300 yrs later. "Rameau's Nephew is a masterpiece alone of its kind and not a little mysterious. Almost every aspect of it, dating, intention, meaning, is open to debate, and tentative conclusions about one aspect are often flatly contradicted by another." - p 15 "It seems rather stretching a point to suggest that Diderot wrote this brilliant piece of invective for the private satisfaction of knowing that it might possibly be published after his death and after that of most of the people attacked." - p 17 "Nor is the list of conjectures exhausted. Is it a dialogue between the respectable, law-abiding side of each one of us and the anarchist, irresponsible, wholly self-centered side?" - p 18 It's an ongoing project of mine to point out what I consider to be misues of "anarchy", "anarchist", "anarchism", "anarchistic", etc, in things that I read. The above's a perfect example. "law-abiding" is equated w/ being "respectable". It wd've been "law-abiding" in Nazi Germany to assist in the robbery & murder of Jews, homosexuals, dissidents, & Gypsies. Somehow, that's not "respectable" to me. The opposite of this is presented as being "anarchist" wch is equated w/ "irresponsible" & "wholly self-centered" & yet it's anarchists who put the most emphasis on taking responsibility for oneself & NOT relinquishing it to the following of laws & leaders. It's also anarchists who make themselves wholly unpopular by protesting & resisting ongoing acts of injustice - a process about as opposite of "self-centered" as it gets. "I hold discussions with myself on politics, love, taste or philosophy, and let my thoughts wander in complete abandon, leaving them free to follow the first wise or foolish idea that comes along." [..] "There the most amazing moves can be seen and the poorest conversation be heard, for if you can be a man of wit and a great chessplayer like Legal you can also be a great chess-player and an ass like Foubert and Mayot." This is the 1st flagrant insult from Diderot that appears in Rameau's Nephew. It's no wonder that he didn't publish it when it was written. I can't really say that I completely approve of insulting people &, yet, there is some refreshment to be had from openly speaking one's generally more self-censored thoughts. Rameau's Nephew is full of insults. "a hundred lickspittles would come and pay court to me every day (he seemed to see them all around him — Palissot, Poincinet, the Frérons, father and son, La Porte[)]" - p 44 These are real people, real enemies of Diderot. "9. Palissot (1730-1814), arch-enemy of the movement, caricatured Diderot and his associates in the comedy Les Philosophes (1760). There were two Poinsinets, cousins, one of whom, Henri Poinsinet (1735-69), known as the younger, attacked the Encylopaedists in his comedy Le Petit Philosophe (1760). The elder Fréron (1719-76), the great enemy of Voltaire, waged an anti-philosophic warfare in his Année littéraire. His son was born in 1754, which again dates this part of the work well into the 1770s. Les Trois siècles de la littérature française, 3 vols, 1772, by Sabatier des Castres, Palissot and others, a sort of history of French literature, was violently biased and hostile to Voltaire and the Enlightenment. This reference is yet another factor in the final dating of this work." - p 128 [..] "He is a compound of the highest and the lowest, good sense and folly." - p 33 "HE: You have always taken a certain amount of interest in me because, although I am a chap you really despise, I amuse you at the same time." - p 45 Diderot's depiction of Rameau's nephew presents him as simultaneously impossibly talented & a sycophantic creep - but slipping thru his cracks there's a FOOL, as in a comedian who speaks truth to power & gets away w/ it if he's charming enuf. "He stirs people up and gives them a shaking, makes them take sides, brings out the truth, shows who are really good and unmasks the villains. It is then that the wise man listens and sorts people out." - p 35 He's also really the nephew of the famous composer. While I was reading this bk I got out the boxset I have of Jean Philippe Rameau's opera-ballet entitled "Les Indes Galantes" (1735; revised 1743) & listened to it 2 or more times to 'put me in the mood' for having an opinion about Rameau's music wch this bk's introductory scholarliness tells me Diderot didn't like. I know next to nothing of Baroque era music so listening to this opera-ballet just yields a respect for the apparent attn to detail w/o yielding a true appreciation of what might've made it most interesting in its day. "He is a nephew of the famous musician who has delivered us from the plainsong of Lully that we have been chanting for over a hundred years, who has written so many unintelligible visions and apocalyptic truths on the theory of music, not a word of which he or anyone else has ever understood" - p 35 Wow, that really makes me want to read Rameau's music theory bk(s). I wonder if they're available in English? "Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony initiated a revolution in music theory. Rameau posited the discovery of the "fundamental law" or what he referred to as the "fundamental bass" of all Western music. Heavily influenced by new Cartesian modes of thought and analysis, Rameau's methodology incorporated mathematics, commentary, analysis and a didacticism that was specifically intended to illuminate, scientifically, the structure and principles of music. With careful deductive reasoning, he attempted to derive universal harmonic principles from natural causes. Previous treatises on harmony had been purely practical; Rameau embraced the new philosophical rationalism, quickly rising to prominence in France as the "Isaac Newton of Music". His fame subsequently spread throughout all Europe, and his Treatise became the definitive authority on music theory, forming the foundation for instruction in western music that persists to this day." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Ph... Wow again. On 2nd thought I've probably intuitively rejected Rameau's theory from day one. Or even the day before day one. Nonetheless, I just bought the bk. "I: Speaking of your uncle, do you see him sometimes? "HE: Yes, going past in the street. "I: Doesn't he ever do anything for you? "HE: If he ever did anything for anybody it was without realizing it. He is a philosopher in his way. He thinks of nothing but himself, and the rest of the universe is not worth a pin to him. His wife and daughter can just die when they like, and so long as the parish tolls tolling their knell go on sounding intervals of a twelfth and a seventeenth everything will be all right. He's quite happy. That is what I particularly value in men of genius. They are only good for one thing, and apart from that, nothing." - p 37 Whew! That's harsh there Diderot old man! "I: Steady, my dear fellow. Now look, tell me—I won't take your uncle as an example, for he is a hard man, brutal, inhuman, avaricious, he is a bad father, bad husband, bad uncle; but it is not quite certain that he is a man of genius, that he has taken his art very far or that his work will count ten years from now." - p 40 Uh.. I bought 3 records of his music today, 259 yrs after his death, so it looks like he made the cut. "Who is disgraced today, Socrates or the judge who made him drink the hemlock? "HE: And a fat lot of goood it has done him! Was he condemned and put to death any the less for that? Was he any the less a seditious citizen? Because he despised a bad law did that do anything to prevent his encouraging fools to despise a good one? Was he any the less impudent and eccentric as a person?" - p 39 These strike me as odd questions that Rameau's nephew is asking since he's being presented as an "impudent and eccentric" person himself. Diderot waxes ironic. "Or again we could wish that Voltaire had the gentleness of Duclos, the ingenuousness of Abbé Trublet or the uprightness of Abbé d'Olivet" - p 42 "Charles Duclos (1704-72), novelist, historian and essayist. His most important work was the Considérations sur les moeurs de ce siècle (1750). In 1755 he became secretary of the Acamémie française. Although sympathetic towards the Encyclopaedists he was a moderate man and thought Diderot a violent fanatic, and used his influence to keep him out of the Academy. Hence Diderot's resentment. "The Abbé Trublet (1697-1770) was a deadly enemy of Voltaire and a sarcastic, unpleasant person. "The Abbé d'Olivet (1682-1768), historian of the Académie française, had a reputation for hypocrisy and dissimulation. Diderot is therefore ironically praising this trio for the opposite virtues to their known vices." - p 127 Rameau's nephew has gotten out of favor w/ the rich patrons he was usually brown-nosing b/c he left some of his contempt slip. Diderot encourages him to try to get back in their good graces. "HE: Yes, you are right. I think that is best. She is kind hearted. Monsieur Vieillard says she is so kind! I know myself that she is. And yet to have to go and eat humble pie in front of the bitch! Beg for mercy at the feet of a miserable little performer who is constantly booed by the pit!" - p 48 "I: Ah, but you see, my friend, she is fair, pretty, young, soft and plump, and so it is an act of humility to which one more delicate than you might stoop upon occasion. "HE: Let's get this clear: there is arse-kissing literally and arse-kissing metaphorically. Ask fat old Bergier, who kisses Madame de la Marque's arse both literally and metaphorically — and my goodness, in that case I should find them both equally unpleasant. "I: If the way I'm suggesting doesn't appeal to you then have the courage to be a pauper. "HE: But it is hard to be a pauper while there are so man wealthy idiots you can live on. And then the self-conetempt; that is unbearable." - p 49 Throughout, Diderot's position vis a vis Rameau & his nephew seems to be one mostly of contempt.. &, yet, when he gives these presumably highly exaggerated accts of his pioneering work as an air violinist (centuries ahead of air guitarists) his descriptions make the nephew seem astoundingly talented. "(At the same time he takes up the position of a violinist, hums an allegro of Locatelli, his right arm moves as though bowing and his left hand and fingers seem to fly up and down the neck. If he plays a wrong note he stops, tightens or loosens the string, plucking it with his nail to make sure it is in tune, then takes up the piece again where he broke off, tapping the time with his foot; head, feet, hands, arms, body all play their part.[)]" - p 53 The fact that he's miming playing a piece by Locatelli is marvelous enuf but what I wonder is: If this had been written 80 yrs later wd it've been Niccolò Paganini? The nephew partially employs himself giving music lessons to the children of the aristocracy. Given that he's obviously passionate about music he expresses a cynical attitude to teaching it. 1st, tho, Diderot dismisses it as useless. "HE: Eight! She should have had her fingers on the keys these four years. "I: But perhaps I was not all that anxious to bring into her educational program a subject that takes up so much time and serves so little purpose." - p 56 I'm not really that sure that I like Diderot. I respect that he was an Encyclopaediast but it seems like he might've also been right at home in today's QUARANTYRANNY in wch music has been declard non-essential in contrast to Dunkin' Donuts. For me, the performance of music is a highly disciplined activity in wch perceptual acuity, intuition, & a sort of instinctual mathematic ability combine at a speed difficult to track. But then I'm not one of those people who's easily impressed by some big guys throwing a ball around & ramming into each other. I'm more impressed by any pianist who can play Alkan or Scriabin or Sorabji or Elliott Carter, etc. Doing that makes a football player look like little more than a boulder being shoved downhill in contrast. "I: I am reflecting that everything you have said is more specious than logical. But let it go at that. You say you have taught accompaniment and composition? "HE: Yes. "I: Knowing nothing whatever about it? "HE: No, I certainly didn't, and that is why there were worse teachers than me: the ones who thought they knew something. At any rate I didn't ruin the intelligence and fingers of the children. When they went on from me to a good teacher, having learned nothing they had nothing to unlearn, and that was so much time and money saved." - p 58 Diderot admits to an affinity for some of the things that the nephew is saying. "I'm not above the peasures of the senses myself. I have a palate too, and it is tickled by a delicate dish or a rare wine. I have a heart and a pair of eyes, and enjoy looking at a pretty woman. I like to feel her firm, round bosom, press her lips with mine, drink pleasure from her eyes and die of it in her arms. I am not averse to a night out with my men friends sometimes, and even a pretty rowdy one. But I won't hide the fact that it is infinitely more pleasureable for me to have helped the unfortunate, successfully concluded some tricky bit of business, given some good advice, read something pleasant, taken a walk with a man or woman I am fond of, spent a few instructional hours with my children, written a worthwhile page, fulfilled the duties of my position, said some tender, soft words to the woman I love and made her love me." - pp 66-67 Personally, I can enjoy the above things too - but coming inside a woman's vagina has a special place in those pleasures that makes it stand out. "I have some soft notes which I accompany with a smile and an infinite variety of approving faces, with nose, mouth, eyes and brow all brought into play. I have a certain agility with my hips, a way of twitching my spine, raising or lowering my shoulders, shutting my eyes and being struck dumb as though I had heard an angelic, divine voice come down from heaven. That's what gets them. I wonder whether you appreciate the full power of this last attitude. Watch it. Look. "I: It certainly is unique. "HE: Do you think any somewhat vain female brain can resist it? "I: No. I must say you have taken the talent for making fools of people and bootlicking as far as it will go." - p 74 It seems that Rameau's nephew was a sort of Elvis Presley of the Baroque era. These days he'd probably just get the girls stoned & dispense w/ the talent. "You hear nothing but names such as Buffon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and God knows what epithets coupled with them. Nobody is allowed to have any brains unless he is as stupid as we are." - p 80 "This speech is a sustained piece of invective against enemies of the Encyclopaedic movement, whether wealthy people with vested interests in ignorance or reaction or their abject tools, the army of unsuccessful writers and professional scandalmongers (today we might call them gossip columnists)." - p 129 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 03, 2023
|
Feb 20, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0449132463
| 9780449132463
| 0449132463
| 4.12
| 4,045
| 1979
| Jul 12, 1987
|
liked it
|
review of John D. MacDonald's The Green Ripper by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 13, 2023 Since I started reviewing bks for Goodreads in the fa review of John D. MacDonald's The Green Ripper by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 13, 2023 Since I started reviewing bks for Goodreads in the fall of 2007 I've put a checkmark next to the title on the title page after I finish a bk & usually write "Finished" followed by the appropriate date. On some of the bks I've read that I remember reading before the fall of 2007 I just put the check. I remembered reading a John MacDonald bk & this is the only one I have in my personal library but I went ahead & read the whole thing anyway in my process of reading crime fiction bks in alphabetical order of author's last name that I haven't already read something by. After I read the whole fucking thing I went to the title page to check it off & saw that there was already a check there. Reading it, nothing had seemed familiar, I didn't remember a single detail. That brings up the issue: Did I really read it already? OR did I misremember that I'd read it already? OR was it such a generic reading experience that it wasn't at all memorable? OR has my memory really gotten that bad?! I think I probably misremembered that I'd already read it, perhaps confusing the author's fairly common-type name w/ another similar crime fiction writer's name, maybe John LeCarre? NOW, the question is: Who gives a shit? In other words, write the fucking review for fuck's sake, will you?! On the back cover, there's a plug for this by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, no less: "To diggers a thousand years from now...the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen." Really? What are they? Drinking buddies or something?! I like Vonnegut but that's one of the most shameless pieces of hyperbole I've ever read. This was published in 1979. I was alive then, I remember what it was like, so I found this bit of economic explanation interesting: ""There is a debt of perhaps two trillion dollars out there, owed by governments to governments, by governments to banks, and there is not one chance in hell it can ever be paid back. There is not enough productive capacity in the world, plus enough raw materials, to provide maintenance of plant plus enough overage even to keep up with the mounting interest." ""What happens? It gets written off?" "He looked at me with a pitying expression. "All the major world currencies will collapse. Trade will cease. Without trade, without the mechanical-scientific apparatus running, the planet won't support its four billion people, or perhaps even half that. Hydrocarbon utilization heats and houses and clothes the people. There will be fear, hate, anger, death, The new barbarism. There will be plague and poison. And then the new Dark Ages."" - pp 12-13 Now, personally, by 5 yrs later, I was pretty much a frequent doomsayer. I thought there wd have to be a revolution in the United States. After all, we had the most flagrant puppet president imaginable, Ronald Reagan. The world's human population has almost doubled since then. That's cause enuf for alarm right there. Do you ever wonder how the US cd force so many people out of work during the QUARANTYRANNY & then pay them all more money than they wd've ordinarly gotten from unemployment? I certainly do. It's been explained to me that the US borrowed money from China, I have no idea whether that's true or not. It all just reinforces money as some sort of fantasy object that 'works' as long as people believe in it. In other words, I'm still a doomsayer except that I haven't really seen doom come in the last 44 yrs since this bk was published so why shd I believe in it now? There're people who've come to public prominence proclaiming that humanity is irreversibly damaging the environment. I think humans love a good apocalypse story, they're thrilling - but when it really comes down to it people keep on keepin' on & the planet is the best survivalist of them all. Hands down. Oh, yeah, this bk. Is it a spoiler to quote the part where the title's explained? "And on the way home she would explain to me how she had outwitted the green ripper. I had read once about a little kid who had overheard some adult conversation and afterward, in the night, had terrible nightmares. He kept telling his people he dreamed about the green ripper coming to get him. They finally figured out that he had heard talk about the grim reaper. I had told Grets about it, and it had found its way into our personal language. It was not possible that the green ripper had gotten her." - pp 42-43 Better the green ripper than the brown splurter. Travis's girlfriend, Grets, has died. Her death is suspicious. So are the visitors Travis receives soon thereafter. ""Before that, their pants were too long. Long enough to step on the back of their cuffs. Like Kissinger. The necktie knots were wrong. Frenchmen tie them that way. When Klein cleaned his glasses and held them up to the light, I looked through them too, and I saw no distortion."" - p 55 & when I looked at that language it was totally transparent. Travis assumes a new identity in order to penetrate a cult group that he thinks is implicated in Grets's death. "As I walked, I talked to imaginary people, talked as Tom McGraw would talk to them. He was servile when he talked to people in power. He was affable as a dog with his peers. He was nasty to those he considered beneath him. I worked my way into the role." - p 123 In other words, he was an untertan. In the cult's compound he witnesses what appears to be training for a terrorist attack. "They walked close and lovingly, laughing and talking together, looking at each other, not at their surroundings. When the whistle blew, they would snatch at the luggage, yank it open, remove an automatic weapon, let the luggage fall to the ground, stand with their backs to each other, almost, in a little deadly square formation, hold the weapons aiming out in four directions, and revolve slowly." - p 130 The cult members had all been trained by different military or paramilitary or revolutionary groups. "Barry had been trained in Cuba by the DGI and had been a weapons instructor at Baninah near Benghazi in Libya. Chuck had trained at a camp near Al-Ghaidha in South Yemen, along with people from the IRA. Sammy had trained in the U.S. Marine Corps and later in the Cuban training center near Bagdad, where the famous Carlos was an adviser. Persival interrupted to give Carlos's correct name, Ilyich Rameirez Sanchez. Stella had been in the Weather Underground and had trained in their mountain camp in Oregon, and later in Bulgaria." - p 153 Now, keeping in mind that this bk's from 1979 do you notice anything odd about the above? How about "Al-Ghaidha in South Yemen"? Al Ghayda (transliterated variously) is a city in Yemen. "Al-Qaeda (/ælˈkaɪdə, ˌælkɑːˈiːdə/; Arabic: القاعدة, romanized: al-Qāʿida, lit. 'the Base', IPA: [ælqɑːʕɪdɐ]) is a Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization led by Salafi jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic state known as the Caliphate. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings, the 2001 September 11 attacks, and the 2002 Bali bombings; it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various countries around the world. "The organization was founded in a series of meetings held in Peshawar during 1988, attended by Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Muhammad Atef, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other veterans of the Soviet–Afghan War. Building upon the networks of Maktab al-Khidamat, the founding members decided to create an organization named "Al-Qaeda" to serve as a "vanguard" for jihad." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda To an Arabic-ignorant person (me), "Al-Ghaidha", as a location near a terrorist training camp in 1979, seems awfully similar to "Al-Qaeda", the terrorist group whose name seems to mean "the base" & that didn't get any attn that I can recall until their triple whammy air-strike on 9/11 - 22 yrs later. According to the above Wikipedia entry, Al-Qaeda wasn't founded until 1988. Did John MacDonald know something in 1979 that still hasn't been put together w/ later times? According to Google Translate, "Al-Ghayda" means "Grove" in English & "Al-Ghayha" means "the aim". It looks like I'm barking up the wrong tree. The cult group has typical rhetoric: ""We make the oppressors visible to the people by giving them reason to show how cruel and tough they can be. We force them to react. Like Chicago and Kent State, but much much more." ""By going out and killing people?" ""That isn't the purpose, Brother. To kill people. Our civilization has gotten too complicated. It's full of machines and plastics. Brother Persival says it is very sick, and like a sick person, it can't survive if a lot of other things happen to it."" - p 181 "He hesitated, then said, "It's on a spike, see? You shove it into the ground at a little slant. You find a good place, a half mile from the end of a runway. Then you pull this top cap off and throw it away. Then you unscrew this little cap down here near the base. Then you push this little switch, and from then on you make no loud noises, Brother. It is an acoustic trigger. A loud noise, like a jet going over low, closes the circuit, and that ignites the propellant and it comes out fast. Little vanes snap open. It's a heat-finder. Little heat-senstive guidance system. It will pick right up to a thousand meters a second, which is somewhere around two thousand miles an hour. It has a four-mile range and it'll hit the hottest thing it can find, which will be a jet engine, and it's got enough muscle to blow off a wing or a tail, whatever." - pp 220-221 But it turns out they were just kidding & these heat-seeking missiles were for making a perfect Mai Tai & Travis's girlfriend comes back from the dead & everyone lives happily ever after in a world where those trillions of dollars in debt just disappear & no-one even remembers about it anymore. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 21, 2023
|
Feb 13, 2023
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 3.47
| 17
| Nov 1967
| Nov 1967
|
really liked it
|
review of Mack Reynolds's After Some Tomorrow by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 11-12, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pl review of Mack Reynolds's After Some Tomorrow by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 11-12, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticA... It's tempting to just review Mack Reynolds's bks. This is, maybe, the 22nd one I've read so far. I enjoy them all, they have plenty of content that appeals to me & they're easy to read. Why wd anyone want to read a bk of mine when there're things like Reynolds novels out there? My bks are so hhhhaaaaaaarrrrrrdddddd to understand, why on earth do I bother to write them? Ahem. As w/ most of the Reynolds novels I've read so far the future has a welfare state where everyone's guaranteed a basic income that enables them to eat, have a place to live, & to get wasted watching TV. This novel's a bit different, though. Here, the main characters are psychics who're being studied w/ an eye to exploitation by forces beyond their ken. ""Perhaps a bit of self interest of a pecuniary nature might tend to up Mr. Grant's run percentage." "The ex-soldier snorted sourly. "That was the good old days, Doc." He brought his credit card from the pocket of his jerkin. "Bu that's the trouble with the Welfare State and the elimination of money. Nobody but I can spend my credit, nobody can steal it from me, and nobody can gamble it away from me or con me out of it. With my Inalienable Basic Bonds I've got security from the cradle to the grave—whether I want it or not." He grunted. "Precious little security, but security."" - p 7 "It occurred to Mick Grant that the unemployment question of the early and middle twentieth century had been solved not without some far out aspects. As automation threw large numbers of the labor force out of work, and increasingly liberal provisions had been made for those so affected, it became increasingly profitable not to work, even were a job available." [..] "But what was the end? Hadn't something like this happened in Rome, back in ancient times? Didn't it finally get to the point where everything was free for the Roman citizen, no matter how low on the totem pole? Free bread from the provinces, free circuses to keep them amused, free handouts from the patrician politicians who wanted their votes." - p 26 Is that true? I've read some Roman history & that's news to me. I have faith in Reynolds's exactingness so I believe him. How weird. When I read this, I was reminded of the early days of the covid quarantine when people cdn't work but cd get unemployment & other stimulus checks wch enabled them to both hang on & to be not particularly concerned about what was really going on. Mick Grant, the ex-soldier/psychic is already having his basic income augmented by a grant given under the condition that he studies paranormal phenomena, wch really means that people study & encourage him. NOW, much to his confusion, he's offered a 2nd fellowship. "["]The Monad Foundation insists that you earn your award. It insists that you study, study, study. It burns with the desire that our young people take more interest in sociopolitical matters. Ah, yes, one more thing. During the summer vacation months, the Foundation will most likely suggest a guided vacation tour." ""To where?" "Tarabya made with one of his almost continual shrugs. "Most likely to Common Europe. Possibly to Italy and Greece, so rich in the political history of the ancient past." "Mick was truly staring now. "You mean, on top of the five shares of Convertible Mutual, I get a free vacation in Common Europe?" ""First class," Mustapha Tarabya nodded unctiously." - p 35 This bk's from 1967. ""I thought possibly we might conduct some further experiments, using it, or possibly one of the other psychedelics . . ." ""Come again?" ""Psychedelics. Literally, mind-manifesting or consciousness-expanding compounds. Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, Bannisteria caapi, dimethyltryptamine, bofotenine."" - p 40 These days, some people say "entheogen" instead of psychedlic. I've always preferrred "consciousness expanders". 1967 might've been the yr that awareness of LSD was coming more to the forefront in the USA. It wasn't made illegal until 1968. I can remember in 1966 or 1967 seeing Timothy Leary on TV wearing a white flowing robe. Even tho I probably knew very little about LSD at the time it was obvious to me that he was very high. He actually seemed to glow. I haven't taken LSD for decades but I'm told that it's very hard to get now. That's too bad b/c I found tripping on it to be a mind-bogglingly positive experience. I don't recommend taking it lightly but I do wish it were legal & available. Mick starts to get inquisitive about the people who're funding him. "He had been unable to find any record of Joshua Porsenna. "He had been unable to check up upon the Monad Foundation. "Dr. Ramsey, who Mick had vaguely thought of as one of the big wigs of the Earl University experiments with ESP, wasn't even connected with the school." - p 44 Having accepted the offer of the Monad Foundation, he's surprised by what they have him study under the supervision of a tutor. ""We might as well start you off tonight, on your supplemental reading. I've brought along a few basic works." ""Supplemental reading," he said unhappily. ""There'll be a great deal of it," she said, as though with satisfaction. "Now, what do you know about anarchism, Michael?"" - p 47 Ha ha! Somebody being pd to study anarchism. That's a hoot. ""However, D. D. Home and Eusapia Palladino are another thing. Both lived at about the turn of the century, Eusapia Palladino, in particular, performed before most of the outstanding scientists of Europe of that period, including both the Curies, Oliver Lodge, Courtier, Favre, Ochorowicz, oh, a multitude of others. Under the strictest of conditions, by the way. None of this seance requirement in the dark." - p 58 Almost all, if not all, of Reynolds's bks teach me about something that I wasn't previously familiar w/ that's of interest to me. Here's yet-another example. "Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced Hume; 20 March 1833 – 21 June 1886) was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will. His biographer Peter Lamont opines that he was one of the most famous men of his era. Harry Houdini described him as "one of the most conspicuous and lauded of his type and generation" and "the forerunner of the mediums whose forte is fleecing by presuming on the credulity of the public." Home conducted hundreds of séances, which were attended by many eminent Victorians. There have been eyewitness accounts by séance sitters describing conjuring methods and fraud that Home may have employed." [..] "Home never directly asked for money, although he lived very well on gifts, donations and lodging from wealthy admirers. He felt that he was on a "mission to demonstrate immortality", and wished to interact with his clients as one gentleman to another, rather than as an employee. In 1852, Home was a guest at the house of Rufus Elmer in Springfield, Massachusetts, giving séances six or seven times a day, which were visited by crowds of people, including a Harvard professor, David Wells, and the poet and editor of the New York Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant. They were all convinced of Home's credibility and wrote to the Springfield Republican newspaper stating that the room was well lit, full inspections were allowed, and said, "We know that we were not imposed upon nor deceived". It was also reported that at one of Home's demonstrations five men of heavy build (with a combined weight of 850 pounds) sat on a table, but it still moved, and others saw "a tremulous phosphorescent light gleam over the walls". Home was investigated by numerous people, such as Professor Robert Hare, the inventor of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and John W. Edmonds, a trial court judge, who were sceptical, but later said they believed Home was not fraudulent." [..] "At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855, a sitter (Frederick Merrifield) observed that a "spirit-hand" was in fact a false limb attached on the end of Home's arm. Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the séance room." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_... I'm more inclined to think that Home was a very clever trickster than I am to think that he actually levitated &/or contacted the dead. That doesn't make him any less fascinating. Ditto for Palladino. "Eusapia Palladino (alternative spelling: Paladino; 21 January 1854 – 16 May 1918) was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. She claimed extraordinary powers such as the ability to levitate tables, communicate with the dead through her spirit guide John King, and to produce other supernatural phenomena. "She convinced many persons of her powers, but was caught in deceptive trickery throughout her career. Magicians, including Harry Houdini, and skeptics who evaluated her claims concluded that none of her phenomena were genuine and that she was a clever trickster. "Her Warsaw séances at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel Pharaoh, which Bolesław Prus began writing in 1894." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia... "["]You know, I came up with one funny thing. Most of these big name anarchists weren't half-educated slum elements that couldn't make the grade and hence wanted to take by force the wealth of those who made it. As a matter of fact, this Bakunin was an aristocrat who studied philosophy at the universities of Moscow and Berlin. And another was a prince, Prince Peter Kropotkin, who wasn't only the top anarchist of his time but one of the top scientists. And this Leo Tolstoy, the writer, he was born an aristocrat too." ""Was he an anarchist?" Anna said. ""Yeah, one of the most influential, evidently."" - pp 60-61 "["]Friend, the day that vote was counted, and it turned out the DeLeonists had won, that's the day the police, the F.B.I., the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines would move in. That's the day a big national emergency would be declared by the powers that be, and we'd wind up with a dictatorship and no more of this democratic voting jetsam. Democratic voting is all very fine as long as you vote for the right guys. It's something like freedom of speech. It's great so long as you say what the ruling caste like to hear, but start sounding off otherwise and you'll soon find you're not getting through."" - p 62 That's something I don't have to be any more convinced about than I already am. ""Holy Zen," Mick said in disgust. "Why give me that jetsam, Freddy? You know damn well that the reason you kept in the army was that you knew you couldn't get a job on the outside, and you rebelled against just sitting around doing nothing." "Fred looked at him from the side of his eyes again. He said, "A good hundred million people in the United States of the Americas are doing it, Spooky." ""Probably more," Mick growled. "People's Capitalism! Look what the country's finally come to. A nation of bums. Practically everybody's on what used to be called relief in the old days. The big difference is, before you went on relief when the situation pickled for you. It was a temporary something, until you could get back on your feet. Now you're born on relief, for crissake."" - p 75 Of course, the 'advantage' for ruling elites of having such a large 'surplus' population is that there's more potential cannon fodder there, etc. Furthermore, the Welfare State helps justify the Police State as government (& shadow government) takes over more & more of the support functions for people it simultaneously takes over the control functions. ""What is there about a Welfare State that it also step by step becomes a police state? I don't know about you, but I caught a funker named Samuelson searching my rooms. How do these people get that way? Once a man's home supposedly was his castle. They needed a warrant to enter it, and they had to have a good reason before one was issued. But then came the FBI and later the CIA and tapping wires, bugging homes, opening mail seemed to get to be routine. Now it's the FIA. You'd think it was a government all of its own."" - p 84 "Anna said slowly, "Actually, it's a rather fascinating subject. The term is too elastic, something like socialism. It came to mean just about anything reactionary. They called the Nazis fascists, and Mussolini's Italian organization, and Salazar in Portugal, and Franco in Spain. Actually, of course, there was little similarity between the four." "Mick scowled at her. "They were all dictatorships." "She nodded, "Yes, but fascism and dictatorship aren't synonymous. For instance, Julius Caeser was a dictator, but he wasn't a fascist. So was Stalin. Come to think of it, you could have fascism without a one man dictator."" [..] "["]fascism is a socioeconomic system, or, at least, the final stages of one. DeLeon foresaw it and called it Industrial Feudalism.["]" - p 89 The only bk I ever read by Murray Bookchin was one about the Spanish Civil War. In it, he made the point that Franco wasn't, strictly speaking a fascist. It made sense to me. Nonetheless, the nazis backed him in the civil war. ""Lord Krishna," Ramsey said. "I see that the LSD is beginning to affect you. Krishna was historic; in the early Vedic period a chieftan of the aborigines. His mother's name was Mari and she gave birth to him while still a virgin. He was born on December 25th, escaped a massacre of the innocents, taught the bortherhood of man, was crucified and then resurrected." "Mick decided it was awfully funny and laughed. "You mean Jesus, Doc." ""No, I mean Krishna. He lived some two thousand years before Jesus."" - pp 102-103 Sound familiar? Check out Brian Flemming's great 2005 documentary "The God Who Wasn't There" in wch the myths of Jesus are explained as cooptations of earlier myths & historical figures: https://youtu.be/alurfHwH_zY . "And then he stopped laughing, and began to cry. "Ramsey said from a great distance, "It was Timothy Leary who said that those who begin laughing always feel the terror later. They realize the joke is on them."" - p 103 "When they dropped her at her door, Anna looked at Mick Grant, a mocking quality there. "Behind that craggy face, you have a beautiful soul, Mick." "He utilized some of his new-found wisdom. "Haven't we all?" he said. "It's the same one." "She laughed—with him, not at him, and was gone." - p 107 ""Now as to Technocracy," he said. "I have here several volumes by Howard Scott and others. You'll be able to study them at your leisure, however, in the way of background, Anna will be interested to know that there is some surface resemblance, at least, between Technocracy and the Socialist Industrial Unionism of Daniel DeLeon, whose program she has already investigated." ""I'm fascinated," Anna said. "Simply." "Dusage had taken a seat. He said, "The Technocrats were first organized in 1932. For a time they attracted considerable attention. Their basic premises were that social phenomena are scientifically measurable and that the laws of social control may be derived from such measurements. Further, that the introduction of the machine and of science into the economic machine made antiquated many of the old institutions such as the use of gold as a medium of exchange. They suggested instead, a unit based upon energy, the erg. Free enterprise, they claimed, had collapsed, and a new social system was needed. Above all, they declared that the workings of a modern society were above the abilities of politicians and control should be put in the hands of scientists, engineers, technicians—in short, the Technocrats."" - p 121 I propose rare ideas as a new medium of exchange. I'd be rich! For those of you for whom all this DeLeon stuff is obscure, consider this: "Reynolds was born in Corcoran, California, the second of four children of Verne La Rue Reynolds and Pauline McCord. When the family moved to Baltimore in 1918, his father joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) so that from an early age Reynolds was raised to accept the tenets of Marxism and socialism. ("I was born into a Marxian Socialist family. I am the child who, at the age of five or six, said to his parent, 'Mother, who is Comrade Jesus Christ?' —for I had never met anyone in that household who wasn't called Comrade.") In 1935, while still in high school in Kingston, New York, Reynolds joined the SLP and became an active advocate of the party's goals. The following year, he toured the country with his father giving lectures and speeches, and became recognized as a significant force in advocating the SLP." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Re... "The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) is the first socialist political party in the United States, established in 1876. "Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States, the party changed its name in 1877 to Socialistic Labor Party and again sometime in the late 1880s to Socialist Labor Party. The party was additionally known in some states as the Industrial Party or Industrial Government Party. In 1890, the SLP came under the influence of Daniel De Leon, who used his role as editor of The Weekly People, the SLP's English-language official organ, to expand the party's popularity beyond its then largely German-speaking membership. Despite his accomplishments, De Leon was a polarizing figure among the SLP's membership. In 1899, his opponents left the SLP and merged with the Social Democratic Party of America to form the Socialist Party of America." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociali... I admit to being usually down on socialists as people likely to exploit, kill, & imprison anarchists but w/ Reynolds as an example I'm all for them. Then, again, the SLP forced him to resign. For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticA... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 17, 2023
|
Feb 12, 2023
|
Mass Market Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0446909238
| 9780446909235
| 0446909238
| 3.74
| 1,440
| Jul 12, 1981
| Oct 01, 1982
|
liked it
|
review of Gregory McDonald's Fletch's Moxie by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 11, 2023 I'm still working my way thru my personal library's crim review of Gregory McDonald's Fletch's Moxie by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 11, 2023 I'm still working my way thru my personal library's crime fiction section in alphabetical order reading one bk apiece by authors whose work I haven't read yet. That's brought me up to yet another McDonald. I found this to be somewhat light, mainstream writing of the sort I can enjoy but don't necessarily take much away from. The murder: "To Buckley's right sat Moxie's agent, manager, and executive producer, Steve Peterman in three-piece, pearl-gray suit, black shoes, and cravat. "Only Steve Peterman wasn't sittting properly in his chair. His head was on his right shoulder." - p 8 There's something strangely casual about the guy who goes about solving the crime, Fletch - if one reads alotof hard-boiled detective fiction, as I almost do, one becomes accustomed to a hero who plunges into a situation rife w/ violence, who manages to survive some severe beatings w/o getting brain-damaged, & gets slipped a mickey or 2. Fletch is more like someone taking a vacation. "Buckley looked over the bits of styrofoam on the sand. "He got stabbed." He shook his head. "He got a knife stuck in his back. Right on the set. Right on camera."" - p 15 He also seems to have money to burn. ""Now. About The Blue House." ""No. ""I only want it for a few days." ""Twelve thousand dollars. I wouldn't rent it for just a few days. Wouldn't be worth changing the bedsheets." ""You rent it very often at that price?" ""Nope. Never before." ""Uh, Ted..." ""I've never rented it before. I don't want to rent it. I put a price on it just because you asked. As a friend." ""Okay. As a friend, I'll take it." ""You will?" ""I will." ""Boy, no other sucker was born the minute you were."" - pp 22-23 ""So how come," Moxie asked very early in the morning in the bright kitchen, "you get to borrow such a nice big house in Key West at a moment's notice?" "Frederick Mooney was asleep in his room. Fletch had checked. ""It belongs to someone I do business with." Carefully, Fletch was trying to make individual omelettes. "A little business. Well, what it comes down to is that I give him money which he feeds to race horses." ""Sounds like a great business." ""The horses like it, I guess." ""Get any manure in return?" ""Nothing but."" - p 95 Moxie is a movie actress. She's also Fletch's girlfriend. The general public doesn't know this so that enables him to get away w/ pretending to be a rude reporter when a press conference is held about the murder of her agent. "Fletch's voice was the loudest and sharpest of all: "Ms. Mooney—did you kill Steve Peterman?" "All the reporters jerked their heads to look at him and some of them even gasped." - p 27 Moxie understands his motive. ""Thanks for what you did for me in there." Moxie smiled. "Pulling the teeth of the other reporters—and all those to come." ""Thought there was a need for one or two clear, simple statements on the incident from you." ""Didn't I do well?" ""You did. Of course." "" 'Steve Peterman was my friend'." Moxie sort-of quoted, with a sort-of choke in her throat. "The bastard. I could have killed him."" - pp 30-31 ""I was having real problems with Steve, Fletch. Which is why I asked you to come down. I wanted to talk it out with somebody. I was finding it very difficult to be nice to him."" - p 32 Fletch is interrogated by the police. ""Why 'sure'? Are you and Ms Mooney lovers?" ""Off and on." "" 'Off and on'." Chin on hand, elbow on desk blotter, Roz Nachman contemplated what off and on could mean. Finally, he shook her head. "I think you should explain." ""Not sure I can." ""Try," she said. "So the hems of Justice will be neat." ""You see." Fletch looked at the ceiling. "Each time Moxie and I meet, here and there, now and then, we pretend we've never met before. We pretend we're just meeting for the first time."" - pp 42-43 Wow. This bk was published in 1982. I'm just reading it for the 1st time in 2023. In 1986, my new girlfriend & I played the same game. You can read about it under the heading "First Meeting Re-Enactments" here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOut... . There's even a scene in my movie "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour" of the re-enactment in San Antonio: https://youtu.be/2QIZAxc1K6M?t=3534 . Moxie has a problematic actor father who's hanging about. "Fletch asked Moxie, "You call your father O.L.?" ""Only to his face." ""I never heard that. You've always called his Freddy." ""Originally it was O.L.O. Short for Oh, Luminous One.["]" - p 64 ""How come you're rich?" Moxie asked. My question exactly. I'm not sure it gets answered, not really. Various characters connected to the making of the movie during wch Peterman was killed end up staying at the Blue House. That's a bit odd.. not to mention a convenient plot device. One of them has a theory about the murder. "Summarily, he said: "I think Buckley's the only one who could have had that set primed and working for him yesterday. To kill Peterman."" - p 111 Peterman's having gotten Moxie millions of dollars in debt gives her a motive wch Fletch tries to analyze the state's probable reaction to. "["]Either you had to be a creative person, or a business person. You had an opportunity to throw yourself one hundred percent into your creative life, and it was good for everybody that you did." ""Don't judges and people like the I.R.S. understand that sort of thing? It's not hard to understand." ""Not in this country, anyway. In this country, everything is a business. Being creative is a business. Except you don't have any executive staff, board of directors, business training or experience to fall back on. That's all your fault, you see, because being creative here is really being nothing. In America, a creative person is only as good as his income.["]" - p 113 I can attest to that. I like to joke that in the U, S, of A you cd have a business tossing live human babies onto bayonets on prime time TV as long as the show got good ratings & you got rich. Maybe I exaggerate. Maybe. There's an actor who does too much coke & gets paranoid. ""They're all against me." Gerry confided to Moxie. "You should see what they're doin' to me." "Moxie put her hands on his wet, shining shoulders. "It's just the coke, honey. No one's doing anything to you. Everything's fine. You're fine. It's a nice day." ""It's not the coke. It's what they're doin' to me." ""It's that little white powder you keep puttin' up your nose, sweetheart," Moxie said. "Drugs do funny things to your mind. Have you heard that?"" - p 140 Might as well go see the sunset. "There was a man dressed as Charlie Chaplin doing the funny walk through the crowd. There was an earnest young man preaching The Word of the Lord and a more earnest young man in a brown shirt and swastika armband preaching racial discrimination, and a most earnest young man satirizing them both, exhorting the people to believe in canned peas. Each had an audience of listeners, watchers, cheerers, and jeerers." - p 145 No wonder some people believe that sunsets are proof of God. 2 directors go at it. "Finally, Koller's cholera caroomed. "McKensie," he said. "you're full of down-under dung. So far you've made three small—very small—films, somewhere in the Outback, a million miles from nowhere, no pressure on you, with all the time in the world. Artsy-smartsy films. For God's sake, they haven't even really been released outside Australia. Your world-wide audience would fit into a mini-bus. And everyone in the back seat would only pretend to understand what you're tryin' to do. And suddenly you're God Almighty. The Grand Auteur. Listen to me babe—I've made more films that you've ever seen. You know how many films I've made? Thirty eight! Okay, so the last five didn't do so well. Three is all you've made, buster! Hell, my wife knows more about directing than you'll ever know, just from listenin' to me talk. And I've made better films than you'll ever make. Damn it all, at least when I film scenes like in Midsummer Night's Madness, I give the audience enough light to see what's goin' on. You make that film and the last third of the picture would be so dark, the audience wouldn't even be able to find their way out of their seats to go home."" - p 162 I cdn't resist butting in: 'You think 38 movies is some big deal?! I've made 713 movies & the one I made in Australia, "Don't Walk Backwards" ( https://youtu.be/kODzM_2_bRM ) is better than everything you 2 have done all rolled into one flickable snot ball!' The murder victim's sleaze is slowly unravelled. ""Does Yellow Orchid mean anything to you, as a film title?" ""No." ""In Ramon's Bed?" ""No." ""Twenty Minutes to Twelve?" ""No, don't think so." ""Midsummer Night's Madness?" ""Of course. That's the film Moxie is making now." ""Are they actually making it?" ""I'm not sure. They have been." ""Sculpture Garden?" ""No." ""These are all films supposedly being made—I should say, financed—by Jumping Cow Productions." ""Yes. All right." ""The sole proprietor of Jumping Cow Productions is Ms Marilyn Mooney." ""Holy Cow." ""Chief Executive Officer and Treasurer is, or was, Steven Peterman." ""Wave that in front of me again, Marty. Moxie owns Jumping Cow Productions?" ""One hundred percent." ""I know she doesn't know that.["]" - pp 187-188 It's not looking good for Moxie, is it? Well, she gets the electric chair but right before she's executed she & Fletch have a conjugal visit & he, being a shape-shifter, takes her shape, goes to the chair instead but is prepared w/ something in his body that causes the electricity to short-circuit & he & Moxie escape & live happily ever after on one of the Earth-like planets he happens to own. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 04, 2023
|
Feb 11, 2023
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.00
| 1
| unknown
| Jul 1963
|
really liked it
|
review of Mack Reynolds's The Earth War by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 30, 2023 I'm glad Mack Reynolds wrote so many novels. I'll never read review of Mack Reynolds's The Earth War by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 30, 2023 I'm glad Mack Reynolds wrote so many novels. I'll never read them all so there's always the chance that I'll discover another one to enjoy. This is at least the 21st one I've read. There're a total of 85, according to the Great Oracle. The last one I reviewed was The Fracas Factor ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) wch came after The Earth War in the 4 bks of the Joe Mauser series. By reviewing them in reverse order I'm causing a fracture in time & yr whole existence has probably been wiped out. Don't sweat it. We begin w/ a variety of names for inebriation. "In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk. "In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched." - p 5 The reader is introduced to Freddy Solingen, a Telly reporter who specializes in the fracases. "He looked up, beginning his grimace of discouragement. "Go away," he muttered nastily. The other's identity came through slowly. One of the Telly news reporters who'd covered the fracas; for the moment he couldn't recall the name. "Joe Mauser held the common prejudices of the Category Military for Telly and all its ramifications. Not only for the drooling multitudes who sat before their sets and vicariously participated in the sadism of combat while their trank bemused brains refused contemplation of the reality of their way of life." - pp 6-7 Indeed. How many people get wasted & take a thrill ride watching a movie about a serial killer? They wdn't find it so entertaining if a serial killer were making THEM their victim. ""You know one of the big reasons you're only a major?" "Joe Mauser looked at him. "The Telly reporter said, "You haven't got any moustache."" - p 9 That's why after I got 12 moustaches on my head ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/H1979mo... ) I went from not even being in the military to being a Major General for the military in a country where I'm not even a citizen! ( https://medium.com/@idioideo/what-am-... ) & I'm no manufactured hero, either! ""Come off it, Major. You've been around long enough to know heroes are made, not born. We stopped having much regard for real heroes a long time ago. Lindbergh and Byrd were a couple of the last we turned out. After that, we left it to the Norwegians to do such things as crew the Kon-Tiki, or to the English to top Everest—whether or not the Britisher made the last hundred feet slung over the shoulder of a Sherpa." - p 13 "Freddy Solingen laid it on the line. "When it's all been accomplished, you'll be an Upper. I'm ambitious too, Joe. Just as ambitious as you are. I need an In. You'll be it. I'll make you. I have the know-how. I can do it. When you're made, you'll make me."" - p 14 Well, I guess it's better than being a Downer, like the following: "["]What I was thinking was that at first the Roman games were athletic affairs without bloodshed. It wasn't until 264 B.C. that three pairs of slaves were sent in to fight with swords. By 183 B.C. the number had gone up to sixty pairs. By 145 B.C. ninety pairs fought for three days. ""But that was just the beginning. They really got underway with the dictators. Sulla put a hundred lions into the arena, but Julius Ceaser topped that with four hundred and Pompey that with six hundred, plus over four hundred leopards and twenty elephants. Augustus beat them all with three thousand five hundred elephants and had ten thousand men killed in a series of games. But it was the emperors who really expanded the ludi. Trajan had ten thousand animals killed in the arena to celebrate his victory over the Dacians, not to mention eleven thousand people.["]" - p 34 Why stop there, right? How about over a million people w/ a plandemic? "He said flatly, "I've never had much regard for those categories in which a man makes his living battening on human sorrow or fear, Sam. That includes in my book such fields as religion, undertakers and their affiliates, and even most doctors for that matter." He added, to explain the last inclusion, "They profit too much from illness, for my satisfaction."" - p 49 But why stop w/ gladiators? Let's come a little closer to the present, shall we? ''No, no. In the First War. All those early fighters. Baron Von Richtofen, the German, Albert Ball, the Englishman, René Fonck, the Frenchman. And all the rest. Werner Voss and Ernst Udet, and Rickenbacker and Luke Short. Flying those rickety Fokkers and Albatross, Spads and Nieuports. "Joe nodded at last. "I remember now. They'd have a Vickers of Spandau mounted so as to fire between the propellor blades. As I remember, that German, Richtofem, was top in the genre with some eighty victories to his credit." ""Okay. They called them dogfights. One aircraft against another. You're going to reintroduce the whole thing."" - p 55 Ah.. Those were the days, right? Early airplanes w/ extremely limited flying capabilities being flown under circumstances where it's a desperate kill-or-be-killed situation & in wch the plane might fail at any moment? It's so romantic! Personally, I'd rather be fucking. Well.. Freddy & Joe's little plan didn't quite work out &.. "Cogswell said brittlely, "They found against the use of aircraft, other than free balloons, in any military action. They threw the book, Mauser. The court ruled that you, Robert Flaubert and James Hideka be stripped of rank and forbidden the Category Military. You have also been fined all stock shares in your possession other than those inalienably yours as a Westworld citizen."" - p 75 Don't be so down, Joe - so what if your dogfight turned into a catfight? Everything might just work out for the best. "He looked again at the telly-mike on his desk. "Miss Mikhail, in my office here is Joseph Mauser, now Mid-Middle in caste. Please take the necessary steps to raise him to Lower-Upper, immediately. I'll clear this with Tom, and he'll authorize it as recommended through the White House. Is that clear?" "In a daze, Joe could hear the receptionist's voice. "Yes, sir. Joseph Mauser to be raised to Low-Upper caste immediately."" - p 92 "Over the years, the Frigid Fracas had laid its chill on tourism, so that now travel between West-world and Sov-world was all but unknown, and even visiting the Neut-world was considered a bit far out and somewhat suspect of going beyond the old-time way of doing things." - p 93 I'm sure that you, dear reader, have been quick enuf to realize that in the above "Frigid Fracas" = Cold Cuts &/or Cold Storage & that the whole passage is a metaphor for running a deli. Same goes for the following passage in wch code is being used to discuss wch is better: bagels or rolls? "["]Perhaps, for a moment, we four can lower barriers enough for me to explain that whilst in the West-world you hold your fracases to," he began enumerating on his fingers, "one, settle disputes between business competitors, or between corporations and unions; two, to train soldiers for your defense requirements; three, to keep bemused a potentially dangerous lower class . . ."" - p 97 It seems that the argument in favor of bagels is gradually dominating the debate. "["]Marx once wrote that when true Socialism had arrived, the formula would be, from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs. Unhappily, due to the fact that the Proletarian Paradise is surrounded by potential enemies, we have not as yet established this formula. Instead, it is now from each according to his abilities and to each according to his contribution. Consequently, the most useful members of our society are drawn into the ranks of the Party, and, contributing the most, are most highly rewarded. The Party consists of somewhat less than one per cent of the population." ""And is for all practical purposes, hereditary," Andersen or Dickson said." - p 98 Ha ha! Reynolds is a 'man-after-my-own-heart', or whatever the expression is. He criticizes both the West-world & the Sov-world. It's worth keeping in mind that: "From 1946–49, Reynolds worked as a national organizer for the SLP" [Socialist Labor Party] but that "the publication of How to Retire without Money, to which Reynolds contributed under the byline Bob Belmont, led the National Executive Committee of the SLP to charge Reynolds with "supporting the fraudulent claims of capitalist apologists, viz, that capitalism offers countless opportunities to those who are 'alert'" and caused Reynolds to resign his membership from the SLP." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Re... ) As such, he was in a good position to be aware of the foibles of both of these opposing ideologies. I went to Hungary in 1997 for a 3 part Neoist festival (see "Hungarian": https://youtu.be/QBTFTpscd4M?t=3684 ) & I DID notice that Hungarian food seemed monotonous in contrast to what I was accustomed to. Paprika, e.g., was heavily used & meat dominated. There was one vegetarian restaurant in Budapest called the Marquis de Salat. "From the first, she gloried in pörkölt, the veal stew with paprika sauce, in rostélyos, the round steak potted in a still hotter paprika sauce, in halászlé, the fish soup which is Hungary's challenge to French bouillabaise, and threatened her lithe figure with her consumption of rétes, the Magyar strudel. All these washed down with Szamorodni or a Hungarian Riseling, the despair of a hundred generations of connoisseurs due to its inability to travel. When liqueurs were called for, barack, the highly distilled apricot brandy which was still the national tipple, was her choice, if not Tokay Aszu, the sweet nectar wine, once allowed only to be consumed by nobility, so precious was it considered." - pp 101-102 Reynolds seems to've been not only a politically theoretically advanced thinker but also significantly pragmatic. Whenever he gets into details about something physical rather than theoretical I always appreciate the clarity of what he presents. "Joe explained. "The knife designed by Jim Bowie was made by a smith named James Black, of Washington, Arkansas. Bowie made himself so notorious with it that the blade became world famous and Black made quite a few exact copies. Various other outfits tried to duplicate his work, but actually none succeeded in producing the perfect balance in such a large knife that made it practical for throwing. It turns over once in thirty feet exactly. All I had to do was get Rákóczi fifteen feet away from me, and he'd had it. And his own knife, when he tried to reciprocate, was off balance."" - p 126 "["]Marx and Engels wrote that following the revolution the State would wither away." The colonel laughed acidly. "Instead, in the Sov-world it continually strengthened itself. A new class, as the Yuoslavian Milovan Djilas called it, had been born."" - p 132 & I have a bk by Djilas called Memoir of a Revolutionary, wch is the 2nd volume of his life story, wch I still haven't read yet. To quote from the back inner jacket bio from this: "Until his expulsion from the Communist party in 1954, Milovan Djilas was a Vice-President and one of Tito's chief associates. Since then he has twice been imprisoned for periods totalling more than nine years." Yugoslavia has long been of interest to me largely b/c I was once lovers w/ a Yugoslavian woman who told me that Tito's positive characteristic was that he managed to keep the various ethnic groups functioning cooperatively w/ the unifying state: "After the Allied victory in World War II, Yugoslavia was set up as a federation of six republics, with borders drawn along ethnic and historical lines: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. In addition, two autonomous provinces were established within Serbia: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Each of the republics had its own branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia party and a ruling elite, and any tensions were solved on the federal level. The Yugoslav model of state organisation, as well as a "middle way" between planned and liberal economy, had been a relative success, and the country experienced a period of strong economic growth and relative political stability up to the 1980s, under Josip Broz Tito. After his death in 1980, the weakened system of federal government was left unable to cope with rising economic and political challenges." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup... Once Tito was no longer around, Yugoslavia fell into civil war w/in roughly a decade. That aside, here's a brief section from near the end of Memoir of a Revolutionary that'' give the reader a feel for who he was: "Dedijer insisted on my meeting with Ribnikar, whom I hadn't known personally, to attempt to win him over. That was in the fall of 1940. "After a long discussion at the first dinner party at Ribnikar's villa, I forced him to waver. After the second dinner party we parted friends. After the third dinner party he was convinced that the Trotskyites were not only wrong, but connected with the fascist secret service. "Jara was harder to break. But before long she also accepted our positions. She was much younger than her husband, and to while away the time she wrote Surrealistic verse and cast longing looks at other men. She even tried to seduce me, but she was not successful. Not because she wasn't good-looking, but because I stood firm on my Communist moral standards, which I myself had helped establish, and because I couldn't imagine any other relationship with the wife of a friend. Our relationship, which she has incorrectly described in one of her books, evolved into a certain fondness, of which her husband was aware and which never exceeded the proper limits, regardless of what may have been on her mind." - p 377, Milovan Djilas's Memoir of a Revolutionary, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st edition, hardback, 1973 & that's that. As always, Reynolds manages to be thoughtful at multiple levels while writing an easily readable & entertaining pulp novel. Bravo! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 28, 2022
|
Feb 03, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0060963999
| 9780060963996
| 0060963999
| 4.30
| 43
| 1989
| Jan 01, 1989
|
it was amazing
|
review of Charles Ludlam's The Complete Plays by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 8, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintek review of Charles Ludlam's The Complete Plays by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 8, 2023 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL... It took me something like 6 yrs to read this. For a large portion of the time that's b/c I had it sitting near my front door as the bk I'd read while sitting outside on my steps, waiting for food to be delivered & suchlike. But that's not really the only excuse I have. It's 905pp long.. & it's PLAYS. I've never liked reading plays that much. Still, I'm glad I finally made it thru it all, I'm sorry I've never seen any of them performed, I'll bet they're much more fun to witness in the flesh than they are as things to read. They're probably hilarious. I 1st heard of Ludlam as one of the main progenitors of the Theater of the Ridiculous, something that I 1st became aware of thru the films made by Ronald Tavel in collaboration w/ Andy Warhol. I reviewed a bk relevant to those here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Alas, the complete review is no longer online b/c Goodreads removed the section where it was posted. John Vaccaro is reputed to've been the 3rd person of prominence in the Ridiculous. According to a Wikipedia entry: "Another perspective is that Ludlam's productions were too close to conventional comedy, while Vacarro's work was more challenging, emphasizing social commentary. Leee Black Childers was quoted in Legs McNeil's 1997 Please Kill Me: "In my opinion, John Vaccaro was more important than Charles Ludlam, because Ludlam followed theatrical traditions and used a lot of drag. People felt very comfortable with Charles Ludlam. Everyone's attitude going to see Charles's plays was that they were going to see a really funny, irreverent, slapstick drag show. They never felt embarrassed. "But John Vaccaro was way past that. Way, way past that. John Vaccaro was dangerous. John Vaccaro could be very embarrassing on many levels. He used thalidomide babies and Siamese triplets joined together at the asshole. One actor had this huge papier-mache prop of a big cock coming out of his shorts, down to his knees. He also couldn't control his bowel movements, so shit was dripping down his legs the whole time and everyone loved it. People loved this kind of visually confrontational theater." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre... So, on the one hand we're told that Vaccaro was "dangerous" & "embarrassing on many levels" &, on the other hand, we're told that everyone "loved this kind of visually confrontational theater." To me, that seems somewhat contradictory. If the work were truly "dangerous" it seems more likely to me that people wd be scared & wd want to leave. Perhaps there was some envy of Ludlam as someone who was starting to break into Hollywood before he died. As for Tavel, I reckon he was hoping that Warhol wd help usher him into stardom. Instead, Warhol's production values cd've hardly been lower & what content there was of note in Tavel's screenplays was largely destroyed by bad sound & fixed camera positions. In a manifesto presented on p vii Ludlam writes: "Aim: To get beyond nihilism by revaluing combat." [..] "1. You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low." Steven Samuels presents a bio: "Always somewhat "different," Ludlam was a rebel and an outcast by his high school years, wearing long hair a decade before it became fashionable." - p x That wd mean the late '50s or early '60s. I grew my hair long at the beginning of 1968 & I was ruthlessly harassed for it where I lived in Baltimore County, MD. I don't know what "long" means here but I was frequently insulted for having hair long enuf to be over my ears - something that is probably hard to understand these days. If Ludlam's hair was even that "long" he probably endured severe hatred. "Among the manyon the cutting edge were playwright Ronald Tavel and director John Vaccaro, who formalizes their nascent collaboration in 1966 with the founding of the Play-House of the Ridiculous in a loft on 17th Street. Ludlam made his first New York stage appearance as Peeping Tom in the Ridiculous's premier production, The Life of Lady Godiva. ""We have passed beyond the absurd; our situation is absolutely preposterous," Tavel declared in a program note, and his play gave ample evidence. Like most subsequent efforts in the divergent strains of the Ridiculous, The Life of Lady Godiva was a self-conscious mix of high and low culture, an anarchic, psychosexual phantasmagoria filled with camp, drag, pageantry, grotesquerie, and literary pretension. Its impact on Ludlam cannot be overestimated. "A subsequent Play-House production proved equally telling. In Screen Test, intended as a half-hour curtain-raiser, a director (Vaccaro himself) was to interview and humiliate an actress and transvestite (an important early member of Ludlam's Ridiculous, Mario Montez)." - p xi In my review of Tavel's Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays I wrote: "What got me interested in Tavel's work in the 1st place was curiosity about whether The Theater of the Ridiculous was in any way an advance over The Theater of the Absurd — something I like very much. When I think of The Theater of the Absurd I tend to credit Alfred Jarry w/ being its founder w/ his play "Ubu Roi". From him I think of Eugene Ionesco & then Edward Albee as successors. SO, I wondered: is The Theater of the Ridiculous significantly different enuf from The Theater of the Absurd to qualify as a separate theater mvmt? ""While in college, while staring at the main quadrangle during a lecture of Theatre of the Absurd, I wondered: "What next?' Meaning, "What in the world could come after a Theatre of the Absurd—Theatre of the Ridiculous??" Which was to say, how far could you push this (bulldozer), how steep the descent (from the Greeks), and is there rock bottom? and who cares?" - p 132 "I reckon I'm one of those people who cares. I also reckon that I'm not convinced that The Theater of the Ridiculous added anything theoretically substantial to The Theater of the Absurd. Nonetheless, the plays/scripts themselves are different. I find the absurdist work to be more essentialized & the ridiculous work to be more sprawling. I like them both." "Soon after Screen Test, Tavel and Vaccaro quarreled and parted. In search of new material, Vaccaro turned to Ludlam, whom he had heard was writing a Ridiculous play." [..] "Ludlam himself was slated to star as Tamberlaine's twin opponents, Cosroe and Zabina, but in the middle of rehearsals the famously tempermental Vaccaro fired him. Half of the company walked out with Ludlam and, at a subsequent meeting, encouraged him to stage the play himself. Then they elected him to lead their new troupe, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company." - p xii Off to a good start, eh? Thoroughly Ridiculous. "Polemical, furrowed-brow theater was not for him. Ludlam knew life was "comedy to those who think/ a tragedy to those who feel," and he was an irrepressible thinker. Laughter was the great liberator and the great equalizer. Anything carried to an extreme was, willy-nilly, ridiculous." [..] "Ludlam survived by working in a health-food store, packaging rare books, doing stunts on "Candid Camera," occasionally receiving help from Christopher Scott." - p xiii Do you remember "Candid Camera"? I'd almost forgotten about it but I liked it very much. It was a TV show that played pranks on people & used hidden cameras to record their reactions. I remember one in wch a car had its motor removed. It was positioned at the top of a hill at the bottom of wch was a garage. A driver got in the car & pretended to drive the car into the garage. The car was just drifting but the mechanic didn't know that. The driver told the mechanic that there seemed to be something wrong w/ the car & when the mechanic opened the hood & found no motor his bafflement was recorded. Naturally, the driver was an expert at keeping a straight face. Working for them seems like a perfect job for Ludlam. "The Elephant Woman (a "midnight frolic" consisting of a frame tale and specialty acts having nothing whatever to do with The Elephant Man, the popularity of which it wished to capitalize on)" - p xvi I like the idea of deliberately naming or categorizing something in a way intended to be misleading. That way one provokes expectations in a (v)audience that can then be stymied. Such miscategorization is like directing a viewer's eyes away from a magic trick thru misdirection. It's a sort of 'anti-spoiler'. If one makes a movie about a poodle but calls it "An Idiot's Guide to Geometry" it might potentially create a state of mind in wch the poodle is seen as a metaphor. "(Ludlam performed the play weekends while commuting to Pittsburgh to direct William Wycherly's The Country Wife for the drama department at Carnegie-Mellon University.)" - p xvii Ok, I just threw that in there b/c I'm a Pittsburgher. "A Quick trip to Coney Island in late 1981 resulted in a second silent black and white film, Museum of Wax, in which Ludlam starred as a homicidal maniac." - p xviii That can be seen online in 3 parts starting here: https://youtu.be/3HRCpBrMhu0 . "Ludlam directed the Santa Fe Opera in Henze's English Cat and filmed a guest spot on "Miami Vice" (having made his network television debut the previous year as a guest star on Madeline Kahn's "Oh Madeline")." - p xix That's Hans Werner Henze, one of my "Top 100 Composers" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100C... ). Ludlam was very active indeed. "More opportunities followed, The Production of Mysteries, a short opera he had written with the company's resident composer, Peter Golub, in 1980, was performed by Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. He directed his own libretto of Die Fledermaus for the Santa Fe Opera. He filmed an episode of "Tales from the Dark Side" for television and was featured in two movies, Forever Lulu and The Big Easy." - p xix Amazing. Lukas Foss, a great composer AND a great conductor AND a great improvisor presented his opera. That's seriously wonderful from my POV. Ludlam had serious creative energy out the wazoo. But one can never take anything for granted, the rug might be pulled out from under at any moment. "The Sorrows of Dolores the very day of its premiere, April; 30, 1987. That same evening, he was hospitalized with pneumocystis pnemonia. Along with other complications, it ended his life on May 28. "He was only forty-four. He had planned, but not accomplished, his greatest work." [..] "We are lucky to have the twenty-nine plays collected here to continue Ludlam's conquest of the universe. Not since Molière have we been blessed with such a playwright, and it make be several centuries more before we see his like again." - p xx I think Samuels is probably right. Ludlam seems to've been extraordinarily energetic & inspired. Samuels also stimulates me to read Molière, it's about time. The 1st play is "Big Hotel" from 1966 (according to the bk, on Wikipedia it's sd to've been from 1967). Ludlam might've been 23 when he wrote it. "CRAMWELL: Yes? Birshitskaya threatening suicide? Throw herself off our roof? Don't let her do it. Talk her out of it. Reason with her! Humor her! Dear me no! Rhis will give the hotel a bad name! Don't let her throw herself off our roof! "(BIRDSHITSKAYA appears above and throws an effigy of herself off the roof. It lands in front of the desk.) "CRAMWELL: (To BELLHOP) Is she hurt? "BELLHOP: (Picking up the limp dummy) No, but she will never dance again. (Carries dummy off) "CRAMWELL: Thank God she's not hurt." - p 6 Do I detect a touch of the Marx Brothers? Ludlam embraces self-reflexive & formalist modes of comedy that derail conventional narrative. Enter BELLHOP. Frantic, CHOCHA, MR. X, and MARTOK torture the MANDARIN.) "BELLHOP: Somewhere along the line, I have lost the thread of the narrative. "MANDARIN: Don't look for it here, young man. We have a play to put on. "BELLHOP: The whole play is falling to pieces. I've lost the thread of the narrative." - p 17 Ludlam's dialog abounds in all sorts of twists & turns. "BLONDINE: Oh Drago, that sounds just elegant and kind of dreamy, if I may say so. (Looking at menu) How about some orange juice, Joey? (Aside to audience) I ate Limburger cheese with bagels for breakfast. I ate mofongo with garlic dressing at lunch. I ate steak and onions at dinner. But he'll never know, 'cause I always stay kissing sweet the new Dazzle-Dent way. "DRAGO: I take it this place is soundproof? "BLONDINE: I don't trust the waiter. He is too short. "DRAGO: I think Blane knows more than he lets on. He's shielding someone. Sylvia Clarkson saw him with a blonde the night of February second. "BLONDINE: (Rising suddenly) Build your Maxwell. I'll be right back. I think I'll take my wig off. "DRAGO: (Roughly forcing her to sit down) You can't afford a week off now. We need you for the Cobra Cunt Ceremony." - p 18 "MANDARIN: (Goes to phone and dials) Hello. Is Mrs. Starkie there? This is Mrs. Cutler. It's about Lumis. No, I don't want to speak to Blane. Lumis! Lumis! (Pause) L as in Lincoln, U as in Utrecht, M as in Massey, I as in Ingres, S as in Synagogue. Lumis! Tell him I called. (Pause) Cutler. (Pause) C as in Cutler, U as in Utrecht, L as in Loomis, E as in Erie, R as in Robespierre . . . (Pause) Robespierre. (Pause) R as in Raw, W as in Wren. A small bird. (Pause) No, this is not Mr. Robespierre. Mr. Starkie. Synagogue. Yes! Raw. Utrecht, Blane. Yes. No-o-o. (He hears bells in the tower) Oh, Blondine, they're playing our song. (Exit)" - p 18 You'd think MANDARIN was calling the US Health Care .Gov hotline: http://youtu.be/tjB3QBz4LAc . Note that they get flustered enuf to misspell "Cutler" by leaving out the "t" & things just get worse from there. Act III opens w/ some low drama: "(The elevator opens, revealing SANTA CLAUS, who falls forward on his face, revealing MR. X and CHOCHA behind him. MR. X wipes the blood from his knife.) "MR.X: Have the corpse leave his name at the desk. "CHOCHA: That's $12.50. "MR. X: Well, what is it? Are we leaving or are they going to keep us here all day? "CHOCHA: They've got some kind of roadblock up ahead. "MR. X: In 1883, the French tightrope walker, Blondine, walked a rope clear across Niagara Falls! "CHOCHA: There's no escape. Too bad they can't play it for you now, Mr. X. (They strangle each other and fall dead on stage)" - p 19 &, of course, Blondine is in one of my movies (sortof): https://youtu.be/1GDXxp_g168?t=6493 . "Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide, A Tragedy" (1967) is up next. "ZABINA: Then whatever induced you to marry that Mongol tyrant, Tamberlaine?" Ludlam's plays are full of refernce, of course. The Character TABERLAINE is an example: " Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage. "Marlowe, generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the University Wits, influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes of the bombast and ambition of Tamburlaine's language can be found in English plays all the way to the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamburl... The "Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642" intrigues me but I don't think I'll look into it further just now. I'd imagine Ludlam wd've been a prime target for such a thing if he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. "ZABINA: (Pulling out a whip) Your bare bottom will feel the sting of my whip on television. Petticoats over your head. Let's see your treasure chest. (Lashes whip) "ALICE: Stand back. I know the only weapon that can destroy you. "ZABINA: (In horror) What's that in your hand? No. No. Mercy, I beg of you. "ALICE: Yes! Beer! (Shakes up bottle and squirts it on ZABINA) "ZABINA: (Screams as she passes out) No, no, not beer. Beer is my undoing. "ALICE: (Victoriously) Now there is only one Queen on Mars." - p 28 It seems hard to be more Theater of the Ridiculous than that. Ludlam has flagrant sexuality, something that I present too, something that seems to exist in both a repressed & extremely explicit form in our society. I imagine that in the day of this play the sex was challenging to present. "VENUS: Doth not Tamberlaine deserve as fortunate abed as ever Venus shlaa couch upon? "ORTYGIUS: Fie! Foul-mouthed fornicatress. "COSROE: Whatsa matter, Ortygius? Scared of the French velvet? "ORTYGIUS: (While the others fuck) Oh, I wish I had never come to court. So many dangers lurk here . . . intrigues and seductions. "(Fanfare. Enter TAMBERLAINE.) "TAMBERLAINE: Four worlds in one bed! I'll tickle your catastrophe! "MAGNAVOX: You'll never take me alive! "TAMBERLAINE: (Lopping off his dick) You'll never spit white again! Ortygius, what are you doing here?" - p 30 I never get tired of self-referentiality (after all, I do it all the time): "TAMBERLAINE: That is my secret. We'll go to the theater tonight and let everyone see us. "ALICE: What's playing? "TAMBERLAINE: The Conquest of the Universe, or When Queens Collide by Charles Ludlam. "ALICE: Filth! The insane ravings of a degenerate mind! I won't go! Besides I haven't a thing to wear! "TAMBERLAINE: It's the theater or rolling dung balls. Take your pick. "ALICE: I choose . . . the theater." - p ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 25, 2022
|
Jan 28, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0843906022
| 9780843906028
| B000CSYZ6U
| 3.37
| 30
| 1978
| Dec 01, 1978
|
really liked it
|
review of Mack Reynolds's The Fracas Factor by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 7, 2023 I'd read at least 19 Mack Reynolds bks before this one. In review of Mack Reynolds's The Fracas Factor by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 7, 2023 I'd read at least 19 Mack Reynolds bks before this one. In the author's bio of Border, Breed Nor Birth he's described as a "World traveler, expert observer of the human condition, a favorite science-fiction writer for more than two decades". There's no mention of what he did as a world traveler. The author's bio in Lagrange Five offers further clarification: "During the Second World War he attended the U.S. Army Marine Officer's Cadet School and was later assigned to Army transport class ships as a navigator in the South Pacific. Following the war he sold his first story to Esquire in 1946 and soon became a full-time freelance writer. To gather material for both fiction and articles he moved to Europe where he based himself for eleven years. In all, he traveled in over seventy-five countries and sold his articles to publications ranging from Playboy to The New York Times. In addition to his travel pieces, he has written more than sixty books, most but not all of them science fiction, and perhaps 200 shorter stories. At present, he resides in the art colony of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico". However, the Wikipedia bio of Reynolds somewhat contradicts the above & its claim that he lived in Europe for 11 yrs. Instead, it has him in Taos, NM after 1947 & in San Miguel de Allende starting in 1953. That, however, is clarified w/ "where they lived for only eighteen months before embarking on a journey through Europe and the East that lasted almost ten years and included stays in Greece, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Morocco, Spain, Eastern Europe, Finland, India, Japan, and Hong Kong. In 1955, Reynolds became a correspondent for Rogue magazine and began making money writing about his travels as well as from his science fiction stories, whose socioeconomic speculations now reflected the insights gained from his encounters with other cultures" bringing the 2 bios more or less back together again. Reynolds has many bks that feature mercenaries, something that I wd oridinarily find off-putting. E.G.: he has a bk called Mercenary from Tomorrow. That's the 1st of the series that this bk is part of, a series featuring Joe Mauser, a mercenary in the "fracases", the televised replacements to war in wch corporations settle disputes w/ limited warfar between mercenaries. This series in order is: 1. Mercenary from Tomorrow (1962) 2. The Earth War (1963) 3. The Fracas Factor (1978) 4. Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (1964) I took that chronology from offline. Why The Fracas Factor is listed as 3rd is unknown to me. I assume that it just wasn't published until 1978 but was written in 3rd place. I read Mercenary from Tomorrow 1st. From my review of that: "Yes, the wars in this future are industrially sponsored deadly competitions between business interests for wch mercenaries are hired. People are attracted to this kind of work in hopes of improving their class position. The general public is attracted to the fracases as entertainment. "This is as good a time as any to mention that this story is set in the same future world as Reynolds's Trample An Empire Down (read my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). In my review of that bk I quote an explanation of this future society: ""He said definitely, "The country's gone flat. No more wars, no more depressions, and with ultramation and computerization, practically nobody works. Practically everybody's on Guaranteed Annual Income. Even the space program has gotten into a rut, with nothing exciting going on. Practically everybody just sits around taking trank or drinking beer and watching Tr-D like a bunch of idiots. The whole country's in a mental slump.""" - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Anyway, I was recently in Frederick, MD, at Wonderbooks, one of my favorite bookstores (don't sell yr bks to them, tho, they don't really have bk buyers they just pay a ridiculously small price for bks by the box), where I picked up 6 more Reynolds bks. I picked this one up as the 1st to read w/o bothering to see where it fit in any chronology. As such, I read this 1st & then The Earth War wch precedes it. It didn't really matter. I found this one to be a bit 'thin', maybe it was deemed too thin to publish when it was written. As I've written many times before, I find reynolds to be astonishingly well-informed on political history. This bk begins w/ an epigraph from Abe Lincoln: "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. "Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address" - p 6 &, yet, when the South tried to secede he was willing to go to war to put an end to that. I'm glad he did given that it put an end to slavery in the US but it still seems a bit hypocritical. Joe has managed to work his way into the upper class w/ his mercenary activities & w/ the help of the subversive group that he's found himself working w/. His girlfriend, Nadine, was born an upper & is part of the same group. "He said, "I wonder how it all got started, this dividing our people into nine castes, ranging from Upper-Upper down to Low-Lower. We started off with a free and equal people. ""Joe, Joe, you innocent," Nadine said. "We used to pride ourselves on the lack of classes in the history of the United States, but we've been among the most class-ridden societies of modern times, right from the beginning. I assume that you don't labor under the illusion that the men who froze and starved under Washington at Valley Forge were later allowed to vote for or against him when he ran for President. Only the equivalent of Uppers in that day were allowed to vote. Only one out of five adults in the United States were eligibile to vote in Washington's election."" - p 57 No women, certainly no slaves, no non-property-owners, that sort of thing. "He had dialed for the capsule to the terminal in Nadine's living room, and when the small light had flickered on the door of the closet-like terminal, he opened it and wedged himself into the small two-seated vehicle. He pulled the canopy over him, nuckled the belt, and then dropped the pressure lever. He dialed his destination after putting his universal credit card in the payment slot. "He could feel the sinking, elevator sensation that meant his capsule was dropping to tube level to be caught up by the computerized controls and shuttled back and forth through the mazes of a vacuum-tube transport labyrinth, before being shot to his basic destination." - p 76 Gotta love it. One of the best things about reading SF are these descriptions of predicted aspects-of-life-taken-for-granted. In this case, I tend to imagine that the infrastructure needed to keep something like this going wd be preposterously dysfunctional. I imagine people caught in their capsules on a regular basis. Mauser tries to enlist the aid of a reporter that he knows. Unbeknownst to him, the reporter just sees him as an opportunity for self-advancement thru betrayal. "["]No Upper-Uppers. No more Lower-Lowers. Everybody reaches his levle in society on his own merit." "It was there that Joe Mauser had made his mistake. "Freddy Solingen was not opposed to the caste system. He was simply ambitious within it. He wanted to get as high on the totem pole as he could manage and by whatever method that came within his reach. He was an opportunist of the old school. Freddy Solingen was out for Number One, Freddy Solingen, and, of course, his son, Sam. And nothing was going to stand in his way, including friendship." - p 88 Joe's military category underling, Max, has been assigned by Joe to check out a conservative rally organized by the enemy of the secret organization that Joe's in. This scene's of particular interest to me b/c it takes place in Druid Hill Park, a park I've been to many times. "Max Mainz was having himself a time. The Nathan Hale Society rally was being held in Druid Hill Park on the outskirts of Greater Washington and in the area once known as Baltimore. It was a pleasant setting, and some of the Society's workers had erected a speaker's stand, well decked with American flags and pennants with such organizational slogans as I Only Regret That I Have But One Life To Lose For My Country, and My Country, May She Always Be Right, But My Country Right Or Wrong." - p 103 Max is easily won over to the society by the free beer &, later, the free prostitutes. Some biographical writings about Reynolds that I've read have led me to psotulate that he might've either been a mercenary himself or might've had close dealings w/ mercenaries in his international travels. This hypothesis seems potentially born out by his depiction of them. "Mercenaries are philosophical about the way they make their living. One day you're up against a lad. The next month you might be on the same side he is. In between fracases, we're a tightly-knit club. If some lad is down on his luck, there's nobody quicker than a mercenary to chip in, even though a couple of months later they might be shooting at each other." - p 114 Thanks to Max's mingling, Joe now has Nathan Hale Society literature to look at. "Joe went back to the pamphlets. They were expensively printed and well done. The cover of the first one read, My Country Right or Wrong, and there was a depiction of Nathan Hale, his arms tied behind him, a handkerchief tied over his eyes, about to be shot as the spy he had been. "Joe muttered, "I thought it was Stephen Decatur who said that, not Nathan Hale." "He read the first few paragraphs. They seemed to have been written for the eyes of a twelve-year-old and not a very bright one at that." - p 128 I don't know whether this form of patriotism is even remembered by people 40 yrs old or younger. My Country Right or Wrong was a very common expression, a bumper sticker, of pro-Vietnam War people in the US in the late '60s & early '70s. It was used as a rebuttal of people who were against the war, who sd that the war was wrong. The idea was that anyone who opposed the war was a traitor. Even tho I found this somewhat 'thin' in contrast to every other Reynolds bk I've read I still loved it. Reynolds was prominent in the SLP (Socialist Labor Party) & is deeply informed re political history. Even tho he was SLP, my feeling was that he was independent enuf to be more of an anarchist at heart. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 23, 2022
|
Jan 08, 2023
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0972854517
| 9780972854511
| 0972854517
| 3.85
| 59
| Apr 01, 2005
| Apr 01, 2005
|
liked it
|
review of H. P. Lovecraft & C. J. Henderson's The Tales of Inspector Legrasse by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2022 Not being very familia review of H. P. Lovecraft & C. J. Henderson's The Tales of Inspector Legrasse by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2022 Not being very familiar w/ Lovecraft & never having heard of Henderson, when I got this bk I thought it might be collaborative writing between the 2 of them such as the writings of Jorge Luis Borges & Adolfo Bioy-Casares. Instead the bk consists of one seminal story by Lovecraft & 6 stories inspired by it that continue its legacy by Henderson. I'm not sure whether that makes Henderson's stories fall into the category of "fan fiction" or not. Lovecraft's story was complete unto itself, it wasn't unfinished. On the other hand, Raymond Chandler's last novel, Poodle Springs only existed in its opening 4 chapters before he died & Robert B. Parker took on the task of finishing it. Chou Wen-Chung finished Edgard Varèse's "Nocturnal". I'm glad for both those finishings. I suppose this bk is closer in spirit to Charlie Chan in Walk Softly, Stranger by Robert Hart Davis & Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen by Michael Avallone - neither by the originator of the Charlie Chan character, Earl Derr Biggers. Whatever the categorizing case may be, there was a time in my life when I might've been a bit dismissive of writers who piggyback off other more famous writers. Now, given that I've read quite a bit of such derivative work, I find it interesting to see how the deriving writers satisfy the challenge. I don't think it's necessarily easy. There's a good scholarly intro by Robert M. Price: "A perverse thought occurs to me. Perverse, as most of my thoughts may be judged, but perhaps true nonetheless: what if H. P. Lovecraft's Inspector Legrasse (in "The Call of Cthulhu"), a Malone-clone borrowed from his earlier tale "The Horror at Red Hook", was intended as a kind of homage to (or even a parody of, if you can parody a silly character by making him serious!) Jules de Grandin, phantom-fighter and offspring of Seabury Quinn, a fellow Weird Tales contributor? Both of them French investigators of the paranormal, see? I know, HPL was not fond of Quinn's work, despite (or rather more likely because of) the popularity of the latter's work among the WT readership. But we know from "The Lurking Fear" and even implicitly "The Haunter of the Dark" that Lovecraft had a fondness for the basic idea of an occult investigator. Legrasse = DeGrandin? Maybe I will meet HPL in a dream and will have the opportunity to ask him. It has happened before." - p xii Lovecraft's story begins w/ an epigraph that I like: ""Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival ... a survival of a hugely remote period when ... consciousness was manifested, perhaps in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity ... forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds ..." "—Algernon Blackwood" Blackwood being another writer that I frequently run across mention of w/o ever having read much or anything by. Lovecraft's original story emphasizes dreams: "These responses from aesthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably stronger during the period of the sculptor's delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox's seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell." - p 7 Artists, or "aesthetes" play an important role in being sensitive to the approaching rule by the old ones who've been in hibernation. Sculptures are found of one of the old ones & these sculptures seem to have the power of unhinging the observer's mind. "It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, while the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the bottom of the pedestal." - p 9 Legrasse & fellow officers go to an island in the swamp where some sort of rituel is taking place. "In a natural glade of the swamp stood a grassy island of perhaps an acre's extent, clear of trees and tolerably dry. On this now leaped and twisted a more indescribable horde of human abnormality than any but a Sime or an Angarola could paint." - p 12 I've never heard of Sime or Angarola so I decided to look them up. "Sidney Herbert Sime (/siːm/;1865 – 22 May 1941) — he usually signed his works as S. H. Sime — was an early 20th century English artist, mostly remembered for his fantastic and satirical artwork, especially his story illustrations for Irish fantasy author Lord Dunsany." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_... "Anthony Angarola (1893–1929) was an American painter, printmaker, and art instructor. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago." [..] "Angarola is also notable as one of the favorite artists of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft made a reference to the works of Angarola in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu" and did the same in "Pickman's Model": "Only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear―the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.... There's something those fellows catch―beyond life―that they're able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it. Sime has it. Angarola of Chicago has it." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony... Lovecraft is a well-loved author & there's the occasional reference to his being somewhat racist wch I think is probably more of an embrassment for his enthusiasts than anything else. "Examined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blood, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of Negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the hetereogeneous cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper and older than Negro fetishism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprising consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith." - p 12 There you have it: the idea that people of 'pure blood' aren't debased while people of 'mixed blood' are. Apparently Lovecraft didn't consider the idea that the most 'pure blooded' people are in-bred & tend to genetic deterioration. Henderson takes up the tale(s) & has Legrasse & co take a 2nd trip to the site where they'd originally captured the cultists. "The next morning, despite the danger presented by the swamp's treacherous bogs, Webb, Galvez, Carrinelle and Legrasse set off for Monolith Island, the colorful name given the site of the November 1st foray by the lieutenant. Unlike the first trip, however, this time several of the locals accompanied the investigators the entire way. Having the use of the swamp-dwellers' craft along with that of their owners' services in getting them to the island made the trip a far easier thing to accomplish than it would have been on their own." - p 37 Nothing happens to them on that trip but one night, after getting collectively extremely drunk, they realize that THAT NIGHT is when the next big ritual summoning is going to occur & they have to go out there THEN, regardless of whether they're wasted or not. "As Carrinelle made his way to the door, Webb let out a moaning wail. He had drained his class and had no more liquor. Seeing that his jacket sleeve was soaked with bourbon, he shoved it into his mouth and sucked hard, pulling a thin drizzle of linty alcohol down his throat. Paying him no mind, Legrasse turned to his lieutenant. ""Galvez," he said, "you're a dirty Spaniard bastard and you can drink more than any man on the force and still come across as a bishop, agreed?" ""An old family talent," admitted the lieutenant with a sharp, clear-eyed smile that belied the amount of bourbon he had consumed that evening. "It is at your disposal, el Grande." ""Good. Is that old Navy destroyer still in dock?" When his man assured him it was, the inspector continued, ordering, "Then you get yourself down to the waterfront, find her captain, and put on a demeanor that will convince him to put to sea. Tell him we've got pirates, tell him anything you have to but get him out there lined up with the swamps."" - p 46 As they're en route to Monolith Island, Legrasse ruminates on scientists as incapable of such action. "Legrasse had known other men of science, confident and filled with advice and theories—until something went wrong. "Then it was always hand-wringing and frayed nerves and tears. Arrogance or hopeless fright—that's all you got from academics. Sliding his paddle into the water once more, the inspector pushed off toward the sound of the growing music. As his flat bottomer slid through the rushes, pushing aside those it could not crush over completely, Legrasse thought on Professor Webb. "He was grateful for the older man's assistance. Indeed, if the professor's theory was correct about the cult—and the crude tune filtering through the night was a strong indicator that he was—then his help would most likely prove invaluable. But, suggestions and clues and ideas, that's all his type—doctors and scientists—were good for. If Webb were there in the boat with him, he knew the man's horror would have already destroyed them." - p 48 Legrasse gets captured & is slated for sacrifice. "Dragging him up to the great block of granite in the center of the island, through the ring of bloated corpses, the gibbering cultists shoved the Inspector up against the massive slab. Lashing his left wrist tightly, they ran a stout ship's rope completely about the great monolith and lashed the right as well. "Once they had completed their work, the cult members stepped back from their captive. As they did, the one acting as their leader, a large, glowering Negro with skin blacker than the surrounding night spoke to Legrasse. ""You one lucky white worm, piece shit boy, dat you be."" - p 51 ""You been try stop mighty Cthulhu. Foolish little white worm. You slide across the ground without feeling, you think you be the grand king of all, but you just a bag of air with no eyes. Blind and sad and fit for the grave."" - p 52 Legrasse survives to live on in the ensuing tales. At the end of this one he develops his sense of mission. "One thing at a time, he told himself. One thing at a time. Whatever other horrors there be in this world, don't worry. They're out there. Patiently waiting. And we'll find them all." - p 58 Henderson introduces some new allies in the next story, Singh & Zarnak. "After Singh brought him a thick cotton robe, Zarnak took the chair behind his desk. The mask of Yama watched all that transpired below, the doctor narrowed his eyes, studying the tall, thick-boned man before him. Quietly pulling a long breath into his lungs, Zarnak probed the air between himself and his visitor. He could sense immediately that Legrasse had not come to him with anything but business most urgent. There was more, however. "A dark, rank odor clouded the ether around his guest, a sinister presence clawing at the man's soul, a thing so far Legrasse had managed to resist. But Zarnak could see from the look swimming in the corners of the man's eyes that how much longer he could resist was anyone's guess. Fatigued to the depths of his soul, the doctor nonetheless held out his hand and said, "All right, let's see it."" - p 63 Zarnak enlists the aid of a black priestess to help ward off the invasion of minions of Cthulhu. She performs a ritual that turns into a sex ritual but it's not quite working. Legrasse, as a witness, has a moment of introspection in wch he realizes that he's the force that's holding back their success. ""What?" he asked himself aloud. "Tell me what is wrong in what you see." "In the honest depths of his heart, beneath his upbringing and the bigotry with which it had gifted him, Legrasse could find nothing wrong. Through new eyes he saw only two people, suddenly in love, oblivious to all else, with the power to shut out the world." - p 77 & this revelation was the turning point that drove away the attackers. I see this as Henderson's having his narratives move beyond Lovecraft's prejudices. For the 4th story, Legrasse is back in the swamps again, at the home of a swamp dweller who has died. Legrasse finds the deceased's diary & reads it. "Legrasse read on, fascinated. Claro had stopped for he had found his home filled with cast lengths of roping flesh, something like the tentacles of a squid, but longer, thinner, and possessed of individual skills no cephalopod imaginable had ever displayed. He stood frozen, terror gripping every muscle, as he watched the roaming tendrils poke and pull and slither in the moonlight. Then, the one he had just eluded found him again, and Claro beat at it with his chair until the seat had become splinters." - p 86 Many yrs later, Legrasse has long since become a recluse in this next story. "When Inspector John Raymond Legrasse had dropped out of sight, he would have best been described as middle-aged, commonplace-looking. Those were no words to paint a picture of the man before Buttacavala. The crime lord found himself staring into a long unshaven face, one that had not seen the sun for so many years, its whiteness approached the ghastly shade of a moldered egg, or that of certain deep-forest fungi. His mouth seemed to twitch—not when one was staring directly at it, but a moment after—giving the impression it was a conscious, mocking gesture rather than an involuntary one. His hair, ragged and wild—half across his face, half standing straight up—was shot through with careless white streaks. But most disturbing of all were his eyes. "Buttacavala could put no name to the color he saw within them. It was a shifting shade—blue/black/brown/green—there was no telling for certain. The only thing the older man could be positive of was that the eyes were almost completely red where they whould have been white, and that they were quite, quite mad." - p 121 "["]why I haven't been with the police for almost ... what is it ... maybe fifteen years now."" - p 122 Legrasse, brought out of retirement by the crime lord, finds himself trapped in a bldg under attack by creatures out in greater strength than ever, a harbinger of the great war between such creatures & humanity. "At the first distraction, Legrasse had pushed forward on the telescope, shoving the creature impaled upon it back into those horrors packing the stairs. The monstrosities had gone down in a tangle, still seeking to unravel themselves when another massive section of the house had come screaming down from above, putting an end to their immediate menace. That the inspector, Webb and Carinelle were able to escape without worse injury than smarting eyes and lungs and various patches of cooked flesh proved to be the most amazing surprise of the evening." - p 157 In the last story, Legrasse & the allies who've been accumulated along the way have made the trek to the other side of the world to fight against the great ceremony for the total revival of Cthulhu. En route, they're attacked on their train by people that they assume to be Cthulhu cultists. ""This man and his fellows attacked us because they did not want us to reach the Cthulhu cult." ""Well, of course not," snapped Galvez. "I'd say it's fairly obvious the evil bastards don't want anything going wrong with their little plan to destroy the world." ""No, you misunderstand me," answered Leigh. "These people came after us because they believed we were here to help the cult ... that we were in some way the key to everything happening on schedule. As far as our attackers were concerned, they were the 'good guys' out to protect the world. We were the ones affecting to bring about its end."" - p 190 I don't know what the many Lovecraft fans wd make of these attempts to continue the Cthulhu mythos. I found Henderson to do a good job of ever-increasing the menace. However, since I'm not that engrossed by the original story I'm not that engrossed by its development either. Nonetheless, I applaud Henderson's rising to the challenge. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 18, 2022
|
Dec 31, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| unknown
| 2.25
| 4
| 1949
| 1950
|
liked it
|
review of Howard Hunt's Dark Encounter by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 30-31, 2022 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleinteks review of Howard Hunt's Dark Encounter by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 30-31, 2022 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticH... E. Howard Hunt is probably best known as one of the Watergate burglars. He might also be known as the CIA guy who was in charge of the invasion of Cuba in 1961. Long ago I read him described as the 'brains' behind the massacre of 100,000 peasants in Guatemala - a crime that President Bill Clinton apologized for. I'm sure that did alotof good (NOT) - at least he acknowledged that it happened. However, Hunt's alleged participation in that atrocity isn't mentioned in Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States so I looked for it in the more recent The Many Headed Hydra (Linebaugh & Rediker). That's a bit outside of that bk's range so it's not surprising I didn't find it there either. I'd already done searches online & not been satisfied w/ the results but today I tried "e howard hunt & guatemala" & went to an article entitled "E. Howard Hunt’s Final Confession The monstrous spymaster gloats over his crimes." BY ANN LOUISE BARDACH (JAN 24, 2007). Here are some relevant excerpts: "By his account, he was the architect of the 1954 U.S.-backed coup (“Operation Success”) in Guatemala that deposed democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz." In the interview that the majority of the article consists of, Hunt doesn't 'take credit' for the deaths in Guatemala that followed the overthrow he orchestrated: " Slate: Some 200,000 civilians were killed in the civil war following the coup, which lasted for the next 40 years. Were all those deaths unforeseen? Hunt: Deaths? What deaths? Slate: Well, the civil war that ensued for the next 40 years after the coup. Hunt: Well, we should have done something we never do—we should have maintained a constant presence in Guatemala after getting rid of Arbenz." - https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2... So what do I make of that? Hunt's overthrow precipitated the following internal strife, he deserves at least partial blame for the deaths. That's enuf to make me completely contemptuous of him. Nonetheless, I decided to read one of his novels. I was curious about what I'd make of it. It's common for spies to write novels & other bks. I read them from time-to-time, they're bound to be propaganda but they're also likely to contain something of value to me to be ferreted out. I was expecting Dark Encounter to be gritty crime fiction. As it turned out it's more of a human drama w/ the emphasis more on the characters than on the overarching crime & punishment aspects of it. The novel's from 1948. The author's bio on the back says: "out of his war-time experiences produced two widely-hailed novels: East of Farewell (Knopf: 1942) and Limit of Darkness (Random House: 1944). This experience included service in both the Navy (destroyer duty) and the Army Air Force, as a Life correspondent on Guadalcanal and a member of the OSS in China. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Writing in 1946. His most recent novel, Bimini Run, was published in 1949 by Farrar, Straus." Dark Encounter's original title was Maelstrom. The edition I read was published by Signet Books. The blurb that appears on the 1st page includes this: "There were three very different people. Alison was spoiled, lovely and so sick of the men of her set that she was willing to risk an affair with Harry—whose he-man approach to love included such subtleties as flagellation." - p 1 Like all sensationalist novel hype this is more than a bit misleading. It implies a type of relationship between Alison & Harry that's far from accurate. The front cover has Harry ripping off Alison's blouse to expose her bra. Since this was the 1940s she doesn't have a cell-phone tucked in there. Interestingly, to me at least, some of the others bks published by Signet at the time & advertised near the beginning are Thoreau's "Walden", Van Tilburg Clark's "The Ox-Bow Incident", & Faulker's "Intruder in the Dust" so Signet must've felt like Hunt belonged somehow in this company. Not only was this originally titled "Maelstrom" but the author abridged it for "Its publication in this form" (p 4) - "this form" presumably meaning a short tawdry paperback. At the beginning, the reader is presented w/ what's to become the divorce tiff between Allison & her husband Chico. "When the war began, Chico went to see an old family friend one afternoon and came back with a stripe and a half. During the war he had never gotten any closer to the water than the Ketchaboneck Club or the bar at Sewanhaka. "When the war ended, Chico took off his summer grays, put on a Palm Beach suit and flew with Alison to Montego Bay, Jamaica, for a month, before going back to his father's brokerage office. There had been no problems in Chico's life, no decisions more difficult than choosing between Brooks and J. Press; between Fence and Zete; between Cadillac and Lincoln—until this afternoon. And even then, liquor had seen him through." - p 14 To an unexpected extent, this novel addresses class. ""I'm at the Plaza, Mr. Prentice. Chico and I have just separated." ""I'm sorry to hear that, my dear." The voice was like a talking book. Correct. Impartial. Judicial. "Is it a question of divorce?" ""Chico wants one." ""And you?" ""I'd rather not talk about it just now, Mr. Prentice. This afternoon has been quite a shock. Could you see me tomorrow?" ""Of course. Would two o'clock be convenient?" ""Surely." ""Before then would you like me to talk to Charles?" No nicknames for Prentice. Correct titles of address. Precision. Black or white. Right or wrong. No human variable like[s] love or satiety, envy or hate." - p 16 "Wealth, grace, and elegance—all inherited. It was easy to be genteel if the props were passed around when you were a kid; no strain to speak without a foreign accent if her folks could send her to a private school; easy to be gracious if she were to inherit a Long Island estate." - p 84 ""My folks came from Germany, near Bensdorf, three years before I was born. My old man was a Rhineland miller and someone told him America was a land of opportunity—a place where class didn't matter—a place where a man could make as much money as he wanted if he didn't mind work." ""What happened after they came to America?" ""They were dumped off a boat at Ellis Island and deloused like cattle. Then my old man got a job in a brewery because there was good pay and he could see grain now and then. But the war started in Europe and, when the Lusitania was sunk, the brewery gave my old man a pink slip in his pay envelope. People chalked Maltese crosses on our door and called us Huns and spat on the street when they saw any of us.["]" - pp 87-88 I suppose Harry's life is a different type of stereotype - the kid who had it rough who fought his way to prosperity by killing people & running rackets. "Harry looked at the gold Swiss watch around his wrist: one o'clock. The boy should be coming back with the ticket soon—unless he had drifted off with the three centuries. Not likely. It was an even fifty plus. Plus what he would say he had to pay the ticket clerk for the reservation. About seventy bucks for a half an hour's work. Thirty-five weeks' pay working for old Abe. I could still be there, getting maybe four bucks a week now, if Abe's still alive." - p 24 Alas for Harry, the heat starts to move in. "All day yesterday in the Hearing Room. Then this morning listening to the same questions over and over again. Where are your records, Mr. Metz? Your books? How much did you pay Senator Robinson to influence purchase of your land? How were you able to oftain such advantageous bargains from the War Assets Administration without prior knowledge of the sealed bids? To what extent were your manipulations aided by Senator Robinson?" - p 42 But Harry manages to wriggle away to Mexico. "A sign said Money Exchange. Harry walked toward it and took a bill from his pocket. He pushed it across the counter and the man counted out a bundle of dirty tattered bank notes. "Cuatrocientos sententa y cinco." ""How much?" ""Four hundred and seventy-five pesos, Señor. In exchange for one hundred dollars."" - pp 45-46 Harry takes a woman home from the bar. "When she came back she held out toward him the butt of a black leather whip. He took it from her, looking at her eyes. The crescents were darker now, almost purple in the half-light of the room; her nostrils broad and quivering. The yard-long whip was heavy in his hand. Her eyes looked at the tip and she touched the light leather fringe dangling sinuously at the end. ""I'm wicked to want you to do this," she said. "Before, it was always my husband." She put her hands against the back of the couch, and leaned forward, legs apart. Then she turned and looked at him wolfishly. "You know what to do," she said. "Do it!" "In a quarter of an hour she was lying over the back of the couch limp and exhausted. Harry had stopped to rest. He saw her reach into an ebony box beside the couch and take out a brown cigarette. She held it toward Harry, and he leaned forward to take it from her. He lit it, and she said hoarsely, "Only a little. If you smoke much, you will kill me."" - p 51 This is where I start to feel like the story is veering a bit from realism to Reefer Madness (1936) territory. The cigarette is pot & Harry does, apparently, go a bit berserk. Did the woman die? That's not immediately clear one way or another. Hunt does go to the trouble of establishing the characters's backstories. In this case, the story of Alison's mother planning her life for her, wch then goes sour. "So it had come to this; the cygnet had left her nest and joined her life with Chico Courtney's because that was the way mother had planned it. Once when you had asked father about the boy from Wells Beach, he had patted your head and said the boy sounded like a fine type for you to know and he hoped you wouldn't stop seeing him just because Mother was jealous of your beauty and had other ideas. "But the Chico she had chosen turned into a black swan while she drifted powerless to stop the change, and her friends had withdrawn from her and now there was no one to whom she could turn. "She looked around slowly, sheltering herself with her arms from silence and emptiness. A frightening sensation of déjà vu came over her, smothering her mind like a dark questing fog. She stood the torture until her nerves grew dull, anesthetized. Then she drank the highball quickly, the liquor flowing through her veins almost at once, killing the fear she had known." - p 68 A pianist named Nick is introduced as another key character. What surprised me about Hunt's writing here is that he actually seems sensitive to music. Keep in mind that, for me, Hunt exemplifies the arrogance of the CIA: he was a person who felt entitled to set forces in motion that resulted in massive death b/c he was sure that he was right about what socio-political system was what they had to abide by - or else. Such a contemptible mindset is not one I'd expect to be sensitive to music. The fact that he is sensitive makes it difficult for me to completely hate him & even 'opens a door' in my mind where I'll consider that maybe he's not as responsible for the genocide in Guatemala as I'd previously taken for granted. That makes me feel uncomfortable. "His music was full and compelling, throbbing with a rolling bass, decorated with intricate right-hand figures that went unnoticed by his audience." [..] "He ended the torch he had been playing, and laid a quietly swaying introduction to "Ill Wind," an old Cotton Club number that had never caught on. Nick had heard Cab Calloway play it back in New Orleans, when he was in High School." - p 77 As I recall, the Cotton Club was a club in Harlem where primarily black musicians played but only whites were allowed in the audience. Have I got that right? I'm not going to check. Cab Calloway was one of their stars & his conk haircut was criticized by Malcolm X as that of a black man trying to look more white. W/ that bit of history out of the way, I like Cab Calloway's music very much. "For the people she was everything and there was nothing of you in it and you wove an unobstrusive counterpoint leading up to the final note that she held the way you knew she would, and you finished with chiming whole-tone progressions that died away until her lips were closed" - p 81 "Oh, love, say what you choose, I got a right to sing the blues, Nick thought. The real blues like Lu Watters' "Friendless Blues" and Bessie Smith's "Cemetery Blues"; Jelly Roll's "Beale Street" and Mary Lou Williams' "Roll 'Em."" - p 119 "First year Med had been five mornings of dissection a week with Neuroanatomy in the afternoons and on Saturday mornings. Then had come Histology—cell structure and fundamental tissues, and in the second semester, Gross Anatomy. Second year he had sweated through Physical Diagnosis, Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, and Bacteriology. That was between '40 and '41 when he had been playing nights at the Faisan d'Or, where Carol had come to him. The band had been a good one, and between sets people would gather around the piano to hear him—mostly undergraduates from Harvard and Princeton who subscribed to Metronome and Downbeat and collected records by Sidney Bechet and Art Tatum and Miff Mole—kids who knew good jazz from bad" - p 130 ""Art Tatum's 'Liza.' Like it?" ""I should say so." She sat at one of the empty tables and lit a cigarette. ""No one can play it the way he can. Get this. . . ." He turned around and played a quick, complicated phrase that left her almost open-mouthed. "Sometimes I can do it, but most of the time I can't."" - p 135 Art Tatum is one of the only 28 pianists on my "Top 100 Pianists" webpage: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100P... . "To loosen his fingers, he played Bix's "In a Mist" and Jess Stacy's "Burnin' the Candle at Both Ends"; then Debussy's "Serenade à la Poupée." Nick thought about the chords in "Laura" and the light delicate way Errol Garner had recorded the song." - p 162 Maybe Hunt just did some research & wasn't really into the music. Still, dropping "In a Mist" & Debussy in the same sentence seems like something a real music enthusiast might do. I even had something musical verified for me: "The band was playing its first number: "Pastelillos de Amor" in authentic samba rhythm. He could hear the scratching of the reco-reco and the methodical swishing of bean-gourds over the saxes and violins." - p 129 I bought a "Rico Rico" from Pete Engelhart Studios, Engelhart being a guy who makes metal percussion - but I wasn't sure whether what I bought was a "Rico" or a "Rico Rico" b/c the doubling of the word struck me as a possible website display glitch. Now I know. Alas, Nazis damaged one of Nick's hands during WWII. "Cutting risers. Chute buckling. Blood on your face. Voices. Sound of running feet. Peasants kicking you, hitting you with clubs and hayrakes. An Unteroffizier crushing your hand under his heel when you tried to crawl. Kicking. Voices. Darkness. . . ." - p 83 Harry takes Alison out on a swanky date.. that includes a Diego Rivera mural! "A captain escorted them to their table at the far[e] end of the ro[o]m, beyond the bar, and Alison turned around to look at the Rivera mural above the wall seats. It was a vinous bacchanal with lush female nudes reclining in near-Sapphic poses against a background of vivid jungle reds and greens." - p 93 "El Castilo was a spawling white stucco castle on Insurgentes, near Genova. Paul drove under the canopied entrance, and a gaudily uniformed attendant opened the door of the Cadillac. There were Royal Palms growing from the lawn, their high sculptured trunks reaching upward like leaf-topped columns. A hidden light illuminated a large marble goldfish pond in the garden, and as Alison walked up the steps she could see flashes of silver and gold darting beneath the surface of the clear water." - p 94 ""That's enough," Harry said. "You wouldn't win again tonight." "Alison rose from the table, returning the five bills she had originally gambled. "How do you know?" ""You won too easily. The banker palmed his third card to let you win. He was set to take you from then on." "She pushed back her hair from the side of her face, "Thanks for telling me." ""You were smart enough to listen."" - p 96 Hunt IS a novelist - in some senses he's formulaic but he includes a dream, a touch that, for me, goes a bit beyond a formula. "During the night Alison dreamed that she had floated over New England from Maine to Long Island, suspended between earth and sky like one of the tropical fish in the aquarium at El Castilo. She had watched calm lakes and peaceful rivers until, somewhere to the South, she was walking alone over a rough, treacherous mountain path, and suddenly the trail ended in mist and below her a torrent raged, carrying along uprooted Royal Palms, debris, and houses that splintered against rocks. As she had watched, shrinking against the side of the mountain, the earth gave way under her feet, slidingly, but she was powerless to move. She had felt herself slipping toward the madly surging current below. Slipping downward. . . ." - p 99 Their time at the casino turns violent as Harry revolts against getting robbed - but it's not until they go to a bullfight that Alison really gets a glimpse of his latent brutality. "But Alison was watching the man in the last moment before the bull entered the ring. The matador seemed to withdraw into himself, his body becoming compact and taut, the rapier in his hand joining to his arm, the cloak of black and red spreading sinuously like the hood of a cobra. Then the bull had come into the ring and stood pawing the earth, its nostrils flared, its tail twitching nervously." - pp 104-105 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticH... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 24, 2022
|
Dec 31, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0394401913
| 9780394401911
| 0394401913
| 4.60
| 63
| Mar 20, 2007
| Mar 20, 2007
|
it was amazing
|
review of Carolyn Brown's Chance and Circumstance by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 8-29, 2022 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo review of Carolyn Brown's Chance and Circumstance by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 8-29, 2022 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticB... Strange as this admission may seem, I don't think any other bk has moved me to tears as often as this one did. I'm not sure I even know another person who'd be moved to tears by it at all - after all, it doesn't have the young pretty protagonist die of cancer leaving her loved ones devastated, it doesn't have the banker successfully make off w/ the life savings of the sad old man who'd worked his entire life to be able to leave a legacy for those he cared about, it doesn't have the social outcast sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn't commit. You get the idea. Instead, it tells about the struggles & triumphs of people whose work I've followed & respected for many decades, mostly people whose personal lives I knew very little about. Even more strangely, perhaps, is that I don't particularly resent the relative priviledge & good favor these people benefited from b/c I recognize the passion & inspiration that drove them so whole-heartedly. Very few people are as passionate & dedicated as the main characters of this bk. Nonetheless, the very 1st reviewer note-to-self I wrote was "spoiled" in reponse to this 1st paragraph of the "PREFACE": "One day, a year or two after I'd stopped performing with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, I received a phone call from Maxine Groffsky, who had left her position as the Paris editor of the Paris Review and had returned to New York. "I want to be your agent?" she said. Astonished, I asked, "For what?" "Your book." "What book" "The one John Cage says you're going to write." "Well, maybe, someday." "No, now." I resisted, she persisted. So I wrote a sample chapter and Maxine presented it to Bob Gottlieb, then editor in chief at Knopf, and suddenly I found myself committed to the daunting project of writing a book. That was over thirty years ago. The writing and the not writing took that long." - p -ii Spoiled?! Yes, spoiled: a friend of hers promotes her writing a bk about his boyfriend to a prominent publishing person, sd person approaches her & makes her a good enuf offer to get the project rolling. She was still somewhat young, roughly aged 46. There's no talk of putting her in prison or rendering her homeless for daring to exist, she's treated w/ respect. As of the writing of this review, I've written & had published or published myself 16 bks. Many of them refer to real-life people but only rarely do I refer to those people by their given names. Sometimes it's to avoid displeasure or repercussions on their part, other times it's to protect them from being fired from their jobs or otherwise persecuted.. - but, OH, how I'd like to just refer to everyone I've known & written about by their given names - whether it's for praise or criticism - & that's what Brown does here. She can probably get away w/ it b/c most of these people are famous, most of them are dead, most of them were friends of hers - &, I think, at least, she's very even-handed about it - she praises John Cage & Merce Cunningham, e.g., & criticizes them - I never got the impression that she was being vindictive or unfair (although her depiction of Yoko Ono struck me as a bit harsh) - in fact, one cd hardly hope for a more honest memoir. "For the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, this day, with a matinee performance, was the end of the Paris season and the end of the 1972 tour begun in Iran in early September. For me, it was the end of a twenty-year way of life. "I had deliberately chosen to end that life abruptly, telling no one but those most intimately concerned, and to end it where I loved performing most—in Europe. A romantic gesture, certainly, but one that insured a happy ending to a life I cherished and had been nourished by." - p 3 "It was shortly after graduating from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, marrying Earle Brown, my childhood sweetheart, and moving to Denver, Colorado, that I first saw Merce Cunningham dance—not perform, I hasten to add, but dance, in a master class that he taught and that I took in April 1951." - pp 3-4 "At each of two parties given for Cage and Cunningham that weekend, Earle and I "rather cornered John" (as I wrote home) "and talked the evening away." The first real question Earle asked him was "Do you feel there is an affinity between your music and the music of Anton Webern?" It was still rare in the United States in 1951 for anyone to know Webern's work. Cage looked quickly roward Earle and replied, "What do you know about Webern?" The conversation took off from there. We heard for the first time the names Pierre Boulez, a young French composer whom Cage had met two years earlier in Paris; David Tudor, an extraordinary young pianist; Morton Feldman, a young New York composer writing graph music. All these young men, more than a decade younger than Cage, were born within a year or two of each other and were Earle's immediate contemporaries." - p 5 For someone like myself, the excitement of such a time is probably hard for anyone not obsessed w/ avant-garde music to understand. All of the above composers, except for Webern (I prefer the music of his teacher, Arnold Schönberg), are on my "Top 100 Composers" webpage: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100C... . I have the highest admiration for Tudor, but he wasn't a composer yet & while I like his electronic pieces very much he hasn't quite made it to my Top 100 list either - both Webern & Tudor are potential candidates nonetheless. Even reading about such a conversation 2nd-hand is fascinating for me. "In April 1951, Earle was already working at three jobs daily. From nine to five he worked at Cabaniss, a contemporary furniture store and interior design shop that sold Eames, Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Herman Miller, the Knoll line, and Schiffer prints. Earle got the job when we were down to our last dollar—a silver keepsake. He used the dollar for a haircut and got the job the same afternoon. From that job, he went to his own studio in a midtown professional building where he gave private lessons to four young jazz musicians and also taught a class with five students. After that he came home to compose. In the early hours of the morning he wrote a string quartet, a passacaglia (for Jane McLean and me to dance to), and a trio. When he finally did go to bed he had trouble sleeping, music still on his mind." - p 6 I can relate - in fact, this is one of many things that makes the story of this bk something I can relate to deeply. Earle & Carolyn were young, in their early 20s, they weren't being taken care of, they had to work - at the same time they were trying to pursue their passions, to pursue the interests that were at the center of their life. This situation didn't last forever, they were treated better & better. For me, being treated better & better wasn't very likely, I wdn't've been hired at the furniture store in the 1st place, I wd've been too much of a weirdo. The work I created was far more controversial & daring than anything Brown or Cunningham ever did. I didn't want it to be absorbed, I wasn't jockeying for respect, I was assaulting the culture. SO, to contrast: In early 1985 my apartment was set fire to, I think by an arsonist hired by the assistant to my landlord to get me out of the neighborhood b/c I was helping the local (& very numerous) street drunks &, thusly, endangering the gentrification of the area. My girlfriend of the time took me in for the next 6 mnths until I found a new place to rent. I usually had 2 jobs, but in July & August, for 6 wks, things took an interesting development, I started working 84 hrs a wk, 7 days a wk. I'd get up around 7AM, leave to catch the bus to work around 7:15AM so that I cd get to my 1st job of the day: working in BalTimOre's porn district editing peep shows. It was the 1st (& one of the ONLY) jobs where I had to punch a time clock. If it wasn't punched by 8AM, I'd be docked an hr's pay. Curiously, I don't remember getting an extra hr's pay if I was there early. Funny how that works. My coworker (& collaborator) & I were responsible for making something like 32 new small gauge (8mm & super-8mm) porns a wk out of available footage organized into themed cubby-holes in the dungeon-like basement where we worked. My coworker, Dick Hertz, & I decided to make a fake porn to sneak into a peep show. I worked 6 days a wk, 8 hrs a day there. This was the Jewish Mafia so it was run somewhat like a sweat shop. After work, I'd catch a bus to my 2nd job, a used bkstore, where I'd work from 5:30 to 10:30PM (or some such). That was 5 days a wk & then on a 6th I'd work a 6 hr day - making a total of 36 hrs at the bkstore. SO, there were 2 days a wk when I only worked one or the other of the 2 jobs. Wages at both places of employment were close to minimum wage but b/c I was working so many hrs I was treated by the IRS as someone making twice what I was making hrly & I was put in a higher tax bracket & expected to pay even more taxes at the end of the yr than what had already been taken out. After I got off work around 10:30PM I'd go back to my girlfriend's & start drinking hard liquor & working on the fake peep show movie, wch was called "Balling Tim Ore is Best". I'd get to sleep around 2 or 3AM & get up for work around 7AM & do it all over again. After 6 wks Dick snuck the film into a peep show & I quit that job. Dick got the film back after 2 wks of escaping detection & gave it to me. It's since been screened many places, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, NYC - so, in a sense, I got some respect from the wider cultural world, as did Carolyn & Earle - but I think you can understand just how different our paths were in many ways. "I was very impressed: "David has been so very generous and helpful—he's gone out of his way to be nice to us. He is such an interesting person—really a genius, I guess. He is the only pianist who can play contemporary music (which is unbelievably difficult), and not only plays this music, but studies the aesthetics of the composers, and their philosophies of life as well, in order to do true justice to what they express in the music. An amazing person. And probably not over twenty-five years old."" - p 8 & if I were to pick one pianist over all it wd be David Tudor. I have a "Top 100 Pianists" webpage too: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100P... . There're only 28 pianist listed on it as of this writing. Tudor wd've been the very 1st I thought of. There're probably more pianists now who can play the extremely difficult work that Tudor pioneered in the 1950s & '60s but he was certainly at the forefront for as long as he was active as a pianist. "After a quick visit with both our families in Massachusetts, we headed directly to 326 Monroe Street, a tenement building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, where John Cage lived on the top floor in two small apartments he'd made into one. The shabby building, almost on the East River, also housed Morton Feldman and the painter-collagist Ray Johnson, who shared his tiny work space with the sculptor Richard Lippold. They called the place "Bozza Mansion," Bozza being their landlord's name." - p 10 Again, I find this exciting. I love Cage's music, I love Feldman's music. I had a brief correspondence w/ Johnson before he committed suicide (it might've been more interesting if it happened after) & he's a major figure in Mail Art history, I don't know Lippold's work much but I remember liking it. The stimulating atmosphere that wd've existed w/ all 4 of these people living in the same bldg must've been phenomenal. "In March I'd received a phone call from Ray Johnson—the enigmatic, eccentric, lovable Ray Johnson—who wondered if I still had a tiny piece of the very large geometric oil painting he had been working on when first we met him in 1951, which he had subsequently cut into bits and mailed out to his "New York Correspondence School" friends." - p 456 "Our decision meant I must get a job, and at the last minute I did, at the Kent School for Girls, where they indentured me: I was to teach dance to the entire school, first grade through high school; to teach drama; the eighth-grade speech classes; an elective appreciation course in dance and drama to juniors and seniors; to serve as substitute teacher for eighth-grade history (a disaster!); to be bus proctor, study-hall proctor, librarian, and drama coach—all for two thousand dollars a year! Each school day began and ended with me proctoring a busload of giggling girls to and from school; when the school day was over, I was completely wiped out and still had more homework to do than the kids." - p 12 WHEW! That is an insanely heavy workload. I'd imagine that the best way for a teacher to get thru it was to not take what was being taught seriously in the least - something I'm sure Brown wdn't've done. $2,000 in 1952 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $22,491.47 seventy yrs later & that's about what I made in a good yr before I retired (working considerably fewer hrs w/ considerably less responsibility) so, yes, that was pathetic pay. Still, being the proctologist for all those kids was the icing on the butt-cake. I mean, really. "Less than two months passed; in the mail came a flyer addressed to us in John's own beautiful hand. Inside, elegantly spaced and lettered, was the announcement that the Living Theatre, Inc., would present two recitals by David Tudor at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, in New York. At the first, Tudor would play Boulez's 2ème Sonate and for the first time anywhere the complete Music of Changes by Cage, as well as a work by Christian Wolff and one by Morton Feldman. The next month, Tudor would play music by Webern, Cage, Wladimir Woronoff, Henry Cowell, Stefan Wolpe, Josef M. Hauer, Low Harrison, Wolff, Feldman, and Earle Brown! The flyer was designed by Cage. In the forties and much of the fifties, Cage and Cunningham (and often Tudor) concerts were usually graced with simple, elegant, handsome flyers, posters, programs, and sometimes tickets that Cage himself designed; when possible he chose the paper as well as the type, layout, colors, etc." - p 13 To say that the above is thrilling to me is an understatement. As an appreciator of imaginative & meticulous design I'm sure that Cage's announcement must've been very special. Just receiving it in the mail wd've been fantastic. Attending the concerts wd've been beyond fantastic. How many opportunities do we have in life for such profound experiences?! Another composer/performer/writer/designer whose production imagination covered all aspects of presentation was the inimitable Franz Kamin (see my documentary about him entitled "DEPOT: Wherein Resides the UNDEAD of Franz Kamin": on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/qDwGVNIJbgE , on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/depot_201906 ; see my underdeveloped Franz Kamin website here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/FranzKa... ). Franz's designs may've even been more fabulous than Cage's. I like to think that my own designs are equally fabulous. I also think that the joys to be found in appreciation of such designs are almost to be taken for granted - &, yet, I think about a pyramid (actually folded & taped into a pyramid) I made to advertise a screening of "DEPOT" at Anthology in NYC. The day before the screening I went to a reading by Steve McCaffery, a writer/performer whose work I consider to be of the highest caliber, genius. I gave McCaffery a pyramid ad. He sd he was flying back to Toronto & wdn't be attending my screening. THEN he sd something like: "How am I supposed to carry this on the plane?!" as if the small pyramidal shape was just a nuisance that interfered w/ his practical life. I explained how he cd untape it & flatten it for putting easily into his pocket - but, truthfully, I was flabbergasted: how cd someone as intelligent & talented as McCaffery be so banal?! "A letter to my parents mentioned the Brandeis Creative Arts Festival, which had commissioned Merce Cunningham to choreograph Stravinsky's Les Noces and Symphonie pour un homme seul, musique concrete composed by Pierre Schaeffer with the collaboration of Pierre Henry." - p 14 Another amazing event I wd've loved to've witnessed. & yet.. John Cage commented: "The Brandeis business is unfortunately not Boulez but a lousy piece by Schaeffer and Henry." - p 15 A "lousy piece"?! Sometimes, IMO, Cage cd be a bit too myopically restricted by his own philosophical obsessions. I keep saying how much I wd've liked to've been at these key cultural moments. Imagine Black Mountain College: "Josef Albers and Charles Olson are probably the two most important to Black Mountain's history, but the list includs Ernst Krenek, Edward Steuerman, Walter Gropius, Lionel Feininger, Ossip Zadkine, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Richard Lippold, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Paul Goodman, Katherine Litz, Bernard Leach, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Peter Voulkos, John Chamberlain, David Tudor, Lou Harrison, Ben Shawn, Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov, Stefan Wolpe" - p 17 AMAZING, yes. Definitely. &, yet. despite what I've already written, despite my intense admiration for many of these people's creativity.. I'm actually happy to've led the life I've led, the life that wasn't at Black Mountain College, the life that started in 1953, that represents a very different trajectory - but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate this history. I do appreciate it. Very much. "In one of his lectures, ostensibly on Satie, Cage said: "With Beethoven the parts of the composition were defined by means of harmony. With Satie and Webern they are defined by means of time lengths. The question of structure is so basic, and it is so important to be in agreement about it, that one must now ask: Was Beethoven right or are Webern and Satie right? I answer immediately and unequivocally, Beethoven was in error, and his influence, which has been as extensive as it is lamentable, has been deadening to the art of music." - p 18 For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticB... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 06, 2022
|
Dec 30, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 9798987157305
| B0BMWG7X6Y
| 5.00
| 1
| unknown
| Oct 31, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
review of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's THE SCIENCE (volume 1) - by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 10, 2022 This is my most recent bk, my 16th. I review of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's THE SCIENCE (volume 1) - by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 10, 2022 This is my most recent bk, my 16th. I consider it to be one of the best things I've ever written AND truly important. The big question: Will anyone read it? On Goodreads, I have many 'followers' who've expressed an interest in my reviews. This is certainly the bk of mine that most coherently presents my 'wit & wisdom' thru the medium of reviews. Really, take the plunge. Read it, you won't be wasting your time. I swear it's better than constantly reaching for your chapstick. Here's the Introduction: 1st, there's no such thing as THE SCIENCE - by that I don't mean that there's no such thing as SCIENCE, I mean that there's no such thing as a monolithic scientific community opinion in wch everyone's in agreement. Scientists, after all, are people 1st & foremost & have the same foibles & varieties that other people do. Even if there's an agreement about what constitutes 'scientific method' & even if an application of that method to a particular subject yields similar results from a multitude of sources it doesn't mean that there can't be underpinning problems w/ axioms &/or distortions of data based on ulterior motives, etc, etc.. During the time of the so-called COVID-19 pandemic it's been my observation that people have been going along w/ medical propaganda based on their subculturally approved 'news'feeds that purport to represent THE SCIENCE despite there being substantially adversarial opinions amongst scientists. In the liberal circles that I'm most directly exposed to, anyone who espouses an opinion that goes against the grain of what's packaged as liberal science is dismissed as a right-wing bone-head. Since I don't think that politicizing science in that way does any good whatsoever toward helping to understand, I've tried to educate myself somewhat using a variety of medical science bks (mainly, if not entirely, for the lay reader) from sources whose philosophy I may or may not agree w/. This approach, I hope, helped me keep a more open mind & kept me aware of my biases. In general, I just wanted to educate myself about medical science since the people who wd potentially argue w/ me asking for THE SCIENCE usually aren't 1. intellectuals, 2. scientists, 3. people capable of any significant research. This bk enables me to explain what my studies have yielded so far. Anyone who might want to argue w/ me can read this bk instead & save me the time & energy of otherwise engaging w/ what I feel is endless combatative ignorance. My most sensationalist take-away from this reading is reinforcement for opinions that've been coming to the fore in recent yrs: viz., that medical science has replaced the Inquisition as a means of dominating & instilling fear into the 'little people' (meaning the vast majority). Just as the Inquisition robbed, kidnapped, tortured, & murdered people for 'the good of their souls' & in accordance w/ 'God's will' so does medical science bully & intimidate people 'for their own good' by inducing a constant fear of impending death. I share many of the same opinions w/ Ivan Illich (author of Medical Nemesis) - esp the opinion that iatrogenesis is responsible for more deaths than the medical establishment is ever likely to admit to. This latter opinion was further reinforced by reading Dr. Edgar March Crookshank's History and Pathology of Vaccination - Volume 1. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 10, 2022
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0140079475
| 9780140079470
| 0140079475
| 3.97
| 5,470
| unknown
| Aug 06, 1985
|
liked it
|
review of Dorothy Cannell's The Thin Woman by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 30, 2022 In the 15+ yrs that I've been reviewing bks for Goodreads review of Dorothy Cannell's The Thin Woman by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 30, 2022 In the 15+ yrs that I've been reviewing bks for Goodreads I've unintentionally found myself rereading 3 bks: a bk by On Kawara, one by Harry Harrison, & now, this by by Cannell. I must've read The Thin Woman before 2007, when I started reviewing every bk I read, b/c I haven't already written a GR review about it. I only knew I'd already read it b/c when I went to check off the title on the bk's title page there was already a check there. Duh. I didn't remember it at all. That's a pretty good indication that this didn't exactly stick w/ me. I wdn't make the same mistake about any of my Top 100 Books ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100B... ) b/c those are all ones that've made a deep impression on me. In the rare instances when I don't remember their content I at least remember that I read them. Anyway, that doesn't mean that this was a 'bad' bk. I was impressed by the quality of the writing given that this was the author's 1st novel. "Dorothy Cannell, British by birth, now lives with her family in Peoria, Illinois, where she teaches cooking. This is her first book. She says she got the inspiration for it one day while watching The Phil Donahue Show." - inside front page Ok, the author watches TV. Don't expect heavy intellectual content here or a deep critique of society. Still, it's entertaining. "Nice people everywhere know that family reunions are occasions of wholesome pleasure, more innocently rewarding than lavender-scented sheets in the airing cupboard or fresh pots of homemade bramble jelly cooling on a marble pantry shelf." - p 1 I like the writing b/c the images evoked are appealing in the way apparently intended w/o in the least bit being something I wd otherwise think of. That sd, I've never been to a family reunion unless Christmas & Thanksgiving gatherings wd qualify. These were always a bit of a misery for me: the same monotonous unintelligent conversation every time, the excessive smothering, the barely under control religious mania, the lack of anything much in common w/ all but one member of my family. The title of the bk, of course, refers to Dashiell Hammett's popular The Thin Man (1934), a novel that spawned 6 movies starring William Powell & Myrna Loy, all of wch I've very much enjoyed. The bk, however, has little in common w/ the Hammett one except for the title & its being a mystery. The main character, Ellie Simons, is a fat woman: ""Cattiness is one of my few pleasures in life—I don't smoke, I don't drink (much), and I don't have sordid affairs with men lusting after my body." ""If you didn't eat for six you might have a hope.["]" - p 4 Having been invited to go to a family reunion & being embarrassed to be overwieght & single Ellie decides to apply for a date from an escort service. She has to fill out an application questionnaire. "But this interrogatory was obviously the brainchild of some Freudian disciple who wanted me to dig my own grave and lie in it. "When using the bathroom, did I always close the door? Did I smoke other people's cigarettes? What kind of nightware did I prefer? "Somewhere between these skilfully dotted lines lay booby traps to be detonated by the unwary." - p 9 Ellie goes shopping for clothes for the occasion. "I was bullied into purchasing a full-length purple silk caftan sporting pearl beading round the neckline and gold braid round the sleeves and hem. Serena and Jill insisted I looked opulent. The term I would have chosen was Arabian Fright." - p 13 Her date-for-hire insists upon taking his car, a convertible w/ the top stuck down. The problem is, it's snowing. "Not having been outside, or even drawn back my curtains that day, I was unprepared for the grim discovery that it was snowing. Large soft swirls like soapflakes powdered the air. Seaside weather? Apparently Bentley Haskell's car laboured under the misconception that it was. The badly scarred rusty-grey vehicle was parked tight against the kerb and the top was down. I knew convertibles went in for that sort of thing, but with discretion. Not with snow flurries churning in from the east." - p 19 Bentley Haskell, her escort, has been rejected by his parents. "His offence was interesting, Mum and Dad had not taken kindly to the idea that their son was a practicing atheist. ""Practicing?" ""I helped stage a rally outside the Hallelujah Revival Chapel, one of those narrow, venomous sects that still believe in burning heretics at the stake. In this instance they had refused to bury a small child in consecrated ground. If that kind of piety is religion I don't need it."" - p 25 I'm a Practicing Promotextual, myself. Please don't bury me in consecrated ground, plain old nature is just fine - just don't murder me & hide the body. They arrive. ""Somewhere to the left of you is a gargoyle. He's the knocker." ""This? I thought the house was sprouting fungus! What do I do? Belt him one?" ""Moron! You yank his tongue out and watch his eyes roll round."" - p 29 Before you know it, they've gone & come back there again, their original host has died & surprised them w/ his will. "" 'H. To Giselle Simons and Bentley Haskell in equal shares, I leave all my remaining estate.' " "Someone gasped: Was it me or Ben? "" 'Subject to the following conditions: "" '1. That Giselle Simmons and Bentley Haskell shall reside at my residence for a period of six months from the date of my death. "" '2. That Giselle Simons shall divest herself of four and one-half stone, no less, in body weight, within said six months and can prove same by presentation of a doctor's certificate.[' "]" - p 64 Wch bring us, of course, to the title. Well, 149pp later, jealous relatives trying to prevent Giselle Sim(m)ons from getting the inheritance have killed EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, including themselves, leaving Ellie & Ben to be the only characters in what's turned into a romance novel. ""Very sporting of you." Moments earlier I had been frozen to the marrow, now I was warm all over, deliciously so. An emotion totally new to me was searing molten blood through my veins. A thousand chocolate éclairs could never have made me feel like this. I was sorry Ben was suffering. But the man had brought this upon himself. "Perhaps we should make it a double wedding?" I suggested, tilting my face up so my lips brushed his chin. "You and" [dead] "Vanessa would make a charming background for" [dead] "Rowland and me."" - p 213 ""Of course not," answered my hero with magnificent repugnance. "But, Ellie, lovely, wonderfully witty Ellie, you'd have to be out of your mind to believe me when I tell you that I am wildly, madly crazy about you."" - p 215 But, humans being the mess that we are, they each decide to marry the afore-mentioned dead people instead after wch they whip up a giant stew w/ all the rest of the deaceased wch they then sweeten & freeze into some sort of trend-setting dessert wch as many people buy as people who buy my bks b/c, remember? there're only the 2 living people, the 2 dead ones & the frozen dessert - so who's going to buy it?, DUH. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Oct 29, 2022
|
Oct 30, 2022
|
Paperback
|
Tentatively,
>
Books:
Read
(1628)
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 3.73
|
it was amazing
|
May 18, 2023
|
May 28, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.26
|
liked it
|
Apr 30, 2023
|
May 24, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.45
|
liked it
|
Apr 26, 2023
|
May 17, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.50
|
really liked it
|
Apr 26, 2023
|
Apr 27, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.43
|
really liked it
|
Apr 15, 2023
|
Apr 27, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.26
|
liked it
|
Apr 14, 2023
|
Apr 26, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.55
|
really liked it
|
Mar 31, 2023
|
Apr 08, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.83
|
really liked it
|
Mar 21, 2023
|
Mar 27, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.33
|
liked it
|
Mar 15, 2023
|
Mar 21, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.50
|
really liked it
|
Mar 08, 2023
|
Mar 21, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.04
|
liked it
|
Mar 08, 2023
|
Mar 20, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Mar 05, 2023
|
Mar 15, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.65
|
liked it
|
Mar 03, 2023
|
Mar 10, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Feb 25, 2023
|
Mar 09, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.74
|
liked it
|
Feb 17, 2023
|
Mar 04, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Feb 15, 2023
|
Mar 03, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.25
|
really liked it
|
Feb 10, 2023
|
Feb 28, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Jan 31, 2023
|
Feb 20, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.67
|
liked it
|
Jan 03, 2023
|
Feb 20, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
liked it
|
Jan 21, 2023
|
Feb 13, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.47
|
really liked it
|
Jan 17, 2023
|
Feb 12, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.74
|
liked it
|
Jan 04, 2023
|
Feb 11, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Dec 28, 2022
|
Feb 03, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.30
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 25, 2022
|
Jan 28, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.37
|
really liked it
|
Dec 23, 2022
|
Jan 08, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
liked it
|
Dec 18, 2022
|
Dec 31, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 2.25
|
liked it
|
Nov 24, 2022
|
Dec 31, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 4.60
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 06, 2022
|
Dec 30, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 5.00
|
it was amazing
|
not set
|
Dec 10, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.97
|
liked it
|
Oct 29, 2022
|
Oct 30, 2022
|
Loading...
